diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:56:12 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:56:12 -0700 |
| commit | 9ba37c2c74af45e0417c9d812ebee74c56d6c1e1 (patch) | |
| tree | b068cbc9ca5426864d7b3d9a891c8d7a3dc538b4 | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666-8.txt | 16678 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 429682 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 533966 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666-h/31666-h.htm | 17307 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666-h/images/north.png | bin | 0 -> 79523 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666.txt | 16678 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 31666.zip | bin | 0 -> 429612 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
10 files changed, 50679 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31666-8.txt b/31666-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..36c7047 --- /dev/null +++ b/31666-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16678 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I +(of 2), by John Wilson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I (of 2) + + +Author: John Wilson + + + +Release Date: March 16, 2010 [eBook #31666] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, +VOLUME I (OF 2)*** + + +E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Joseph R. Hauser, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 31666-h.htm or 31666-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31666/31666-h/31666-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31666/31666-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + The original text uses macrons (a letter with a bar over + it) in some of the names. These have been replaced with + [=x], where x is the original letter. + + + + + + +RECREATIONS + +OF + +CHRISTOPHER NORTH + + +A New Edition in Two Volumes + +VOL. I. + + + + + + + +William Blackwood and Sons +Edinburgh and London +MDCCCLXVIII + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. I. + + PAGE +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET:-- + FYTTE FIRST, 1 + + FYTTE SECOND, 29 + + FYTTE THIRD, 52 + +TALE OF EXPIATION, 75 + +MORNING MONOLOGUE, 104 + +THE FIELD OF FLOWERS, 121 + +COTTAGES, 135 + +AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY, 179 + +INCH-CRUIN, 231 + +A DAY AT WINDERMERE, 242 + +THE MOORS!-- + PROLOGUE, 262 + + FLIGHT FIRST--GLEN-ETIVE, 290 + + FLIGHT SECOND--THE COVES OF CRUACHAN, 316 + + FLIGHT THIRD--STILL LIFE, 336 + + FLIGHT FOURTH--DOWN RIVER AND UP LOCH, 365 + +HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM, 390 + +THE HOLY CHILD, 410 + +OUR PARISH, 422 + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +Like most of Professor Wilson's miscellaneous writings, the articles +contained in the two following volumes appeared originally in +"Blackwood's Magazine." Having been revised and considerably remodelled +by their Author, they were published in three volumes, 8vo, in 1842, +under the general title, "The Recreations of Christopher North." In the +reprint, the special titles of some of the articles are different from +those which the same papers bear in the Magazine. + + + + +RECREATIONS + +OF + +CHRISTOPHER NORTH. + + + + +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. + +FYTTE FIRST. + + +There is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on +flood, field, and fell. The principles in human nature on which they +depend, are in all the same; but those principles are subject to +infinite modifications and varieties, according to the difference of +individual and national character. All such pastimes, whether followed +merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate means of +sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and knowledge of nature and +nature's laws; nor less, patience, perseverance, courage even, and +bodily strength or activity, while the spirit which animates and +supports them is a spirit of anxiety, doubt, fear, hope, joy, +exultation, and triumph--in the heart of the young a fierce passion--in +the heart of the old a passion still, but subdued and tamed down, +without, however, being much dulled or deadened, by various experience +of all the mysteries of the calling, and by the gradual subsiding of all +impetuous impulses in the frames of all mortal men beyond perhaps +three-score, when the blackest head will be becoming grey, the most +nervous knee less firmly knit, the most steely-springed instep less +elastic, the keenest eye less of a far-keeker, and, above all, the most +boiling heart less like a caldron or a crater--yea, the whole man +subject to some dimness or decay, and, consequently, the whole duty of +man like the new edition of a book, from which many passages that formed +the chief glory of the _editio princeps_ have been expunged--the whole +character of the style corrected without being thereby improved--just +like the later editions of the Pleasures of Imagination, which were +written by Akenside when he was about twenty-one, and altered by him at +forty--to the exclusion or destruction of many most _splendida vitia_, +by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its +brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse--perplexing +critics. + +Now, seeing that such pastimes are in number almost infinite, and +infinite the varieties of human character, pray what is there at all +surprising in your being madly fond of shooting--and your brother Tom +just as foolish about fishing--and cousin Jack perfectly insane on +fox-hunting--while the old gentleman your father, in spite of wind and +weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the +white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire wolds--and uncle Ben, as if +just escaped from Bedlam or St Luke's with Dr Haslam at his heels, or +with a few hundred yards' start of Dr Warburton, is seen galloping, in a +Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian +beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to +be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in +field and forest--"still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by +the name of Escape? + +Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have +thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the +alphabet; yet how many languages--some six thousand we believe, each of +which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you might +as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species +of sportsmen. + +There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound +development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and +deer-stalking--from being, in short, a universal genius in sports and +pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man. + +Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in pastimes. We do +not now speak of marbles--or knuckling down at taw--or trundling a +hoop--or pall-lall--or pitch and toss--or any other of the games of the +school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately +perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus Angling seems the earliest of +them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on +the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited +with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a +yarn-thread--for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut--his +rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his +play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing +had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after +month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul-engrossing +hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug--a tug! +With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, +he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull +away at the monster--and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans +and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far +away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, +two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, +and sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, +holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, +like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush +of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, +up-stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his +hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the +thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw--and at night, +"cabined, cribbed, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep--a +thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams! + +From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful daydream, haunted by +the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality--an art--a science--of +which the flaxen-headed schoolboy feels himself to be master--a mystery +in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now, all alone, in the +power of successful passion, to the distant brook--brook a mile +off--with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a +huge forest of six acres, between and the house in which he is boarded +or was born! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy +shallows--there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The +scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, +disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. +And oh! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the +braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of +sunshine! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two +pieces--yes, his line is of hair twisted--plaited by his own +soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly! +And the Fates, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, +ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the paidler in the +brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at +the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the +bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a +race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots +through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life +expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden +brightens up the sky. _Fortuna favet fortibus_--and with one long pull, +and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve-incher on +the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where +such an exploit was possible, and dashing upon him like an osprey, soars +up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries +off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging +him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him +bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and +feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow +light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly +splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzlingly; but now +the radiance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye +of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of +clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine. + +Springs, summers, autumns, winters--each within itself longer, by many +times longer than the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at last +through one's fingers like a knotless thread--pass over the curled +darling's brow; and look at him now, a straight and strengthy stripling, +in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after +rock-ledge, nor needing aught as he plashes knee-deep, or +waistband-high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of +his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely +seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the +sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown, rod of ash framed by +village wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is +dexterous; but a twenty-feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and +a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line +itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's +proboscis--the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw--from +butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," +the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses +materialised! A fish--fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore +to be woo'd--she is a salmon, therefore to be won"--but shy, timid, +capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any +other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in +spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last; and then +with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead, or worse than dead, +fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the lustre of her beauty, +insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable +things in a world of perishing!--But the salmon has grown sulky, and +must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct +with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver +bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very +head of the waterfall! Give her the butt--give her the butt--or she is +gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep!--Now comes the +trial of your tackle--and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge +of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards--right up the middle of +the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very +course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and +deep--and the line goes steady, boys, steady--stiff and steady as a Tory +in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal +fin--danger in the flap of her tail--and yet may her silver shoulder +shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, +and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now +level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or +obstruction--the coast is clear--no tree-roots here--no floating +branches--for during the night they have all been swept down to the +salt loch. _In medio tutissimas ibis_--ay, now you feel she begins to +fail--the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! +another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to +have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual +Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook!--you in the +tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the +devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?--Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is +that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you +think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tarn Grieve never gruppit sae +heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council.--Curse that collie! +Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks--if +that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, +come bellowing by between us and the river, then, "Madam! all is lost, +except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at +seven. Our will is made--ten thousand to the Foundling--ditto to the +Thames Tunnel--ha--ha--my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss +thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further +resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself +to death! No faith in female--she trusts to the last trial of her +tail--sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle +spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy +planet. Scrope--Bainbridge--Maule--princes among Anglers--oh! that you +were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious +sympathy--far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing +the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow +in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious +vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! +Poor Sandy--why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!--Peter! The +Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with +a swirl--whitening as she nears the sand--there she has it--struck right +into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or +Venus--and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of +beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood! + + "The child is father of the man, + And I would wish my days to be + Bound each to each by natural piety!" + +So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun, +formed of the last year's growth of a branch of the plane-tree--the +beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree--that +stands straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from +afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in +sheltered inland vale, still loving the roof of the fisherman's or +peasant's cottage. + +Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a very musket, such +as soldiers bear--a Christmas present from parent, once a colonel of +volunteers--nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, +formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hinder-end +of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon +tires of such ineffectual trigger--and his soul, as well as his hair, is +set on fire by that extraordinary compound--Gunpowder. He begins with +burning off his eyebrows on the King's birthday; squibs and crackers +follow, and all the pleasures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off +a gun--"and follows to the field some warlike lord"--in hopes of being +allowed to discharge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his +last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking +among the trees. This is his first practice in firearms, and from that +hour he is--a Shooter. + +Then there is in most rural parishes--and of rural parishes alone do we +condescend to speak--a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the +butt--perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is +bought, or borrowed, by the young shooter, who begins firing first at +barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living things--a strange cur, +who, from his lolling tongue, may be supposed to have the hydrophobia--a +cat that has purred herself asleep on the sunny churchyard wall, or is +watching mice at their hole-mouths among the graves--a water-rat in the +mill-lead--or weasel that, running to his retreat in the wall, always +turns round to look at you--a goose wandered from his common in +disappointed love--or brown duck, easily mistaken by the unscrupulous +for a wild one, in pond remote from human dwelling, or on meadow by the +river-side, away from the clack of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, +shouted out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flying +mark to the more advanced class; or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh +of day close to the cottage door among the chickens; or a flock of +pigeons wheeling overhead on the stubble-field, or sitting so thick +together that every stock is blue with tempting plumage. + +But the pistol is discharged for a fowling-piece--brown and rusty, with +a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion +to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up +into the air--and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent +dent in copper metal; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming +swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held sacred, but shot at +on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him--an opinion +strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small +brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the +many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game--and +still more, the long-winged legless black devilet, that, if it falls to +the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the +corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of +cannon-shot, gambols in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a +thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's +flight. It seems to boyish eyes that the creatures near the earth, when +but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers +growing on the coign of vantage: the signal is given to fire; but the +devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips +with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground but a +tiny bit of mossy mortar, inhabited by a spider! + +But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the schoolboy, or rather the +college boy, returning to his rural vacation (for in Scotland college +winters tread close, too close, on the heels of academies), has a gun--a +gun in a case--a double-barrel too--of his own--and is provided with a +licence, probably without any other qualification than that of hit or +miss. On some portentous morning he effulges with the sun in velveteen +jacket and breeches of the same--many-buttoned gaiters, and an +unkerchiefed throat. 'Tis the fourteenth of September, and lo! a +pointer at his heels--Ponto, of course--a game-bag like a beggar's +wallet at his side--destined to be at eve as full of charity--and all +the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see +the sight, would be the "mother that bore him;" the heart of that old +sportsman, his daddy, would sing for joy! The chained mastiff in the +yard yowls his admiration; the servant lasses uplift the pane of their +garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in +their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab Roger, who has been +cleaning out the barn, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and away +go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pupil through the autumnal +rime, off to the uplands, where--for it is one of the earliest of +harvests--there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The +turnip-fields are bright green with hope and expectation--and coveys are +couching on lazy beds beneath the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, +ditch-guarded on either side, shelters its own brood--imagination hears +the whirr shaking the dewdrops from the broom on the brae--and first one +bird and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no +contemptible covey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in clouds, +from the coppice brushwood with here and there an intercepting standard +tree. + +Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or +having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent +nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, +shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his +points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between +those inexorable knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy +enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole +parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts; +and the schoolmaster, fastening a knowing eye on dunce and neerdoweel, +holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the tawes. Frequent flogging +will cow the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels +now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, +rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smelling strongly, he +draws slowly and beautifully, and + + "There fix'd, a perfect semicircle stands." + +Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his eagerness, stumbling among +the stubble, when, hark and lo! the gabble of grey goslings, and the +bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! Bang goes the right-hand barrel +at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be off to the tune of "ower the +hills and far awa'," while the young gentleman, half-ashamed and +half-incensed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the left-hand +barrel, with a highly improper curse, at the father of the feathered +family before him, who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, +throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird of his usual habits, and, +after biting the dust with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, +breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary scene--and leaves himself +to be paid for at the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly +irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long, and not only harmless, +but honourable and useful life. + +It is nearly as impossible a thing as we know, to borrow a dog about the +time the sun has reached his meridian, on the First Day of the +Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into +his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of "tired Nature's sweet +restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a collie, who, from +numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don +in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip-field to +stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no +objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto to +perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in +upon them open-mouthed, despatches them right and left, even like the +famous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westminster. The birds are +bagged with a gentle remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded with a +whang of cheese. Elated by the pressure on his shoulder, the young +gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, like winking, +at every uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle by bringing +down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and, +wearied with such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who +can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he +could kick her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is half +full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the +cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge +of a wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy +sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her brain, and +turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece +of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior pouch of the +jacket, yet unstained by blood, yawns to receive her--and in she goes +plump; paws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all--while Luath, all the way +home to the Mains, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through; for +well he knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy, +whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or +burrowed beneath a snow-wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite +of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory +shot. + +But let us trace no further thus, step by step, the Pilgrim's Progress. +Look at him now--a finished sportsman--on the moors--the bright black +boundless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching away, by long Loch Ericht side, +into the dim and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, over the +bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that the pluffer at partridge-pouts who +had nearly been the death of poor Ponto? Lord Kennedy himself might take +a lesson now from the straight and steady style in which, on the +mountain brow, and up to the middle in heather, he brings his Manton to +the deadly level! More unerring eye never glanced along brown barrel! +Finer forefinger never touched a trigger! Follow him a whole day, and +not one wounded bird. All most beautifully arrested on their flight by +instantaneous death! Down dropped right and left, like lead on the +heather--old cock and hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as +calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from among a pile of plumage. +No random shot within--no needless shot out of distance--covered every +feather before stir of finger--and body, back, and brain, pierced, +broken, shattered! And what perfect pointers! There they stand, still as +death--yet instinct with life--the whole half-dozen! Mungo, the +black-tanned--Don, the red-spotted--Clara, the snow-white--Primrose, the +pale yellow--Basto, the bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many +colours, often seen afar through the mists like a meteor. + +So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's Progress--now briefly for the +Hunter's. Hunting, in this country, unquestionably commences with cats. +Few cottages without a cat. If you do not find her on the mouse watch +at the gable end of the house just at the corner, take a solar +observation, and by it look for her on bank or brae--somewhere about the +premises--if unsuccessful, peep into the byre, and up through a hole +among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is you see her eyes +glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into +the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the +baulks below the kipples. No. Well, then, let your eye travel along the +edge of that little wood behind the cottage--ay, yonder she is!--but she +sees both you and your two terriers--one rough and the other +smooth--and, slinking away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in +among the hazels, she either lies _perdu_, or is up a fir-tree almost as +high as the magpie's or corby's nest. + +Now, observe, shooting cats is one thing, and hunting them is +another--and shooting and hunting, though they may be united, are here +treated separately; so, in the present case, the cat makes her escape. +But get her watching birds--young larks, perhaps, walking on the lea--or +young linnets hanging on the broom--down-by yonder in the holm lands, +where there are no trees, except indeed that one glorious single tree, +the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by Glowrer, and then what a most +capital chase! Stretching herself up with crooked back, as if taking a +yawn--off she jumps, with tremendous spangs, and tail, thickened with +fear and anger, perpendicular. Youf--youf--youf--go the +terriers--head-over-heels perhaps in their fury--and are not long in +turning her--and bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all ablaze and +abristle. A she-devil incarnate! Hark--all at once now strikes up a +trio--Catalani caterwauling the treble--Glowrer taking the bass, and +Tearer the tenor--a cruel concert cut short by a squalling throttler. +Away--away along the holm--and over the knowe--and into the wood--for +lo! the gudewife, brandishing a besom, comes flying demented without her +mutch, down to the murder of her Tabby--her son, a stout stripling, is +seen skirting the potato-field to intercept our flight--and, most +formidable of all foes, the Man of the House himself, in his shirt +sleeves and flail in his hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, +across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off from the Manse. The +hunt's up--and 'tis a capital steeple-chase. Disperse--disperse! Down +the hill, Jack--up the hill, Gill--dive the dell, Kit--thread the wood, +Pat--a hundred yards' start is a great matter--a stern chase is always a +long chase--schoolboys are generally in prime wind--the old man begins +to puff, and blow, and snort, and put his paws to his paunch--the son is +thrown out by a double of dainty Davy's--and the "sair begrutten mither" +is gathering up the torn and tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, +and invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on her pitiless +murderers. Some slight relief to her bursting and breaking heart to vow +that she will make the minister hear of it on the deafest side of his +head--ay, even if she have to break in upon him sitting on Saturday +night, getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in his ain study. + +Now, gentle reader, again observe, that though we have now described, +_con amore_, a most cruel case of cat-killing, in which we certainly did +play a most aggravated part some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we +from recommending such wanton barbarity to the rising generation. We are +not inditing a homily on humanity to animals, nor have we been appointed +to succeed the Rev. Dr Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the +Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual Gibsonian sermon on +that subject--we are simply stating certain matters of fact, +illustrative of the rise and progress of the love of pastime in the +soul, and leave our readers to draw the moral. But may we be permitted +to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often make the most pious men; +that it does not follow, according to the wise saws and modern instances +of prophetic old women of both sexes, that he who in boyhood has worried +a cat with terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on one of his own +species; or that peccadilloes are the progenitors of capital crimes. +Nature allows to growing lads a certain range of wickedness, _sans peur +et sans reproche_. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock +ancient females--to laugh at Quakers--to make mouths at a decent man and +his wife riding double to church--the matron's thick legs ludicrously +bobbing from the pillion, kept firm on Dobbin's rump by her bottom, +"_ponderibus librata suis_,"--to tip the wink to young women during +sermon on Sunday--and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, +whether they will or no, on high-road or by-path--and to perpetrate many +other little nameless enormities. + +No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious +character; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by +pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is +of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that +he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his +dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and +frolic, even when trespasses, are not guilt; and though a cat have nine +lives, she has but one ghost--and that will haunt no house where there +are terriers. What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent, +you would not wish your only boy--your son and heir--the blended image +of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty--to be a smug, +smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his +forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his +white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always +moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his +nose--botanising with his maiden aunts--doing the pretty at tea-tables +with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and +attending to the kettle--telling tales on all naughty boys and +girls--laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny-pig--keeping +all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer--having his own +peg for his uncrushed hat--saying his prayers precisely as the clock +strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's-buff--and +puffed up every Sabbath eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon +memory for a sermon--while all the other boys are scolded for having +fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write +sermons himself at his tender years, nay--even to be able to give you +chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far +that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even +of his Sunday clothes--blotting his copy--impiously pinning pieces of +paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father--going to +the fishing not only without leave, but against orders--bathing in the +forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned--drying powder before the +schoolroom fire, and blowing himself and two crack-skulled cronies to +the ceiling--tying kettles to the tails of dogs--shooting an old woman's +laying hen--galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps--climbing +trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up the +tooth-of-time-indented sides of old castles after wallflowers and +starlings--being run away with in carts by colts against turnpike +gates--buying bad ballads from young gypsy-girls, who, on receiving a +sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change +out of that;"--on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail--a +devil for galloping--not only attending country races for a saddle and +collar, but entering for and winning the prize--dancing like a devil in +barns at kirns--seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming +heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be +involved--fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn +beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen +blue--and, to conclude "this strange eventful history," once brought +home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom, and +found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the +moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate! + +Nay, start not, parental reader--nor, in the terror of anticipation, +send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, +mayhap pursuing even such another career. Trust thou to the genial, +gracious, and benign _vis medicatrix naturę_. What though a few clouds +bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how +splendid the meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight the +beauty of the budding and blowing rose? Look how she revives beneath +dew, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even scarce endure the +lustre! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute the +snow of the swan? They fall off from her expanded wings, and, pure as a +spirit, she soars away, and descends into her own silver lake, stainless +as the water-lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immortal +soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its +nascent state--in this, less favoured than material and immaterial +things that perish? No--it is undergoing endless transmigrations,--every +hour a being different, yet the same--dark stains blotted out--rueful +inscriptions effaced--many an erasure of impressions once thought +permanent, but soon altogether forgotten--and vindicating, in the midst +of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial +origin, character, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, +like a taper in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shining +in inextinguishable and self-fed radiance--like a star in heaven. + +Therefore, bad as boys too often are--and a disgrace to the mother who +bore them--the cradle in which they were rocked--the nurse by whom they +were suckled--the schoolmaster by whom they were flogged--and the +hangman by whom it was prophesied they were to be executed--wait +patiently for a few years, and you will see them all transfigured--one +into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all +men to be Christians--another into a parliamentary orator, who commands +the applause of listening senates, and + + "Reads his history in a nation's eyes" + +--one into a painter, before whose thunderous heavens the storms of +Poussin "pale their ineffectual fires"--another into a poet composing +and playing, side by side, on his own peculiar harp, in a concert of +vocal and instrumental music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth--one +into a great soldier, who, when Wellington is no more, shall, for the +freedom of the world, conquer a future Waterloo--another who, hoisting +his flag on the "mast of some tall ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in +the Temeraire, lay two three-deckers on board at once, and clothe some +now nameless peak or promontory in immortal glory, like that shining on +Trafalgar. + +Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. Cats have a look of +hares--kittens of leverets--and they are all called Pussy. The terriers +are useful still, preceding the line like skirmishers, and with finest +noses startling the maukin from bracken-bush or rush bower, her skylight +garret in the old quarry, or her brown study in the brake. Away with +your coursing on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are seen squatted +from a distance, and the sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, +are let slip by a Tryer, running for cups and collars before lords and +ladies, and squires of high and low degree--a pretty pastime enough, no +doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. But will it for a moment +compare with the sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld witch" +from the bunweed-covered lea, when the throat of every pedestrian is +privileged to cry "halloo--halloo--halloo"--and whipcord-tailed +greyhound and hairy lurcher, without any invidious distinction of birth +or bearing, lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same moment, to +the same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing +Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with retroverted +eyes she turns her face to the mountain, and seeks the cairn only a +little lower than the falcon's nest. + +What signifies any sport in the open air, except in congenial scenery of +earth and heaven? Go, thou gentle Cockney! and angle in the New +River;--but, bold Englishman, come with us and try a salmon-cast in the +old Tay. Go, thou gentle Cockney! and course a suburban hare in the +purlieus of Blackheath;--but, bold Englishman, come with us and course +an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night an old +woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as you will with a +leash and a half of lightfoots, still returns at dark to the same form +in the turf-dyke of the garden of the mountain cottage. The children, +who love her as their own eyes--for she has been as a pet about the +family, summer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some +five years old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle--will +scarcely care to see her started--nay, one or two of the wickedest among +them will join in the halloo; for often, ere this, "has she cheated the +very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the lang dowgs walloping +ahint her, sair forfeuchen, up the benty brae--and it's no the day that +she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, or smooth Spring, or the red +Bick, or the hairy Lurcher--though a' fowre be let lowse on her at ance, +and ye surround her or she rise." What are your great big fat lazy +English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food +brought to their very mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with +five minutes' scamper among themselves--to the middle-sized, +hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel-legged, long-winded maukins of Scotland, +that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland +yardie that shelters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing +every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired as young eagles +ringing the sky for pastime, and before the dogs seem not so much +scouring for life as for pleasure--with such an air of freedom, liberty, +and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the +faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine--strong in +bone, and sound in bottom;--see, see how Tickler clears that +twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird--tops that hedge +that would turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbray--and +then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his own +length, and close upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off within a +point of due south. A kennel! He never was and never will be in a kennel +all his free joyful days. He has walked and run--and leaped and swam +about--at his own will, ever since he was nine days old--and he would +have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets +for him--he takes his meals with the family, sitting at the right hand +of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he +chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church. +That is the education of a Scottish greyhound--and the consequence is, +that you may pardonably mistake him for a deer dog from Badenoch or +Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse +of the antlers on the weather-gleam, + + "Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod + To his hills that encircle the sea." + +This may be called roughing +it--slovenly--coarse--rude--artless--unscientific. But we say no--it is +your only coursing. Gods! with what a bounding bosom the schoolboy +salutes the dawning of the cool--clear--crisp, yes, crisp October morn +(for there has been a slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows +are all glittering with rime); and, little time lost at dress or +breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch, and away to the +Trysting-hill Farmhouse, which he fears the gamekeeper and his grews +will have left ere he can run across the two long Scotch miles of moor +between him and his joy! With step elastic, he feels flying along the +sward as from a spring-board; like a roe, he clears the burns and bursts +his way through the brakes; panting, not from breathlessness but +anxiety, he lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole, and lo, the +green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat +before the door, and two or three tall raw-boned poachers--and there is +mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, +adventure, and desperation, in that word; while tall and graceful stand +the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen yet quiet +eyes, prophetic of their destined prey, and though motionless now as +stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like +lightning at the loved halloo! + +Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, +with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no +trifle--for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, +is moreover in the family way, and surely this time there will be twins +at least--and pours out a canty caulker for each crowing crony, +beginning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and +her self; and better speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers +another with "hinny," by way of Athole brose; but it is put off till +evening, for coursing requires a clear head, and the same sobriety then +adorned our youth that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although +an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn +office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, +anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market; and donning +his broad blue bonnet, and the shortest-tailed auld coat he can find, +and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his orders for +a' things about the place, and sets off with the younkers for a holiday. +Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as +he may look; and 'twould be well for this wicked world if no elder in it +had a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's +wife used to call his "awfu' fondness for the Grews!" + +And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed +it merely be some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had time and could +afford it, and lived in a tolerably open country, would not keep, at the +very least, three greyhounds? No better eating than a hare, though old +blockhead Burton--and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was +one in this world--in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. +Did he ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commencement, swallow a +tureen of hare-soup with half-a-peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he +did--and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no +occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he +never did--then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England--as +you love us and yourself--cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment +dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly +sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing +as melancholy meat--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--provided only there +be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. +But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even daunering +about the home-farm seeking for a hare! It is quite an art or science. +You must consult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the +night before--and of every day and night back to last Sunday, when +probably you were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares +shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they +love the fallow field--that, the stubble; this, you will see them, +almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland +lea--that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, +detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or +the bracken; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet +or wind--that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; now you may depend +on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a +bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his +fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the +airts;--in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even +if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be +called an ignorant man--is probably a better-informed man in the long +run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the +Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the +lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old +courser (him of the Sporting Annals included), who was not a man both of +abilities and virtues. But where were we?--at the Trysting-hill +Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-them-Out. + +Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills--for +we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the +rose--fleet of foot almost as the very antelope--Oh! now, alas! dim and +withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms--slow +as the sloth along the ground--spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered +pantaloon! + + "O heaven! that from our bright and shining years + Age would but take the things youth heeded not!" + +An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent to the +hills--and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, +intimates that she is in her old form behind the dyke--and the noble +dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that +her hour is come. Plash, plash, through the marsh, and then on the dry +furze beyond, you see her large dark-brown eyes--Soho, soho, +soho--Halloo, halloo, halloo--for a moment the seemingly horned creature +appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on +her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts--away fly hare +and hounds towards the mountain. + +Stand all still for a minute--for not a bush the height of our knee to +break our view--and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beautiful +exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in admiration the beatings of the +rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights--none more, none so +much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed +at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of +the falcon's wing! Instinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one +flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and +twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong passions! Now +they are all three upon her--and she dies! No! glancing aside, like a +bullet from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight +course--and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting +headlong one over the other, all three, with erected tails, suddenly +bring themselves up--like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one +after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and +again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind--and in a close line, +head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet--again, all +opened-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the +cliff. + +We are all on foot--and pray what horse could gallop through among all +these quagmires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the +water-cressy and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither +side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee--up that hill on +the perpendicular strewn with flint-shivers--down these loose-hanging +cliffs--through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as +iron--over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds--and-- +finally--up--up--up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the +cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a +patch of snow? + +The thing is impossible--so we are all on foot--and the fleetest keeper +that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give +us sixty yards. "Ha! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"--we +exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But +see--see--they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount--glancing +aside, she throws them all three out--yes, all three, and few enow too, +though fair play be a jewel--and ere they can recover, she is ahead a +hundred yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and +bottom! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; +but she steals away from them inch by inch--beating them all blind--and, +suddenly disappearing--Heaven knows how--leaves them all in the lurch. +With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping +tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, +and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in +defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third +time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland--nor can there any +longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most +sceptical, that she is--what all the country-side have long known her to +be--a Witch. + +From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy +in the order of nature--and so is it from coursing to Fox-Hunting--by +means, however, of a small intermediate step--the Harriers. Musical is a +pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring changes +in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country we +have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule +without an exception; and, as we shall see by-and-by, there is one too +here), and commend us even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the +pastoral or sylvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a +heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will +ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some fourteen hands, that +can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on +bridle-paths, or upon the pathless braes--and by judicious horsemanship, +you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far +out at the death. But the schoolboy--and the shepherd--and the +whipper-in--as each hopes for favour from his own Diana--let them all be +on foot--and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that +can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old +fox--but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless +young hare. What deceit in every double! What calculation in every +squat! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Labyrinth is the +creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre! +a-listening the baffled roar! Now into the pool she plunges, to free +herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent +course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, +fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely +beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping +of stone walls she crawls and scrambles--and now ventures from the wood +along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so +that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty +little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if +to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. +Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The +terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the +churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among +the number--and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of +the house of worship--and now, in momentary contrition, + + "Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!" + +and we bethink ourselves--alas! all in vain, for + + "_Naturam expellas furcā, tamen usque recurret_"-- + +of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity:-- + + "One lesson, reader, let us two divide, + Taught by what nature shows and what conceals, + Never to blend our pleasure and our pride + With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." + +It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice--so let us +conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime +is the very strongest that can possess the heart--nor, of all the heroes +of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. +His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two +words--Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the +sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate--that would +have been cutting his own throat--but to thin man-devouring wild +beasts--the Pards--with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, +where not even a wolf has existed for centuries--nor a wild boar--the +same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw +of the Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as +never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the +sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat--and gathers them together in +gallant array on the edge of the cover, + + "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard + Upon the golden hills." + +What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes and flaming +nostrils--betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will +revel in the chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut, sorrel, grey--of +all shades and hues--and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar +character of shape and form--yet all blending harmoniously as they crown +the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as +they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights +or deepening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy +sky. + +You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping +in the desert--and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of +the Saracenic chivalry; but take our word for it, great part of all such +descriptions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should +dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed? And how can that +full speed be anything more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, +the Barbs being up to the belly at every stroke? They are always, it is +said, in high condition--but we, who know something about horse-flesh, +give that assertion the lie. They have seldom anything either to eat or +drink; are lean as church-mice; and covered with, clammy sweat before +they have ambled a league from the tent. And then such a set of absurd +riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to +Brentford, _viā_ the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and +such saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and ridden, accoutrements and +all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh +to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! +Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in to the death of all +the fine strong animal spirits--but blood intermingled and interfused by +twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her +power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey, + + "Gives the world assurance of a horse!" + +Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of +each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but +for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the Hussars of +England--confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers!--let the trumpet sound +a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be +opposed with spear and scimitar--and through their snow-ranks will the +Three Hundred go like thaw--splitting them into dissolution with the +noise of thunder. + +The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it; and where, we ask, were +the British cavalry ever overthrown? And how could the great +north-country horse-coupers perform their contracts, but for the +triumphs of the Turf? Blood--blood there must be, either for strength, +or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry--the Life Guards and +the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without +racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one +of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them 'twould be +palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his +rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war campaign? Thus he +becomes demi-corpsed with the noble animal; and what easy, equable +motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with +nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The hills +and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her +gentlemen--her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease--but, with +Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, +have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued +among the sylvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross +swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and still have they been in the +shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at +Saldanha--the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo! + +"Well, do you know, that, after all you have said, Mr North, I cannot +understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me +both cruel and dangerous." + +Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and +delivering them up to the transport of their high condition--for every +throbbing vein is visible--at the first full burst of that maddening +cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! +What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those +of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all +your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on +a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a +smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and +passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first +Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon--once, perhaps, +in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea +that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine +music--worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band +of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African +sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one +man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and +away--while wood and welkin rings--and nothing is felt--nothing is +imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dykes, +ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the +impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, +art, and science, in an enclosed, cultivated, civilised, and Christian +country. There they go--prince and peer, baronet and squire--the +nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each +on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son--for +could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander +would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his +way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. +Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, +halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go +wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged +steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud +as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the +country are dispersed the scarlet runners--and a hundred villages pour +forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, +or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the +perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five-barred +gate--away over the ears flies the ex-roughrider in a surprising +somerset--after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on +knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow--Friendship is a fine +thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed--but +Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly +leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a +"hark forward, tantivy!" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure--and +ere the fallen has risen and shaken himself, is round the corner of the +white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the +heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the +Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the +devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? +since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed +with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman +in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with +his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility +of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly +stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; +let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain +yield to fore-feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with +briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to +cliffs unscalable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go +sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high; yet "without +stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the +music grows fiercer and more savage--lo! all that remains together of +the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of +their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now +make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the +other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed +faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general +growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cosy, as he was an +hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the +cover--he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he +not, pray, well off for sepulture? + + + + +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. + +FYTTE SECOND. + + +We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear +egotistical--for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must +naturally be anxious to know something of our early history--and their +anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed +some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding +field-sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every +Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it +is necessary that we enter into some interesting details. + +There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a +duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old +tradition, had been out both in the Fifteen and Forty-five. There were +ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy +retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season +continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and +workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven +Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely +rather have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for +kicking when she received her discharge; so much so, indeed, that it was +reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the +recoil. She had a very wide mouth--and was thought by us "an awfu' +scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest +merit. She carried anything we chose to put into her--there still being +of all her performances a loud and favourable report--balls, buttons, +chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults--she had got +addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and +to another of hanging fire; habits of which it was impossible, for us +at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new +series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the +affection and admiration of us all, that faults like these did not in +the least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did +absolutely and positively and _bonā fide_ "go off," was in proportion to +the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire--why, +we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the +level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth +clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right +shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, +took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the +blowing up of a rock. + +The "Lang Gun," again, was of a much gentler disposition, and, instead +of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, inclining +forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this +apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it +difficult for us to hold her horizontally--and hence the muzzle being +attracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of +the Shooter. That such is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to be +proved by this--that when the "Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid +across the shoulders of two boys standing about a yard the one before +the other, she kicked every bit as well as the blunderbuss. Her lock was +of a very peculiar construction. It was so contrived that, when on full +cock, the dog-head, as we used to call it, stood back at least seven +inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pulling the +trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in +general remained _in statu quo_--and there was perfect silence. She had +a worm-eaten stock, into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself +fairly inserted; and even with the aid of circumvoluting twine, 'twas +always coggly. Thus too, the vizy (_Anglice_ sight) generally inclined +unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us everyday +hitting and hurting objects of whose existence even we were not aware, +till alarmed by the lowing or the galloping of cattle on the hills; and +we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who +shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the +furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was +murdered. The "Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit--and, with slugs +or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. +Bob Howie at that distance arrested the career of a mad dog--a single +slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one +or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive--or, like many +other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a +silent prey to the rust of oblivion. + +Not a boy in the school had a game certificate--or, as it was called in +the parish--"a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit +necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not +that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually--on the +contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one--a fellow of infinite +fancy--with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But their +numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of +boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes +settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse +garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it +happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, +charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them +from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let +drive into the whirr--a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming +in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the +mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and +the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never +was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into +any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every +cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no +use in rainy weather--for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At +each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have +thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish. Seldom a +Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training +season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes, +all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates. +On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they +were busy on grain and pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions +embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million +families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable +multitude would have laughed at the Plague. + +The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from +our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. +Perhaps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, we spared the lyrists +of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the +other beneath the rosy cloud--while there was ever a sevenfold red +shield before Robin's breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, +or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn +or byre. Now and then the large bunting, conspicuous on a top-twig, and +proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom--or the cunning +stone-chat, glancing about the old dykes, usually shot at in vain--or +yellow-hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop +of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that +cruel creed--or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song--or +shilfa, the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his white-plumed wings in +shade and sunshine, in joy the most rapturous, in grief the most +despairing of all the creatures of the air--or redpole, balanced on the +down of the thistle or flower of the bunweed on the old clovery lea--or, +haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and +gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only +slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy +Land. + +But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old--and then woe to the rookery +on the elm-tree grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens, +rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under +that umbrage formed firm floor for Titania's feet--while others kept +dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all +the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted +parents, now dipping down in despair almost within shot, and now, as if +sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and +disappearing to return no more--till sunset should bring silence, and +the night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated +bowers; and then indeed would they come all flying back upon their +strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the +depth of far-off fir-woods, where they had lain quaking at the ceaseless +cannonade, some from the furrows of the new-brairded fields aloof on the +uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of +the moorish wilderness. + +Happiest of all human homes, beautiful Craig-Hall! For so even now dost +thou appear to be--in the rich, deep, mellow, green light of imagination +trembling on tower and tree--art thou yet undilapidated and undecayed, +in thy old manorial solemnity almost majestical, though even then thou +hadst long been tenanted but by a humble farmer's family--people of low +degree. The evening-festival of the First Day of the Books--nay, scoff +not at such an anniversary--was still held in thy ample kitchen--of old +the bower of brave lords and ladies bright--while the harper, as he sung +his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the +dais. The days of chivalry were gone--and the days had come of curds and +cream, and, preferred by some people though not by us, of cream-cheese. +Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and +chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more +lifelike seem the living! Middle-aged men and middle-aged women, +husbands and wives, those sedate, with hair combed straight on their +foreheads, sunburnt faces, and horny hands established on their +knees--these serene, with countenances many of them not unlovely--comely +all--and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms--as +they sat in their holiday dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had +hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, for a blink +restored! Boys and virgins--those bold even in their bashfulness--these +blushing whenever eyes met eyes,--nor would they--nor could they--have +spoken in the hush to save their souls; yet ere the evening star arose, +many a pretty maiden had, down-looking and playing with the hem of her +garment, sung linnet-like her ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many +a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Burns was +but a youth--walking mute among the wildflowers on the moor--nor aware +of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart! + +Of all the year's holidays, not even excepting the First of May, this +was the most delightful. The First of May, longed for so passionately +from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist +and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a +sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashed--the roomy +hay-waggon remained in its shed--the preparations made for us in the +distant moorland farmhouse were vain--the fishing-rods hung useless on +the nails--and disconsolate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, +ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month +of June" be frequently showery, it is almost always sunny too. Every +half-hour there is such a radiant blink that the young heart sings aloud +for joy; summer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are of little or no +use towards the Longest Day; there is something cheerful even in +thunder, if it be not rather too near; the lark has not yet ceased +altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled +beneath the sablest cloud; the green earth repels from her refulgent +bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in +the fulness and brightness of her contentment; through the heaviest +flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an +impatient smile, and all the rivers and burns, with the multitude of +their various voices, sing praises unto Heaven. + +Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we went bounding over the flowery +fields and broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. During the long +noisy day, we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was +to be; and during the long and almost as noisy evening, we forgot all +the pastime of the day. Weeks before, had each of us engaged his partner +for the first country dance, by right his own when supper came, and to +sit close to him with her tender side, with waist at first stealthily +arm-encircled, and at last boldly and almost with proud display. In the +churchyard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whispered into the +ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity +failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burnside cottage, +and with the contents of his basket leave a tender request, and from +behind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile, a kiss, and a waving +farewell. + +Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen made beautiful +with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius +decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting +a still nobler guest. But oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was +then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of +hawthorn, in the chimney--itself almost a tree, so thick--so deep--so +rich its load of blossoms--so like its fragrance to something breathed +from heaven--and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as she +approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's +breath--in an hour all melted quite away! No broom that nowadays grows +on the brae, so yellow as the broom--the golden broom--the broom that +seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself +had sunk--the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest--and of +its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark +hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her +merriment--dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose +bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses--conservatories-- +orangeries--are exquisitely balmy still--and, in presence of these +strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some +rich foreign clime. But now we carry the burden of our years along with +us--and that consciousness bedims the blossoms, and makes mournful the +balm, as from flowers in some fair burial-place, breathing of the tomb. +But oh! that Craig-Hall hawthorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they +send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that +all the weary worn-out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment, +and even now--the flight of that swallow seems more aerial--more alive +with bliss his clay-built nest--the ancient long-ago blue of the sky +returns to heaven--not for many a many a long year have we seen so +fair--so frail--so transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! The +very viol speaks--the very dance responds in Craig-Hall: this--this is +the very Festival of the First Day of the Rooks--Mary Mather, the pride +of the parish--the county--the land--the earth--is our partner--and long +mayest thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud--when the parting kiss is +given--and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into her +bosom! + +But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search +for it, even like a spinster of old, in the dis arranged spindle of one +of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, +hushed by machinery clink-clanking with power-looms in every town and +city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves--alone--or +with one chosen comrade; for even then we began to have our sympathies +and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, +but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, +and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a +perfect love--we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred--alone +or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and +stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whaup! At first +sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart +beating quick time in the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body +being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether--and we grew sick +with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, +like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample +wings--and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by +our ineffectual hail, seen falling far short of the deceptive distance, +while his mate that had lain couched--perhaps in her nest of eggs or +young, exposed yet hidden--within killing range, half-running, +half-flying, flapped herself into flight, simulating lame leg and +wounded wing; and the two disappearing together behind the hills, left +us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, to resume with live hopes +rising out of the ashes of the dead, our daily disappointed quest over +the houseless mosses. Yet now and then to our steady aim the bill of the +whaup disgorged blood--and as we felt the feathers in our hand, and from +tip to tip eyed the outstretched wings, Fortune, we felt, had no better +boon to bestow, earth no greater triumph. + +Hush--stoop--kneel--crawl--for by all our hopes of mercy--a heron--a +heron! An eel dangling across his bill! And now the water-serpent has +disappeared! From morning dawn hath the fowl been fishing here--perhaps +on that very stone--for it is one of those days when eels are a-roaming +in the shallows, and the heron knows that they are as likely to pass by +that stone as any other--from morning dawn--and 'tis now past meridian, +half-past two! Be propitious, oh ye Fates! and never--never--shall he +again fold his wings on the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees that +overtop the only tower left of the old castle. Another eel! and we too +can crawl silent as the sinuous serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes +dead--no, not dead--but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as +head-over-heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the serene unsettling +of himself from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, and his craw +filled with fish for his far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk +into the air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away like a +wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the current of air homewards +flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy course--laggard and lazy no +more--leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your motion in +watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible among the woods! + +The disgorged eels are returned--some of them alive--to their native +element--the mud. And the dead heron floats away before small winds and +waves into the middle of the tarn. Where is he--the matchless +Newfoundlander--_nomine gaudens_ FRO, because white as the froth of the +sea? Off with a collie. So--stript with the first intention, we plunge +from a rock, and, + + "Though in the scowl of heaven, the tarn + Grows dark as we are swimming," + +Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with the heron floating +before us, return to the heather-fringed shore, and give three cheers +that startle the echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the +Grey-Linn Cairn. + +Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock-and-river scene, beautiful +and bewildering as the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself brought +who knows where to seek the heron in all its solitary haunts. For often +when the moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be baffled by the +waves of tarn and loch, he sails away from his swinging-tree, and +through some open glade dipping down to the secluded stream, alights +within the calm chasm, and folds his wings in the breezeless air. The +clouds are driving fast aloft in a carry from the sea--but they are all +reflected in that pellucid pool--so perfect the cliff-guarded repose. A +better day--a better hour--a better minute for fishing could not have +been chosen by Mr Heron, who is already swallowing a par. Another--and +another--but something falls from the rock into the water; and +suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses himself to a short +flight up the channel--round that tower-like cliff standing strangely by +itself, with a crest of self-sown flowering shrubs; and lo! another +vista, if possible, just a degree more silent--more secluded--more +solitary--beneath the mid-day night of woods! To shoot thee there--would +be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of +an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortunate for thee--folded up there, as +thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone--that at this moment we +have no firearms--for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that very +pool, and this--O Heron--is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to +be in utter solitude--no sportsman but thyself in the chasm--for the +otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with +bitten shoulder seldom lies here--that epicure's tasted prey. Yet within +ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon +thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy +watchful sense--for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or +fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that there is not +only humanity--but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and +possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious, solemn, +and sacred light--and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and +ancient in thy look--and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the +very elements admire and reverence--the waters wetting them not--nor the +winds ruffling--and moreover we love thee--Heron--for the sake of that +old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A +Ruin nameless, traditionless--sole, undisputed property of Oblivion! + +Hurra!--Heron--hurra! why, that was an awkward tumble--and very nearly +had we hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie? +A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy +life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits--but thy nerves must be +sorely shaken--and what an account of this adventure will certainly be +shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs! Not, even +wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit +this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb +creatures--and rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than +seek for fish in this man-monster-haunted pool. Farewell! farewell! + +Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly +known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the +garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander, +and nine goslings--about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not +sickened and died of Nostalgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of +their native Tweed--and a brace of perch, now nothing but prickle. But +the lochs--the hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's eye and our +mind's ear,--heaven and earth! the bogs are black with duck, teal, and +widgeon--up there "comes for food or play" to the holla of the winds, a +wedge of wild geese, piercing the marbled heavens with clamour--and lo! +in the very centre of the mediterranean, the Royal Family of the Swans! +Up springs the silver sea-trout in the sunshine--see Sir Humphrey!--a +salmon--a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea! + +For how many admirable articles are there themes in the above short +paragraph! Duck, teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans! And first, duck, +teal, and widgeon. There they are, all collected together, without +regard to party politics, in their very best attire, as thick as the +citizens of Edinburgh, their wives, sweethearts, and children, on the +Calton Hill, on the first day of the King's visit to Scotland. As thick, +but not so steady--for what swimming about in circles--what ducking and +diving is there!--all the while accompanied with a sort of low, thick, +gurgling, not unsweet, nor unmusical quackery, the expression of the +intense joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh! Muckle-mou'd Meg! neither +thou nor the "Lang Gun" are of any avail here--for that old drake, who, +together with his shadow, on which he seems to be sitting, is almost as +big as a boat in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, near as he +seems to be in the deception of the clear frosty air, is yet better than +three hundred yards from the shore--and, at safe distance, cocks his eye +at the fowler. There is no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how +tempting in its unapproachable reeds and rushes, and hut-crested +knoll--a hut built perhaps by some fowler, in the olden time--yon +central Isle! But be still as a shadow--for lo! a batch of +Whig-seceders, paddling all by themselves towards that creek--and as +surely as our name is Christopher, in another quarter of an hour they +will consist of killed, wounded, and missing. On our belly--with +unhatted head just peering over the knowe--and Muckle mou'd Meg slowly +and softly stretched out on the rest, so as not to rustle a +windle-strae, we lie motionless as a maukin, till the coterie collects +together for simultaneous dive down to the aquatic plants and insects of +the fast-shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the turn with their +tails, a single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs +about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden disturbance, is +afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood. + +Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro--who +with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever +and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged +by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, +and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down +the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his +tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily +disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back +and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, +to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if +she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards +heaven--then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more +gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back +delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky +lines--precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling +art--next--nobly done, glorious Fro--that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, +with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest +waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the +indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings--and now, if +we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name--finally, that +exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately +pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to +a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means +and appliances to boot, carved finely--most finely--by razor-like knife, +in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide--tasted by a tongue +and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning +rose--swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its +intense delight--and received into a stomach yawning with greed and +gratitude,--Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the +apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this +feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short +quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium! + +How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy head +above the foam, his gathered prey seized--all four--by their limber +necks, and brightening, like a bunch of flowers, as they glitter towards +the shore! With one bold body-shake, felt to the point, of each +particular hair, he scatters the water from his coat like mist, +reminding one of that glorious line in Shakespeare, + + "Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane," + +advancing with sinewy legs seemingly lengthened by the drenching flood, +and dripping tail stretched out in all its broad longitude, with hair +almost like white hanging plumes--magnificent as tail of the Desert-Born +at the head of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Half-way his master +meets his beloved Fro on the slope; and first proudly and haughtily +pausing to mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemeth one whom nature, +in his boldest and brightest bearing, hath yet made a slave--he lays the +offering at our feet, and having felt on his capacious forehead the +approving pressure of our hand, + + "While, like the murmur of a dream, + He hears us breathe his name," + +he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel of transport, and in many +a widening circle pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with +whirlwind speed; till, as if utterly joy-exhausted, he brings his +snow-white bulk into dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment +illuminated by a burst of sunshine! + +Not now--as fades upon our pen the solemn light of the dying day--shall +we dare to decide, whether or not Nature--O most matchless creature of +thy kind!--gave thee, or gave thee not, the gift of an immortal +soul!--Better such creed--fond and foolish though it may be--yet +scarcely unscriptural, for in each word of Scripture there are many +meanings, even when each sacred syllable is darkest to be read,--better +such creed than that of the atheist or sceptic, distracted ever in his +seemingly sullen apathy, by the dim, dark doom of dust. Better that Fro +should live, than that Newton should die--for ever. What though the +benevolent Howard devoted his days to visit the dungeon's gloom, and by +intercession with princes, to set the prisoners free from the low +damp-dripping stone roof of the deep-dug cell beneath the foundation +rocks of the citadel, to the high dewdropping vault of heaven, too, too +dazzlingly illumined by the lamp of the insufferable sun! There reason +triumphed--those were the works of glorified humanity. But thou--a +creature of mere instinct--according to Descartes, a machine, an +automaton--hadst yet a constant light of thought and of affection in +thine eyes; nor wert thou without some glimmering and mysterious +notions--and what more have we ourselves?--of life and of death! Why +fear to say that thou wert divinely commissioned and inspired--on that +most dismal and shrieking hour, when little Harry Seymour, that bright +English boy, "whom all that looked on loved," entangled among the cruel +chains of those fair water-lilies, all so innocently yet so murderously +floating round him, was, by all standing or running about there with +clenched hands, or kneeling on the sod--given up to inextricable death? +We were not present to save the dear boy, who had been delivered to our +care as to that of an elder brother, by the noble lady who, in her deep +widow's weeds, kissed her sole darling's sunny head, and disappeared. We +were not present--or by all that is holiest in heaven or on earth--our +arms had been soon around thy neck, when thou wert seemingly about to +perish! + +But a poor dumb despised dog--nothing, as some say, but animated +dust--was there,--and without shout or signal--for all the Christian +creatures were alike helpless in their despair--shot swift as a sunbeam +over the deep, and by those golden tresses, sinking and brightening +through the wave, brought the noble child ashore, and stood over him, as +if in joy and sorrow, lying too like death on the sand! And when little +Harry opened his glazed eyes, and looked bewildered on all the faces +around--and then fainted--and revived and fainted again--till at last he +came to dim recollection of this world on the bosom of the physician +brought thither with incomprehensible speed from his dwelling afar +off--thou didst lick his cold white hands and blue face, with a whine +that struck awful pity into all hearts, and thou didst follow him--one +of the group--as he was borne along--and frisking and gambolling no more +all that day, gently didst thou lay thyself down at the feet of his +little bed, and watch there unsleeping all night long! For the boy knew +that God had employed one of his lowly creatures to save him--and +beseeched that he might lie there to be looked at by the light of the +taper, till he himself, as the pains went away, might fall asleep! And +we, the watchers by his bedside, heard him in his dreams mentioning the +creature's name in his prayers. + +Yet at times--O Fro--thou wert a sad dog indeed--neither to bind nor to +hold--for thy blood was soon set aboil, and thou--like Julius Cęsar--and +Demetrius Poliorcetes--and Alexander the Great--and many other ancient +and modern kings and heroes--thou wert the slave of thy passions. No +Scipio wert thou with a Spanish captive. Often--in spite of threatening +eye and uplifted thong--uplifted only, for thou went'st unflogged to thy +grave--didst thou disappear for days at a time--as if lost or dead. +Rumours of thee were brought to the kirk by shepherds from the remotest +hills in the parish--most confused and contradictory--but, when +collected and compared, all agreeing in this--that thou wert living, and +lifelike, and life-imparting, and after a season from thy travels to +return; and return thou still didst--wearied often and woe-begone--purpled +thy snow-white curling--and thy broad breast torn, not disfigured, by +honourable wounds. For never yet saw we a fighter like thee. Up on thy +hind-legs in a moment, like a growling Polar monster, with thy fore-paws +round thy foeman's neck, bull-dog, collie, mastiff, or greyhound, and +down with him in a moment, with as much ease as Cass, in the wrestling +ring at Carlisle, would throw a Bagman, and then woe to the throat of +the downfallen, for thy jaws were shark-like as they opened and shut +with their terrific tusks, grinding through skin and sinew to the spine. + +Once, and once only--bullied out of all endurance by a half-drunken +carrier--did we consent to let thee engage in a pitched battle with a +mastiff victorious in fifty fights--a famous shanker--and a throttler +beyond all compare. It was indeed a bloody business--now growling along +the glaur of the road--a hairy hurricane--now snorting in the +suffocating ditch--now fair play on the clean and clear crown of the +causey--now rolling over and over through a chance-open white little +gate, into a cottage-garden--now separated by choking them both with a +cord--now brought out again with savage and fiery eyes to the scratch on +a green plat round the signboard-swinging tree in the middle of the +village--auld women in their mutches crying out, "Shame! whare's the +minister?"--young women, with combs in their pretty heads, blinking with +pale and almost weeping faces from low-lintelled doors--children +crowding for sight and safety on the louping-on-stane--and loud cries +ever and anon at each turn and eddy of the fight, of "Well done, Fro! +well done, Fro!--see how he worries his windpipe--well done, Fro!" for +Fro was the delight and glory of the whole parish, and the honour of all +its inhabitants, male and female, was felt to be staked on the +issue--while at intervals was heard the harsh hoarse voice of the +carrier and his compeers, cursing and swearing in triumph in a +many-oathed language peculiar to the race that drive the broad-wheeled +waggons with the high canvass roofs, as the might of Teeger prevailed, +and the indomitable Fro seemed to be on his last legs beneath a grip of +the jugular, and then stretched motionless and passive--in defeat or +death. A mere _ruse_ to recover wind. Like unshorn Sampson starting from +his sleep, and snapping like fired flax the vain bands of the +Philistines, Fro whammled Teeger off, and twisting round his head in +spite of the grip on the jugular, the skin stretching and giving way in +a ghastly but unfelt wound, he suddenly seized with all his tusks his +antagonist's eye, and bit it clean out of the socket. A yowl of +unendurable pain--spouting of blood--sickness--swooning--tumbling +over--and death. His last fight is over! His remaining eye glazed--his +protruded tongue bitten in anguish by his own grinding teeth--his massy +hind-legs stretched out with a kick like a horse--his short tail +stiffens--he is laid out a grim corpse--flung into a cart tied behind +the waggon--and off to the tanyard. + +No shouts of victory--but stern, sullen, half-ashamed silence--as of +guilty things after the perpetration of a misdeed. Still glaring +savagely, ere yet the wrath of fight has subsided in his heart, and +going and returning to the bloody place, uncertain whether or not his +enemy were about to return, Fro finally lies down at some distance, and +with bloody flews keeps licking his bloody legs, and with long darting +tongue cleansing the mire from his neck, breast, side, and back--a +sanguinary spectacle! He seems almost insensible to our caresses, and +there is something almost like upbraiding in his victorious eyes. Now +that his veins are cooling, he begins to feel the pain of his +wounds--many on, and close to vital parts. Most agonising of all--all +his four shanks are tusk-pierced, and, in less than ten minutes, he +limps away to his kennel, lame as if riddled by shot-- + + "Heu quantum mutatus ab illo + Hectore!" + +gore-besmeared and dirt-draggled--an hour ago serenely bright as the +lily in June, or the April snow. The huge waggon moves away out of the +clachan without its master, who, ferocious from the death of the other +brute he loved, dares the whole school to combat. Off fly a dozen +jackets--and a devil's dozen of striplings from twelve past to going +sixteen--firmly wedged together like the Macedonian Phalanx--are yelling +for the fray. There is such another shrieking of women as at the taking +of Troy. But + + "The Prince of Mearns stept forth before the crowd, + And, Carter, challenged you to single fight!" + +Bob Howie, who never yet feared the face of clay, and had too great a +heart to suffer mere children to combat the strongest and most unhappy +man in the whole country--stripped to the buff; and there he stands, +with + + "An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;" + +shoulders like Atlas--breast like Hercules--and arms like Vulcan. The +heart of Benjamin the waggoner dies within him--he accepts the challenge +for a future day--and retreating backwards to his clothes, receives a +right-hander as from a sledge-hammer on the temple, that fells him like +an ox. The other carters all close in, but are sent spinning in all +directions as from the sails of a windmill. Ever as each successive lout +seeks the earth, we savage schoolboys rush in upon him in twos, and +threes, and fours, basting and battering him as he bawls; at this very +crisis--so fate ordained--are seen hurrying down the hill from the +south, leaving their wives, sweethearts, and asses in the rear, with +coal-black hair and sparkling eyes, brown brany legs, and clenched iron +fists at the end of long arms, swinging flail-like at all times, and +never more than now, ready for the fray, a gang of Gypsies! +while--beautiful coincidence!--up the hill from the north came on, at +double-quick time, an awkward squad of as grim Milesians as ever buried +a pike in a Protestant. Nor question nor reply; but in a moment a +general mźlée. Men at work in the hay-fields, who would not leave their +work for a dog-fight, fling down scythe and rake, and over the hedges +into the high-road, a stalwart reinforcement. Weavers leap from their +treddles--doff their blue aprons, and out into the air. The red-cowled +tailor pops his head through a skylight, and next moment is in the +street. The butcher strips his long light-blue linen coat, to engage a +Paddy; and the smith, ready for action--for the huge arms of Burniwind +are always bare--with a hand-ower-hip delivery, makes the head of the +king of the gypsies ring like an anvil. There has been no marshalling of +forces--yet lo! as if formed in two regular lines by the Adjutant +himself after the first tuilzie, stand the carters, the gypsies, and the +Irishmen, opposed to Bob Howie, the butcher, the smith, the tailor, the +weaver, the haymakers, and the boys from the manse--the latter drawn up +cautiously, but not cowardly, in the rear. What a twinkling of fists and +shillelas! what bashed and bloody noses! cut blubber lips--cheekbones +out of all proportion to the rest of the face, and, through sudden black +and blue tumefactions, men's changed into pigs' eyes! And now there is +also rugging of caps and mutches and hair, "femineo ululatu," for the +Egyptian Amazons bear down like furies on the glee'd widow that keeps +the change-house, half-witted Shoosy that sells yellow sand, and Davie +Donald's dun daughter, commonly called Spunkie. What shrieking and +tossing of arms, round the whole length and breadth of the village! +Where is Simon Andrew the constable? Where is auld Robert Maxwell the +ruling elder? What can have become of Laird Warnock, whose word is law? +And what can the Minister be about, can anybody tell, that he does not +come flying from the manse to save the lives of his parishioners from +cannibals, and gypsies, and Eerish, murdering their way to the gallows? + +How--why--or when--that bloody battle ceased to be, was never distinctly +known either then or since; but, like everything else, it had an +end--and even now we have a confused dream of the spot at its +termination--naked men lying on their backs in the mire, all drenched in +blood--with women, some old and ugly, with shrivelled witch-like hag +breasts, others young, and darkly, swarthily, blackly beautiful, with +budding or new-blown bosoms unkerchiefed in the collyshangie--perilous +to see--leaning over them: and these were the Egyptians! Men in brown +shirts, gore-spotted, with green bandages round their broken heads, +laughing, and joking, and jeering, and singing, and shouting, though +desperately mauled and mangled--while Scottish wives, and widows, and +maids, could not help crying out in sympathy, "Oh! but they're bonny +men--what a pity they should aye be sae fond o' fechting, and a' manner +o' mischief!"--and these were the Irishmen! Retired and apart, hangs the +weaver, with his head over a wall, dog-sick, and bocking in strong +convulsions; some haymakers are washing their cut faces in the well; the +butcher, bloody as a bit of his own beef, walks silent into the +shambles; the smith, whose grimy face hides its pummelling, goes off +grinning a ghastly smile in the hands of his scolding, yet not unloving +wife; the tailor, gay as a flea, and hot as his own goose, to show how +much more he has given than received, offers to leap any man on the +ground, hop-step-and-jump, for a mutchkin--while Bob Howie walks about, +without a visible wound, except the mark of bloody knuckles on his +brawny breast, with arms a-kimbo, seaman-fashion--for Bob had been at +sea--and as soon as the whisky comes, hands it about at his own expense, +caulker after caulker, to the vanquished--for Bob was as generous as +brave; had no spite at the gypsies; and as for Irishmen, why they were +ranting, roving, red-hot, dare-devil boys, just like himself; and after +the fight, he would have gone with them to Purgatory, or a few steps +further down the hill. All the battle through, we manse-boys had fought, +it may be said, behind the shadow of him our hero; and in warding off +mischief from us, he received not a few heavy body-blows from King +Carew, a descendant of Bamfylde Moore, and some crown-cracks from the +shillelas of the Connaught Rangers. + +Down comes a sudden thunder-plump, making the road a river--and to the +whiff o' lightning, all in the shape of man, woman, and child, are under +roof-cover. The afternoon soon clears up, and the haymakers leave the +clanking empty gill or half-mutchkin stoup for the field, to see what +the rain has done--the forge begins again to roar--the sound of the +flying shuttle tells that the weaver is again on his treddles; the +tailor hoists up his little window in the thatch, in that close +confinement, to enjoy the cauler air--the tinklers go to encamp on the +common--"the air is balm"--insects, drooping from eave and tree, "show +to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold"--though the season of +bird-singing be over and gone, there is a pleasant chirping hereabouts, +thereabouts, everywhere; the old blind beggar, dog-led, goes from door +to door, unconscious that such a stramash has ever been--and dancing +round our champion, away we schoolboys all fly with him to swim in the +Brother Loch, taking our fishing-rods with us, for one clap of thunder +will not frighten the trouts; and about the middle or end of July, we +have known great labbers, twenty inches long, play wallop between our +very feet, in the warm shallow water, within a yard of the edge, to the +yellow-bodied, tinsey-tailed, black half-heckle, with brown mallard +wing, a mere midge, but once fixed in lip or tongue, "inextricable as +the gored lion's bite." + +But ever after that Passage in the life of Fro, his were, on the whole, +years of peace. Every season seemed to strengthen his sagacity, and to +unfold his wonderful instincts. Most assuredly he knew all the simpler +parts of speech--all the household words in the Scottish language. He +was, in all our pastimes, as much one of ourselves, as if, instead of +being a Pagan with four feet, he had been a Christian with two. As for +temper, we trace the sweetness of our own to his; an angry word from one +he loved, he forgot in half a minute, offering his lion-like paw; yet +there were particular people he could not abide, nor from their hands +would he have accepted a roast potato out of the dripping-pan, and in +this he resembled his master. He knew the Sabbath-day as well as the +sexton--and never was known to bark till the Monday morning when the +cock crew; and then he would give a long musical yowl, as if his breast +were relieved from silence. If ever, in this cold, changeful, inconstant +world, there was a friendship that might be called sincere, it was that +which, half a century ago and upwards, subsisted between Christopher +North and John Fro. We never had a quarrel in all our lives--and within +these two months we made a pilgrimage to his grave. He was buried--not +by our hands, but by the hands of one whose tender and manly heart loved +the old, blind, deaf, staggering creature to the very last--for such in +his fourteenth year he truly was--a sad and sorry sight to see, to them +who remembered 'the glory of his stately and majestic years. One day he +crawled with a moan-like whine to our brother's feet, and expired. +Reader, young, bright, and beautiful though thou be--remember all flesh +is dust! + +This is an episode--a tale, in itself complete, yet growing out of, and +appertaining to, the main plot of Epic or Article. You will recollect we +were speaking of ducks, teals, and widgeons; and we come now to the next +clause of the verse--wild geese and swans. + +Some people's geese are all swans; but so far from that being the case +with ours--sad and sorry are we to say it--now all our swans are geese. +But in our buoyant boyhood, all God's creatures were to our eyes just as +God made them; and there was ever--especially birds--a tinge of beauty +over them all. What an inconceivable difference--distance--to the +imagination, between the nature of a tame and a wild goose! Aloft in +heaven, themselves in night invisible, the gabble of a cloud of wild +geese is sublime. Whence comes it--whither goes it--for what end, and by +what power impelled? Reason sees not into the darkness of instinct--and +therefore the awestruck heart of the night-wandering boy beats to hear +the league-long gabble that probably has winged its wedge-like way from +the lakes, and marshes, and dreary morasses of Siberia, from Lapland, or +Iceland, or the unfrequented and unknown northern regions of +America--regions set apart, quoth Bewick we believe, for summer +residences and breeding-places, and where they are amply provided with a +variety of food, a large portion of which must consist of the larvę of +gnats, and myriads of insects, there fostered by the unsetting sun! Now +they are gabbling good Gaelic over a Highland night-moor. Perhaps in +another hour the descending cloud will be covering the wide waters at +the head of the wild Loch Maree--or, silent and asleep, the whole host +be riding at anchor around Lomond's Isles! + +But 'tis now mid-day--and lo! in that mediterranean--a flock of wild +Swans! Have they dropt down from the ether into the water almost as pure +as ether, without having once folded their wings, since they rose aloft +to shun the insupportable northern snows hundreds of leagues beyond the +storm-swept Orcades? To look at the quiet creatures, you might think +that they had never left the circle of that little loch. There they hang +on their shadows, even as if asleep in the sunshine; and now stretching +out their long wings--how apt for flight from clime to clime!--joyously +they beat the liquid radiance, till to the loud flapping high rises the +mist, and wide spreads the foam, almost sufficient for a rainbow. Safe +are they from all birds of prey. The Osprey dashes down on the teal, or +sea-trout, swimming within or below their shadow. The great Erne, or +Sea-eagle, pounces on the mallard, as he mounts from the bulrushes +before the wild swans sailing, with all wings hoisted, like a fleet--but +osprey nor eagle dares to try his talons on that stately bird--for he is +bold in his beauty, and formidable as he is fair; the pinions that swim +and soar can also smite; and though the one be a lover of war, the other +of peace, yet of them it may be said, + + "The eagle he is lord above, + The swan is lord below!" + +To have shot such a creature--so large--so white--so high-soaring--and +on the winds of midnight wafted from so far--a creature that seemed not +merely a stranger in that loch, but belonging to some mysterious land in +another hemisphere, whose coast ships with frozen rigging have been +known to visit, driving under bare poles through a month's +snow-storms--to have shot such a creature was an era in our imagination, +from which, had nature been more prodigal, we might have sprung up a +poet. Once, and but once, we were involved in the glory of that event. +The creature had been in a dream of some river or lake in +Kamtschatka--or ideally listening, + + "Across the waves' tumultuous roar, + The wolf's long howl from Oonalashka's shore," + +when, guided by our good genius and our brightest star, we suddenly saw +him sitting asleep in all his state, within gunshot, in a bay of the +moonlight Loch! We had nearly fainted--died on the very spot--and why +were we not entitled to have died as well as any other passionate +spirit, whom joy ever divorced from life? We blew his black bill into +pieces--not a feather on his head but was touched; and like a little +white-sailed pleasure-boat caught in a whirlwind, the wild swan spun +round, and then lay motionless on the water, as if all her masts had +gone by the board. We were all alone that night--not even Fro was with +us; we had reasons for being alone, for we wished not that there should +be any footfall but our own round that mountain-hut. Could we swim? Ay, +like the wild swan himself, through surge or breaker. But now the loch +was still as the sky, and twenty strokes carried us close to the +glorious creature, which, grasped by both hands, and supporting us as it +was trailed beneath our breast, while we floated rather than swam +ashore, we felt to be in verity our--Prey! We trembled with a sort of +fear, to behold him lying indeed dead on the sward. The moon--the many +stars, here and there one wondrously large and lustrous--the hushed +glittering loch--the hills, though somewhat dimmed, green all winter +through, with here and there a patch of snow on their summits in the +blue sky, on which lay a few fleecy clouds--the mighty foreign bird, +whose plumage we had never hoped to touch but in a dream, lying like the +ghost of something that ought not to have been destroyed--the scene was +altogether such as made our wild young heart quake, and almost repent of +having killed a creature so surpassingly beautiful. But that was a +fleeting fancy--and over the wide moors we went, like an American Indian +laden with game, journeying to his wigwam over the wilderness. As we +whitened towards the village in the light of morning, the earlier +labourers held up their hands in wonder what and who we might be; and +Fro, who had missed his master, and was lying awake for him on the +mount, came bounding along, nor could refrain the bark of delighted +passion as his nose nuzzled in the soft down of the bosom of the +creature whom he remembered to have sometimes seen floating too far off +in the lake, or far above our reach cleaving the firmament. + + + + +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. + +FYTTE THIRD. + + +O Muckle-mou'd Meg! and can it be that thou art numbered among forgotten +things--unexistences! + + "Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course, + With rocks, and stones, and trees!" + +What would we not now give for a sight--a kiss--of thy dear lips! Lips +which we remember once to have put to our own, even when thy beloved +barrel was double-loaded! Now we sigh to think on what then made us +shudder! Oh! that thy butt were but now resting on our shoulder! Alas! +for ever discharged! Burst and rent asunder, art thou now lying buried +in a peat-moss? Did some vulgar villain of a village Vulcan convert +thee, name and nature, into nails? Some dark-visaged Douglas of a +henroost-robbing Egyptian, solder thee into a pan? Oh! that our passion +could dig down unto thee in the bowels of the earth--and with loud +lamenting elegies, and louder hymns of gratulation, restore thee, +buttless, lockless, vizyless, burst, rent, torn, and twisted though thou +be'st, to the light of day, and of the world-rejoicing Sun! Then would +we adorn thee with evergreen wreaths of the laurel and the ivy--and hang +thee up, in memory and in monument of all the bright, dim, still, stormy +days of our boyhood--when gloom itself was glory--and when--But + + "Be hush'd my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns, + When the faint and the feeble deplore." + +Cassandra--Corinna--Sappho--Lucretia--Cleopatra--Tighe--De Staėl--in +their beauty or in their genius, are, with millions on millions of the +fair-faced or bright-souled, nothing but dust and ashes; and as they +are, so shall Baillie, and Grant, and Hemans, and Landon be--and why +vainly yearn "with love and longings infinite," to save from doom of +perishable nature--of all created things, but one alone--Muckle-mou'd +Meg! + +After a storm comes a calm; and we hasten to give the sporting world the +concluding account of our education. In the moorland parish--God bless +it--in which we had the inestimable advantage of passing our +boyhood--there' were a good many falcons--of course the kite or +glead--the buzzard--the sparrowhawk--the marsh harrier--that imp the +merlin--and, rare bird and beautiful! there, on a cliff which, alas! a +crutched man must climb no more, did the Peregrine build her nest. You +must not wonder at this, for the parish was an extensive one even for +Scotland--half Highland half Lowland--and had not only "muirs and mosses +many o," but numerous hills, not a few mountains, some most +extraordinary cliffs, considerable store of woods, and one, indeed, that +might well be called the Forest. + +Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead through thy own sweet stormy skies, +Auld Scotland! and as sternly and grimly thou look'st far over the +hushed or howling seas, remember thee--till all thy moors and mosses +quake at thy heart, as if swallowing up an invading army--a fate that +oft befell thy foes of yore--remember thee, in mist-shrouded dream, and +cloud-born vision, of the long line of kings, and heroes, and sages, and +bards, whose hallowed bones sleep in pine-darkened tombs among the +mountain heather, by the side of rivers, and lochs, and arms of +ocean--their spirits yet seen in lofty superstition, sailing or sitting +on the swift or settled tempest. Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead, Auld +Scotland! and sing aloud to all the nations of the earth, with thy voice +of cliffs, and caves, and caverns, + + "Wha daur meddle wi' me?" + +What! some small, puny, piteous windpipes are heard cheeping against +thee from the Cockneys--like ragged chickens agape in the pip. How the +feeble and fearful creatures would crawl on their hands and knees, faint +and giddy, and shrieking out for help to the heather stalks, if forced +to face one of thy cliffs, and foot its flinty bosom! How would the +depths of their long ears, cotton-stuffed in vain, ache to the +spray-thunder of thy cataracts! Sick, sick would be their stomachs, +storm-swept in a six-oared cutter into the jaws of Staffa! That sight +is sufficient to set the most saturnine on the guffaw--the Barry +Cornwall himself, crossing a chasm a hundred yards deep, + + "On the uncertain footing of a spar," + +on a tree felled where it stood, centuries ago, by steel or storm, into +a ledgeless bridge, oft sounding and shaking to the hunter's feet in +chase of the red-deer! The Cockneys do not like us Scotchmen--because of +our high cheek-bones. They are sometimes very high indeed, very coarse, +and very ugly, and give a Scotchman a grim and gaunt look, assuredly not +to be sneezed at, with any hope of impunity, on a dark day and in a +lonesome place, by the most heroic chief of the most heroic clan in all +the level land of Lud, travelling all by himself in a horse and gig, and +with a black boy in a cockaded glazed hat, through the Heelands o' +Scotland, passing of course, at the very least, for a captain of +Hussars! Then Scotchmen canna keep their backs straught, it seems, and +are always booin' and booin' afore a great man. Cannot they, indeed? Do +they, indeed? Ascend with that Scottish shepherd yon mountain's +breast--swim with him that mountain loch--a bottle of Glenlivet, who +first stands in shallow water, on the Oak Isle--and whose back will be +straughtest, that of the Caledonian or the Cockney? The little Luddite +will be puking among the heather, about some five hundred feet above the +level of the sea--higher for the first time in his life than St Paul's, +and nearer than he ever will again be, either in the spirit or the +flesh, to heaven. The little Luddite will be puking in the hitherto +unpolluted loch, after some seven strokes or so, with a strong Scottish +weed twisted like an eel round its thigh, and shrieking out for the +nearest resuscitating machine in a country, where, alas! there is no +Humane Society. The back of the shepherd--even in presence of that +"great man"--will be as straught as--do not tremble, Cockney--this +Crutch. Conspicuous from afar like a cairn, from the inn-door at +Arrochar, in an hour he will be turning up his little finger so--on the +Cobler's head; or, in twenty minutes, gliding like a swan, or shooting +like a salmon, his back being still straught--leaving Luss, he will be +shaking the dewdrops from his brawny body on the silver sand of Inch +Morren. + +And happy were we, Christopher North, happy were we in the parish in +which Fate delivered us up to Nature, that, under her tuition our +destinies might be fulfilled. A parish! Why it was in itself a +kingdom--a world. Thirty miles long by twenty at the broadest, and five +at the narrowest; and is not that a kingdom--is not that a world worthy +of any monarch that ever wore a crown? Was it level? Yes, league-long +levels were in it of greensward, hard as the sand of the sea-shore, yet +springy and elastic, fit training-ground for Childers, or Eclipse, or +Hambletonian, or Smolensko, or for a charge of cavalry in some great +pitched battle, while artillery might keep playing against artillery +from innumerous affronting hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs were +there, which extorted a panegyric from the roving Irishman in his +richest brogue--bogs in which forests had of old been buried, and armies +with all their banners. Was it hilly? Ay, there the white sheep nibbled, +and the black cattle grazed; there they baa'd and they lowed upon a +thousand hills--a crowd of cones, all green as emerald. Was it +mountainous? Give answer from afar, ye mist-shrouded summits, and ye +clouds cloven by the eagle's wing! But whether ye be indeed mountains, +or whether ye be clouds, who can tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that +long-lingering sunset, that drenches heaven and earth in one +indistinguishable glory, setting the West on fire, as if the final +conflagration were begun! Was it woody? Hush, hush, and you will hear a +pine-cone drop in the central silence of a forest--a silent and solitary +wilderness--in which you may wander a whole day long, unaccompanied but +by the cushat, the corby, the falcon, the roe, and they are all shy of +human feet, and, like thoughts, pass away in a moment; so if you long +for less fleeting farewells from the native dwellers in the wood, lo! +the bright brown queen of the butterflies, gay and gaudy in her +glancings through the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring bird-like over +the pools in the glade; and if your ear desire music, the robin and the +wren may haply trill you a few notes among the briery rocks, or the bold +blackbird open wide his yellow bill in his holly-tree, and set the +squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his ringing roundelay. Any +rivers? one--to whom a thousand torrents are tributary--as he himself is +tributary to the sea. Any lochs? how many we know not--for we never +counted them twice alike--omitting perhaps some forgotten tarns, or +counting twice over some one of our more darling waters, worthy to dash +their waves against the sides of ships--alone wanting to the +magnificence of those inland seas! Yes, it was as level, as boggy, as +hilly, as mountainous, as woody, as lochy, and as rivery a parish, as +ever laughed to scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical Survey. + +Was not that a noble parish for apprenticeship in sports and pastimes of +a great master? No need of any teacher. On the wings of joy we were +borne over the bosom of nature, and learnt all things worthy and needful +to be learned, by instinct first, and afterwards by reason. To look at a +wild creature--winged with feathers, or mere feet--and not desire to +destroy or capture it--is impossible to passion--to imagination--to +fancy. Thus had we longed to feel and handle the glossy plumage of the +beaked birds--the wide-winged Birds of Prey--before our finger had ever +touched a trigger. Their various flight, in various weather, we had +watched and noted with something even of the eye of a naturalist--the +wonder of a poet; for among the brood of boys there are hundreds and +thousands of poets who never see manhood--the poetry dying away--the boy +growing up into mere prose;--yet to some even of the paragraphs of these +Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few sparks of the sacred light are yet +alive within us; and sad to our old ears would be the sound of "Put out +the light, and then--put out the light!" Thus were we impelled, even +when a mere child, far away from the manse, for miles, into the moors +and woods. Once it was feared that poor wee Kit was lost; for having set +off all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line from the distant +Black Loch, and look at a trap set for a glead, a mist overtook him on +the moor on his homeward way, with an eel as long as himself hanging +over his shoulder, and held him prisoner for many hours within its +shifting walls, frail indeed, and opposing no resistance to the hand, +yet impenetrable to the feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. If +the mist had remained, that would have been nothing; only a still cold +wet seat on a stone; but as "a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of +curb and rein," so a Scotch mist becomes a shower--and a shower a +flood--and a flood a storm--and a storm a tempest--and a tempest thunder +and lightning--and thunder and lightning heavenquake and +earthquake--till the heart of poor wee Kit quaked, and almost died +within him in the desert. In this age of Confessions, need we be +ashamed to own, in the face of the whole world, that we sat us down and +cried! The small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped out of +his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeped comfort. With crest just a +thought lowered by the rain, the green-backed, white-breasted peaseweep, +walked close by us in the mist; and sight of wonder, that made even in +that quandary by the quagmire our heart beat with joy--lo! never seen +before, and seldom since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days old, +little bigger than shrew-mice, all covered with blackish down, +interspersed with long white hair, running after their mother! But the +large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, restless even in the most utter +solitude, soon spied us glowering at her, and her young ones, through +our tears; and not for a moment doubting--Heaven forgive her for the +shrewd but cruel suspicion!--that we were Lord Eglinton's +gamekeeper--with a sudden shrill cry that thrilled to the marrow in our +cold backbone--flapped and fluttered herself away into the mist, while +the little black bits of down disappeared, like devils, into the moss. +The croaking of the frogs grew terrible. And worse and worse, close at +hand, seeking his lost cows through the mist, the bellow of the +notorious red bull! We began saying our prayers; and just then the sun +forced himself out into the open day, and, like the sudden opening of +the shutters of a room, the whole world was filled with light. The frogs +seemed to sink among the powheads--as for the red bull who had tossed +the tinker, he was cantering away, with his tail towards us, to a lot of +cows on the hill; and hark--a long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo! Rab +Roger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest lass, from the manse, in +search of our dead body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Leezy kisses us +from the one to the other--wrings the rain out of our long yellow +hair--(a pretty contrast to the small grey sprig now on the crown of our +pericranium, and the thin tail acock behind)--and by-and-by stepping +into Hazel-Deanhead for a drap and a "chitterin' piece," by the time we +reach the manse we are as dry as a whistle--take our scold and our +pawmies from the minister--and, by way of punishment and penance, after +a little hot whisky-toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of bun, are +bundled off to bed in the daytime! + +Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded gun was in our hand--and often +guided the city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the plover, the +moorfowl, and the falcon. The falcon! yes--in the higher region of +clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a stripling--and how fast +had we so shot up you may know, by taking notice of the schoolboy on the +play-green, and two years afterwards, discovering, perhaps, that he is +that fine tall ensign carrying the colours among the light-bobs of the +regiment, to the sound of clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum, +marching into the city a thousand strong. + +We used in early boyhood, deceived by some uncertainty in size, not to +distinguish between a kite and a buzzard, which was very stupid, and +unlike us--more like Poietes in Salmonia. The flight of the buzzard, as +may be seen in Selby, is slow--and except during the season of +incubation, when it often soars to a considerable height, it seldom +remains long on the wing. It is indeed a heavy, inactive bird, both in +disposition and appearance, and is generally seen perched upon some old +and decayed tree, such being its favourite haunt. Him we soon thought +little or nothing about--and the last one we shot, it was, we remember, +just as he was coming out of the deserted nest of a crow, which he had +taken possession of out of pure laziness; and we killed him for not +building a house of his own in a country where there was no want of +sticks. But the kite or glead, as the same distinguished ornithologist +rightly says, is proverbial for the ease and gracefulness of its flight, +which generally consists of large and sweeping circles, performed with a +motionless wing, or at least with a slight and almost imperceptible +stroke of its pinions, and at very distant intervals. In this manner, +and directing its course by its tail, which acts as a rudder, whose +slightest motion produces effect, it frequently soars to such a height +as to become almost invisible to the human eye. Him we loved to slay, as +a bird worthy of our barrel. Him and her have we watched for days, like +a lynx, till we were led, almost as if by an instinct, to their nest in +the heart of the forest--a nest lined with wool, hair, and other soft +materials, in the fork of some large tree. They will not, of course, +utterly forsake their nest, when they have young, fire at them as you +will, though they become more wary, and seem as if they heard a leaf +fall, so suddenly will they start and soar to heaven. We remember, from +an ambuscade in a briery dell in the forest, shooting one flying +overhead to its nest; and, on going up to him as he lay on his back, +with clenched talons and fierce eyes, absolutely shrieking and yelling +with fear, and rage, and pain, we intended to spare his life, and only +take him prisoner, when we beheld beside him on the sod, a chicken from +the brood of famous ginger piles, then, all but his small self, +following the feet of their clucking mother at the manse! With visage +all inflamed, we gave him the butt on his double organ of +destructiveness, then only known to us by the popular name of "back o' +the head," exclaiming + + "Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas + Immolat"-- + +Quivered every feather, from beak to tail and talon, in his last +convulsion, + + "Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras!" + +In the season of love what combats have we been witness +to--Umpire--between birds of prey! The Female Falcon, she sat aloof like +a sultana, in her soft, sleek, glossy plumes, the iris in her eye of +wilder, more piercing, fiery, cruel, fascinating, and maddening lustre, +than ever lit the face of the haughtiest human queen, adored by princes +on her throne of diamonds. And now her whole plumage shivers--and is +ruffled--for her own Gentle Peregrine appears, and they two will enjoy +their dalliance on the edge of the cliff-chasm--and the Bride shall +become a wife in that stormy sunshine on the loftiest precipice of all +these our Alps. But a sudden sugh sweeps down from heaven, and a rival +Hawk comes rushing in his rage from his widowed eyry, and will win and +wear this his second selected bride--for her sake, tearing, or to be +torn, to pieces. Both struck down from heaven, fall a hundred fathom to +the heather, talon-locked, in the mutual gripe of death. Fair play, +gentlemen, and attend to the Umpire. It is, we understand, to be an +up-and-down fight. Allow us to disentangle you--and without giving +advantage to either--elbow-room to both. Neither of you ever saw a human +face so near before--nor ever were captive in a human hand. Both fasten +their momentarily frightened eyes on us, and, holding back their heads, +emit a wild ringing cry. But now they catch sight of each other, and in +an instant are one bunch of torn, bloody plumes. Perhaps their wings are +broken, and they can soar no more--so up we fling them both into the +air--and wheeling each within a short circle, clash again go both birds +together, and the talons keep tearing throats till they die. Let them +die, then, for both are for ever disabled to enjoy their lady-love. She, +like some peerless flower in the days of chivalry at a fatal tournament, +seeing her rival lovers dying for her sake, nor ever to wear her glove +or scarf in the front of battle, rising to leave her canopy in tears of +grief and pride--even like such Angelica, the Falcon unfolds her wings, +and flies slowly away from her dying ravishers, to bewail her virginity +on the mountains. "O, Frailty! thy name is woman!" A third Lover is +already on the wing, more fortunate than his preceding peers--and +Angelica is won, wooed, and sitting, about to lay an egg in an old eyry, +soon repaired and furbished up for the honey-week, with a number of +small birds lying on the edge of the hymeneal couch, with which, when +wearied with love, and yawp with hunger, Angelica may cram her maw till +she be ready to burst, by her bridegroom's breast. + +Forgotten all human dwellings, and all the thoughts and feelings that +abide by firesides, and doorways, and rooms, and roofs--delightful was +it, during the long long midsummer holiday, to lie all alone, on the +greensward of some moor-surrounded mount, not far from the foot of some +range of cliffs, and with our face up to the sky, wait, unwearying, till +a speck was seen to cross the blue cloudless lift, and steadying itself +after a minute's quivering into motionless rest, as if hung suspended +there by the counteracting attraction of heaven and earth, known to be a +Falcon! Balanced far above its prey, and, soon as the right moment came, +ready to pounce down, and fly away with the treasure in its talons to +its crying eyry! If no such speck were for hours visible in the ether, +doubtless dream upon dream, rising unbidden, and all of their own wild +accord, congenial with the wilderness, did, like phantasmagoria, pass to +and fro, backwards and forwards, along the darkened curtain of our +imagination, all the lights of reason being extinguished or removed! In +that trance, not unheard, although scarcely noticed, was the cry of the +curlew, the murmur of the little moorland burn, or the din, almost like +dashing, of the far-off loch. 'Twas thus that the senses, in their most +languid state, ministered to the fancy, and fed her for a future day, +when all the imagery then received so imperfectly, and in broken +fragments, into her mysterious keeping, was to arise in orderly array, +and to form a world more lovely and more romantic even than the reality, +which then lay hushed or whispering, glittering or gloomy, in the +outward air. For the senses hear and see all things in their seeming +slumbers, from all the impulses that come to them in solitude gaining +more, far more, than they have lost! When we are awake, or half awake, +or almost sunk into a sleep, they are ceaselessly gathering materials +for the thinking and feeling soul--and it is hers, in a deep delight +formed of memory and imagination, to put them together by a divine +plastic power, in which she is almost, as it were, a very creator, till +she exult to look on beauty and on grandeur such as this earth and these +heavens never saw, products of her own immortal and immaterial energies, +and BEING once, to BE for ever, when the universe, with all its suns and +systems, is no more! + +But oftener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the +cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, +ever hungry except when asleep. Left to themselves, when the old birds +are hunting, an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear +the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be, +fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down +tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects, +who likewise all live upon prey; for example. Ants of Carrion. Get you +behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide +scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost +a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against +the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from the frost-riven breast +of the precipice. Wait there, though it should be for hours--but it will +not be for hours; for both the old hawks are circling the sky, one over +the marsh and one over the wood. She comes--she comes--the female +Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her mate; and while he is plain in his +dress, as a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and gaudy as a Demirep +dressed for the pit of the Opera--deep and broad her bosom, with an air +of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a serpent's. But now she is a +mother, and plays a mother's part--greedier, even than for herself, for +her greedy young. The lightning flashes from the cave-mouth, and she +comes tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through the dwarf bushes on +the cliff-face, perpendicular and plum-down, within three yards of her +murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest this day--no--nor all +night long: for a father's is not as a mother's love. Your only chance +of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed circuit round about all the +moors within half a league; and possibly you may see him sitting on some +cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid to fly either hither or thither, +perplexed by the sudden death he saw appearing among the unaccountable +smoke, scenting it yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of +your approach. Hazard a long shot--for you are right behind him--and a +slug may hit him on the head, and, following the feathers, split his +skull-cap and scatter his brains. 'Tis done--and the eyry is orphan'd. +Let the small brown moorland birds twitter Io Pęan, as they hang +balanced on the bulrushes--let the stone-chat glance less fearfully +within shelter of the old grey cairn--let the cushat coo his joyous +gratitude in the wood--and the lark soar up to heaven, afraid no more of +a demon descending from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, let them +die of rage and hunger--for there must always be pain in the world; and +'tis well when its endurance by the savage is the cause of pleasure to +the sweet--when the gore-yearning cry of the cruel is drowned in the +song of the kind at feed or play--and the tribes of the peace-loving +rejoice in the despair and death of the robbers and shedders of blood! + +Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all his days shot an Eagle. That +royal race seems nearly extinct in Scotland. Gaze as you will over the +wide circumference of a Highland heaven, calm as the bride's dream of +love, or disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision of a storm, and +all spring and summer long you may not chance to see the shadow of an +Eagle in the sun. The old kings of the air are sometimes yet seen by the +shepherds on cliff or beneath cloud; but their offspring are rarely +allowed to get full-fledged in spite of the rifle always lying loaded in +the shieling. But in the days of our boyhood there were many glorious +things on earth and air that now no more seem to exist, and among these +were the Eagles. One pair had from time immemorial built on the +Echo-cliff, and you could see with a telescope the eyry, with the rim of +its circumference, six feet in diameter, strewn with partridges, +moorfowl, and leverets--their feathers and their skeletons. But the +Echo-cliff was inaccessible. + + "Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud, + And mists that spread the flying shroud, + And sunbeams, and the flying blast, + That if it could, would hurry past, + But that enormous barrier binds it fast." + +No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand feet of the lower +earth; yet how often must they have stooped down on lamb and leveret, +and struck the cushat in her very yew-tree in the centre of the wood! +Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the waning moon--at +mid-day, in the night of sun-hiding tempests--or afar off, in even more +solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, +they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles, + + "Placed far amid the melancholy main," + +or vast inland glens, where not a summer shieling smiles beneath the +region of eternal snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in flesh, +and bone, and blood, just like the veriest poultry that die of croup and +consumption on the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness blinds the +eye that God framed to pierce the seas, and weakens the wing that +dallies with the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain is the doctrine +of the divine right of kings. He is hawked at by the mousing owl, whose +instinct instructs him that these talons have lost their grasp and these +pinions their deathblow. The eagle lies for weeks famished in his eyry, +and, hunger-driven over the ledge, leaves it to ascend no more. He is +dethroned, and wasted to mere bones--a bunch of feathers--his flight is +now slower than that of the buzzard--he floats himself along now with +difficulty from knoll to knoll, pursued by the shrieking magpies, +buffeted by the corby, and lying on his back, like a recreant, before +the beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was terrified to hop round the +carcass till the king of the air was satiated, and gave his permission +to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he himself had scorned. Yet he +is a noble aim to the fowler still; you break a wing and a leg, but fear +to touch him with your hand; Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons +constricted in the death-pang; and holding him up, you wonder that such +an anatomy--for his weight is not more than three pounds--could drive +his claws through that shaggy hide till blood sprung to the +blow--inextricable but to yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to +heal, for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying bird of prey. + +Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where each stone in the desert was +sublime, unassociated though it was with dreams of memory, in its own +simple native power over the human heart! Each sudden breath of wind +passed by us like the voice of a spirit. There were strange meanings in +the clouds--often so like human forms and faces threatening us off, or +beckoning us on, with long black arms, back into the long-withdrawing +wilderness of heaven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, that we had +not been all alone in the desert--that there had been another heart, +whose beatings might have kept time with our own, that we might have +gathered courage in the silent and sullen gloom from the light in a +brother's eye--the smile on a brother's countenance. And often had we +such a Friend in these our far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, +by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage of the old pine-woods. A +Friend from whom "we had received his heart, and given him back our +own,"--such a friendship as the most fortunate and the most happy--and +at that time we were both--are sometimes permitted by Providence, with +all the passionate devotion of young and untamed imagination, to enjoy, +during a bright dreamy world of which that friendship is as the Polar +star. Emilius Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy when we were but +a child--when we were but a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the shadow +of his arm--happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He +was the protector--the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we +bounded with wilder glee--at our studies we sat with intenser +earnestness, by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those +glorious sunsets, and imbued our young spirit with the love and worship +of nature. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was +no idle ceremony to be hastily gone through--that we might lay down our +head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep, but a command of God, +which a response from nature summoned the humble heart to obey. He it +was who for ever had at command wit for the sportive, wisdom for the +serious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry music of his +lips--they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes; and then, all at +once, when the one changed its measures, and the other gathered, as it +were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, +and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit felt to be +indeed divine! It seemed as if we knew but the words of language--that +he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read +together were, every page, and every sentence of every page, all covered +over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, +unintelligible or with imperfect meanings. Whether we perused with him a +volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and the +sky, or the volume revealed from heaven, next day we always knew and +felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we +grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and +religious air, with all our finer affections towards other human beings, +all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, +or with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent fancy to embrace +the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of +pleasure or pain--of joy or grief--of fear or hope--had our heart to +withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within +our bosom, with all its imperfections--may we venture to say, with all +its virtues. A repented folly--a confessed fault--a sin for which we +were truly contrite--a vice flung from us with loathing and with +shame--in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and +his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in +the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school +were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a +flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal +land. In spite of that difference in our years--or oh! say rather +because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and +the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and +younger brother, in the sunlight and moonlight solitudes! Woods--into +whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his +company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and +there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts--in whose +lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by +ourselves have faced the spray--in his presence, dinn'd with a merry +music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling +up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily +overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as +we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm +of both blue depths--how magnificent the white-crested waves tumbling +beneath the black thunder-cloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed +on it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of some sudden +storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, that +seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods to our ear, +because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at +midnight, when not one star was in the sky. With him we first followed +the Falcon in her flight--he showed us on the Echo-cliff the Eagle's +eyry. To the thicket he led us where lay couched the lovely-spotted Doe, +or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two +fawns at her side. But for him we should not then have seen the antlers +of the red-deer, for the Forest was indeed a most savage place, and +haunted--such was the superstition at which they who scorned it +trembled--haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had +murdered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little mountain well that +ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all +those still shadowy solitudes! Into what depths of human nature did he +teach our wondering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to become of us, we +sometimes thought in sadness that all at once made our spirits +sink--like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by the fear of some +unwonted shadow from above--what was to become of us when the mandate +should arrive for him to leave the Manse for ever, and sail away in a +ship to India never more to return! Ever as that dreaded day drew +nearer, more frequent was the haze in our eyes; and in our blindness, we +knew not that such tears ought to have been far more rueful still, for +that he then lay under orders for a longer and more lamentable voyage--a +voyage over a narrow strait to the Eternal shore. All--all at once he +drooped; on one fatal morning the dread decay began; with no +forewarning, the springs on which his being had so lightly--so +proudly--so grandly moved--gave way. Between one Sabbath and another his +bright eyes darkened--and while all the people were assembled at the +sacrament, the soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. It was +indeed a dreadful death, serene and sainted though it were; and not a +hall--not a house--not a hut--not a shieling within all the circle of +those wide mountains, that did not on that night mourn as if it had lost +a son. All the vast parish attended his funeral--Lowlanders and +Highlanders in their own garb of grief. And have time and tempest now +blackened the white marble of that monument--is that inscription now +hard to be read--the name of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration--nor +haply one surviving who ever saw the light of the countenance of him +there interred! Forgotten as if he had never been! for few were that +glorious orphan's kindred--and they lived in a foreign land--forgotten +but by one heart, faithful through all the chances and changes of this +restless world! And therein enshrined among all its holiest +remembrances, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it too, like +his, shall be but dust and ashes! + +Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting one another--in absence or in +death. Yet forgetting is not just the very word; call it rather a +reconcilement to doom and destiny--in thus obeying a benign law of +nature that soon streams sunshine over the shadows of the grave. Not +otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent +spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight; and thoughts +delightful still, thoughts of the faces and the voices of the dead, +perish not, lying sometimes in slumber--sometimes in sleep. It belongs +not to the blessed season and genius of youth, to hug to its heart +useless and unavailing griefs. Images of the well-beloved, when they +themselves are in the mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, +through the meditative hush of solitude. But our main business--our +prime joys and our prime sorrows--ought to be, must be, with the living. +Duty demands it; and Love, who would pine to death over the bones of the +dead, soon fastens upon other objects with eyes and voices to smile and +whisper an answer to all his vows. So was it with us. Ere the midsummer +sun had withered the flowers that spring had sprinkled over our +Godfrey's grave, youth vindicated its own right to happiness; and we +felt that we did wrong to visit too often that corner in the kirkyard. +No fears had we of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams we saw +him--most often all alive as ever--sometimes a phantom away from that +grave! If the morning light was frequently hard to be endured, bursting +suddenly upon us along with the feeling that he was dead, it more +frequently cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth +a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we +found ourselves angling down the river, or along the loch--once more +following the flight of the Falcon along the woods--eying the Eagle on +the Echo-cliff. Days passed by, without so much as one thought of +Emilius Godfrey--pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our +books intently--just as if he had never been! But often and often, too, +we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards +us--his very figure--we could not be deceived; but the love-raised ghost +disappeared on a sudden--the grief-woven spectre melted into the mist. +The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to +grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature +became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and +fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from +the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their +way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God. + +Then this was to be our last year in the parish--now dear to us as our +birthplace; nay, itself our very birthplace--for in it from the darkness +of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of +cloud and mountain, we felt that most probably never more should we +return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did +ourselves, had chalked out a future life for young Christopher North--a +life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name. +Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of +passion, to make the most--the best--of the few months that remained to +us, of that our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled +by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the world, all +alike--young and old--must obey. Our books were flung aside--nor did +our old master and minister frown--for he grudged not to the boy he +loved the remnant of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's +rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye--not with our voice--one long +holiday, throughout that our last autumn, on to the pale farewell +blossoms of the Christmas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the loch +or river; but we had not known thoroughly our own soul--for now we +angled less passionately--less perseveringly than was our wont of +yore--sitting in a pensive, a melancholy, a miserable dream, by the +dashing waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our gun we plunged earlier +in the morning into the forest, and we returned later at eve--but less +earnest--less eager were we to hear the cushat's moan from his +yew-tree--to see the hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft on the +sky. A thousand dead thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the +woods--and we sometimes did wring our hands in an agony of grief, to +know that our eyes should not behold the birch-tree brightening there +with another spring. + +Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling was felt to be a +farewell; there was something mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces +of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to +whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil guile; we +regarded the solemn toil-and-care-worn countenances of the old with a +profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our +more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the +woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting +now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from +the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle +with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom +failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. +They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the +insolences of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had +been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had +shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had +been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young +we might sometimes have been, for boyhood is soon heated, and boils +before a defying eye; but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we +revered the head of old age. + +And many at last were the kind--some the sad farewells, ere long +whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for ever +silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard--its +blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to +Thee--O palest Phantom--clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost +risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from +the skies to bless--unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist +of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot +choose but weep, with the self-same vision that often glided before us +long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound of our voice would pause +for a little while, and then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, +floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its +plumes on a knoll far up an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched +that face, pale though it be--lifelike is the waving of those gentle +hands--and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure +from lips hushed by the burial mould! Restored by the power of love, she +stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her +golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under +which the child had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a +moment the blue light in her dewy eyes was dimmed--and never again did +she behold either flower or star. Yet all the images of all the things +she had loved remained in her memory, clear and distinct as the things +themselves before unextinguished eyes; and ere three summers had flown +over her head--which, like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in +heaven's gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness +higher and higher in the light--she could trip her singing way through +the wild wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor +erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses +peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to +give themselves into her fingers; and 'twas thought they hung longer +unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink +the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though +her garment touched the broom-stalk on which they sang. The cushat, as +she thrid her way through the wood, continued to croon in her darksome +tree--and the lark, although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by +her presence into a new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as +if it were his first matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth and air +manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Wilderness--and as for human +beings, she was named, in their pity, their wonder, and their delight, +the Blind Beauty of the Moor! + +She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And +now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten +the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden--and he was poor. Of +all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is--Charity. No +manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven--for the mouths of the +hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among +the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each +neighbour's house--neighbour though miles afar--as the sacred duty came +round--and the unrepining poor sent the grateful child away with their +prayers. + +One evening, returning to the hut with her usual song, she danced up to +her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she +shrieked--if she fainted--there was but one Ear that heard, one Eye that +saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud +unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, +but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she +came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound of our +voice, fell down with clasped hands at our feet--"My father's dead!" Had +the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of mortality? For +people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little while there was +a group round us, and we bore her back again to her dwelling in our +arms. As for us, we had been on our way to bid the fair creature and her +father farewell. How could she have lived--an utter orphan--in such a +world! The holy power that is in Innocence would for ever have remained +with her; but Innocence longs to be away, when her sister Joy has +departed; and 'tis sorrowful to see the one on earth, when the other has +gone to Heaven! This sorrow none of us had long to see; for though a +flower, when withered at the root, and doomed ere eve to perish, may yet +look to the careless eye the same as when it blossomed in its +pride--yet its leaves, still green, are not as once they were--its +bloom, though fair, is faded--and at set of sun, the dews shall find it +in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere Sabbath came, the orphan +child was dead. Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her birth had +been the humblest of the humble; and though all in life had loved her, +it was thought best that none should be asked to the funeral of her and +her father, but two or three friends; the old clergyman himself walked +at the head of the father's coffin--we at the head of the +daughter's--for this was granted unto our exceeding love;--and thus +passed away for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor! + +Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us +over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our +pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic. +Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen--let +us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-cliff, and with our +rifle--'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey--let us stalk the +red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick, as now they +lie on the Atholl Braes; they were still a rare sight--and often and +often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single +glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true +angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has +reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea--so we, +a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as +the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the +possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and +strongest is self-fed passion springing in spite of circumstance. When +blows the warm showery south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow +sides at every dropping of the fly on the curling water--and the angler +is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once--twice--thrice--during a +long blustering day--the sullen plunge of a salmon is sufficient for +that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever +on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is +never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in the Great +Glen. A loud, wild, wrathful, and savage cry from some huge animal made +our heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our forehead in sweat. We looked +up--and a red-deer--a stag of ten--the king of the forest--stood with +all his antlers, snuffing the wind, but yet blind to our figure +overshadowed by a rock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart--and leaping up +far higher than our head, he tumbled in terrific death, and lay +stone-still before our starting eyes amid the rustling of the +strong-bented heather! There we stood surveying him for a long +triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes--and ghastlier his long +bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of +his antlers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in +death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the +north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again, +with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a +distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-waggon forced its way through the +bogs and over the braes--and on our return into the inhabited country, +we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing +over the Prey; for not for many years--never since the funeral of the +old lord--had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along +the heather. + +Fifty years and more--and oh! my weary soul! half a century took a long +time to die away in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms +through which were afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged +raptures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed +halcyons to rest--though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but +a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs, +the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and +the clouds! Fifty years and more are gone--and this is the Twelfth of +August Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all the Highland mountains +have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's +joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our +feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully these +fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast! +intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now +all a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up among the +rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition it is +to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty +cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan now in their variegated summer-dress, seen +even among the unmelted snows. The scene shiftsand high up on the heath +above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braemar, the Thane--God bless +him--has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unerring +rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's Oak. Never shall Eld deaden +our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men any more than with +their highest raptures, their profoundest griefs. Blessings on the head +of every true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor shall we take +it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he +may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a +rainy day, to the peat-reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, +by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid +conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a +haunch of the red-deer. + +Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle--or a female, fair as +the Falcon--a male, stern as an old Stag--or a female, soft as a young +Doe--we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article--and to +look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now +come to the close of his Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen--out of +one into another--and from which he has now been revived by the +application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think +that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking +common in sleep, there has been no method in our madness, no _lucidus +ordo_ in our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit--our +thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to +the most approved principles of association--and a fine proportion has +been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble +tree, which--although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown +its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further +gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the +umbrage--is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature +working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an +old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Woe and shame to the +sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let +the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find +shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age. + + + + +TALE OF EXPIATION. + + +Margaret Burnside was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest +people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child; and as they +had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about +the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left +friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom +wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling +among hard-working folk, towards objects out of the narrow circle of +their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong +excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the +lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian +benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost +destitution--and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate +with the tears shed over their parents' graves. They are taken by the +hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection, +and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers +and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of +comfort falls upon them during the gloom of grief, and attends them all +their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of +affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretchedness with +which all have become familiar, no one very tenderly pities; and thus +the orphan, reconciling herself to the extreme hardships of her +condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both +happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant pressure +of her lot, becomes poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates +like an almost worthless weed that is carelessly trodden on by every +foot, or if by nature born a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all +her days leads the life not so much of a servant as of a slave. + +Such, till she was twelve years old, had been the fate of Margaret +Burnside. Of a slender form and weak constitution, she had never been +able for much work; and thus from one discontented and harsh master and +mistress to another, she had been transferred from house to +house--always the poorest--till she came to be looked on as an +encumbrance rather than a help in any family, and thought hardly worth +her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes herding the kine. It was +supposed that she was in a consumption--and as the shadow of death +seemed to lie on the neglected creature's face, a feeling something like +love was awakened towards her in the heart of pity, for which she showed +her gratitude by still attending to all household tasks with an alacrity +beyond her strength. Few doubted that she was dying--and it was plain +that she thought so herself; for the Bible, which, in her +friendlessness, she had always read more than other children, who were +too happy to reflect often on the Word of that Being from whom their +happiness flowed, was now, when leisure permitted, seldom or never out +of her hands; and in lonely places, where there was no human ear to +hearken, did the dying girl often support her heart, when quaking in +natural fears of the grave, by singing to herself hymns and psalms. But +her hour was not yet come--though by the inscrutable decrees of +Providence doomed to be hideous with almost inexpiable guilt. As for +herself--she was innocent as the linnet that sang beside her in the +broom, and innocent was she to be up to the last throbbings of her +religious heart. When the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the +orphan seemed to see in the holy words, brightening through the +radiance, assurances of forgiveness of all her sins--small sins +indeed--yet to her humble and contrite heart exceeding great--and to be +pardoned only by the intercession of Him who died for us on the tree. +Often, when clouds were in the sky, and blackness covered the Book, hope +died away from the discoloured page--and the lonely creature wept and +sobbed over the doom denounced on all who sin, and repent not--whether +in deed or in thought. And thus religion became within her an awful +thing--till, in her resignation, she feared to die. But look on that +flower by the hill-side path, withered, as it seems, beyond the power of +sun and air and dew and rain to restore it to life. Next day, you happen +to return to the place, its leaves are of a dazzling green, its +blossoms of a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. Nature, as +if kindling towards her in sudden love, not only restored her in a few +weeks to life--but to perfect health; and ere long she, whom few had +looked at, and for whom still fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the +fairest girl in all the parish--while she continued to sit, as she had +always done from very childhood, on the _poor's form_ in the lobby of +the kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a manner, in one so +poorly attired and so meanly placed, attracted the eyes of the young +Ladies in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside was taken under their +especial protection--sent for two years to a superior school, where she +was taught all things useful for persons in humble life--and while yet +scarcely fifteen, returning to her native parish, was appointed teacher +of a small school of her own, to which were sent all the girls who could +be spared from home, from those of parents poor as her own had been, up +to those of the farmers and small proprietors, who knew the blessings of +a good education--and that without it, the minister may preach in vain. +And thus Margaret Burnside grew and blossomed like the lily of the +field--and every eye blessed her--and she drew her breath in gratitude, +piety, and peace. + +Thus a few happy and useful years passed by--and it was forgotten by +all--but herself--that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. But to be +without one near and dear blood-relative in all the world, must often, +even to the happy heart of youthful innocence, be more than a pensive--a +painful thought; and therefore, though Margaret Burnside was always +cheerful among her little scholars, yet in the retirement of her own +room (a pretty parlour, with a window looking into a flower-garden), and +on her walks among the braes, her mien was somewhat melancholy, and her +eyes wore that touching expression, which seems doubtfully to +denote--neither joy nor sadness--but a habit of soul which, in its +tranquillity, still partakes of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often +on past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to indulge in dreams of +future repose. That profound orphan-feeling imbued her whole character; +and sometimes when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon +her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber--and wept. + +Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at +Moorside, the highest hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father +had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was grey, +his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were +dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower--indeed his wife had never +been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his +youth and prime of manhood; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he +had been looked at with no very friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his +character had preceded his arrival there--and in that peaceful pastoral +parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any +good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and +religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the +best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions +faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of +dislike, or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity +which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at +first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously +exhibited themselves in fiery outbreaks, advancing age had gradually +subdued; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and industrious man; +affected, if he followed it not in sincerity, even an austerely +religious life; and as he possessed more than common sagacity and +intelligence, he had acquired, at last, if not won, a certain ascendancy +in the parish, even over many whose hearts never opened nor warmed +towards him--so that he was now an elder of the kirk--and, as the most +unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, a just steward to the poor. His +grey hairs were not honoured, but it would not be too much to say that +they were respected. Many who had doubted him before came to think they +had done him injustice, and sought to wipe away their fault by regarding +him with esteem, and showing themselves willing to interchange all +neighbourly kindnesses and services with all the family at Moorside. His +son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and too much addicted to the +fascinating pastimes of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons of +labour, and rarely long pursued against the law without vitiating the +whole character, was a favourite with all the parish. Singularly +handsome, and with manners above his birth, Ludovic was welcome +wherever he went, both with young and old. No merry-making could deserve +the name without him; and at all meetings for the display of feats of +strength and agility, far and wide through more counties than one he was +the champion. Nor had he received a mean education. All that the parish +schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having been the darling companion +of all the gentlemen's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his mind had +kept pace with theirs, and from them he had caught unconsciously that +demeanour so far superior to what could have been expected from one in +his humble condition, but which, at the same time, seemed so congenial +with his happy nature as to be readily acknowledged to be one of its +original gifts. Of his sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she +was the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and that all who saw their +friendship felt that it was just. The small parentless granddaughter was +also dear to Margaret--more than perhaps her heart knew, because that, +like herself, she was an orphan. But the creature was also a merry and a +madcap child, and her freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, as +she tossed her head in untamable glee, and went dancing and singing, +like a bird on the boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange +sympathy entirely won the heart of her who, throughout all her own +childhood, had been familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of tears. +And thus did Margaret love her, it might be said, even with a very +mother's love. She generally passed her free Saturday afternoons at +Moorside, and often slept there all night with little Ann in her bosom. +At such times Ludovic was never from home, and many a Sabbath he walked +with her to the kirk--all the family together--and _once_ by themselves +for miles along the moor--a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which returned +upon him in his agony on his dying day. + +No one said, no one thought that Ludovic and Margaret were lovers--nor +were they, though well worthy indeed of each other's love; for the +orphan's whole heart was filled and satisfied with a sense of duty, and +all its affections were centred in her school, where all eyes blessed +her, and where she had been placed for the good of all those gladsome +creatures, by them who had rescued her from the penury that kills the +soul, and whose gracious bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In her +prayers she beseeched God to bless them rather than the wretch on her +knees--their images, their names, were ever before her eyes and on her +ear; and next to that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, and +comes from the footstool of God into the humble, lowly, and contrite +heart, was to that orphan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the bliss +of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to her was a brother, and no more; a +name sacred as that of sister, by which she always called her Alice, and +was so called in return. But to Ludovic, who had a soul of fire, +Margaret was dearer far than ever sister was to the brother whom, at the +sacrifice of her own life, she might have rescued from death. Go where +he might, a phantom was at his side--a pale fair face for ever fixed its +melancholy eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal even when they +faintly smiled; and once he awoke at midnight, when all the house were +asleep, crying, with shrieks, "O God of mercy! Margaret is murdered!" +Mysterious passion of Love! that darkens its own dreams of delight with +unimaginable horrors! Shall we call such dire bewilderment the +superstition of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the prophetic +soul! + +From what seemingly insignificant sources--and by means of what humble +instruments--may this life's best happiness be diffused over the +households of industrious men! Here was the orphan daughter of forgotten +paupers, both dead ere she could speak; herself, during all her +melancholy childhood, a pauper even more enslaved than ever they had +been--one of the most neglected and unvalued of all God's +creatures--who, had she then died, would have been buried in some +nettled nook of the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost by one +single tear--suddenly brought out from the cold and cruel shade in which +she had been withering away, by the interposition of human but angelic +hands, into the heaven's most gracious sunshine, where all at once her +beauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for so many years had been even +begrudgingly fed on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury ungrateful +for all her weak but zealous efforts to please by doing her best, in +sickness and sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and in all +weathers, however rough and severe--was now raised to the rank of a +moral, intellectual, and religious being, and presided over, tended, and +instructed many little ones, far far happier in their childhood than it +had been her lot to be, and all growing up beneath her now untroubled +eyes, in innocence, love, and joy inspired into their hearts by her, +their young and happy benefactress. Not a human dwelling in all the +parish, that had not reason to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She +taught them to be pleasant in their manners, neat in their persons, +rational in their minds, pure in their hearts, and industrious in all +their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, all angry fits, and all +idle dispositions--the besetting vices and sins of the children of the +poor, whose home-education is often so miserably, and almost necessarily +neglected--did this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of meekness +never ruffled, and tenderness never troubled, in a few months subdue and +overcome--till her school-room, every day in the week, was, in its +cheerfulness, sacred as a Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve with +the hum of perpetual happiness. The effects were soon felt in every +house. All floors were tidier, and order and regularity enlivened every +hearth. It was the pride of her scholars to get their own little gardens +behind their parents' huts to bloom like that of the Brae--and, in +imitation of that flowery porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the +wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every Sabbath forenoon waited for +her at the gate--and walked, with her at their head, into the House of +God--a beautiful procession to all their parents' eyes--one by one +dropping away into their own seats, as the band moved along the little +lobby, and the minister, sitting in the pulpit all the while, looked +solemnly down upon the fair flock--the shepherd of their souls! + +It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was not in the kirk. The +congregation had risen to join in prayer, when the great door was thrown +open, and a woman, apparelled as for the house of worship, but wild and +ghastly in her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil spirits, burst +in upon the service, and, with uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God +to forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the foulest and most +unnatural murder had been done, and that her own eyes had seen the +corpse of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a pool of blood! The +congregation gave one groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the +kirk had been toppling over their heads. All cheeks waxed white, women +fainted, and the firmest heart quaked with terror and pity, as once and +again the affrighted witness, in the same words, described the horrid +spectacle, and then rushed out into the open air, followed by hundreds, +who for some minutes had been palsy-stricken; and now the kirkyard was +all in a tumult round the body of her who lay in a swoon. In the midst +of that dreadful ferment, there were voices crying aloud that the poor +woman was mad, and that such horror could not be beneath the sun; for +such a perpetration on the Sabbath-day, and first heard of just as the +prayers of His people were about to ascend to the Father of all mercies, +shocked belief, and doubt struggled with despair as in the helpless +shudderings of some dream of blood. The crowd were at last prevailed on +by their pastor to disperse, and sit down on the tombstones, and water +being sprinkled over the face of her who still lay in that mortal swoon, +and the air suffered to circulate freely round her, she again opened her +glassy eyes, and raising herself on her elbow, stared on the multitude, +all gathered there so wan and silent, and shrieked out, "The Day of +Judgment!--the Day of Judgment!" + +The aged minister raised her on her feet, and led her to a grave, on +which she sat down, and hid her face on his knees. "O that I should have +lived to see the day--but dreadful are the decrees of the Most High--and +she whom we all loved has been cruelly murdered! Carry me with you, +people, and I will show you where lies her corpse." + +"Where--where is Ludovic Adamson?" cried a hoarse voice which none there +had ever heard before; and all eyes were turned in one direction; but +none knew who had spoken, and all again was hush. Then all at once a +hundred voices repeated the same words, "Where--where is Ludovic +Adamson?" and there was no reply. Then, indeed, was the kirkyard in an +angry and a wrathful ferment, and men looked far into each other's eyes +for confirmation of their suspicions. And there was whispering about +things, that, though in themselves light as air, seemed now charged with +hideous import; and then arose sacred appeals to Heaven's eternal +justice, horridly mingled with oaths and curses; and all the crowd, +springing to their feet, pronounced, "that no other but he could be the +murderer." + +It was remembered now, that for months past Margaret Burnside had often +looked melancholy--that her visits had been less frequent to Moorside; +and one person in the crowd said, that a few weeks ago she had come upon +them suddenly in a retired place, when Margaret was weeping bitterly, +and Ludovic tossing his arms, seemingly in wrath and distraction. All +agreed that of late he had led a disturbed and reckless life--and that +something dark and suspicious had hung about him, wherever he went, as +if he were haunted by an evil conscience. But did not strange men +sometimes pass through the Moor--squalid mendicants, robber-like, from +the far-off city--one by one, yet seemingly belonging to the same +gang--with bludgeons in their hands--half-naked, and often drunken in +their hunger, as at the doors of lonesome houses they demanded alms; or +more like footpads than beggars, with stern gestures, rising up from the +ditches on the wayside, stopped the frightened women and children going +upon errands, and thanklessly received pence from the poor? One of them +must have been the murderer! But then, again, the whole tide of +suspicion would set in upon Ludovic--her lover; for the darker and more +dreadful the guilt, the more welcome is it to the fears of the +imagination when its waking dreams are floating in blood. + +A tall figure came forward from the porch, and all was silence when the +congregation beheld the Father of the suspected criminal. He stood still +as a tree in a calm day--trunk, limbs, moved not--and his grey head was +uncovered. He then stretched out his arm, not in an imploring, but in a +commanding attitude, and essayed to speak; but his white lips quivered, +and his tongue refused its office. At last, almost fiercely, he uttered, +"Who dares denounce my son?" and like the growling thunder the crowd +cried, "All--all--he is the murderer!" Some said that the old man +smiled; but it could have been but a convulsion of the features--outraged +nature's wrung-out and writhing expression of disdain, to show how a +father's love brooks the cruelty of foolish falsehood and injustice. + +Men, women, and children--all whom grief and horror had not made +helpless--moved away towards the Moor--the woman who had seen the sight +leading the way; for now her whole strength had returned to her, and she +was drawn and driven by an irresistible passion to look again at what +had almost destroyed her judgment. Now they were miles from the kirk, +and over some brushwood, at the edge of a morass some distance from the +common footpath, crows were seen diving and careering in the air, and a +raven, flapping suddenly out of the covert, sailed away with a savage +croak along a range of cliffs. The whole multitude stood stock-still at +that carrion-sound. The guide said shudderingly, in a low hurried voice, +"See, see--that is her mantle"--and there indeed Margaret lay, all in a +heap, maimed, mangled, murdered, with a hundred gashes. The corpse +seemed as if it had been baked in frost, and was imbedded in coagulated +blood. Shreds and patches of her dress, torn away from her bosom, +bestrewed the bushes--for many yards round about, there had been the +trampling of feet, and a long lock of hair that had been torn from her +temples, with the dews yet unmelted on it, was lying upon a plant of +broom, a little way from the corpse. The first to lift the body from the +horrid bed was Gilbert Adamson. He had been long familiar with death in +all its ghastliness, and all had now looked to him--forgetting for the +moment that he was the father of the murderer--to perform the task from +which they recoiled in horror. Resting on one knee, he placed the corpse +on the other--and who could have believed, that even the most violent +and cruel death could have wrought such a change on a face once so +beautiful! All was distortion--and terrible it was to see the dim glazed +eyes, fixedly open, and the orbs insensible to the strong sun that smote +her face white as snow among the streaks as if left by bloody fingers! +Her throat was all discoloured--and a silk handkerchief twisted into a +cord, that had manifestly been used in the murder, was of a redder hue +than when it had veiled her breast. No one knows what horror his eyes +are able to look on, till they are tried. A circle of stupefied gazers +was drawn by a horrid fascination closer and closer round the +corpse--and women stood there holding children by the hands, and fainted +not, but observed the sight, and shuddered without shrieking, and stood +there all dumb as ghosts. But the body was now borne along by many +hands--at first none knew in what direction, till many voices muttered, +"To Moorside--to Moorside"--and in an hour it was laid on the bed in +which Margaret Burnside had so often slept with her beloved little Ann +in her bosom. + +The hand of some one had thrown a cloth over the corpse. The room was +filled with people--but all their power and capacity of horror had been +exhausted--and the silence was now almost like that which attends a +natural death, when all the neighbours are assembled for the funeral. +Alice, with little Ann beside her, kneeled at the bed, nor feared to lay +her head close to the covered corpse--sobbing out syllables that showed +how passionately she prayed--and that she and her little niece--and, oh! +for that unhappy father--were delivering themselves up into the hands of +God. That father knelt not--neither did he sit down--nor move--nor +groan--but stood at the foot of the bed, with arms folded almost +sternly--and with his eyes fixed on the sheet, in which there seemed to +be neither ruth nor dread--but only an austere composure, which, were it +indeed but resignation to that dismal decree of Providence, had been +most sublime--but who can see into the heart of a man either righteous +or wicked, and know what may be passing there, breathed from the gates +of heaven or of hell! + +Soon as the body had been found, shepherds and herdsmen, fleet of foot +as the deer, had set off to scour the country far and wide, hill and +glen, mountain and morass, moor and wood, for the murderer. If he be on +the face of the earth, and not self-plunged in despairing suicide into +some quagmire, he will be found--for all the population of many +districts are now afoot, and precipices are clomb till now brushed but +by the falcons. A figure, like that of a man, is seen by some of the +hunters from a hill-top, lying among the stones by the side of a +solitary loch. They separate, and descend upon him, and then, gathering +in, they behold the man whom they seek--Ludovic Adamson, the murderer. + +His face is pale and haggard, yet flushed as if by a fever centred in +his heart. That is no dress for the Sabbath-day--soiled and +savage-looking, and giving to the eyes that search an assurance of +guilt. He starts to his feet, as they think, like some wild beast +surprised in his lair, and gathering itself up to fight or fly. +But--strange enormity--a Bible is in his hand! And the shepherd who +first seized him, taking the book out of his grasp, looks into the page, +and reads, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." +On a leaf is written, in her own well-known hand, "The gift of Margaret +Burnside!" Not a word is said by his captors--they offer no needless +violence--no indignities--but answer all inquiries of surprise and +astonishment (O! can one so young be so hardened in wickedness!) by a +stern silence and upbraiding eyes, that like daggers must stab his +heart. At last he walks doggedly and sullenly along, and refuses to +speak; yet his tread is firm--there is no want of composure in his face, +now that the first passion of fear or anger has left it; and now that +they have the murderer in their clutch, some begin almost to pity him, +and others to believe, or at least to hope, that he may be innocent. As +yet they have said not a word of the crime of which they accuse him; but +let him try to master the expression of his voice and his eyes as he +may, guilt is in those stealthy glances--guilt is in those reckless +tones. And why does he seek to hide his right hand in his bosom? And +whatever he may affect to say--they ask him not--most certainly that +stain on his shirt-collar is blood. But now they are at Moorside. + +There is still a great crowd all round about the house--in the +garden--and at the door--and a troubled cry announces that the criminal +has been taken, and is close at hand. His father meets him at the gate; +and, kneeling down, holds up his clasped hands, and says, "My son, if +thou art guilty, confess, and die." The criminal angrily waves his +father aside, and walks towards the door. "Fools! fools! what mean ye by +this? What crime has been committed? And how dare ye to think me the +criminal? Am I like a murderer?"--"We never spoke to him of the +murder--we never spoke to him of the murder!" cried one of the men who +now held him by the arm; and all assembled then exclaimed, "Guilty, +guilty--that one word will hang him! O, pity, pity, for his father and +poor sister--this will break their hearts!" Appalled, yet firm of foot, +the prisoner forced his way into the house; and turning, in his +confusion, into the chamber on the left, there he beheld the corpse of +the murdered on the bed--for the sheet had been removed--as yet not laid +out, and disfigured and deformed just as she had been found on the moor, +in the same misshapen heap of death! One long insane glare--one shriek, +as if all his heartstrings at once had burst--and then down fell the +strong man on the floor like lead. One trial was past which no human +hardihood could endure--another, and yet another, awaits him; but them +he will bear as the guilty brave have often borne them, and the most +searching eye shall not see him quail at the bar or on the scaffold. + +They lifted the stricken wretch from the floor, placed him in a chair, +and held him upright, till he should revive from the fit. And he soon +did revive; for health flowed in all his veins, and he had the strength +of a giant. But when his senses returned, there was none to pity him; +for the shock had given an expression of guilty horror to all his looks, +and, like a man walking in his sleep under the temptation of some +dreadful dream, he moved with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at +the corpse, gabbled in hideous laughter, and then wept and tore his hair +like a distracted woman or a child. Then he stooped down as he would +kiss the face, but staggered back, and, covering his eyes with his +hands, uttered such a groan as is sometimes heard rending the sinner's +breast when the avenging Furies are upon him in his dreams. All who +heard it felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce cry through the +room of, "Make him touch the body, and if he be the murderer, it will +bleed!"--"Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," said his father; +"bleed afresh it will not, for thou art innocent; and savage though now +they be who once were proud to be thy friends, even they will believe +thee guiltless when the corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, and +not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But his son spake not a word, nor +did he seem to know that his father had spoken; but he suffered himself +to be led passively towards the bed. One of the bystanders took his hand +and placed it on the naked breast, when out of the corners of the +teeth-clenched mouth, and out of the swollen nostrils, two or three +blood-drops visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout declared the +sacred faith of all the crowd in the dreadful ordeal. "What body is +this? 'tis all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with an idiot +vacancy on the faces that surrounded him. But now the sheriff of the +county entered the room, along with some officers of justice, and he was +spared any further shocks from that old saving superstition. His wrists +soon after were manacled. These were all the words he had uttered since +he recovered from the fit; and he seemed now in a state of stupor. + +Ludovic Adamson, after examination of witnesses who crowded against him +from many unexpected quarters, was committed that very Sabbath night to +prison on a charge of murder. On the Tuesday following, the remains of +Margaret Burnside were interred. All the parish were at the funeral. In +Scotland it is not customary for females to join in the last simple +ceremonies of death. But in this case they did; and all her scholars, in +the same white dresses in which they used to walk with her at their head +into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed the bier. Alice and little Ann were +there, nearest the coffin, and the father of him who had wrought all +this woe was one of its supporters. The head of the murdered girl +rested, it might be said, on his shoulder--but none can know the +strength which God gives to his servants--and all present felt for him, +as he walked steadily under that dismal burden, a pity, and even an +affection, which they had been unable to yield to him ere he had been so +sorely tried. The Ladies from the Castle were among the other mourners, +and stood by the open grave. A sunnier day had never shone from heaven, +and that very grave itself partook of the brightness, as the +coffin--with the gilt letters, "Margaret Burnside, Aged 18"--was let +down, and in the darkness below disappeared. No flowers were sprinkled +there, nor afterwards planted on the turf--vain offerings, of unavailing +sorrow! But in that nook--beside the bodies of her poor parents--she was +left for the grass to grow over her, as over the other humble dead; and +nothing but the very simplest headstone was placed there, with a +sentence from Scripture below the name. There was less weeping, less +sobbing, than at many other funerals; for as sure as Mercy ruled the +skies, all believed that she was there--all knew it, just as if the +gates of heaven had opened and showed her a white-robed spirit at the +right hand of the throne. And why should any rueful lamentation have +been wailed over the senseless dust? But on the way home over the hills, +and in the hush of evening beside their hearths, and in the stillness of +night on their beds--all--young and old--all did nothing but weep. + +For weeks--such was the pity, grief, and awe inspired by this portentous +crime and lamentable calamity, that all the domestic ongoings in all the +houses far and wide, were melancholy and mournful, as if the country had +been fearing a visitation of the plague. Sin, it was felt, had brought +not only sorrow on the parish, but shame that ages would not wipe away; +and strangers, as they travelled through the moor, would point the place +where the foulest murder had been committed in all the annals of crime. +As for the family at Moorside, the daughter had their boundless +compassion, though no eye had seen her since the funeral; but people, in +speaking of the father, would still shake their heads, and put their +fingers to their lips, and say to one another in whispers, that Gilbert +Adamson had once been a bold, bad man--that his religion, in spite of +all his repulsive austerity, wore not the aspect of truth--and that, had +he held a stricter and a stronger hand on the errors of his misguided +son, this foul deed had not been perpetrated, nor that wretched sinner's +soul given to perdition. Yet others had gentler and humaner thoughts. +They remembered him walking along God-supported beneath the bier--and at +the mouth of the grave--and feared to look on that head--formerly +grizzled, but now quite grey--when on the very first Sabbath after the +murder he took his place in the elders' seat, and was able to stand up, +along with the rest of the congregation, when the minister prayed for +peace to his soul, and hoped for the deliverance out of jeopardy of him +now lying in bonds. A low Amen went all round the kirk at these words; +for the most hopeless called to mind that maxim of law, equity, and +justice--that every man under accusation of crime should be held +innocent till he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribunal might +condemn him, and yet might he stand acquitted before the tribunal of +God. + +There were various accounts of the behaviour of the prisoner. Some said +that he was desperately hardened--others, sunk in sullen apathy and +indifference--and one or two persons belonging to the parish who had +seen him declared that he seemed to care not for himself, but to be +plunged in profound melancholy for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose +name he involuntarily mentioned, and then bowed his head on his knees +and wept. His guilt he neither admitted at that interview, nor denied; +but he confessed that some circumstances bore hard against him, and that +he was prepared for the event of his trial--condemnation and death. "But +if you are not guilty, Ludovic, _who can be the murderer_? Not the +slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any other person--and did +not, alas! the body bleed when"--The unhappy wretch sprang up from the +bed, it was said, at these words, and hurried like a madman back and +forward along the stone floor of his cell. "Yea--yea!" at last he cried, +"the mouth and nostrils of my Margaret did indeed bleed when they +pressed down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's truth!" "God's +truth?"--"Yes--God's truth, I saw first one drop, and then another, +trickle towards me--and I prayed to our Saviour to wipe them off before +other eyes might behold the dreadful witnesses against me; but at that +hour Heaven was most unmerciful--for those two small drops--as all of +you saw--soon became a very stream--and all her face, neck, and +breast--you saw it as well as I miserable--were at last drenched in +blood. Then I may have confessed that I was guilty--did I, or did I not, +confess it? Tell me--for I remember nothing distinctly;--but if I +did--the judgment of offended Heaven, then punishing me for my sins, had +made me worse than mad--and so had all your abhorrent eyes; and men, if +I did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove me to it--and your +cruelty--which was great; for no pity had any one for me that day, +though Margaret Burnside lay before me a murdered corpse--and a hoarse +whisper came to my ear urging me to confess--I well believe from no +human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who, at that hour, was suffered +to leave the pit to ensnare my soul." Such was said to have been the +main sense of what he uttered in the presence of two or three who had +formerly been among his most intimate friends, and who knew not, on +leaving his cell and coming into the open air, whether to think him +innocent or guilty. As long as they thought they saw his eyes regarding +them, and that they heard his voice speaking, they believed him +innocent; but when the expression of the tone of his voice, and of the +look of his eyes--which they had felt belonged to innocence--died away +from their memory--then arose against him the strong, strange, +circumstantial evidence, which, wisely or unwisely, lawyers and judges +have said _cannot lie_--and then, in their hearts, one and all of them +pronounced him guilty. + +But had not his father often visited the prisoner's cell? Once--and once +only; for in obedience to his son's passionate prayer, beseeching +him--if there were any mercy left either on earth or in heaven--never +more to enter that dungeon, the miserable parent had not again entered +the prison; but he had been seen one morning at dawn, by one who knew +his person, walking round and round the walls, staring up at the black +building in distraction, especially at one small grated window in the +north tower--and it is most probable that he had been pacing his rounds +there during all the night. Nobody could conjecture, however dimly, what +was the meaning of his banishment from his son's cell. Gilbert Adamson, +so stern to others, even to his own only daughter, had been always but +too indulgent to his Ludovic--and had that lost wretch's guilt, so +exceeding great, changed his heart into stone, and made the sight of his +old father's grey hairs hateful to his eyes? But then the jailor, who +had heard him imploring--beseeching--commanding his father to remain, +till after the trial, at Moorside, said, that all the while the prisoner +sobbed and wept like a child; and that when he unlocked the door of the +cell, to let the old man out, it was a hard thing to tear away the arms +and hands of Ludovic from his knees, while the father sat like a stone +image on the bed, and kept his tearless eyes fixed sternly upon the +wall, as if not a soul had been present, and he himself had been a +criminal condemned next day to die. + +The father had obeyed, _religiously_, that miserable injunction, and +from religion it seemed he had found comfort. For Sabbath after Sabbath +he was at the kirk--he stood, as he had been wont to do for years, at +the poor's plate, and returned grave salutations to those who dropt +their mite into the small sacred treasury--his eyes calmly, and even +critically, regarded the pastor during prayer and sermon--and his deep +bass voice was heard, as usual, through all the house of God, in the +Psalms. On week-days he was seen by passers-by to drive his flocks +afield, and to overlook his sheep on the hill-pastures, or in the +pen-fold; and as it was still spring, and seed-time had been late this +season, he was observed holding the plough, as of yore; nor had his +skill deserted him--for the furrows were as straight as if drawn by a +rule on paper--and soon bright and beautiful was the braird on all the +low lands of his farm. The Comforter was with him, and, sorely as he had +been tried, his heart was not yet wholly broken; and it was believed +that, for years, he might outlive the blow that at first had seemed more +than a mortal man might bear and be! Yet that his woe, though hidden, +was dismal, all ere long knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his +face--cheeks shrunk and fallen; brow not so much furrowed as scarred; +eyes quenched; hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had torn +it away in handfuls during the solitude of midnight--and now absolutely +as white as snow; and over the whole man an indescribable ancientness +far beyond his years--though they were many, and most of them had been +passed in torrid climes--all showed how grief has its agonies as +destructive as those of guilt, and those the most wasting when they work +in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved by the shedding of one single +tear--when the very soul turns dry as dust, and life is imprisoned, +rather than mingled, in the decaying--the mouldering body! + +The Day of Trial came, and all labour was suspended in the parish, as if +it had been a mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this remote +district poured into the circuit-town, and besieged the court-house. +Horsemen were in readiness, soon as the verdict should be returned, to +carry the intelligence--of life or death--to all those glens. A few +words will suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the evidence, and +its issue. The prisoner, who stood at the bar in black, appeared--though +miserably changed from a man of great muscular power and activity, a +magnificent man, into a tall thin shadow--perfectly unappalled; but in a +face so white, and wasted, and woe-begone, the most profound +physiognomist could read not one faintest symptom either of hope or +fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. He hardly seemed to belong +to this world, and stood fearfully and ghastlily conspicuous between the +officers of justice, above all the crowd that devoured him with their +eyes, all leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound of his voice, +when to the indictment he should plead "Not Guilty." These words he did +utter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, and then was suffered +to sit down, which he did in a manner destitute of all emotion. During +all the many long hours of his trial, he never moved head, limbs, or +body, except once, when he drank some water, which he had not asked for, +but which was given to him by a friend. The evidence was entirely +circumstantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, and of many of the +very slightest sort, which, taken singly, seemed to mean nothing, but +which, when considered all together, seemed to mean something against +him--how much or how little, there were among the agitated audience many +differing opinions. But slight as they were, either singly or together, +they told fearfully against the prisoner, when connected with the fatal +few which no ingenuity could ever explain away; and though ingenuity did +all it could do, when wielded by eloquence of the highest order--and as +the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a rustle and a buzz through +the court, and a communication of looks and whispers, that seemed to +denote that there were hopes of his acquittal--yet, if such hopes there +were, they were deadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, logical +address to the jury by the counsel for the crown, and destroyed by the +judge's charge, which amounted almost to a demonstration of guilt, and +concluded with a confession due to his oath and conscience, that he saw +not how the jury could do their duty to their Creator and their +fellow-creatures, but by returning _one_ verdict. They retired to +consider it; and, during a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on a +deathlike Image. + +It had appeared in evidence, that the murder had been committed, at +least all the gashes inflicted--for there were also finger-marks of +strangulation--with a bill-hook, such as foresters use in lopping trees; +and several witnesses swore that the bill-hook which was shown them, +stained with blood, and with hair sticking on the haft, belonged to +Ludovic Adamson. It was also given in evidence--though some doubts +rested on the nature of the precise words--that on that day, in the room +with the corpse, he had given a wild and incoherent denial to the +question then put to him in the din, "What he had done with the +bill-hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession since the spring +before; but it had been found, after several weeks' search, in a hag in +the moss, in the direction that he would have most probably taken--had +he been the murderer--when flying from the spot to the loch where he was +seized. The shoes which he had on when taken, fitted the footmarks on +the ground, not far from the place of the murder, but not so perfectly +as another pair which were found in the house. But that other pair, it +was proved, belonged to the old man; and therefore the correspondence +between the footmarks and the prisoner's shoes, though not perfect, was +a circumstance of much suspicion. But a far stronger fact, in this part +of the evidence, was sworn to against the prisoner. Though there was no +blood on his shoes, when apprehended his legs were bare--though that +circumstance, strange as it may seem, had never been noticed till he was +on the way to prison! His stockings had been next day found lying on the +sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly after having been washed, +and laid out to dry in the sun. At mention of this circumstance a cold +shudder ran through the court; but neither that, nor indeed any other +circumstance in the evidence--not even the account of the appearance +which the murdered body exhibited when found on the moor, or when +afterwards laid on the bed--extorted from the prisoner one groan--one +sigh--or touched the imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. It +was proved, that when searched--in prison, and not before (for the +agitation that reigned over all assembled in the room at Moorside that +dreadful day, had confounded even those accustomed to deal with +suspected criminals)--there were found in his pocket a small French gold +watch, and also a gold brooch, which the Ladies of the Castle had given +to Margaret Burnside. On these being taken from him, he had said +nothing, but looked aghast. A piece of torn and bloody paper, which had +been picked up near the body, was sworn to be in his handwriting; and +though the meaning of the words--yet legible--was obscure, they seemed +to express a request that Margaret would meet him on the moor on that +Saturday afternoon she was murdered. The words "Saturday"--"meet +me"--"last time"--were not indistinct, and the paper was of the same +quality and colour with some found in a drawer in his bedroom at +Moorside. It was proved that he had been drinking with some dissolute +persons--poachers and the like--in a public-house in a neighbouring +parish all Saturday, till well on in the afternoon, when he left them in +a state of intoxication--and was then seen running along the hill-side +in the direction of the moor. Where he passed the night between the +Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give no account, except once when +unasked, and as if speaking to himself, he was overheard by the jailor +to mutter, "Oh! that fatal night--that fatal night!" And then, when +suddenly interrogated, "Where were you?" he answered, "Asleep on the +hill;" and immediately relapsed into a state of mental abstraction. +These were the chief circumstances against him, which his counsel had +striven to explain away. That most eloquent person dwelt with affecting +earnestness on the wickedness of putting any evil construction on the +distracted behaviour of the wretched man when brought without warning +upon the sudden sight of the mangled corpse of the beautiful girl, whom +all allowed he had most passionately and tenderly loved; and he strove +to prove--as he did prove to the conviction of many--that such behaviour +was incompatible with such guilt, and almost of itself established his +innocence. All that was sworn to _against_ him, as having passed in that +dreadful room, was in truth _for_ him--unless all our knowledge of the +best and of the worst of human nature were not, as folly, to be given to +the winds. He beseeched the jury, therefore, to look at all the other +circumstances that did indeed seem to bear hard upon the prisoner, in +the light of his innocence, and not of his guilt, and that they would +all fade into nothing. What mattered his possession of the watch and +other trinkets? Lovers as they were, might not the unhappy girl have +given them to him for temporary keepsakes? Or might he not have taken +them from her in some playful mood, or received them--(and the brooch +was cracked, and the mainspring of the watch broken, though the glass +was whole)--to get them repaired in the town, which he often visited, +and she never? Could human credulity for one moment believe, that such a +man as the prisoner at the bar had been sworn to be by a host of +witnesses--and especially by that witness, who, with such overwhelming +solemnity, had declared he loved him as his own son, and would have been +proud if Heaven had given him such a son--he who had baptised him, and +known him well ever since a child--that such a man could _rob_ the body +of her whom he had violated and murdered? If, under the instigation of +the devil, he had violated and murdered her, and for a moment were made +the hideous supposition, did vast hell hold that demon whose voice would +have tempted the violator and murderer--suppose him both--yea, that man +at the bar--sworn to by all the parish, if need were, as a man of +tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded--in the lust of lucre, +consequent on the satiating of another lust--to rob his victim of a few +trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination into the realms of wildest +wickedness, and yet they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for a +moment the union of such appalling and such paltry guilt, _in that man_ +who now trembled not before them, but who seemed cut off from all the +sensibilities of this life by the scythe of Misery that had shorn him +down! But why try to recount, however feebly, the line of defence taken +by the speaker, who on that day seemed all but inspired? The sea may +overturn rocks, or fire consume them till they split in pieces; but a +crisis there sometimes is in man's destiny, which all the powers ever +lodged in the lips of man, were they touched with a coal from heaven, +cannot avert, and when even he who strives to save, feels and knows that +he is striving all in vain--ay, vain as a worm--to arrest the tread of +Fate about to trample down its victim into the dust. All hoped--many +almost believed--that the prisoner would be acquitted--that a verdict of +"Not Proven," at least, if not of "Not Guilty," would be returned; but +_they_ had not been sworn to do justice before man and before God--and, +if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their +hearts--flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that +bar presented--a man already seeming to belong unto the dead! + +In about a quarter of an hour the jury returned to the box--and the +verdict, having been sealed with black wax, was handed up to the Judge, +who read, "We unanimously find the prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to +receive sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in the court during the +Judge's solemn and affecting address to the criminal--except those of +the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the doom. "Your body will be hung +in chains on the moor--on a gibbet erected on the spot where you +murdered the victim of your unhallowed lust, and there will your bones +bleach in the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the insects and the +birds of the air have devoured your flesh; and in all future times, the +spot on which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you perpetrated that +double crime, at which all humanity shudders, will be looked on from +afar by the traveller passing through that lonesome wild with a sacred +horror!" Here the voice of the Judge faltered, and he covered his face +with his hands; but the prisoner stood unmoved in figure, and in face +untroubled and when all was closed, was removed from the bar, the same +ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seemingly unconscious of what had +passed, or even of his own existence. + +Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell! "Once +more only--only once more let me see him before I die!" were his words +to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when +a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom +now all the world had forsaken. As free from sin himself as might be +mortal and fallen man--mortal because fallen--he knew from Scripture and +from nature, that in "the lowest deep there is still a lower deep" in +wickedness, into which all of woman born may fall, unless held back by +the arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must serve steadfastly in +holiness and truth. He knew, too, from the same source, that man cannot +sin beyond the reach of God's mercy--if the worst of all imaginable +sinners seek, in a Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through the +Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily--and nightly--he visited that cell; nor +did he fear to touch the hand, now wasted to the bone, which, at the +temptation of the Prince of the Air--who is mysteriously suffered to +enter in at the gates of every human heart that is guarded not by the +flaming sword of God's own Seraphim--was lately drenched in the blood of +the most innocent creature that ever looked on the day. Yet a sore trial +it was to his Christianity to find the criminal so obdurate. He would +make no confession. Yet said that it was fit--that it was far best he +should die--that he deserved death! But ever when the deed without a +name was alluded to, his tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an +impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen to conscience and +confess--he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear +bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease--cease to torment me, or you +will drive me to deny my God!" + +No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been +missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning--(where he had been all +night never was known, though it was afterwards rumoured that one like +him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of +the murder)--wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round +and round about, like a man stricken with blindness, and vainly seeking +to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and +he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some +disjointed syllables, which he did continually, without one moment's +cessation, one unintelligible and most rueful moan! The figure of his +daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes--blind and dumb he sat +where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his +shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs--though +stone-blind at least to all real things--beneath them flashing fire. He +had borne up bravely--almost to the last--but had some tongue syllabled +his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten +him? + +Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none; for the +old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most +confident trust of his son's acquittal. Nothing had ever served to shake +his conviction of his innocence--though he had always forborne speaking +about the circumstances of the murder--and had communicated to nobody +any of the grounds on which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless; +and though a trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lips, when he +used to say to the silent neighbours, "We shall soon see him back at +Moorside." Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and his trust in +God that that innocence would be established and set free, been so +sacred, that the blow, when it did come, struck him like a hammer, and +felled him to the ground, from which he had risen with a riven brain? In +whatever way the shock had been given, it had been terrible; for old +Gilbert Adamson was now a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in +Moorside--not keepers from a mad-house, for his daughter could not +afford such tendence--but two of her brother's friends, who sat up with +him alternately, night and day, while the arms of the old man, in his +distraction, had to be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an +end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; +and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the +neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it, and an asylum for +them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties; +and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away +by violence, she was suffered to remain with him who knew her not, but +who often--it was said--stared distractedly upon her, as if she had been +some fiend sent in upon his insanity from the place of punishment. Weeks +passed on, and still she was there--hiding herself at times from those +terrifying eyes; and from her watching corner, waiting from morn till +night, and from night till morn--for she seldom lay down to sleep, and +had never undressed herself since that fatal sentence--for some moment +of exhausted horror, when she might steal out, and carry some slight +gleam of comfort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or the gloom in +which the brain of her father swam through a dream of blood. But there +were no lucid intervals; and ever as she moved towards him, like a +pitying angel, did he furiously rage against her, as if she had been a +fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, had lived to see the +murdered corpse of her dearest friend--murdered by her own only brother, +whom, in secret, that murdered maiden had most tenderly loved--that +murderous brother loaded with prison-chains, and condemned to the gibbet +for inexpiable and unpardonable crimes--her father raving like a demon, +self-murderous were his hands but free, nor visited by one glimpse of +mercy from Him who rules the skies--after having borne more than, as she +meekly said, had ever poor girl borne, she took to her bed quite +heart-broken, and, the night before the day of execution, died. As for +poor little Ann, she had been wiled away some weeks before; and in the +blessed thoughtlessness of childhood, was not without hours of happiness +among her playmates on the braes. + +The Morning of that Day arose, and the Moor was all blackened with +people round the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, with its horrid +arms, out of the ground during the night. No sound of axes or hammers +had been heard clinking during the dark hours--nothing had been seen +passing along the road; for the windows of all the houses from which +anything could have been seen, had been shut fast against all horrid +sights--and the horses' hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled that +had brought that hideous Framework to the Moor. But there it now +stood--a dreadful Tree! The sun moved higher and higher up the sky, and +all the eyes of that congregation were at once turned towards the east, +for a dull sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling feet, seemed +shaking the Moor in that direction; and lo! surrounded with armed men on +horseback, and environed with halberds, came on a cart, in which three +persons seemed to be sitting, he in the middle all dressed in white--the +death-clothes of the murderer--the unpitying shedder of most innocent +blood. + +There was no bell to toll there--but at the very moment he was ascending +the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hundreds of people +all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his +eyes, and said, "O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou his blessed Son, who +died to save sinners! accept this sacrifice!" + +Not one in all that immense crowd could have known that that white +apparition was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been almost +jet-black, was now white as his face--as his figure, dressed, as it +seemed, for the grave. Are they going to execute the murderer in his +shroud? Stone-blind, and stone-deaf, there he stood--yet had he, without +help, walked up the steps of the scaffold. A hymn of several voices +arose--the man of God close beside the criminal, with the Bible in his +uplifted hands; but those bloodless lips had no motion--with him this +world was not, though yet he was in life--in life, and no more! And was +this the man who, a few months ago, flinging the fear of death from him, +as a flash of sunshine flings aside the shades, had descended into that +pit which an hour before had been bellowing, as the foul vapours +exploded like cannons, and brought up the bodies of them who had +perished in the womb of the earth? Was this he who once leapt into the +devouring fire, and reappeared, after all had given over for lost the +glorious boy, with an infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to +eddy back, that they might scathe not the head of the deliverer, and a +shower of blessings fell upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, +and made the heart of the widow to sing for joy? It is he. And now the +executioner pulls down the cord from the beam, and fastens it round the +criminal's neck. His face is already covered, and that fatal +handkerchief is in his hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, and one +multitudinous sob convulses the air;--when wild outcries, and shrieks, +and yells, are at that moment heard from the distant gloom of the glen +that opens up to Moorside, and three figures, one far in advance of the +others, come flying, as on the wings of the wind, towards the gibbet. +Hundreds started to their feet, and "'Tis the maniac--'tis the lunatic!" +was the cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hill-side, that seemed +hardly accessible but to the goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few +desperate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected he would have been +dashed in pieces, alighted unstunned upon the level greensward; and now, +far ahead of his keepers, with incredible swiftness neared the +scaffold--and, the dense crowd making a lane for him in their fear and +astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the horrid platform, and, +grasping his son in his arms, howled dreadfully over him; and then with +a loud voice cried, "Saved--saved--saved!" + +So sudden had been that wild rush, that all the officers of justice--the +very executioner--stood aghast; and now the prisoner's neck is free from +that accursed cord--his face is once more visible without that hideous +shroud--and he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. "Seize him--seize +him!" and he was seized--but no maniac, no lunatic, was the father now; +for during the night, and during the dawn, and during the morn, and on +to mid-day--on to the HOUR OF ONE--when all rueful preparations were to +be completed--had Providence been clearing and calming the tumult in +that troubled brain; and as the cottage clock struck ONE, memory +brightened at the chime into a perfect knowledge of the past, and +prophetic imagination saw the future lowering upon the dismal present. +All night long, with the cunning of a madman--for all night long he had +still been mad--the miserable old man had been disengaging his hands +from the manacles, and that done, springing like a wild beast from his +cage, he flew out of the open door, nor could a horse's speed on that +fearful road have overtaken him before he reached the scaffold. + +No need was there to hold the miserable man. He who had been so furious +in his manacles at Moorside, seemed now, to the people at a distance, +calm as when he used to sit in the elders' seat beneath the pulpit in +that small kirk. But they who were on or near the scaffold saw something +horrid in the fixedness of his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, ye +fools!" he muttered to some of the mean wretches of the law, who still +had him in their clutch--and tossing his hands on high, cried with a +loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens! and hear, O Earth! I am the +Violator--I am the Murderer!" + +The moor groaned as in earthquake--and then all that congregation bowed +their heads with a rustling noise, like a wood smitten by the wind. Had +they heard aright the unimaginable confession? His head had long been +grey--he had reached the term allotted to man's mortal life here +below--threescore and ten. Morning and evening, never had the Bible been +out of his hands at the hour set apart for family worship. And who so +eloquent as he in expounding its most dreadful mysteries? The +unregenerate heart of man, he had ever said--in scriptural phrase--was +"desperately wicked." Desperately wicked indeed! And now again he tossed +his arms wrathfully--so the wild motion looked--in the wrathful skies. +"I ravished--I murdered her--ye know it, ye evil spirits in the depths +of hell!" Consternation now fell on the minds of all--and the truth was +clear as light--and all eyes knew at once that now indeed they looked on +the murderer. The dreadful delusion under which all their understandings +had been brought by the power of circumstances, was by that voice +destroyed--the obduracy of him who had been about to die was now seen to +have been the most heroic virtue--the self-sacrifice of a son, to save a +father from ignominy and death. + +"O monster, beyond the reach of redemption! and the very day after the +murder, while the corpse was lying in blood on the Moor, he was with us +in the House of God! Tear him in pieces--rend him limb from limb--tear +him into a thousand pieces!"--"The Evil One had power given him to +prevail against me, and I fell under the temptation. It was so written +in the Book of Predestination, and the deed lies at the door of +God!"--"Tear the blasphemer into pieces! Let the scaffold drink his +blood!"--"So let it be, if it be so written, good people! Satan never +left me since the murder till this day--he sat by my side in the +kirk--when I was ploughing in the field--there--ever as I came back from +the other end of the furrow--he stood on the head-rig in the shape of a +black shadow. But now I see him not--he has returned to his den in the +pit. I cannot imagine what I have been doing, or what has been done to +me, all the time between the day of trial and this of execution. Was I +mad? No matter. But you shall not hang Ludovic--he, poor boy, is +innocent;--here, look at him--here--I tell you again--is the Violator +and the Murderer!" + +But shall the men in authority dare to stay the execution at a maniac's +words? If they dare not--that multitude will, now all rising together +like the waves of the sea. "Cut the cords asunder that bind our +Ludovic's arms"--a thousand voices cried; and the murderer, unclasping a +knife, that, all unknown to his keepers, he had worn in his breast when +a maniac, sheared them asunder as the sickle shears the corn. But his +son stirred not--and on being lifted _up_ by his father, gave not so +much as a groan. His heart had burst--and he was dead. No one touched +the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down--not to pray, but to look into +his son's eyes--and to examine his lips--and to feel his left +breast--and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to +assure himself--and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field +after hush of the noise of battle--that this was death. He rose; and +standing forward on the edge of the scaffold, said, with a voice that +shook not, deep, strong, hollow, and hoarse--"Good people! I am +_likewise_ now the murderer of my daughter and of my son! and of +myself!" Next moment, the knife was in his heart--and he fell down a +corpse on the corpse of his Ludovic. All round the sultry horizon the +black clouds had for hours been gathering--and now came the thunder and +the lightning--and the storm. Again the whole multitude prostrated +themselves on the moor--and the Pastor, bending over the dead bodies, +said, + + "THIS IS EXPIATION!" + + + + +MORNING MONOLOGUE. + + +"Knowledge is Power." So is Talent--so is Genius--so is Virtue. Which is +the greatest? It might seem hard to tell; but united they go forth +conquering and to conquer. Nor is that union rare. Kindred in nature, +they love to dwell together in the same "palace of the soul." Remember +Milton. But too often they are disunited; and then, though still Powers, +they are but feeble, and their defeats are frequent as their triumphs. +What! is it so even with Virtue? It is, and it is not. Virtue may reign +without the support of Talent and Genius; but her counsellor is +Conscience, and what is Conscience but Reason rich by birthright in +knowledge directly derived from the heaven of heavens beyond all the +stars? + +And may Genius and Talent indeed be, conceive, and execute, without the +support of Virtue? You will find that question answered in the following +lines by Charles Grant, which deserve the name of philosophical +poetry:-- + + "Talents, 'tis true, quick, various, bright, has God + To Virtue oft denied, on Vice bestow'd; + Just as fond Nature lovelier colours brings + To deck the insect's than the eagle's wings. + But then of man the high-born nobler part, + The ethereal energies that touch the heart, + Creative Fancy, labouring Thought intense, + Imagination's wild magnificence, + And all the dread sublimities of Song-- + These, Virtue! these, to thee alone belong." + +Such is the natural constitution of humanity; and in the happiest state +of social life, all its noblest Faculties would bear legitimate sway, +each in its own province, within the spirit's ample domains. There, +Genius would be honoured; and Poetry another name for religion. But to +such a state there can, under the most favouring skies, be no more than +an approximation; and the time never was when Virtue suffered no +persecution, Honour no shame, Genius no neglect, nor fetters were not +imposed by tyrannous power on the feet of the free. The age of Homer, +the age of Solon, the age of Pericles, the age of Numa, the age of +Augustus, the age of Alfred, the age of Leo, the age of Elizabeth, the +age of Anne, the age of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron, have they not been +all bright and great ages? Yet had they been faithfully chronicled, over +the misery and madness of how many despairing spirits fraught with +heavenly fire, might we not have been called to pour forth our +unavailing indignations and griefs! + +Under despotic governments, again, such as have sunk deep their roots +into Oriental soils, and beneath Oriental skies prosperously expanded +their long-enduring umbrage, where might is right, and submission +virtue, noble-minded men--for sake of that peace which is ever dearest +to the human heart, and if it descend not a glad and gracious gift from +Heaven, will yet not ungratefully be accepted when breathed somewhat +sadly from the quieted bosom of earth by tyranny saved from +trouble--have submitted, almost without mourning, to sing "many a lovely +lay," that perished like the flowers around them, in praise of the Power +at whose footstool they "stooped their anointed heads as low as death." +Even then has Genius been honoured, because though it ceased to be +august, still it was beautiful; it seemed to change fetters of iron into +bands of roses, and to halo with a glory the brows of slaves. The +wine-cup mantled in its light; and Love forgot in the bower Poetry built +for bliss, that the bride might be torn from the bridegroom's bosom on +her bridal night by a tyrant's lust. Even there Genius was happy, and +diffused happiness; at its bidding was heard pipe, tabor, and dulcimer; +and to its lips "warbling melody" life floated by, in the midst of all +oppression, a not undelightful dream! + +But how has it been with us in our Green Island of the West? Some people +are afraid of revolutions. Heaven pity them! we have had a hundred since +the Roman bridged our rivers, and led his highways over our mountains. +And what the worse have we been of being thus revolved? We are no +radicals; but we dearly love a revolution--like that of the stars. No +two nights are the heavens the same--all the luminaries are revolving +to the music of their own spheres. Look, we beseech you, on that +new-risen star. He is elected by universal suffrage--a glorious +representative of a million lesser lights; and on dissolution of _that_ +Parliament--how silent but how eloquent!--he is sure of his return. Why, +we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen below--it is no +longer called Reform--were it to fling up to free light from fettered +darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole +world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. But +we look abroad and see strutting to and fro the sons of little men blown +up with vanity, in a land where tradition not yet old tells of a race of +giants. We are ashamed of ourselves to think we feared the throes of the +times, seeing not portentous but pitiable births. Brush these away; and +let us think of the great dead--let us look on the great living--and, +strong in memory and hope, be confident in the cause of Freedom. "Great +men _have been_ among us--better none;" and can it be said that _now_ +there is "a want of books and men," or that those we have are mere +dwarfs and duodecimos? Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and +enterprise, no passion in the character of our country? Has not wide +over earth + + "England sent her men, of men the chief, + To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree?" + +Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the Queen, kindled America into +life, and raised up in the New World a power to balance the Old, star +steadying star in their unconflicting courses? You can scarce see her +shores for ships; her inland groves are crested with towers and temples; +and mists brooding at intervals over her far-extended plains, tell of +towns and cities, their hum unheard by the gazer from her glorious +hills. Of such a land it would need a gifted eye to look into all that +is passing within the mighty heart; but it needs no gifted eye, no +gifted ear, to see and hear there the glare and the groaning of great +anguish, as of lurid breakers tumbling in and out of the caves of the +sea. But is it or is it not a land where all the faculties of the soul +are free as they ever were since the Fall? Grant that there are +tremendous abuses in all departments of public and private life; that +rulers and legislators have often been as deaf to the "still small +voice" as to the cry of the million; that they whom they have ruled, +and for whom they have legislated often so unwisely or wickedly, have +been as often untrue to themselves, and in self-imposed idolatry + + "Have bow'd their knees + To despicable gods." + +Yet base, blind, and deaf (and better dumb) must be he who would deny, +that here Genius has had, and now has, her noblest triumphs; that Poetry +has here kindled purer fires on loftier altars than ever sent up their +incense to Grecian skies; that Philosophy has sounded depths in which +her torch was not extinguished, but, though bright, could pierce not the +"heart of the mystery" into which it sent some strong illuminations; +that Virtue here has had chosen champions victorious in their martyrdom; +and Religion her ministers and her servants not unworthy of her whose +title is from heaven. + +Causes there have been, are, and ever will be, why often, even here, the +very highest faculties "rot in cold obstruction." But in all the +ordinary affairs of life, have not the best the best chance to win the +day? Who, in general, achieve competence, wealth, splendour, +magnificence, in their condition as citizens? The feeble, the ignorant, +and the base, or the strong, the instructed, and the bold? Would you, at +the offstart, back mediocrity with alien influence, against high talent +with none but its own--the native "might that slumbers in a peasant's +arm," or, nobler far, that which neither sleeps nor slumbers in a +peasant's heart? There is something abhorrent from every sentiment in +man's breast to see, as we too often do, imbecility advanced to high +places by the mere accident of high birth. But how our hearts warm +within us to behold the base born, if in Britain we may use the word, by +virtue of their own irresistible energies, taking precedence, rightful +and gladly-granted, of the blood of kings! Yet we have heard it +whispered, insinuated, surmised, spoken, vociferated, howled, and roared +in a voice of small-beer-souring thunder, that Church and State, Army +and Navy, are all officered by the influence of the Back-stairs--that +few or none but blockheads, by means of brass only, mount from the Bar +which they have disturbed to that Bench which they disgrace; and that +mankind intrust the cure of all diseases their flesh is heir to, to the +exclusive care of every here and there a handful of old women. + +Whether overstocked or not, 'twould be hard to say, but all professions +are full--from that of Peer to that of Beggar. To live is the most many +of us can do. Why then complain? Men should not complain when it is +their duty as men to work. Silence need not be sullen--but better +sullenness than all this outrageous outcry, as if words the winds +scatter, were to drop into the soil and grow up grain. Processions! is +this a time for full-grown men in holiday shows to play the part of +children? If they desire advancement, let them, like their betters, turn +to and work. All men worth mentioning in this country belong to the +working classes. What seated Thurlow, and Wedderburne, and Scott, and +Erskine, and Copley, and Brougham on the woolsack? Work. What made +Wellington? For seven years war all over Spain, and finally at +Waterloo--work--bloody and glorious work. + +Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. Let the few sluggards that +possess but cannot enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures and +sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such creatures disturb the +equanimity of the magnanimous working-classes of England? True to +themselves in life's great relations, they need not grudge, for a little +while longer, the paupers a few paltry pence out of their earnings; for +they know a sure and silent deathblow has been struck against that order +of things by the sense of the land, and that all who receive wages must +henceforth give work. All along that has been the rule--these are the +exceptions; or say, that has been the law--these are its revolutions. +Let there be high rewards, and none grudge them--in honour and gold--for +high work. And men of high talents--never extinct--will reach up their +hands and seize them, amidst the acclamations of a people who have ever +taken pride in a great ambition. If the competition is to be in future +more open than ever, to know it is so will rejoice the souls of all who +are not slaves. But clear the course! Let not the crowd rush in--for by +doing so, they will bring down the racers, and be themselves trampled to +death. + +Now we say that the race is--if not always--ninety-nine times in a +hundred--to the swift, and the battle to the strong. We may have been +fortunate in our naval and military friends; but we cannot charge our +memory with a single consummate ass holding a distinguished rank in +either service. That such consummate asses are in both, we have been +credibly informed, and believe it; and we have sometimes almost imagined +that we heard their bray at no great distance, and the flapping of their +ears. Poor creatures enough do rise by seniority or purchase, or if +anybody know how else, we do not; and such will be the case to the end +of the chapter of human accidents. But merit not only makes the man, but +the officer on shore and at sea. They are as noble and discontented a +set of fellows all, as ever boarded or stormed; and they will continue +so, not till some change in the Admiralty, or at the Horse-guards, for +Sir James Graham does his duty, and so does Lord Hill; but till a change +in humanity, for 'tis no more than Adam did, and we attribute whatever +may be amiss or awry, chiefly to the Fall. Let the Radicals set poor +human nature on her legs again, and what would become of _them_? In the +French service there is no rising at all, it seems, but by merit; but +there is also much running away; not in a disgraceful style, for our +natural enemies and artificial friends are a brave race, but in mere +indignation and disgust to see troops so shamefully ill-officered as +ours, which it would be a disgrace to look in the face on the field, +either in column or line. Therefore they never stand a charge, but are +off in legions of honour, eagles and all, before troops that have been +so uniformly flogged from time immemorial, as to have no other name but +raw lobsters, led on by officers all shivering or benumbed under the +"cold shade of aristocracy," like Picton and Pack. + +We once thought of going ourselves to the English Bar, but were +dissuaded from doing so by some judicious friends, who assured us we +should only be throwing away our great talents and unexampled eloquence; +for that success depended solely on interest, and we had none we knew +of, either in high places or in low, and had then never seen an +attorney. We wept for the fate of many dear friends in wigs, and made a +pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On our return from Palestine and other foreign +parts, behold them all bending under briefs, bound by retaining fees, +or, like game-hawks, wheeling in airy circuits over the rural provinces, +and pouncing down on their prey, away to their eyries with talonfuls, +which they devoured at their luxurious leisure, untroubled by any callow +young! They now compose the Bench. + +Ere we set off for Salem, we had thoughts of entering the Church, and of +becoming Bishops. But it was necessary, we were told, first to be tutor +to a lord. That, in our pride, we could not stomach; but if ours had not +been the sin by which Satan fell, where now had been the excellent +Howley? All our habits in youth led us to associate much with intending +divines. A few of them are still curates; but 'twere vain to try to +count the vicars, rectors, canons, deans, archdeacons, and bishops, with +whom, when we were all undergraduates together at Oxford, we used to do +nothing but read Greek all day, and Latin all night. Yet you hear +nothing but abuse of such a Church! and are told to look at the +Dissenters. We do look at them, and an uglier set we never saw; not one +in a hundred, in his grimness, a gentleman. Not a single scholar have +they got to show; and now that Hall is mute, not one orator. Their +divinity is of the dust--and their discourses dry bones. Down with the +old Universities--up with new. The old are not yet down, but the new are +up; and how dazzling the contrast, even to the purblind! You may hew +down trees, but not towers; and Granta and Rhedicyna will show their +temples to the sun, ages after such structures shall have become +hospitals. They enlighten the land. Beloved are they by all the +gentlemen of England. Even the plucked think of them with tears of +filial reverence, and having renewed their plumage, clap their wings, +and crow defiance to all their foes. A man, you say, can get there no +education to fit him for life. Bah! Tell that to the marines. Now and +then one meets a man eminent in a liberal profession, who has not been +at any place that could easily be called a College. But the great +streams of talent in England keep perpetually flowing from the gates of +her glorious Universities--and he who would deny it in any mixed company +of leading men in London, would only have to open his eyes in the hush +that rebuked his folly, to see that he was a Cockney, clever enough, +perhaps, in his own small way, and the author of some sonnets, but even +to his own feelings painfully out of place among men who had not studied +at the Surrey. + +We cannot say that we have any fears, this fine clear September morning, +for the Church of England in England. In Ireland, deserted and betrayed, +it has received a dilapidating shock. Fain would seven millions of "the +finest people on the earth," and likewise the most infatuated, who are +so proud of the verdure of their isle that they love to make "the green +one red," see the entire edifice overthrown, not one stone left upon +another, and its very name smothered in a smoky cloud of ascending dust. +They have told us so in yells, over which has still been heard "the +wolf's long howl," the savage cry of the O'Connell. And Ministers who +pretend to be Protestants, and in reform have not yet declared against +the Reformation, have tamely yielded, recreants from the truth, to +brawlers who would pull down her holiest altars, and given up "pure +religion, breathing household laws," a sacrifice to superstition. But +there is a power enshrined in England which no Government dare seek to +desecrate--in the hearts of the good and wise, grateful to an +establishment that has guarded Christianity from corruption, and is +venerated by all the most enlightened spirits who conscientiously +worship without its pale, and know that in the peaceful shadow of its +strength repose their own humbler and untroubled altars. + +We have been taking a cheerful--a hopeful view of our surrounding world, +as it is enclosed within these our seas, whose ideal murmur seemed a +while to breathe in unison with our Monologue. We have been believing +that in this our native land, the road of merit is the road to +success--say happiness. And is not the law the same in the world of +Literature and the Fine Arts? Give a great genius anything like fair +play, and he will gain glory--nay, bread. True, he may be before his +age, and may have to create his worshippers. But how few such! And is it +a disgrace to an age to produce a genius whose grandeur it cannot all at +once comprehend? The works of genius are surely not often +incomprehensible to the highest contemporary minds, and if they win +their admiration, pity not the poor Poet. But pray syllable the living +Poet's name who has had reason to complain of having fallen on evil +days, or who is with "darkness and with danger compassed round." From +humblest birthplaces in the obscurest nooks frequently have we seen + + "The fulgent head + Star-bright appear;" + +from unsuspected rest among the water-lilies of the mountain mere, the +snow-white swan in full plumage soar into the sky. Hush! no nonsense +about Wordsworth. "Far-off his coming shone;" and what if for a while +men knew not whether 'twas some mirage-glimmer, or the dawning of a new +"orb of song!" + +We have heard rather too much even from that great poet about the +deafness and blindness of the present time. No Time but the future, he +avers, has ears or eyes for divine music and light. Was Homer in his own +day obscure, or Shakespeare? But Heaven forbid we should force the bard +into an argument; we allow him to sit undisturbed by us in the bower +nature delighted to build for him, with small help from his own hands, +at the dim end of that alley green, among lake-murmur and +mountain-shadow, for ever haunted by ennobling visions. But we love and +respect Present Time--partly, we confess, because he has shown some +little kindly feeling for ourselves, whereas we fear Future Time may +forget us among many others of his worthy father's friends, and the name +of Christopher North + + "Die on his ears a faint unheeded sound." + +But Present Time has not been unjust to William Wordsworth. Some small +temporalities were so; imps running about the feet of Present Time, and +sometimes making him stumble: but on raising his eyes from the ground, +he saw something shining like an Apparition on the mountain-top, and he +hailed, and with a friendly voice, the advent of another true Poet of +nature and of man. + +We must know how to read that prophet, before we preach from any text in +his book of revelations. + + "We poets in our youth begin in gladness, + But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." + +Why spoke he thus? Because a deep darkness had fallen upon him all alone +in a mountain-cave, and he quaked before the mystery of man's troubled +life. + + "He thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, + The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride; + Of him who walk'd in glory and in joy, + Following his plough upon the mountain-side!" + +and if they died miserably, "How may I perish!" But they wanted wisdom. +Therefore the marvellous boy drank one bowl drugged with sudden, and +the glorious ploughman many bowls drugged with lingering death. If we +must weep over the woes of Genius, let us know for whom we may rightly +shed our tears. With one drop of ink you may write the names of all + + "The mighty Poets in their misery dead." + +Wordsworth wrote those lines, as we said, in the inspiration of a +profound but not permanent melancholy; and they must not be profaned by +being used as a quotation in defence of accusations against human +society, which, in some lips, become accusations against Providence. The +mighty Poets have been not only wiser but happier than they knew; and +what glory from heaven and earth was poured over their inward life, up +to the very moment it darkened away into the gloom of the grave! + +Many a sad and serious hour have we read d'Israeli, and many a lesson +may all lovers of literature learn from his well-instructed books. But +from the unhappy stories therein so feelingly and eloquently narrated, +has many "a famous ape" drawn conclusions the very reverse of those +which he himself leaves to be drawn by all minds possessed of any +philosophy. Melancholy the moral of these moving tales; but we must look +for it, not into the society that surrounds us, though on it too we must +keep a watchful, and, in spite of all its sins, a not irreverent eye, +but into our own hearts. There lies the source of evil which some evil +power perhaps without us stirs up till it wells over in misery. Then +fiercely turns the wretch first against "the world and the world's law," +both sometimes iniquitous, and last of all against the rebellious spirit +in his own breast, but for whose own innate corruption his moral being +would have been victorious against all outward assaults, violent or +insidious, "and to the end persisting safe arrived." + +Many men of genius have died without their fame, and for their fate we +may surely mourn without calumniating our kind. It was their lot to die. +Such was the will of God. Many such have come and gone, ere they knew +themselves what they were; their brothers and sisters and friends knew +it not; knew it not their fathers and their mothers; nor the village +maidens on whose bosoms they laid their dying heads. Many, conscious of +the divine flame, and visited by mysterious stirrings that would not let +them rest, have like vernal wildflowers withered, or been cut down like +young trees in the season of leaf and blossom. Of this our mortal life +what are these but beautiful evanishings! Such was our young Scottish +Poet, Michael Bruce--a fine scholar, who taught a little wayside school, +and died, a mere lad, of consumption. Loch Leven Castle, where Mary +Stuart was imprisoned, looks not more melancholy among the dim waters +for her than for its own Poet's sake! The linnet, in its joy among the +yellow broom, sings not more sweetly than did he in his sadness, sitting +beside his unopened grave, "one song that will not die," though the +dirge but draw now and then a tear from some simple heart. + + "Now spring returns--but not to me returns + The vernal joy my better years have known; + Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns, + And all the joys of life with health are flown." + +To young Genius to die is often a great gain. The green leaf was almost +hidden in blossoms, and the tree put forth beautiful promise. Cold winds +blew, and clouds intercepted the sunshine; but it felt the dews of +heaven, and kept flourishing fair even in the moonlight, deriving sweet +sustenance from the stars. But would all those blossoms have been fruit? +Many would have formed, but more perhaps dropt in unperceived decay, and +the tree which "all eyes that looked on loved," might not have been the +pride of the garden. Death could not permit the chance of such +disappointment, stepped kindly in, and left the spring-dream "sweet but +mournful to the soul," among its half-fancied memories. Such was the +fate, perhaps, of Henry Kirke White. His fine moral and intellectual +being was not left to pine away neglected; and if, in gratitude and +ambition, twin-births in that noble heart, he laid down his life for +sake of the lore he loved, let us lament the dead with no passionate +ejaculations over injustice by none committed, console ourselves with +the thought, in noways unkind to his merits, that he died in a mild +bright spring that might have been succeeded by no very glorious summer; +and that, fading away as he did among the tears of the good and great, +his memory has been embalmed, not only in his own gentle inspirations, +but in the immortal eulogy of Southey. But, alas! many thus endowed by +nature "have waged with fortune an unequal war;" and pining away in +poverty and disappointment, have died broken-hearted--and been +buried--some in unhonoured, some even in unwept graves! And how many +have had a far more dismal lot, because their life was not so innocent! +The children of misfortune, but of error too--of frailty, vice, and sin. +Once gone astray, with much to tempt them on, and no voice, no hand, to +draw them back, theirs has been at first a flowery descent to death, but +soon sorely beset with thorns, lacerating the friendless wretches, till, +with shame and remorse their sole attendants, they have tottered into +uncoffined holes and found peace. + +With sorrows and sufferings like these, it would be hardly fair to blame +society at large for having little or no sympathy; for they are, in the +most affecting cases, borne in silence, and are unknown even to the +generous and humane in their own neighbourhood, who might have done +something or much to afford encouragement or relief. Nor has Charity +always neglected those who so well deserved her open hand, and in their +virtuous poverty might, without abatement of honourable pride in +themselves, have accepted silent succour to silent distress. Pity that +her blessings should be so often intercepted by worthless applicants, on +their way, it may be said, to the magnanimous who have not applied at +all, but spoken to her heart in a silent language, which was not meant +even to express the penury it betrayed. But we shall never believe that +dew twice blessed seldom descends, in such a land as ours, on the noble +young head that else had sunk like a chance flower in some dank shade, +left to wither among weeds. We almost venture to say, that much of such +unpitied, because often unsuspected suffering, cannot cease to be +without a change in the moral government of the world. + +Nor has Genius a right to claim from Conscience what is due but to +Virtue. None who love humanity can wish to speak harshly of its mere +frailties or errors--but none who revere morality can allow privilege to +its sins. All who sin suffer, with or without genius; and we are nowhere +taught in the New Testament, that remorse in its agony, and penitence in +its sorrow, visit men's imaginations only; but whatever way they enter, +their rueful dwelling is in the heart. Poets shed no bitterer tears than +ordinary men; and Fonblanque finely showed us, in one of his late little +essays, clear as wells and deep as tarns, that so far from there being +anything in the constitution of genius naturally kindred either to vice +or misery, it is framed of light and love and happiness, and that its +sins and sufferings come not from the spirit but from the flesh. Yet is +its flesh as firm as, and perhaps somewhat finer than, that of the +common clay; but still it is clay--for all men are dust. + +But what if they who, on the ground of genius, claim exemption from our +blame, and inclusion within our sympathies, even when seen suffering +from their own sins, have no genius at all, but are mere ordinary men, +and but for the fumes of some physical excitement, which they mistake +for the airs of inspiration, are absolutely stupider than people +generally go, and even without any tolerable abilities for alphabetical +education? Many such run versifying about, and will not try to settle +down into any easy sedentary trade, till, getting thirsty through +perpetual perspiration, they take to drinking, come to you with +subscription-papers for poetry, with a cock in their eye that tells of +low tippling-houses, and, accepting your half-crown, slander you when +melting it in the purling purlieus of their own donkey-browsed +Parnassus. + +Can this age be fairly charged--we speak of England and Scotland--with a +shameful indifference--or worse--a cruel scorn--or worse still--a +barbarous persecution of young persons of humble birth, in whom there +may appear a promise of talent, or of genius? Many are the scholars in +whom their early benefactors have had reason to be proud of themselves, +while they have been happy to send their sons to be instructed in the +noblest lore, by men whose boyhood they had rescued from the darkness of +despair, and clothed it with the warmth and light of hope. And were we +to speak of endowments in schools and colleges, in which so many fine +scholars have been brought up from among the humbler classes, who but +for them had been bred to some mean handicraft, we should show better +reason still for believing that moral and intellectual worth is not +overlooked, or left to pine neglected in obscure places, as it is too +much the fashion with a certain set of discontented declaimers to give +out; but that in no other country has such provision been made for the +meritorious children of the enlightened poor as in England. But we fear +that the talent and the genius which, according to them, have been so +often left or sent to beggary, to the great reproach even of our +national character, have not been of a kind which a thoughtful humanity +would in its benefactions have recognised; for it looks not with very +hopeful eyes on mere irregular sallies of fancy, least of all when +spurning prudence and propriety, and symptomatic of a mental +constitution easily excited, but averse to labour, and insensible to the +delight labour brings with it, when the faculties are all devoted in +steadfastness of purpose to the acquisition of knowledge and the +attainment of truth. + +'Tis not easy to know, seeing it is so difficult to define it, whether +this or that youth who thinks he has genius, has it or not: the only +proof he may have given of it is perhaps a few copies of verses, which +breathe the animal gladness of young life, and are tinged with tints of +the beautiful, which joy itself, more imaginative than it ever again +will be, steals from the sunset; but sound sense, and judgment, and +taste which is sense and judgment of all finest feelings and thoughts, +and the love of light dawning on the intellect, and ability to gather +into knowledge facts near and from afar, till the mind sees systems, and +in them understands the phenomena which, when looked at singly, +perplexed the pleasure of the sight--these, and aptitudes and capacities +and powers such as these, are indeed of promise, and more than promise; +they are already performance, and justify in minds thus gifted, and in +those who watch their workings, hopes of a wiser and happier future when +the boy shall be a man. + +Perhaps too much honour, rather than too little, has been shown by this +age to mediocre poetry and other works of fiction. A few gleams of +genius have given some writers of little worth a considerable +reputation; and great waxed the pride of poetasters. But true poetry +burst in beauty over the land, and we became intolerant of "false +glitter." Fresh sprang its flowers from the "dędal earth," or seemed, +they were so surpassingly beautiful, as if spring had indeed descended +from heaven, "veiled in a shower of shadowing roses," and no longer +could we suffer young gentlemen and ladies, treading among the +profusion, to gather the glorious scatterings, and weaving them into +fantastic or even tasteful garlands, to present them to us, as if they +had been raised from the seed of their own genius, and entitled +therefore "to bear their name in the wild woods." This flower-gathering, +pretty pastime though it be, and altogether innocent, fell into +disrepute; and then all such florists began to complain of being +neglected, or despised, or persecuted, and their friends to lament over +their fate, the fate of all genius, "in amorous ditties all a summer's +day." + +Besides the living poets of highest rank, are there not many whose +claims to join the sacred band have been allowed, because their lips, +too, have sometimes been touched with a fire from heaven? Second-rate +indeed! Ay, well for those who are third, fourth, or fifth rate--knowing +where sit Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Round about Parnassus run +_many_ parallel roads, with forests of "cedar and branching palm" +between, overshadowing the sunshine on each magnificent level with a +sense of something more sublime still nearer the forked summit; and each +band, so that they be not ambitious overmuch, in their own region may +wander or repose in grateful bliss. Thousands look up with envy from +"the low-lying fields of the beautiful land" immediately without the +line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain, +separating it from the common earth. What clamour and what din from the +excluded crowd! Many are heard there to whom nature has been kind, but +they have not yet learned "to know themselves," or they would retire, +but not afar off, and in silence adore. And so they do ere long, and are +happy in the sight of "the beauty still more beauteous" revealed to +their fine perceptions, though to them was not given the faculty that by +combining in spiritual passion creates. But what has thither brought the +self-deceived, who will not be convinced of their delusion, even were +Homer or Milton's very self to frown on them with eyes no longer dim, +but angry in their brightness like lowering stars? + +But we must beware--perhaps too late--of growing unintelligible, and ask +you, in plainer terms, if you do not think that by far the greatest +number of all those who raise an outcry against the injustice of the +world to men of genius, are persons of the meanest abilities, who have +all their lives been foolishly fighting with their stars? Their demons +have not whispered to them "have a taste," but "you have genius," and +the world gives the demons the lie. Thence anger, spite, rancour, and +envy eat their hearts, and they "rail against the Lord's anointed." They +set up idols of clay, and fall down and worship them--or idols of brass, +more worthless than clay; or they perversely, and in hatred, not in +love, pretend reverence for the Fair and Good, because, forsooth, placed +by man's ingratitude too far in the shade, whereas man's pity has, in +deep compassion, removed the objects of their love, because of their +imperfections not blameless, back in among that veiling shade, that +their beauty might still be visible while their deformities were hidden +in "a dim religious light." + +Let none of the sons or daughters of genius hearken to such outcry but +with contempt--and at all times with suspicion, when they find +themselves the objects of such lamentations. The world is not--at least +does not wish to be an unkind, ungenerous, and unjust world. Many who +think themselves neglected, are far more thought of than they suppose; +just as many who imagine the world ringing with their name, are in the +world's ears nearly anonymous. Only one edition or two of your poems +have sold--but is it not pretty well that five hundred or a thousand +copies have been read, or glanced over, or looked at, or skimmed, or +skipped, or fondled, or petted, or tossed aside "between malice and true +love," by ten times that number of your fellow-creatures, not one of +whom ever saw your face; while many millions of men, nearly your equals, +and not a few millions your superiors far, have contentedly dropt into +the grave, at the close of a long life, without having once "invoked the +Muse," and who would have laughed in your face had you talked to them, +even in their greatest glee, about their genius? + +There is a glen in the Highlands (dearly beloved Southrons, call on us, +on your way through Edinburgh, and we shall delight to instruct you how +to walk our mountains) called Glencro--very unlike Glenco. A good road +winds up the steep ascent, and at the summit there is a stone seat on +which you read "_Rest and be thankful_." You do so--and are not a little +proud--if pedestrians--of your achievement. Looking up, you see cliffs +high above your head (not the Cobbler), and in the clear sky, as far +above them, a balanced bird. You envy him his seemingly motionless +wings, and wonder at his air-supporters. Down he darts, or aside he +shoots, or right up he soars, and you wish you were an Eagle. You have +reached Rest-and-be-thankful, yet rest you will not, and thankful you +will not be, and you scorn the mean inscription, which many a worthier +wayfarer has blessed, while sitting on that stone he has said, "give us +this day our daily bread," eat his crust, and then walked away contented +down to Cairndow. Just so has it been with you sitting at your appointed +place--pretty high up--on the road to the summit of the Biforked Hill. +You look up and see Byron--there "sitting where you may not soar,"--and +wish you were a great Poet. But you are no more a great Poet than an +Eagle eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip--and will not +rest-and-be-thankful that you are a man and a Christian. Nay, you are +more, an author of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed to be +excellent, better far than the best paragraph in this our Morning +Monologue. But you are sick of walking, and nothing will satisfy you but +to fly. Be contented, as we are, with feet, and weep not for wings; and +let us take comfort together from a cheering quotation from the +philosophic Gray-- + + "For they that creep and they that fly, + Just end where they began!" + + + + +THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. + + +A May-morning on Ulswater and the banks of Ulswater--commingled earth +and heaven! Spring is many-coloured as Autumn; but now Joy scatters the +hues daily brightening into greener life, then Melancholy dropt them +daily dimming into yellower death. The fear of Winter then--but now the +hope of Summer; and Nature rings with hymns hailing the visible advent +of the perfect year. If for a moment the woods are silent, it is but to +burst forth anew into louder song. The rain is over and gone--but the +showery sky speaks in the streams on a hundred hills; and the wide +mountain gloom opens its heart to the sunshine that on many a dripping +precipice burns like fire. Nothing seems inanimate. The very clouds and +their shadows look alive--the trees, never dead, are wide-awakened from +their sleep--families of flowers are frequenting all the dewy +places--old walls are splendid with the light of lichens--and +birch-crowned cliffs up among the coves send down their fine fragrance +to the Lake on every bolder breath that whitens with breaking wavelets +the blue of its breezy bosom. Nor mute the voice of man. The shepherd is +whooping on the hill--the ploughman calling to his team somewhere among +the furrows in some small late field, won from the woods; and you hear +the laughter, and the echoes of the laughter--one sound--of children +busied in half-work half-play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the +occupation of young rustic life? 'Tis no Arcadia--no golden age. But a +lovelier scene--in the midst of all its grandeur--is not in merry and +majestic England; nor did the hills of this earth ever circumscribe a +pleasanter dwelling for a nobler peasantry, than these Cumbrian ranges +of rocks and pastures, where the raven croaks in his own region, +unregarded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How beautiful the Church +Tower! + +On a knoll not far from the shore, and not high above the water, yet by +an especial felicity of place gently commanding all that reach of the +Lake with all its ranges of mountains--every single tree, every grove, +and all the woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene at the bidding +of the Spirit of Beauty--reclined two Figures--the one almost rustic, +but venerable in the simplicity of old age--the other no longer young, +but still in the prime of life--and though plainly apparelled, with form +and bearing such as are pointed out in cities, because belonging to +distinguished men. The old man behaved towards him with deference, but +not humility; and between them two--in many things unlike--it was clear +even from their silence that there was friendship. + +A little way off, and sometimes almost running, now up and now down the +slopes and hollows, was a girl about eight years old--whether beautiful +or not you could not know, for her face was either half-hidden in golden +hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her brow, it was so bright in +the sunshine that you saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now she was +chasing the butterflies, not to hurt them, but to get a nearer sight of +their delicate gauze wings--the first that had come--she wondered +whence--to waver and wanton for a little while in the spring sunshine, +and then, she felt, as wondrously, one and all, as by consent, to +vanish. And now she stooped as if to pull some little wildflower, her +hand for a moment withheld by a loving sense of its loveliness, but ever +and anon adding some new colour to the blended bloom intended to gladden +her father's eyes--though the happy child knew full well, and sometimes +wept to know, that she herself had his entire heart. Yet gliding, or +tripping, or dancing along, she touched not with fairy foot one white +clover-flower on which she saw working the silent bee. Her father looked +too often sad, and she feared--though what it was, she imagined not even +in dreams--that some great misery must have befallen him before they +came to live in the glen. And such, too, she had heard from a chance +whisper, was the belief of their neighbours. But momentary the shadows +on the light of childhood! Nor was she insensible to her own beauty, +that with the innocence it enshrined combined to make her happy; and +first met her own eyes every morning, when most beautiful, awakening +from the hushed awe of her prayers. She was clad in russet like a +cottager's child; but her air spoke of finer breeding than may be met +with among those mountains--though natural grace accompanies there many +a maiden going with her pitcher to the well--and gentle blood and old +flows there in the veins of now humble men--who, but for the decay of +families once high, might have lived in halls, now dilapidated, and +scarcely distinguished through masses of ivy from the circumjacent +rocks! + +The child stole close behind her father, and kissing his cheek, said, +"Were there ever such lovely flowers seen in Ulswater before, father? I +do not believe that they will ever die." And she put them in his breast. +Not a smile came to his countenance--no look of love--no faint +recognition--no gratitude for the gift which at other times might haply +have drawn a tear. She stood abashed in the sternness of his eyes, +which, though fixed on her, seemed to see her not; and feeling that her +glee was mistimed--for with such gloom she was not unfamiliar--the child +felt as if her own happiness had been sin, and, retiring into a glade +among the broom, sat down and wept. + +"Poor wretch, better far that she never had been born." + +The old man looked on his friend with compassion, but with no surprise; +and only said, "God will dry up her tears." + +These few simple words, uttered in a solemn voice, but without one tone +of reproach, seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, who first +looking towards the spot where his child was sobbing to herself, though +he heard it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejaculated for her sake +a broken prayer. He then would have fain called her to him; but he was +ashamed that even she should see him in such a passion of grief--and the +old man went to her of his own accord, and bade her, as from her father, +again to take her pastime among the flowers. Soon was she dancing in her +happiness as before; and, that her father might hear she was obeying +him, singing a song. + +"For five years every Sabbath have I attended divine service in your +chapel--yet dare I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed for +faith--nor, wretch that I am, am I an unbeliever. But I fear to fling +myself at the foot of the cross. God be merciful to me a sinner!" + +The old man opened not his lips; for he felt that there was about to be +made some confession. Yet he doubted not that the sufferer had been more +sinned against than sinning; for the goodness of the stranger--so called +still after five years' residence among the mountains--was known in many +a vale--and the Pastor knew that charity covereth a multitude of +sins--and even as a moral virtue prepares the heart for heaven. So +sacred a thing is solace in this woeful world. + +"We have walked together, many hundred times, for great part of a day, +by ourselves two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, and yet never +once from my lips escaped one word about my fates or fortunes--so frozen +was the secret in my heart. Often have I heard the sound of your voice, +as if it were that of the idle wind; and often the words I did hear +seemed, in the confusion, to have no relation to us, to be strange +syllablings in the wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil spirit +instigating me to self-destruction." + +"I saw that your life was oppressed by some perpetual burden; but God +darkened not your mind while your heart was disturbed so grievously; and +well pleased were we all to think, that in caring so kindly for the +griefs of others, you might come at last to forget your own; or if that +were impossible, to feel, that with the alleviations of time, and +sympathy, and religion, yours was no more than the common lot of +sorrow." + +They rose--and continued to walk in silence--but not apart--up and down +that small sylvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her +father's distraction--no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as +mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time--and pretended +to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears. + +"That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not--perhaps +in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a +lovelier child was never seen than that wretch--God bless her--how +beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness singing over her +flowers! Just such another must her mother have been at her age. She is +now an outcast--and an adulteress." + +The Pastor turned away his face, for in the silence he heard groans, and +the hollow voice again spoke.-- + +"Through many dismal days and nights have I striven to forgive her, but +never for many hours together have I been enabled to repent my curse. +For on my knees I implored God to curse her--her head--her eyes--her +breast--her body--mind, heart, and soul--and that she might go down a +loathsome leper to the grave." + +"Remember what He said to the woman--'Go, and sin no more!'" + +"The words have haunted me all up and down the hills--His words and +mine; but mine have always sounded liker justice at last--for my nature +was created human--and human are all the passions that pronounced that +holy or unholy curse!" + +"Yet you would not curse her now--were she lying here at your feet--or +if you were standing by her deathbed?" + +"Lying here at my feet! Even here--on this very spot--not blasted, but +green through all the year--within the shelter of these two rocks--she +did lie at my feet in her beauty--and as I thought her innocence--my own +happy bride! Hither I brought her to be blest--and blest I was even up +to the measure of my misery. This world is hell to me now--but then it +was heaven!" + +"These awful names are of the mysteries beyond the grave." + +"Hear me and judge. She was an orphan; all her father's and mother's +relations were dead, but a few who were very poor. I married her, and +secured her life against this heartless and wicked world. That child was +born--and while it grew like a flower--she left it--and its father--me +who loved her beyond light and life, and would have given up both for +her sake." + +"And have not yet found heart to forgive her--miserable as she needs +must be--seeing she has been a great sinner!" + +"Who forgives? The father his profligate son, or disobedient daughter? +No; he disinherits his firstborn, and suffers him to perish, perhaps by +an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days +in penury--a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent; +he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on +the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have +taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But +she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overflow with heaven. Had +God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But with her +own hand which I had clasped at the altar--and with our Lucy at her +knees--she gave me that loathsome draught of shame and sorrow:--I drank +it to the dregs--and it is burning all through my being--now--as if it +had been hell-fire from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel. +In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see +the verse--and then shall I know that Christianity is an imposture; for +the voice of God within me--the conscience which is His still small +voice--commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse--never +to forgive her, and her wickedness--not even if we should see each +other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment." + +His countenance grew ghastly--and staggering to a stone, he sat down and +eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about +in his sleep. His face was like ashes--and he gasped like one about to +fall into a fit. "Bring me water"--and the old man motioned on the +child, who, giving ear to him for a moment, flew away to the Lakeside +with an urn she had brought with her for flowers; and held it to her +father's lips. His eyes saw it not;--there was her sweet pale face all +wet with tears, almost touching his own--her innocent mouth breathing +that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the +bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom--and kissed her dewy +eyes--and begged her to cease her sobbing--to smile--to laugh--to +sing--to dance away into the sunshine--_to be happy!_ And Lucy afraid, +not of her father, but of his kindness--for the simple creature was not +able to understand his wild utterance of blessings--returned to the +glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern, +kept her eyes on her father, and left her flowers to fade unheeded +beside her empty urn. + +"Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! That child was just three years +old the very day it was forsaken--she abandoned it and me on its +birthday! Twice had that day been observed by us--as the sweetest--the +most sacred of holidays; and now that it had again come round--but I not +present--for I was on foreign service--thus did she observe it--and +disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into +action--and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent +prayers; for love made me religious--and for their sakes I feared +though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the +field of battle--and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but +I saw them as distinctly as in a dream--the mother lying with her child +in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that vision mockery enough to drive +me mad? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herself--and I kissed +it and pressed it to my heart; for no black seal was there--and I knew +that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the +words--and then they began to blacken into ghastly characters--till at +last I gathered from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and +shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollution. + +"A friend was with me, and I gave it to him to read--for in my anguish +at first I felt no shame--and I watched his face as he read it, that I +might see corroboration of the incredible truth, which continued to look +like falsehood, even while it pierced my heart with agonising pangs. 'It +may be a forgery,' was all he could utter--after long agitation; but the +shape of each letter was too familiar to my eyes--the way in which the +paper was folded--and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have passed, +for the room grew dark--and I asked him to leave me for the night. He +kissed my forehead--for we had been as brothers. I saw him next +morning--dead--cut nearly in two--yet had he left a paper for me, +written an hour before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that +oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and +blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave! + +"And has the time indeed come that I can thus speak calmly of all that +horror? The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all +night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long +friendship--and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse. +Momentary starts of affection seized me--but I cared little or nothing +for the death of him, the tender and the true, the gentle and the brave, +the pious and the noble-hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel +and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion dead--dead to all the +sanctities of nature--for her, and for her alone, I suffered all +ghastliest agonies--nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the +conviction that she was worthless; for desperately wicked as she had +shown herself to be--oh! crowding came back upon me all our hours of +happiness--all her sweet smiles--all her loving looks--all her +affectionate words--all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses; and the +loss of all that bliss--the change of it all into strange, sudden, +shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was +delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with +phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of +sleep! + +"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak +from great loss of blood--and the blow so stunned me that I had not +strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages--for +nobody watched me--and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of +life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to +recover, another passion took possession of me--and I vowed that there +should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was +known through the whole army. Not a tent--not a hut--in which my name +was not bandied about--a jest in the mouths of profligate +poltroons--pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had +commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I +looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion +or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces +arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my +way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music +as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle--as they had +often done with me at their head--all sternly silent before an +approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me, +smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour +had been the idol I worshipped--alas! too, too passionately far--and now +I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes--and heard as if a +legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a +confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called +me--me, despicable in my own esteem--scorned, insulted, forsaken--me, +who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it--a +wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left +her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and, +opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without +remorse--nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband--not even +for sake of that child whom I knew she loved--for no hypocrite was she +there; and oh! lost creature though she was--even now I wonder over that +unaccountable desertion--and much she must have suffered from the image +of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly +happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her +hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I +frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will +come to hate me--oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, +gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her--nor +she with sorrow. Yet--even her how often have I made weep! All the +unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but +leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that +always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there--only +brighter--all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my +unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to +think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of +mercy! what if she were to die!" + +"She will not die--she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many +happy years--my son--are yet in store even for you--sorely as you have +been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure +for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You +prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life--and has He +not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not +then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it +produce there resignation--if need be, contrition--and, above all, +forgiveness." + +"Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in +mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined +foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he +would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his +blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or +flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed +my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his +blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let +it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and +hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon +woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his +heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution +dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of +the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered +over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;--there he was +before me--in all that beauty by women so beloved--graceful as Apollo; +and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his +name, he saluted me--_her husband_--on the field,--and let the wind play +with his raven tresses--his curled love-locks--and then presented +himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot +him through the heart." + +The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder--yet they had +come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had +gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an +avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted +demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His +eyes retained their savage glare--his teeth were clenched--and he +feasted on his crime. + +"Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged +friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable +conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed +great--but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son! +you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven." + +"Who dares to condemn the deed? He deserved death--and whence was doom +to come but from me the Avenger? I took his life--but once I saved it. I +bore him from the battlements of a fort stormed in vain--after we had +all been blown up by the springing of a mine; and from bayonets that had +drunk my blood as well as his--and his widowed mother blessed me as the +saviour of her son. I told my wife to receive him as a brother--and for +my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. Who shall speak of +temptation--or frailty--or infatuation to me? Let the fools hold their +peace. His wounds became dearer to her abandoned heart than mine had +ever been; yet had her cheek lain many a night on the scars that seamed +this breast--for I was not backward in battle, and our place was in the +van. I was no coward, that she who loved heroism in him should have +dishonoured her husband. True, he was younger by some years than me--and +God had given him pernicious beauty--and she was young, too--oh! the +brightest of all mortal creatures the day she became my bride--nor less +bright with that baby at her bosom--a matron in girlhood's resplendent +spring! Is youth a plea for wickedness? And was I old? I, who, in spite +of all I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling as to a +furnace; but cut off for ever by her crime from fame and glory--and from +a soldier in his proud career, covered with honour in the eyes of all my +countrymen, changed in an hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. My +name has been borne by a race of heroes--the blood in my veins has +flowed down a long line of illustrious ancestors--and here am I now--a +hidden disguised hypocrite--dwelling among peasants--and afraid--ay, +afraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely from the ground even +among the solitudes of the mountains, lest some wandering stranger +should recognise me, and see the brand of ignominy her hand and +his--accursed both--burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this bosom--but +tell me if it was in disgust with these my scars?" + +And as he bared it, distractedly, that noble chest was seen indeed +disfigured with many a gash--on which a wife might well have rested her +head with gratitude not less devout because of a lofty pride mingling +with life-deep affection. But the burst of passion was gone by--and, +covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child. + +"Oh! cruel--cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to +her--for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory--not +an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains, +her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with +curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes--beautiful as on our +marriage-day--all in purest white--adorned with flowers--it wreathes its +arms around my neck--and offers its mouth to my kisses--and then all at +once is changed into a leering wretch, retaining a likeness of my +bride--then into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead--dead of cold and +hunger: she whom I cherished in all luxury--whose delicate frame seemed +to bring round itself all the purest air and sweetest sunshine--she may +have expired in the very mire--and her body been huddled into some hole +called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen to her! +Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who +support hated and hateful life by prostitution? Black was her crime; yet +hardly did she deserve to be one of that howling crew--she whose voice +was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent--for up to +the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been +hers;--then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where +she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness +be lightened--let me see into its heart--and know but the meaning of her +guilt--and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and +night, it has troubled and confounded me--and from blind and baffled +wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through +which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find--and nothing is left +me but to tear my hair out by handfuls--as, like a madman, I have +done--to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon +her the curse of God. O wicked--most wicked! Yet He who judges the +hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand +times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the +moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back--I know not +whether of a good or evil spirit--and bade me leave her to her fate. But +she must be dead--and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too +sternly--from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly +expressed to you but parts of my miserable being--and if I could lay it +all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn--for my +worst passions only have now found utterance--all my better feelings +will not return nor abide for words--even I myself have forgotten them; +but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the +Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on +his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man +encouraged him not to despair--it needed but a motion of his hand to +bring the child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her +father's heart. The forgiveness was felt to be holy in that embrace. + +The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were +sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed +something like a rainbow--and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and +in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock, +and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat +suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a +promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a +crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind +coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly along, when a +sudden squall struck the sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and +went down. No shrieks were heard--and the boatman swam ashore; but a +figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared--and starting from +his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after +desperate exertions brought the drowned creature to the side--a female +meanly attired--seemingly a stranger--and so attenuated that it was +plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus +perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was grey--but +the face, though withered, was not old--and as she lay on the +greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine. + +He stood over her awhile--as if struck motionless--and then kneeling +beside the body, kissed its lips and eyes--and said only, "It is Lucy!" + +The old man was close by--and so was that child. They too knelt--and the +passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of +death--ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is +forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom--wasted to the bone--in the +idle thought that she might yet breathe--and a paper dropt out into his +hand, which he read aloud to himself--unconscious that any one was near. +"I am fast dying--and desire to die at your feet. Perhaps you will spurn +me--it is right you should; but you will see how sorrow has killed the +wicked wretch who was once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude +for five years, and have suffered great hardships. I think I am a +penitent--and have been told by religious persons that I may hope for +pardon from Heaven! Oh! that you would forgive me too! and let me have +one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers--perhaps +you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where +we passed a summer day the week of our marriage." + +"Not thus could I have kissed thy lips--Lucy--had they been red with +life. White are they--and white must they long have been! No pollution +on them--nor on that poor bosom now. Contrite tears had long since +washed out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines--and in them a +humble heart said nothing but God's truth. Child--behold your mother. +Art thou afraid to touch the dead?" + +"No--father--I am not afraid to kiss her lips--as you did now. +Sometimes, when you thought me asleep, I have heard you praying for my +mother." + +"Oh! child! cease--cease--or my heart will burst." + +People began to gather about the body--but awe kept them aloof; and as +for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would +have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So +the groups remained for a while at a distance--even the old pastor went +a good many paces apart; and under the shadow of that tree the father +and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit +beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep. + +That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived +long among them--had adopted many of their customs--and was even as one +of themselves--so it seemed--in the familiar intercourse of man with +man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was +entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that +then there needed to be neither concealment nor avowal of the truth. So +in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers; a bier had +been prepared: and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the +Father of little Lucy holding her hand, silently directed the procession +towards his own house--out of the FIELD OF FLOWERS. + + + + +COTTAGES. + + +Have you any intention, dear reader, of building a house in the country? +If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage. +We presume that you are obliged to live, one half of the year at least, +in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and +your establishment? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house +in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Abercromby Place, or Queen Street. The +said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might +expect in the City of Palaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold +some ten score of modern Athenians--your dining-room might feast one +half of the contributors to _Blackwood's Magazine_--your "placens uxor" +has her boudoir--your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her +music-room--your boys their own studio--the governess her retreat--and +the tutor his den--the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her +own sanctum--the butler bargains for his dim apartment--and the four +maids must have their front area-window. In short, from cellarage to +garret all is complete, and Number Forty-two is really a splendid +mansion. + +Now, dear reader, far be it from us to question the propriety or +prudence of such an establishment. Your house was not built for +nothing--it was no easy thing to get the painters out--the furnishing +thereof was no trifle--the feu-duty is really unreasonable--and taxes +are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles of free trade, and the +universal prosperity of the country. Servants are wasteful, and their +wages absurd--and the whole style of living, with long-necked bottles, +most extravagant. But still we do not object to your establishment--far +from it, we admire it much; nor is there a single house in town where we +make ourselves more agreeable to a late hour, or that we leave with a +greater quantity of wine of a good quality under our girdle. Few things +would give us more temporary uneasiness, than to hear of any +embarrassment in your money concerns. We are not people to forget good +fare, we assure you; and long and far may all shapes of sorrow keep +aloof from the hospitable board, whether illuminated by gas, oil, or +mutton. + +But what we were going to say is this--that the head of such a house +ought not to live, when ruralising, in a Cottage. He ought to be +consistent. Nothing so beautiful as consistency. What then is so absurd +as to cram yourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, and your scarcely +less numerous menials, into a concern called a Cottage? The ordinary +heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees above that of a brown study, +during the month of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage. Then the +smell of the kitchen! How it aggravates the sultry closeness! A strange, +compounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. +It is at the worst during the latter part of the forenoon, when +everything has been got into preparation for cookery. There is then +nothing savoury about the smell--it is dull, dead--almost catacombish. A +small back-kitchen has it in its power to destroy the sweetness of any +Cottage. Add a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of the eternal +clashing of pots, pans, plates, trenchers, and general crockery, we now +say nothing; indeed, the sound somewhat relieves the smell, and the ear +comes occasionally in to the aid of the nose. Such noises are windfalls; +but not so the scolding of cook and butler--at first low and tetchy, +with pauses--then sharp, but still interrupted--by-and-by, loud and +ready in reply--finally a discordant gabble of vulgar fury, like maniacs +quarrelling in Bedlam. Hear it you must--you and all the strangers. To +explain it away is impossible; and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone, +or Megęra, will come flying into the parlour with a bloody cleaver, +dripping with the butler's brains. During the time of the quarrel the +spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the five-year-old +black-face burnt on one side to a cinder.--"To dinner with what appetite +you may." + +It would be quite unpardonable to forget one especial smell which +irretrievably ruined our happiness during a whole summer--the smell of +a dead rat. The accursed vermin died somewhere in the Cottage; but +whether beneath a floor, within lath and plaster, or in roof, baffled +the conjectures of the most sagacious. The whole family used to walk +about the Cottage for hours every day, snuffing on a travel of +discovery; and we distinctly remember the face of one elderly +maiden-lady at the moment she thought she had traced the source of the +fumée to the wall behind a window-shutter. But even at the very same +instant we ourselves had proclaimed it with open nostril from a press in +an opposite corner. Terriers were procured--but the dog Billy himself +would have been at fault. To pull down the whole Cottage would have been +difficult--at least to build it up again would have been so; so we had +to submit. Custom, they say, is second nature, but not when a dead rat +is in the house. No, none can ever become accustomed to that; yet good +springs out of evil--for the live rats could not endure it, and +emigrated to a friend's house, about a mile off, who has never had a +sound night's rest from that day. We have not revisited our Cottage for +several years; but time does wonders, and we were lately told by a +person of some veracity that the smell was then nearly gone; but our +informant is a gentleman of blunted olfactory nerves, having been +engaged from seventeen to seventy in a soap-work. + +Smoke too. More especially that mysterious and infernal sort, called +back-smoke! The old proverb, "No smoke without fire," is a base lie. We +have seen smoke without fire in every room in a most delightful Cottage +we inhabited during the dog-days. The moment you rushed for refuge even +into a closet, you were blinded and stifled; nor shall we ever forget +our horror on being within an ace of smotheration in the cellar. At +last, we groped our way into the kitchen. Neither cook nor jack was +visible. We heard, indeed, a whirring and revolving noise--and then +suddenly Girzie swearing through the mist. Yet all this while people +were admiring our Cottage from a distance, and especially this self-same +accursed back-smoke, some portions of which had made an excursion up the +chimneys, and was wavering away in a spiral form to the sky, in a style +captivating to Mr Price on the Picturesque. + +No doubt, there are many things very romantic about a Cottage. +Creepers, for example. Why, sir, these creepers are the most mischievous +nuisance that can afflict a family. There is no occasion for mentioning +names, but--devil take all parasites. Some of the rogues will actually +grow a couple of inches upon you in one day's time; and when all other +honest plants are asleep, the creepers are hard at it all night long, +stretching out their toes and their fingers, and catching an +inextricable hold of every wall they can reach, till, finally, you see +them thrusting their impudent heads through the very slates. Then, like +other low-bred creatures, they are covered with vermin. All manner of +moths--the most grievous grubs--slimy slugs--spiders spinning toils to +ensnare the caterpillar--earwigs and slaters, that would raise the gorge +of a country curate--wood-lice--the slaver of gowk's-spittle--midges-- +jocks-with-the-many-legs; in short, the whole plague of insects infest +that--Virgin's bower. Open the lattice for half an hour, and you find +yourself in an entomological museum. Then there are no pins fixing down +the specimens. All these beetles are alive, more especially the enormous +blackguard crawling behind your ear. A moth plumps into your tumbler of +cold negus, and goes whirling round in meal, till he makes absolute +porritch. As you open your mouth in amazement, the large blue-bottle +fly, having made his escape from the spiders, and seeing that not a +moment is to be lost, precipitates himself head-foremost down your +throat, and is felt, after a few ineffectual struggles, settling in +despair at the very bottom of your stomach. Still, no person will be so +unreasonable as to deny that creepers on a Cottage are most beautiful. +For the sake of their beauty, some little sacrifice must be made of +one's comforts, especially as it is only for one half of the year, and +last really was a most delightful summer. + +How truly romantic is a thatch roof! The eaves how commodious for +sparrows! What a paradise for rats and mice! What a comfortable colony +of vermin! They all bore their own tunnels in every direction, and the +whole interior becomes a Cretan labyrinth. Frush, frush becomes the +whole cover in a few seasons; and not a bird can open his wing, not a +rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw like chaff. Eternal +repairs! Look when you will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on +the rigging; of all operatives the most inoperative. Then there is +always one of the number descending the ladder for a horn of ale. +Without warning, the straw is all used up; and no more fit for the +purpose can be got within twenty miles. They hint heather--and you sigh +for slate--the beautiful sky-blue, sea-green, Ballachulish slate! But +the summer is nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting back to the +city; so you let the job stand over to spring, and the soaking rains and +snows of a long winter search the Cottage to its heart's-core, and every +floor is ere long laden with a crop of fungi--the bed-posts are +ornamented curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the walls with their +various and inimitable lustre. + +Everything is romantic that is pastoral--and what more pastoral than +sheep? Accordingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own mutton. Great +lubberly Leicesters or Southdowns are not worth the mastication, so you +keep the small black-face. Stone walls are ugly things, you think, near +a Cottage, so you have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the small +black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing through or over all impediments, +after an adventurous leader, and, despising the daisied turf, keep +nibbling away at all your rare flowering shrubs, till your avenue is a +desolation. Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is a rare +time for the nest-makers. You purchase a collie, but he compromises the +affair with the fleecy nation, and contents himself with barking all +night long at the moon, if there happen to be one--if not, at the +firmament of his kennel. You are too humane to hang or drown Luath, so +you give him to a friend. But Luath is in love with the cook, and pays +her nightly visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he step into the +kennel, he takes up his station, after supper, on a knoll within +ear-range, and pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music of the +spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. The gardener at last gets +orders to shoot him--and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts and blows +off his left hand--so that Andrew Fairservice retires on a pension. + +Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the Alderney. They are slim, +delicate, wild-deer-looking creatures, that give an air to a Cottage. +But they are most capricious milkers. Of course you make your own +butter; that is to say, with the addition of a dozen purchased pounds +weekly, you are not very often out of that commodity. Then, once or +twice in a summer, they suddenly lose their temper, and chase the +governess and your daughters over the edge of a gravel-pit. Nothing they +like so much as the tender sprouts of cauliflower, nor do they abhor +green pease. The garden-hedge is of privet--a pretty fence, and fast +growing, but not formidable to a four-year-old. On going to eat a few +gooseberries by sunrise, you start a covey of cows, that in their alarm +plunge into the hot-bed with a smash, as if all the glass in the island +had been broken--and rushing out at the gate at the critical instant +little Tommy is tottering in, they leave the heir-apparent, scarcely +deserving that name, half hidden in the border. There is no sale for +such outlandish animals in the home-market, and it is not Martinmas, so +you must make a present of them to the president or five silver-cupman +of an agricultural society, and you receive in return a sorry red round, +desperately saltpetred, at Christmas. + +What is a Cottage in the country, unless "your banks are all furnished +with bees, whose murmurs invite one to sleep?" There the hives stand, +like four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row. Not a more harmless insect +in all this world than a bee. Wasps are devils incarnate, but bees are +fleshly sprites, as amiable as industrious. You are strolling along in +delightful mental vacuity, looking at a poem of Barry Cornwall's, when +smack comes an infuriated honey-maker against your eyelid, and plunges +into you the fortieth part of an inch of sting saturated in venom. The +wretch clings to your lid like a burr, and it feels as if he had a +million claws to hold him on while he is darting his weapon into your +eyeball. Your banks are indeed well furnished with bees, but their +murmurs do not invite you to sleep; on the contrary, away you fly like a +madman, bolt into your wife's room, and roar out for the recipe. The +whole of one side of your face is most absurdly swollen, while the other +is _in statu quo_. One eye is dwindled away to almost nothing, and is +peering forth from its rainbow-coloured envelope, while the other is +open as day to melting charity, and shining over a cheek of the purest +crimson. Infatuated man! Why could you not purchase your honey? Jemmy +Thomson, the poet, would have let you have it, from Habbie's Howe, the +true Pentland elixir, for five shillings the pint; for during this +season both the heather and the clover were prolific of the honey-dew, +and the Skeps rejoiced over all Scotland on a thousand hills. + +We could tell many stories about bees, but that would be leading us away +from the main argument. We remember reading in an American newspaper, +some years ago, that the United States lost one of their most upright +and erudite judges by bees, which stung him to death in a wood while he +was going the circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in the same +newspaper, "We are afraid we have lost another judge by bees;" and then +followed a somewhat frightful description of the assassination of +another American Blackstone by the same insects. We could not fail to +sympathise with both sufferers; for in the summer of the famous comet we +ourselves had nearly shared the same fate. Our Newfoundlander upset a +hive in his vagaries--and the whole swarm unjustly attacked us. The buzz +was an absolute roar--and for the first time in our lives we were under +a cloud. Such buzzing in our hair! and of what avail were +fifty-times-washed nankeen breeches against the Polish Lancers? With our +trusty crutch we made thousands bite the dust--but the wounded and dying +crawled up our legs, and stung us cruelly over the lower regions. At +last we took to flight, and found shelter in the ice-house. But it +seemed as if a new hive had been disturbed in that cool grotto. Again we +sallied out, stripping off garment after garment, till, _in puris +naturalibus_, we leaped into a window, which happened to be that of the +drawing-room, where a large party of ladies and gentlemen were awaiting +the dinner-bell--but fancy must dream the rest. + +We now offer a set of _Blackwood's Magazine_ to any scientific character +who will answer this seemingly simple question--what is Damp? +Quicksilver is a joke to it, for getting into or out of any place. +Capricious as damp is, it is faithful in its affection to all Cottages +ornées. What more pleasant than a bow-window? You had better, however, +not sit with your back against the wall, for it is as blue and ropy as +that of a charnel-house. Probably the wall is tastily papered--a +vine-leaf pattern perhaps--or something spriggy--or in the aviary +line--or, mayhap, haymakers, or shepherds piping in the dale. But all +distinctions are levelled in the mould--Phyllis has a black patch over +her eye, and Strephon seems to be playing on a pair of bellows. Damp +delights to descend chimneys, and is one of smoke's most powerful +auxiliaries. It is a thousand pities you hung up--just in that unlucky +spot--Grecian Williams's Thebes--for now one of the finest water-colour +paintings in the world is not worth six-and-eightpence. There is no +living in the country without a library. Take down, with all due +caution, that enormous tome, the _Excursion_, and let us hear something +of the Pedlar. There is an end to the invention of printing. Lo and +behold, blank verse indeed! You cannot help turning over twenty leaves +at once, for they are all amalgamated in must and mouldiness. Lord Byron +himself is no better than an Egyptian mummy; and the Great Unknown +addresses you in hieroglyphics. + +We have heard different opinions maintained on the subject of damp +sheets. For our own part, we always wish to feel the difference between +sheets and cerements. We hate everything clammy. It is awkward, on +leaping out of bed to admire the moon, to drag along with you, glued +round your body and members, the whole paraphernalia of the couch. It +can never be good for rheumatism--problematical even for fever. Now, be +candid--did you ever sleep in perfectly dry sheets in a Cottage ornée? +You would not like to say "No, never," in the morning--privately, to +host or hostess. But confess publicly, and trace your approaching +retirement from all the troubles of this life, to the dimity-curtained +cubiculum on Tweedside. + +We know of few events so restorative as the arrival of a coachful of +one's friends, if the house be roomy. But if everything there be on a +small scale, how tremendous a sudden importation of live cattle! The +children are all trundled away out of the Cottage, and their room given +up to the young ladies, with all its enigmatical and emblematical +wall-tracery. The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a shake-down. +My lady's maid must positively pass the night in the butler's pantry, +and the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. Where the old +gentleman and his spouse have been disposed of, remains as controversial +a point as the authorship of Junius; but next morning at the +breakfast-table, it appears that all have survived the night, and the +hospitable hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, that small as +the Cottage appears, it has wonderful accommodation, and could have +easily admitted half-a-dozen more patients. The visitors politely +request to be favoured with a plan of so very commodious a Cottage, but +silently swear never again to sleep in a house of one story, till life's +brief tale be told. + +But not one half the comforts of a Cottage have yet been enumerated--nor +shall they be by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to add, that the +strange coachman had been persuaded to put up his horses in the +outhouses, instead of taking them to an excellent inn about two miles +off. The old black long-tailed steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for +nearly twenty years, had been lodged in what was called the Stable, and +the horse behind had been introduced into the byre. As bad luck would +have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty was in his stall; and without +the slightest provocation, he had, during the night-watches, so handled +his heels against Mr Fox, that he had not left the senior a leg to stand +upon, while he had bit a lump out of the buttocks of Mr Pitt little less +than an orange. A cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an assault on +the roadster, and tore up his flank with her crooked horn as clean as if +it had been a ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with post-horses; +and although Mr Dick be at once one of the most skilful and most +moderate of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of autumn was +necessarily as long as that of a proctor. Mr Fox gave up the ghost--Mr +Pitt was put on the superannuated list--and Joseph Hume, the hack, was +sent to the dogs. + +To this condition, then, we must come at last, that if you build at all +in the country, it must be a mansion three stories high, at the +lowest--large airy rooms--roof of slates and lead--and walls of the +freestone or the Roman cement. No small black-faces, no Alderneys, no +beehives. Buy all your vivres, and live like a gentleman. Seldom or +never be without a houseful of company. If you manage your family +matters properly, you may have your time nearly as much at your own +disposal as if you were the greatest of hunkses, and never gave but +unavoidable dinners. Let the breakfast-gong sound at ten o'clock--quite +soon enough. The young people will have been romping about the parlours +or the purlieus for a couple of hours--and will all make their +appearance in the beauty of high health and high spirits. Chat away as +long as need be, after muffins and mutton-ham, in small groups on sofas +and settees, and then slip you away to your library, to add a chapter to +your novel, or your history, or to any other task that is to make you +immortal. Let gigs and curricles draw up in the circle, and the wooing +and betrothed wheel away across a few parishes. Let the pedestrians +saunter off into the woods or to the hill-side--the anglers be off to +loch or river. No great harm even in a game or two at billiards--if such +be of any the cue--sagacious spinsters of a certain age, staid dowagers, +and bachelors of sedentary habits, may have recourse, without blame, to +the chess or backgammon board. At two lunch--and at six the dinner-gong +will bring the whole flock together, all dressed--mind that--all +dressed, for slovenliness is an abomination. Let no elderly gentleman, +however bilious and rich, seek to monopolise a young lady--but study the +nature of things. Champagne, of course, and if not all the delicacies, +at least all the substantialities, of the season. Join the ladies in +about two hours--a little elevated or so--almost imperceptibly--but +still a little elevated or so; then music--whispering in corners--if +moonlight and stars, then an hour's out-of-door study of astronomy--no +very regular supper--but an appearance of plates and tumblers, and to +bed, to happy dreams and slumbers light, at the witching hour. Let no +gentleman or lady snore, if it can be avoided, lest they annoy the +crickets; and if you hear any extraordinary noise round and round about +the mansion, be not alarmed, for why should not the owls choose their +own hour of revelry? + +Fond as we are of the country, we would not, had we our option, live +there all the year round. We should just wish to linger into the winter +about as far as the middle of December--then to a city--say at once +Edinburgh. There is as good skating-ground, and as good curling-ground, +at Lochend and Duddingston, as anywhere in all Scotland--nor is there +anywhere else better beef and greens. There is no perfection anywhere, +but Edinburgh society is excellent. We are certainly agreeable citizens; +with just a sufficient spice of party spirit to season the feast of +reason and the flow of soul, and to prevent society from becoming +drowsily unanimous. Without the fillip of a little scandal, honest +people would fall asleep; and surely it is far preferable to that to +abuse one's friends with moderation. Even Literature and the Belles +Lettres are not entirely useless; and our Human Life would not be so +delightful as that of Mr Rogers, without a few occasional Noctes +Ambrosianę. + +But the title of our article recalls our wandering thoughts, and our +talk must be of Cottages. Now, think not, beloved reader, that we care +not for Cottages, for that would indeed be a gross mistake. But our very +affections are philosophical; our sympathies have all their source in +reason; and our admiration is always built on the foundation of truth. +Taste, and feeling, and thought, and experience, and knowledge of this +life's concerns, are all indispensable to the true delights the +imagination experiences in beholding a beautiful _bonā fide_ Cottage. It +must be the dwelling of the poor; and it is that which gives it its +whole character. By the poor, we mean not paupers, beggars; but families +who, to eat, must work, and who, by working, may still be able to eat. +Plain, coarse, not scanty, but unsuperfluous fare is theirs from +year's-end to year's-end, excepting some decent and grateful change on +chance holidays of nature's own appointment--a wedding or a christening, +or a funeral. Yes, a funeral; for when this mortal coil is shuffled off, +why should the hundreds of people that come trooping over muirs and +mosses to see the body deposited, walk so many miles, and lose a whole +day's work, without a dinner? And if there be a dinner, should it not be +a good one? And if a good one, will the company not be social? But this +is a subject for a future paper, nor need such paper be of other than a +cheerful character. Poverty, then, is the builder and beautifier of all +huts and cottages. But the views of honest poverty are always hopeful +and prospective. Strength of muscle and strength of mind form a truly +Holy Alliance; and the future brightens before the steadfast eyes of +trust. Therefore, when a house is built in the valley, or on the +hill-side--be it that of the poorest cottar--there is some little room, +or nook, or spare place, which hope consecrates to the future. Better +times may come--a shilling or two may be added to the week's +wages--parsimony may accumulate a small capital in the Savings-bank +sufficient to purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of drawers for +the wife, a curtained bed for the lumber-place, which a little labour +will convert into a bedroom. It is not to be thought that the +pasture-fields become every year greener, and the cornfields every +harvest more yellow--that the hedgerows grow to thicker fragrance, and +the birch-tree waves its tresses higher in the air, and expands its +white-rinded stem almost to the bulk of a tree of the forest--and yet +that there shall be no visible progress from good to better in the +dwelling of those whose hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into +rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, so does each individual +dwelling. Every ten years, the observing eye sees a new expression on +the face of the silent earth; the law of labour is no melancholy lot; +for to industry the yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding great +reward. + +Therefore, it does our heart good to look on a Cottage. Here the +objections to straw-roofs have no application. A few sparrows chirping +and fluttering in the eaves can do no great harm, and they serve to +amuse the children. The very baby in the cradle, when all the family are +in the fields, mother and all, hears the cheerful twitter, and is +reconciled to solitude. The quantity of corn that a few sparrows can +eat--greedy creatures as they are--cannot be very deadly; and it is +chiefly in the winter-time that they attack the stacks, when there is +much excuse to be made on the plea of hunger. As to the destruction of a +little thatch, why, there is not a boy about the house, above ten years, +who is not a thatcher, and there is no expense in such repairs. Let the +honeysuckle, too, steal up the wall, and even blind unchecked a corner +of the kitchen-window. Its fragrance will often cheer unconsciously the +labourer's heart, as, in the mid-day hour of rest, he sits dandling his +child on his knee, or converses with the passing pedlar. Let the +moss-rose tree flourish, that its bright blush-balls may dazzle in the +kirk the eyes of the lover of fair Helen Irwin, as they rise and fall +with every movement of a bosom yet happy in its virgin innocence. Nature +does not spread in vain her flowers in flush and fragrance over every +obscure nook of earth. Simple and pure is the delight they inspire. Not +to the poet's eye alone is their language addressed. The beautiful +symbols are understood by lowliest minds; and while the philosophical +Wordsworth speaks of the meanest flower that blows giving a joy too deep +for tears, so do all mankind feel the exquisite truth of Burns's more +simple address to the mountain-daisy which his ploughshare had upturned. +The one touches sympathies too profound to be general--the other speaks +as a son of the soil affected by the fate of the most familiar flower +that springs from the bosom of our common dust. + +Generally speaking, there has been a spirit of improvement at work, +during these last twenty years, upon all the Cottages in Scotland. The +villages are certainly much neater and cleaner than formerly, and in +very few respects, if any, positively offensive. Perhaps none of them +have--nor ever will have--the exquisite trimness, the habitual and +hereditary rustic elegance, of the best villages of England. There, even +the idle and worthless have an instinctive love of what is decent, and +orderly, and pretty in their habitations. The very drunkard must have a +well-sanded floor, a clean-swept hearth, clear-polished furniture, and +uncobwebbed walls to the room in which he quaffs, guzzles, and smokes +himself into stupidity. His wife may be a scold, but seldom a +slattern--his children ill taught, but well apparelled. Much of this is +observable even among the worst of the class; and, no doubt, such things +must also have their effect in tempering and restraining excesses. +Whereas, on the other hand, the house of a well-behaved, well-doing +English villager is a perfect model of comfort and propriety. In +Scotland, the houses of the dissolute are always dens of dirt, and +disorder, and distraction. All ordinary goings-on are inextricably +confused--meals eaten in different nooks, and at no regular +hour--nothing in its right place or time--the whole abode as if on the +eve of a flitting; while, with few exceptions, even in the dwellings of +the best families in the village, one may detect occasional +forgetfulness of trifling matters, that, if remembered, would be found +greatly conducive to comfort--occasional insensibilities to what would +be graceful in their condition, and might be secured at little expense +and less trouble--occasional blindness to minute deformities that mar +the aspect of the household, and which an awakened eye would sweep away +as absolute nuisances. Perhaps the very depth of their affections--the +solemnity of their religious thoughts--and the reflective spirit in +which they carry on the warfare of life--hide from them the perception +of what, after all, is of such very inferior moment, and even create a +sort of austerity of character which makes them disregard, too much, +trifles that appear to have no influence or connection with the essence +of weal or woe. Yet if there be any truth in this, it affords, we +confess, an explanation rather than a justification. + +Our business at present, however, is rather with single Cottages than +with villages. We Scottish people have, for some years past, been doing +all we could to make ourselves ridiculous, by claiming for our capital +the name of Modern Athens, and talking all manner of nonsense about a +city which stands nobly on its own proper foundation; while we have kept +our mouths comparatively shut about the beauty of our hills and vales, +and the rational happiness that everywhere overflows our native land. +Our character is to be found in the country; and therefore, gentle +reader, behold along with us a specimen of Scottish scenery. It is not +above some four miles long--its breadth somewhere about a third of its +length; a fair oblong, sheltered and secluded by a line of varied +eminences, on some of which lies the power of cultivation, and over +others the vivid verdure peculiar to a pastoral region; while, telling +of disturbed times past for ever, stand yonder the ruins of an old +fortalice or keep, picturesque in its deserted decay. The plough has +stopped at the edge of the profitable and beautiful coppice-woods, and +encircled the tall elm-grove. The rocky pasturage, with its clovery and +daisied turf, is alive with sheep and cattle--its briery knolls with +birds--its broom and whins with bees--and its wimpling burn with trouts +and minnows glancing through the shallows, or leaping among the cloud of +injects that glitter over its pools. Here and there a cottage--not above +twenty in all--one low down in the holm, another on a cliff beside the +waterfall: that is the mill--another breaking the horizon in its more +ambitious station--and another far up at the hill-foot, where there is +not a single tree, only shrubs and brackens. On a bleak day, there is +but little beauty in such a glen; but when the sun is cloudless, and all +the light serene, it is a place where poet or painter may see visions +and dream dreams, of the very age of gold. At such seasons, there is a +home-felt feeling of humble reality, blending with the emotions of +imagination. In such places, the low-born high-souled poets of old +breathed forth their songs, and hymns, and elegies--the undying lyrical +poetry of the heart of Scotland. + +Take the remotest Cottage first in order, HILLFOOT, and hear who are its +inmates--the Schoolmaster and his spouse. The schoolhouse stands on a +little unappropriated piece of ground--at least it seems to be so--quite +at the head of the glen; for there the hills sink down on each side, and +afford an easy access to the seat of learning from two neighbouring +vales, both in the same parish. Perhaps fifty scholars are there +taught--and with their small fees, and his small salary, Allan Easton is +contented. Allan was originally intended for the Church; but some +peccadilloes obstructed his progress with the Presbytery, and he never +was a preacher. That disappointment of all his hopes was for many years +grievously felt, and somewhat soured his mind with the world. It is +often impossible to recover one single false step in the slippery road +of life--and Allan Easton, year after year, saw himself falling farther +and farther into the rear of almost all his contemporaries. One became a +minister, and got a manse, with a stipend of twenty chalders; another +grew into an East India Nabob; one married the laird's widow, and kept a +pack of hounds--another expanded into a colonel--one cleared a plum by a +cotton-mill--another became the Croesus of a bank--while Allan, who +had beat them all hollow at all the classes, wore second-hand clothes, +and lived on the same fare with the poorest hind in the parish. He had +married, rather too late, the partner of his frailties--and after many +trials, and, as he thought, not a few persecutions, he got settled at +last, when his head, not very old, was getting grey, and his face +somewhat wrinkled. His wife, during his worst poverty, had gone again +into service, the lot, indeed, to which she had been born; and Allan had +struggled and starved upon private teaching. His appointment to the +parish school had, therefore, been to them both a blessed elevation. The +office was respectable--and loftier ambition had long been dead. Now +they are old people--considerably upwards of sixty--and twenty years' +professional life have converted Allan Easton, once the wild and +eccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, and pedantic pedagogue. +All his scholars love him, for even in the discharge of such very humble +duties, talents make themselves felt and respected; and the kindness of +an affectionate and once sorely wounded, but now healed heart, is never +lost upon the susceptible imaginations of the young. Allan has sometimes +sent out no contemptible scholars, as scholars go in Scotland, to the +universities; and his heart has warmed within him when he has read +their names, in the newspaper from the manse, in the list of successful +competitors for prizes. During vacation-time, Allan and his spouse leave +their cottage locked up, and disappear, none know exactly whither, on +visits to an old friend or two, who have not altogether forgotten them +in their obscurity. During the rest of the year, his only out-of-doors +amusement is an afternoon's angling, an art in which it is universally +allowed he excels all mortal men, both in river and loch; and often, +during the long winter nights, when the shepherd is walking by his +dwelling, to visit his "ain lassie," down the burn, he hears Allan's +fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, some one of those Scottish +melodies, that we know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, but +soothing to every heart that has been at all acquainted with grief. +Rumour says too, but rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that the +Schoolmaster, when he meets with pleasant company, either at home or a +friend's house, is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then the +memories of other days crowd upon his brain, and loosen his tongue into +eloquence. Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon her husband on all +such occasions; but Allan braves its glances, and is forgiven. + +We see only the uncertain glimmer of their dwelling through the +low-lying mist; and therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were +clearly before our eyes. But should you ever chance to angle your way up +to HILLFOOT, admire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the jargonelle +pear-tree on the southern gable. The climate is somewhat high, but it is +not cold; and, except when the spring-frosts come late and sharp, there +do all blossoms and fruits abound, on every shrub and tree native to +Scotland. You will hardly know how to distinguish--or rather, to speak +in clerkly phrase, to analyse the sound prevalent over the fields and +air; for it is made up of that of the burn, of bees, of old Susan's +wheel, and the hum of the busy school. But now it is the play-hour, and +Allan Easton comes into his kitchen for his frugal dinner. Brush up your +Latin, and out with a few of the largest trouts in your pannier. Susan +fries them in fresh butter and oatmeal--the greyhaired pedagogue asks a +blessing--and a merrier man, within the limits of becoming mirth, you +never passed an hour's talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and Susan +his spouse. + +You look as if you wished to ask who inhabits the Cottage--on the left +hand yonder--that stares upon us with four front windows, and pricks up +its ears like a new-started hare? Why, sir, that was once a +Shooting-box. It was built about twenty years ago, by a sporting +gentleman of two excellent double-barrelled guns, and three stanch +pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of +August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among +the hills from sunrise to sunset. He has been long dead and buried; and +the Box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let +furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an +escutcheon. Picturesque people say it ruins the whole beauty of the +glen; but we must not think so, for it is not in the power of the +ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a +purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contrivance. The window-shutters +have been closed for several years, and the chimneys look as if they had +breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddy, and the ground +shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a barrel to +catch the rain-drippings from the slate-eaves. If it be indeed haunted, +pity the poor ghost! You may have it on a lease, short or long, for +merely paying the taxes. Every year it costs some pounds in +advertisements. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By name, +WINDY-KNOWE. + +Nay, let us not fear to sketch the character of its last inhabitant, for +we desire but to speak the truth. Drunkard, stand forward, that we may +have a look at you, and draw your picture. There he stands! The mouth of +the drunkard, you may observe, contracts a singularly sensitive +appearance--seemingly red and rawish; and he is perpetually licking or +smacking his lips, as if his palate were dry and adust. His is a thirst +that water will not quench. He might as well drink air. His whole being +burns for a dram. The whole world is contracted into a caulker. He would +sell his soul in such extremity, were the black bottle denied him, for a +gulp. Not to save his soul from eternal fire, would he, or rather could +he, if left alone with it, refrain from pulling out the plug, and +sucking away at destruction. What a snout he turns up to the morning +air, inflamed, pimpled, snubby, and snorty, and with a nob at the end +on't like one carved out of a stick by the knife of a schoolboy--rough +and hot to the very eye--a nose which, rather than pull, you would +submit even to be in some degree insulted. A perpetual cough harasses +and exhausts him, and a perpetual expectoration. How his hand trembles! +It is an effort even to sign his name: one of his sides is certainly not +by any means as sound as the other; there has been a touch of palsy +there; and the next hint will draw down his chin to his collar-bone, and +convert him, a month before dissolution, into a slavering idiot. There +is no occupation, small or great, insignificant or important, to which +he can turn, for any length of time, his hand, his heart, or his head. +He cannot angle--for his fingers refuse to tie a knot, much more to busk +a fly. The glimmer and the glow of the stream would make his brain +dizzy--to wet his feet now would, he fears, be death. Yet he thinks that +he will go out--during that sunny blink of a showery day--and try the +well-known pool in which he used to bathe in boyhood, with the long, +matted, green-trailing water-plants depending on the slippery rocks, and +the water-ousel gliding from beneath the arch that hides her "procreant +cradle," and then sinking like a stone suddenly in the limpid stream. He +sits down on the bank, and fumbling in his pouch for his pocket-book, +brings out, instead, a pocket-pistol. Turning his fiery face towards the +mild, blue, vernal sky, he pours the gurgling brandy down his +throat--first one dose, and then another--till, in an hour, stupefied +and dazed, he sees not the silvery crimson-spotted trouts, shooting, and +leaping, and tumbling, and plunging in deep and shallow; a day on which, +with one of Captain Colley's March-Browns, in an hour we could fill our +pannier. Or, if it be autumn or winter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice +at once gruff and feeble, an old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the +partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right and left, in +potato or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble--but now his sight is dim +and wavering, and his touch trembles on the trigger. The covey whirrs +off, unharmed in a single feather--and poor Ponto, remembering better +days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's heel, and +will range no more. Out, as usual, comes the brandy-bottle--he is still +a good shot when his mouth is the mark; and having emptied the fatal +flask, he staggers homewards, with the muzzles of his double-barrel +frequently pointed to his ear, both being on full cock, and his brains +not blown out only by a miracle. He tries to read the newspaper--just +arrived--but cannot find his spectacles. Then, by way of variety, he +attempts a tune on the fiddle; but the bridge is broken, and her side +cracked, and the bass-string snapped--and she is restored to her peg +among the cobwebs. In comes a red-headed, stockingless lass, with her +carrots in papers, and lays the cloth for dinner--salt beef and greens. +But the Major's stomach scunners at the Skye-stot--his eyes roll eagerly +for the hot-water--and in a couple of hours he is dead-drunk in his +chair, or stoitering and staggering, in aimless dalliance with the +scullion, among the pots and pans of an ever-disorderly and dirty +kitchen. Mean people, in shabby sporting velveteen dresses, rise up, as +he enters, from the dresser, covered with cans, jugs, and quaichs, and +take off their rusty and greasy napless hats to the Major; and, to +conclude the day worthily and consistently, he squelches himself down +among the reprobate crew, takes his turn at smutty jest and smuttier +song, which drive even the jades out of the kitchen--falls back +insensible, exposed to gross and indecent practical jokes from the +vilest of the unhanged--and finally is carried to bed on a hand-barrow, +with hanging head and heels, like a calf across a butcher's cart, and, +with glazed eyes and lolling tongue, is tumbled upon the quilt--if ever +to awake it is extremely doubtful; but if awake he do, it is to the same +wretched round of brutal degradation--a career, of which the inevitable +close is an unfriended deathbed and a pauper's grave. O hero! six feet +high, and once with a brawn like Hercules--in the prime of life +too--well born and well bred--once bearing the king's commission--and on +that glorious morn, now forgotten or bitterly remembered, thanked on the +field of battle by Picton, though he of the fighting division was a hero +of few words--is that a death worthy of a man--a soldier--and a +Christian? A dram-drinker! Faugh! faugh! Look over--lean over that +stile, where a pig lies wallowing in mire--and a voice, faint and +feeble, and far off, as if it came from some dim and remote world within +your lost soul, will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly one, +agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring across the husk-trough, +is, as a physical, moral, and intellectual being, superior to you, late +Major in his Majesty's ---- regiment of foot, now dram-drinker, +drunkard, and dotard, and self-doomed to a disgraceful and disgusting +death ere you shall have completed your thirtieth year. What a changed +being from that day when you carried the colours, and were found, the +bravest of the brave, and the most beautiful of the beautiful, with the +glorious tatters wrapped round your body all drenched in blood, your +hand grasping the broken sabre, and two grim Frenchmen lying hacked and +hewed at your feet! Your father and your mother saw your name in the +"Great Lord's" Despatch; and it was as much as he could do to keep her +from falling on the floor, for "her joy was like a deep affright!" Both +are dead now; and better so, for the sight of that blotched face and +those glazed eyes, now and then glittering in fitful frenzy, would have +killed them both, nor, after such a spectacle, could their old bones +have rested in the grave. + +Alas, Scotland--ay, well-educated, moral, religious Scotland can show, +in the bosom of her bonny banks and braes, cases worse than this; at +which, if there be tears in heaven, the angels weep. Look at that +greyheaded man, of threescore and upwards, sitting by the wayside! He +was once an Elder of the Kirk, and a pious man he was, if ever piety +adorned the temples--"the lyart haffets, wearing thin and bare," of a +Scottish peasant. What eye beheld the many hundred steps, that one by +one, with imperceptible gradation, led him down--down--down to the +lowest depths of shame, suffering, and ruin! For years before it was +bruited abroad through the parish that Gabriel Mason was addicted to +drink, his wife used to sit weeping alone in the spence when her sons +and daughters were out at their work in the fields, and the infatuated +man, fierce in the excitement of raw ardent spirits, kept causelessly +raging and storming through every nook of that once so peaceful +tenement, which for many happy years had never been disturbed by the +loud voice of anger or reproach. His eyes were seldom turned on his +unhappy wife except with a sullen scowl, or fiery wrath; but when they +did look on her with kindness, there was also a rueful self-upbraiding +in their expression, on account of his cruelty; and at sight of such +transitory tenderness, her heart would overflow with forgiving +affection, and her sunk eyes with unendurable tears. But neither +domestic sin nor domestic sorrow will conceal from the eyes and the ears +of men; and at last Gabriel Mason's name was a byword in the mouth of +the scoffer. One Sabbath he entered the kirk in a state of miserable +abandonment, and from that day he was no longer an elder. To regain his +character seemed to him, in his desperation, beyond the power of man, +and against the decree of God. So he delivered himself up, like a slave, +to that one appetite, and in a few years his whole household had gone to +destruction. His wife was a matron, almost in the prime of life, when +she died; but as she kept wearing away to the other world, her face told +that she felt her years had been too many in this. Her eldest son, +unable, in pride and shame, to lift up his eyes at kirk or market, went +away to the city, and enlisted into a regiment about to embark on +foreign service. His two sisters went to take farewell of him, but never +returned; one, it is said, having died of a fever in the Infirmary--just +as if she had been a pauper; and the other--for the sight of sin, and +sorrow, and shame, and suffering, is ruinous to the soul--gave herself +up, in her beauty, an easy prey to a destroyer, and doubtless has run +her course of agonies, and is now at peace. The rest of the family dropt +down, one by one, out of sight, into inferior situations in far-off +places; but there was a curse, it was thought, hanging over the family, +and of none of them did ever a favourable report come to their native +parish; while he, the infatuated sinner, whose vice seemed to have +worked all the woe, remained in the chains of his tyrannical passion, +nor seemed ever, for more than the short term of a day, to cease hugging +them to his heart. Semblance of all that is most venerable in the +character of Scotland's peasantry! Image of a perfect patriarch, walking +out to meditate at eventide! What a noble forehead! Features how high, +dignified, and composed! There, sitting in the shade of that old wayside +tree, he seems some religious Missionary, travelling to and fro over the +face of the earth, seeking out sin and sorrow, that he may tame them +under the word of God, and change their very being into piety and peace. +Call him not a hoary hypocrite, for he cannot help that noble--that +venerable--that apostolic aspect--that dignified figure, as if bent +gently by Time, loth to touch it with too heavy a hand--that holy +sprinkling over his furrowed temples of the silver-soft, and the +snow-white hair--these are the gifts of gracious Nature all--and Nature +will not reclaim them, but in the tomb. That is Gabriel Mason--the +Drunkard! And in an hour you may, if your eyes can bear the sight, see +and hear him staggering up and down the village, cursing, swearing, +preaching, praying--stoned by blackguard boys and girls, who hound all +the dogs and curs at his heels, till, taking refuge in the smithy or the +pot-house, he becomes the sport of grown clowns, and, after much idiot +laughter, ruefully mingled with sighs, and groans, and tears, he is +suffered to mount upon a table, and urged, perhaps, by reckless folly to +give out a text from the Bible, which is nearly all engraven on his +memory--so much and so many other things effaced for ever--and there, +like a wild Itinerant, he stammers forth unintentional blasphemy, till +the liquor he has been allowed or instigated to swallow smites him +suddenly senseless, and, falling down, he is huddled off into a corner +of some lumber-room; and left to sleep--better far for such a wretch +were it to death. + +Let us descend, then, from that most inclement front, into the lown +boundaries of the HOLM. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the +peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With +its outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is +composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine +at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a +glorious dunghill (O, breathe not the name!) that will cover every field +with luxuriant harvests--twelve bolls of oats to the acre. There the +cattle--oxen yet "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," +will, in a few months, eat themselves up, on straw and turnip, into +obesity. There turkeys walk demure--there geese waddle, and there the +feathery-legged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly +aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, that squire of dames, crowing to +his partlets. There a cloud of pigeons often descends among the corny +chaff, and then whirrs off to the uplands. No chained mastiff looking +grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of cheerful and sagacious +collies are seen sitting on their hurdies, or "worrying ither in +diversion." A shaggy colt or two, and a brood mare, with a spice of +blood, and a foal at her heels, know their shed, and evidently are +favourites with the family. Out comes the master, a rosy-cheeked carle, +upwards of six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a blue bonnet and +velveteen breeches--a man not to be jostled on the crown o' the causey, +and a match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, or gypsy from Yetholm. +But let us into the kitchen. There's the wife--a bit tidy body--and +pretty withal--more authoritative in her quiet demeanour than the most +tyrannical mere housekeeper that ever thumped a servant lass with the +beetle. These three are her daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest, +seemingly older than her mother--for she is somewhat hard-favoured, and +strong red hair dangling over a squint eye is apt to give an expression +of advanced years, even to a youthful virgin. Vaccination was not known +in Girzie's babyhood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned +creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. She is what is delicately +called a strapper, rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of an +Aurora about the ankles. She makes her way, in all household affairs, +through every impediment, and will obviously prove, whenever the +experiment is made, a most excellent wife. Mysie, the second daughter, +is more composed, more genteel, and sits sewing--with her a favourite +occupation, for she has very neat hands; and is, in fact, the milliner +and mantua-maker for all the house. She could no more lift that enormous +pan of boiling water off the fire than she could fly, which in the grasp +of Girzie is safely landed on the hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a +pensive look, as if in love--and we have heard that she is betrothed to +young Mr Rentoul, the divinity student, who lately made a speech before +the Anti-patronage Society, and therefore may reasonably expect very +soon to get a kirk. But look--there comes dancing in from the ewe-bughts +the bright-eyed Bessy, the flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl +in Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd of the Gentle Shepherd himself! O +that we were a poet, to sing the innocence of her budding breast! +But--heaven preserve us!--what is the angelic creature about? Making +rumbledethumps! Now she pounds the potatoes and cabbages as with pestle +and mortar! Ever and anon licking the butter off her fingers, and then +dashing in the salt! Methinks her laugh is out of all bounds loud--and, +unless my eyes deceived me, that stout lout whispered in her delicate +ear some coarse jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up into her not +undelighted countenance. Heavens and earth!--perhaps an assignation in +the barn, or byre, or bush aboon Traquair. But the long dresser is set +out with dinner--the gudeman's bonnet is reverently laid aside--and if +any stomach assembled there be now empty, it is not likely, judging from +appearances, that it will be in that state again before next +Sabbath--and it is now but the middle of the week. Was it not my Lord +Byron who liked not to see women eat? Poo--poo--nonsense! We like to see +them not only eat--but devour. Not a set of teeth round that +kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too, in +spite of syboes, sweet as dawn-dew--the whole female frame full of +health, freshness, spirit, and animation! Away all delicate wooers, +thrice-high-fantastical! The diet is wholesome--and the sleep will be +sound; therefore eat away, Bessy--nor fear to laugh, although your +pretty mouth be full--for we are no poet to madden into misanthropy at +your mastication; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate, +to us these lips are roses still; "thy eyes are lode-stars, and thy +breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom! +No--no--no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood +unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the +sweet hour of prime. And then mayest thou plight thy troth--in all the +warmth of innocence--to some ardent yet thoughtful youth, who will carry +his bride exultingly to his own low-roofed home--toil for her and the +children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold--and sit +with her in the kirk, when long years have gone by, a comely matron, +attended by daughters acknowledged to be fair--but neither so fair, nor +so good, nor so pious, as their mother. + +What a contrast to the jocund Holm is the ROWAN-TREE-HUT--so still, and +seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low, +that you might pass it without observing its turf-roof. There live old +Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has +borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not much under +sixty. That poor creature is bed-ridden and helpless, and has to be fed +almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white +pony--well named Samson--that she drives three times a-week, all the +year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of +articles to nearly twenty different families, living miles apart. Every +other day in the week--for there is but one Sabbath either to herself or +Samson--she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the +roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red +petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is almost frightful, +with a formidable beard, and a rough voice--and violent gestures, +encouraging the overladen enemy of the Philistines. But as soon as she +enters her hut, she is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her +daughter's bedside. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, and she +hears, during the dead of the night, her daughter's slightest moan. Her +voice is not rough at all when the poor old creature is saying her +prayers; nor, we may be well assured, is its lowest whisper unheard in +heaven. + +Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern side of the vale, and they +have fixed themselves on the Cottage of the SEVEN OAKS. The grove is a +noble one; and, indeed, those are the only timber-trees in the valley. +There is a tradition belonging to the grove, but we shall tell it some +other time; now, we have to do with that mean-looking Cottage, all +unworthy of such magnificent shelter. With its ragged thatch it has a +cold cheerless look--almost a look of indigence. The walls are sordid in +the streaked ochre-wash--a wisp of straw supplies the place of a broken +pane--the door seems as if it were inhospitable--and every object about +is in untended disorder. The green pool in front, with its floating +straws and feathers, and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and needless; +the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open at the roots; the few garments +spread upon them seem to have stiffened in the weather, forgotten by the +persons who placed them there; and half-starved young cattle are +straying about in what once was a garden. Wretched sight it is; for that +dwelling, although never beautiful, was once the tidiest and best-kept +in all the district. But what has misery to do with the comfort of its +habitation? + +The owner of that house was once a man well to do in the world; but he +minded this world's goods more than it was fitting to do, and made +Mammon his god. Abilities he possessed far beyond the common run of men, +and he applied them all, with all the energy of a strong mind, to the +accumulation of wealth. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate +end; and he despised a bargain unless he outwitted his neighbour. +Without any acts of downright knavery, he was not an honest man--hard to +the poor--and a tyrannical master. He sought to wring from the very soil +more than it could produce; his servants, among whom were his wife and +daughter, he kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to twilight; and +was a forestaller and a regrater--a character which, when Political +Economy was unknown, was of all the most odious in the judgment of +simple husbandmen. His spirits rose with the price of meal, and every +handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like a tax. What could the +Bible teach to such a man? What good could he derive from the calm air +of the house of worship? He sent his only son to the city, with +injunctions instilled into him to make the most of all transactions, at +every hazard but that of his money; and the consequence was, in a few +years, shame, ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, imprisoned, +dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a vulgar seducer; and being +driven from her father's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless misery, +to a life of prostitution. His wife, heartbroken by cruelty and +affliction, was never afterwards altogether in her right mind, and now +sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders off to distant places, lone +houses and villages, almost in the condition of an idiot--wild-eyed, +loose-haired, and dressed like a very beggar. Speculation after +speculation failed--with farmyard crowded with old stacks, he had to +curse three successive plentiful harvests--and his mailing was now +destitute. The unhappy man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity; +and, when his brain was inflamed with liquor, a dangerous madman. He is +now a sort of cattle-dealer--buys and sells miserable horses--and at +fairs associates with knaves and reprobates, knowing that no honest man +will deal with him except in pity or derision. He has more than once +attempted to commit suicide; but palsy has stricken him--and in a few +weeks he will totter into the grave. + +There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you see the smoke--even the +chimney-top, but you could not see the Cottage itself, unless you were +within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is it with knolls and small +green eminences, in a den of its own, a shoot or scion from the main +stem of the valley. It is called THE BROOM, and there is something +singular, and not uninteresting, in the history of its owner. He married +very early in life, indeed when quite a boy, which is not, by the way, +very unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, prudent and calculating as +is their general character. David Drysdale, before he was thirty years +of age, had a family of seven children, and a pretty family they were as +might be seen in all the parish. His life was in theirs, and his mind +never wandered far from his fireside. His wife was of a consumptive +family, and that insidious and fatal disease never showed in her a +single symptom during ten years of marriage; but one cold evening awoke +it at her very heart, and in less than two months it hurried her into +the grave. Poor creature, such a spectre! When her husband used to carry +her, for the sake of a little temporary relief, from chair to couch, and +from her couch back again to her bed, twenty times in a day, he hardly +could help weeping, with all his consideration, to feel her frame as +light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man said, that in all his +practice he never had known soul and body keep together in such utter +attenuation. But her soul was as clear as ever while racking pain was in +her fleshless bones. Even he, her loving husband, was relieved from woe +when she expired; for no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the +misery of groans from one so patient and so resigned. Perhaps +consumption is infectious--so, at least, it seemed here; for first one +child began to droop, and then another--the elder ones first; and, +within the two following years, there were almost as many funerals from +this one house as from all the others in the parish. Yes--they all +died--of the whole family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were thought +to have pined away in a sort of fearful foreboding--and a fever took off +a third--but four certainly died of the same hereditary complaint with +the mother; and now not a voice was heard in the house. He did not +desert the Broom; and the farm-work was still carried on, nobody could +tell how. The servants, to be sure, knew their duty, and often performed +it without orders. Sometimes the master put his hand to the plough, but +oftener he led the life of a shepherd, and was by himself among the +hills. He never smiled--and at every meal he still sat like a man about +to be led out to die. But what will not retire away--recede--disappear +from the vision of the souls of us mortals! Tenacious as we are of our +griefs, even more than of our joys, both elude our grasp. We gaze after +them with longing or self-upbraiding aspirations for their return; but +they are shadows, and like shadows vanish. Then human duties, lowly +though they may be, have their sanative and salutary influence on our +whole frame of being. Without their performance conscience cannot be +still; with it, conscience brings peace in extremity of evil. Then +occupation kills grief, and industry abates passion. No balm for sorrow +like the sweat of the brow poured into the furrows of the earth, in the +open air, and beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths were felt by +the childless widower, long before they were understood by him; and when +two years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost despairingly, by--he +began at times to feel something like happiness again when sitting among +his friends in the kirk, or at their firesides, or in the labours of the +field, or even on the market-day, among this world's concerns. Thus, +they who knew him and his sufferings were pleased to recognise what +might be called resignation and its grave tranquillity; while strangers +discerned in him nothing more than a staid and solemn demeanour, which +might be natural to many a man never severely tried, and offering no +interruption to the cheerfulness that pervaded their ordinary life. + +He had a cousin a few years younger than himself, who had also married +when a girl, and when little more than a girl had been left a widow. Her +parents were both dead, and she had lived for a good many years as an +upper servant, or rather companion and friend, in the house of a +relation. As cousins, they had all their lives been familiar and +affectionate, and Alice Gray had frequently lived for months at a time +at the Broom, taking care of the children, and in all respects one of +the family. Their conditions were now almost equally desolate, and a +deep sympathy made them now more firmly attached than they ever could +have been in better days. Still, nothing at all resembling love was in +either of their hearts, nor did the thought of marriage ever pass across +their imaginations. They found, however, increasing satisfaction in each +other's company; and looks and words of sad and sober endearment +gradually bound them together in affection stronger far than either +could have believed. Their friends saw and spoke of the attachment, and +of its probable result, long before they were aware of its full nature; +and nobody was surprised, but, on the contrary, all were well pleased, +when it was understood that they were to be man and wife. There was +something almost mournful in their marriage--no rejoicing--no +merry-making--but yet visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, and +peace. An air of cheerfulness was not long of investing the melancholy +Broom--the very swallows twittered more gladly from the window-corners, +and there was joy in the cooing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The +farm awoke through all its fields, and the farm-servants once more sang +and whistled at their work. The wandering beggar, who remembered the +charity of other years, looked with no cold expression on her who now +dealt out his dole; and as his old eyes were dimmed for the sake of +those who were gone, gave a fervent blessing on the new mistress of the +house, and prayed that she might long be spared. The neighbours, even +they who had best loved the dead, came in with cheerful countenances, +and acknowledged in their hearts, that since change is the law of life, +there was no one, far or near, whom they could have borne to see sitting +in that chair but Alice Gray. The husband knew their feelings from their +looks, and his fireside blazed once more with a cheerful lustre. + +O, gentle reader, young perhaps, and inexperienced of this world, wonder +not at this so great change! The heart is full, perhaps, of a pure and +holy affection, nor can it die, even for an hour of sleep. May it never +die but in the grave! Yet die it may, and leave thee blameless. The time +may come when that bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, with all its +heaving beauty, one single passionate or adoring sigh. Those eyes, that +now stream agitation and bliss into thy throbbing heart, may, on some +not very distant day, be cold to thy imagination as the distant and +unheeded stars. That voice, now thrilling through every nerve, may fall +on thy ear a disregarded sound. Other hopes, other fears, other +troubles, may possess thee wholly--and that more than angel of Heaven +seem to fade away into a shape of earth's most common clay. But here +there was no change--no forgetfulness--no oblivion--no faithlessness to +a holy trust. The melancholy man often saw his Hannah, and all his seven +sweet children--now fair in life--now pale in death. Sometimes, perhaps, +the sight, the sound--their smiles and their voices--disturbed him, till +his heart quaked within him, and he wished that he too was dead. But God +it was who had removed them from our earth--and was it possible to +doubt that they were all in blessedness? Shed your tears over change +from virtue to vice, happiness to misery; but weep not for those still, +sad, mysterious processes by which gracious Nature alleviates the +afflictions of our mortal lot, and enables us to endure the life which +the Lord our God hath given us. Ere long husband and wife could bear to +speak of those who were now no more seen; when the phantoms rose before +them in the silence of the night, they all wore pleasant and approving +countenances, and the beautiful family often came from Heaven to visit +their father in his dreams. He did not wish, much less hope, in this +life, for such happiness as had once been his--nor did Alice Gray, even +for one hour, imagine that such happiness it was in her power to bestow. +They knew each other's hearts--what they had suffered and survived; and, +since the meridian of life and joy was gone, they were contented with +the pensive twilight. + +Look, there is a pretty Cottage--by name LEASIDE--one that might almost +do for a painter--just sufficiently shaded by trees, and showing a new +aspect every step you take, and each new aspect beautiful. There is, it +is true, neither moss, nor lichens, nor weather-stains on the roof--but +all is smooth, neat, trim, deep thatch, from rigging to eaves, with a +picturesque elevated window covered with the same material, and all the +walls white as snow. The whole building is at all times as fresh as if +just washed by a vernal shower. Competence breathes from every lattice, +and that porch has been reared more for ornament than defence, although, +no doubt, it is useful both in March and November winds. Every field +about it is like a garden, and yet the garden is brightly conspicuous +amidst all the surrounding cultivation. The hedgerows are all clipped, +for they have grown there for many and many a year; and the shears were +necessary to keep them down from shutting out the vista of the lovely +vale. That is the dwelling of Adam Airlie the Elder. Happy old man! This +life has gone uniformly well with him and his; yet, had it been +otherwise, there is a power in his spirit that would have sustained the +severest inflictions of Providence. His gratitude to God is something +solemn and awful, and ever accompanied with a profound sense of his +utter unworthiness of all the long-continued mercies vouchsafed to his +family. His own happiness, prolonged to a great age, has not closed +within his heart one source of pity or affection for his brethren of +mankind. In his own guiltless conscience, guiltless before man, he yet +feels incessantly the frailties of his nature, and is meek, humble, and +penitent as the greatest sinner. He, his wife, an old faithful +female-servant, and an occasional granddaughter, now form the whole +household. His three sons have all prospered in the world. The eldest +went abroad when a mere boy, and many fears went with him--a bold, +adventurous, and somewhat reckless creature. But consideration came to +him in a foreign climate, and tamed down his ardent mind to a +thoughtful, not a selfish prudence. Twenty years he lived in India--and +what a blessed day was the day of his return! Yet in the prime of life, +by disease unbroken, and with a heart full to overflowing with all its +old sacred affections, he came back to his father's lowly cottage, and +wept as he crossed the threshold. His parents needed not any of his +wealth; but they were blamelessly proud, nevertheless, of his honest +acquisitions--proud when he became a landholder in his native parish, +and employed the sons of his old companions, and some of his old +companions themselves, in the building of his unostentatious mansion, or +in cultivating the wild but not unlovely moor, which was dear to him for +the sake of the countless remembrances that clothed the bare banks of +its lochs, and murmured in the little stream that ran among the pastoral +braes. The new mansion is a couple of miles from his parental Cottage; +but not a week, indeed seldom half that time, elapses, without a visit +to that dear dwelling. They likewise not unfrequently visit him--for his +wife is dear to them as a daughter of their own; and the ancient couple +delight in the noise and laughter of his pretty flock. Yet the son +understands perfectly well that the aged people love best their own +roof--and that its familiar quiet is every day dearer to their +habituated affections. Therefore he makes no parade of filial +tenderness--forces nothing new upon them--is glad to see the +uninterrupted tenor of their humble happiness; and if they are proud of +him, which all the parish knows, so is there not a child within its +bounds that does not know that Mr Airlie, the rich gentleman from India, +loves his poor father and mother as tenderly as if he had never left +their roof; and is prouder of them, too, than if they were clothed in +fine raiment, and fared sumptuously every day. Mr Airlie of the Mount +has his own seat in the gallery of the Kirk--his father, as an Elder, +sits below the pulpit--but occasionally the pious and proud son joins +his mother in the pew, where he and his brothers sat long ago; and every +Sabbath one or other of his children takes its place beside the +venerated matron. The old man generally leaves the churchyard leaning on +his Gilbert's arm--and although the sight has long been so common as to +draw no attention, yet no doubt there is always an under and unconscious +pleasure in many a mind witnessing the sacredness of the bond of blood. +Now and then the old matron is prevailed upon, when the weather is bad +and roads miry, to take a seat home in the carriage--but the Elder +always prefers walking thither with his son, and he is stout and hale, +although upwards of threescore and ten years. + +Walter, the second son, is now a captain in the navy, having served for +years before the mast. His mind is in his profession, and he is +perpetually complaining of being unemployed--a ship--a ship, is still +the burden of his song. But when at home--which he often is for weeks +together--he attaches himself to all the ongoings of rural life, as +devotedly as if a plougher of the soil instead of the sea. His mother +wonders, with tears in her eyes, why, having a competency, he should +still wish to provoke the dangers of the deep; and beseeches him +sometimes to become a farmer in his native vale. And perhaps more +improbable things have happened; for the captain, it is said, has fallen +desperately in love with the daughter of the clergyman of a neighbouring +parish, and the doctor will not give his consent to the marriage, unless +he promise to live, if allowed, on shore. The political state of Europe +certainly seems at present favourable to the consummation of the wishes +of all parties. + +Of David, the third son, who has not heard, that has heard anything of +the pulpit eloquence of Scotland?--Should his life be spared, there can +be no doubt that he will one day or other be Moderator of the General +Assembly, perhaps Professor of Divinity in a College. Be that as it may, +a better Christian never expounded the truths of the gospel, although +some folks pretend to say that he is not evangelical. He is, however, +beloved by the poor--the orphan and the widow; and his ministrations, +powerful in the kirk to a devoutly listening congregation, are so too at +the sick-bed, when only two or three are gathered around it, and when +the dying man feels how a fellow-creature can, by scriptural aids, +strengthen his trust in the mercy of his Maker. + +Every year, on the birthday of each of their sons, the old people hold a +festival--in May, in August, and at Christmas. The sailor alone looks +disconsolate as a bachelor, but that reproach will be wiped away before +autumn; and should God grant the cottagers a few more years, some new +faces will yet smile upon the holidays; and there is in their unwithered +hearts warm love enough for all that may join the party. We too--yes, +gentle reader--we too shall be there--as we have often been during the +last ten years--and you yourself will judge, from all you know of us, +whether or no we have a heart to understand and enjoy such rare +felicity. + +But let us be off to the mountains, and endeavour to interest our +beloved reader in a Highland Cottage--in any one, taken at hap-hazard, +from a hundred. You have been roaming all day among the mountains, and +perhaps seen no house except at a dwindling distance. Probably you have +wished not to see any house, but a ruined shieling--a deserted hut--or +an unroofed and dilapidated shed for the outlying cattle of some remote +farm. But now the sun has inflamed all the western heaven, and darkness +will soon descend. There is now a muteness more stern and solemn than +during unfaded daylight. List--the faint, far-off, subterranean sound of +the bagpipe! Some old soldier, probably, playing a gathering or a +coronach. The narrow dell widens and widens into a great glen, in which +you just discern the blue gleam of a loch. The martial music is more +distinctly heard--loud, fitful, fierce, like the trampling of men in +battle. Where is the piper? In a cave, or within the Fairies' Knowe? At +the door of a hut. His eyes were extinguished by ophthalmia, and there +he sits, fronting the sunlight, stone-blind. Long silver hair flows down +his broad shoulders, and you perceive that, when he rises, he will rear +up a stately bulk. The music stops, and you hear the bleating of goats. +There they come, prancing down the rocks, and stare upon the stranger. +The old soldier turns himself towards the voice of the Sassenach, and, +with the bold courtesy of the camp, bids him enter the hut. One +minute's view has sufficed to imprint the scene for ever on the +memory--a hut whose turf walls and roof are incorporated with the living +mountain, and seem not the work of man's hand, but the casual +architecture of some convulsion--the tumbling down of fragments from the +mountain-side by raging torrents, or a partial earthquake; for all the +scenery about is torn to pieces--like the scattering of some wide ruin. +The imagination dreams of the earliest days of our race, when men +harboured, like the other creatures, in places provided by nature. But +even here, there are visible traces of cultivation working in the spirit +of a mountainous region--a few glades of the purest verdure opened out +among the tall brackens, with a birch-tree or two dropped just where the +eye of taste could have wished, had the painter planted the sapling, +instead of the winds of heaven having wafted thither the seed--a small +croft of barley, surrounded by a cairn-like wall made up of stones +cleared from the soil, and a patch of potato ground, neat almost as the +garden that shows in a nook its fruit-bushes and a few flowers. All the +blasts that ever blew must be unavailing against the briery rock that +shelters the hut from the airt of storms; and the smoke may rise under +its lee, unwavering on the windiest day. There is sweetness in all the +air, and the glen is noiseless, except with the uncertain murmur of the +now unswollen waterfalls. That is the croak of the raven sitting on his +cliff half-way up Ben-Oura; and hark, the last belling of the red-deer, +as the herd lies down in the mist among the last ridge of heather, +blending with the shrubless stones, rocks, and cliffs that girdle the +upper regions of the vast mountain. + +Within the dimness of the hut you hear greetings in the Gaelic tongue, +in a female voice; and when the eye has by-and-by become able to endure +the smoke, it discerns the household--the veteran's ancient dame--a +young man that may be his son, or rather his grandson, but whom you soon +know to be neither, with black matted locks, the keen eye, and the light +limbs of the hunter--a young woman, his wife, suckling a child, and yet +with a girlish look, as if but one year before her silken snood had been +untied--and a lassie of ten years, who had brought home the goats, and +now sits timidly in a nook eyeing the stranger. The low growl of the +huge brindled stag-hound had been hushed by a word on your first +entrance, and the noble animal watches his master's eye, which he obeys +in his freedom throughout all the forest-chase. A napkin is taken out of +an old worm-eaten chest, and spread over a strangely-carved table, that +seems to have belonged once to a place of pride; and the hungry and +thirsty stranger scarcely knows which most to admire, the broad bannocks +of barley-meal and the huge roll of butter, or the giant bottle, whose +mouth exhales the strong savour of conquering Glenlivet. The board is +spread--why not fall to and eat? First be thanks given to the Lord God +Almighty. The blind man holds up his hand and prays in a low chanting +voice, and then breaks bread for the lips of the stranger. On such an +occasion is felt the sanctity of the meal shared by human beings brought +accidentally together--the salt is sacred--and the hearth an altar. + +No great travellers are we, yet have we seen something of this habitable +globe. The Highlands of Scotland is but a small region, nor is its +interior by any means so remote as the interior of Africa. Yet 'tis +remote. The life of that very blind veteran might, in better hands than +ours, make an interesting history. In his youth he had been a +shepherd--a herdsman--a hunter--something even of a poet. For thirty +years he had been a soldier--in many climates and many conflicts. Since +first he bloodied his bayonet, how many of his comrades had been buried +in heaps! Flung into trenches dug on the field of battle! How many +famous captains had shone in the blaze of their fame--faded into the +light of common day--died in obscurity, and been utterly forgotten! What +fierce passions must have agitated the frame of that now calm old man! +On what dreadful scenes, when forts and towns were taken by storm, must +those eyes, now withered into nothing, have glared with all the fury of +man's most wrathful soul! Now peace is with him for evermore. Nothing to +speak of the din of battle, but his own pipes wailing or raging among +the hollow of the mountains. In relation to his campaigning career, his +present life is as the life of another state. The pageantry of war has +all rolled off and away for ever; all its actions but phantoms now of a +dimly-remembered dream. He thinks of his former self, as sergeant in the +Black Watch, and almost imagines he beholds another man. In his long, +long blindness, he has created another world to himself out of new +voices--the voices of new generations, and of torrents thundering all +year long round about his hut. Almost all the savage has been tamed +within him, and an awful religion falls deeper and deeper upon him, as +he knows how he is nearing the grave. Often his whole mind is dim, for +he is exceedingly old, and then he sees only fragments of his youthful +life--the last forty years are as if they had never been--and he hears +shouts and huzzas, that half a century ago rent the air with victory. He +can still chant, in a hoarse broken voice, battle-hymns and dirges; and +thus, strangely forgetful and strangely tenacious of the past, linked to +this life by ties that only the mountaineer can know, and yet feeling +himself on the brink of the next, Old Blind Donald Roy, the Giant of the +Hut of the Three Torrents, will not scruple to quaff the "strong +waters," till his mind is awakened--brightened--dimmed--darkened--and +seemingly extinguished--till the sunrise again smites him, as he lies in +a heap among the heather; and then he lifts up, unashamed and +remorseless, that head, which, with its long quiet hairs, a painter +might choose for the image of a saint about to become a martyr. + +We leave old Donald asleep, and go with his son-in-law, Lewis of the +light-foot, and Maida the stag-hound, surnamed the Throttler, + + "Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod, + To his hills that encircle the sea." + +We have been ascending mountain-range after mountain-range, before +sunrise; and lo! night is gone, and nature rejoices in the day through +all her solitudes. Still as death, yet as life cheerful--and unspeakable +grandeur in the sudden revelation. Where is the wild-deer herd?--where, +ask the keen eyes of Maida, is the forest of antlers!--Lewis of the +light-foot bounds before, with his long gun pointing towards the mists +now gathered up to the summits of Benevis. + +Nightfall--and we are once more at the Hut of the Three Torrents. Small +Amy is grown familiar now, and, almost without being asked, sings us the +choicest of her Gaelic airs--a few too of Lowland melody: all merry, yet +all sad--if in smiles begun, ending in a shower--or at least a tender +mist of tears. Heardst thou ever such a syren as this Celtic child? Did +we not always tell you that fairies were indeed realities of the +twilight or moonlight world? And she is their Queen. Hark! what thunders +of applause! The waterfall at the head of the great Corrie thunders +_encore_ with a hundred echoes. But the songs are over, and the small +singer gone to her heather-bed. There is a Highland moon!--The shield of +an unfallen archangel. There are not many stars--but those two--ay, that +One, is sufficient to sustain the glory of the night. Be not alarmed at +that low, wide, solemn, and melancholy sound. Runlets, torrents, rivers, +lochs, and seas--reeds, heather, forests, caves, and cliffs, all are +sound, sounding together a choral anthem. + +Gracious heavens! what mistakes people have fallen into when writing +about Solitude! A man leaves a town for a few months, and goes with his +wife and family, and a travelling library, into some solitary glen. +Friends are perpetually visiting him from afar, or the neighbouring +gentry leaving their cards, while his servant-boy rides daily to the +post-village for his letters and newspapers. And call you that solitude? +The whole world is with you, morning, noon, and night. But go by +yourself, without book or friend, and live a month in this hut at the +head of Glenevis. Go at dawn among the cliffs of yonder pine-forest, and +wait there till night hangs her moon-lamp in heaven. Commune with your +own soul, and be still. Let the images of departed years rise, +phantom-like, of their own awful accord from the darkness of your +memory, and pass away into the wood-gloom or the mountain-mist. Will +conscience dread such spectres? Will you quake before them, and bow down +your head on the mossy root of some old oak, and sob in the stern +silence of the haunted place? Thoughts, feelings, passions, spectral +deeds, will come rushing around your lair, as with the sound of the +wings of innumerous birds--ay, many of them, like birds of prey, to gnaw +your very heart. How many duties undischarged! How many opportunities +neglected! How many pleasures devoured! How many sins hugged! How many +wickednesses perpetrated! The desert looks more grim--the heaven +lowers--and the sun, like God's own eye, stares in upon your conscience! + +But such is not the solitude of our beautiful young shepherd-girl of the +Hut of the Three Torrents. Her soul is as clear, as calm as the pool +pictured at times by the floating clouds that let fall their shadows +through among the overhanging birch-trees. What harm could she ever do? +What harm could she ever think? She may have wept--for there is sorrow +without sin; may have wept even at her prayers--for there is penitence +free from guilt, and innocence itself often kneels in contrition. Down +the long glen she accompanies the stream to the house of God--sings her +psalms--and returns wearied to her heather-bed. She is, indeed, a +solitary child; the eagle, and the raven, and the red-deer see that she +is so--and echo knows it when from her airy cliff she repeats the happy +creature's song. Her world is within this one glen. In this one glen she +may live all her days--be wooed, won, wedded, buried. Buried--said we? +Oh, why think of burial when gazing on that resplendent head? +Interminable tracts of the shining day await her, the lonely darling of +nature; nor dare Time ever eclipse the lustre of those wild-beaming +eyes! Her beauty shall be immortal, like that of her country's fairies. +So, Flower of the Wilderness, we wave towards thee a joyful--though an +everlasting farewell. + +Where are we now? There is not on this round green earth a lovelier Loch +than Achray. About a mile above Loch Vennachar, and as we approach the +Brigg of Turk, we arrive at the summit of an eminence, whence we descry +the sudden and wide prospect of the windings of the river that issues +from Loch Achray--and the Loch itself reposing--sleeping--dreaming on +its pastoral, its sylvan bed. Achray, being interpreted, signifies the +"Level Field," and gives its name to a delightful farm at the west end. +On "that happy, rural seat of various view," could we lie all day long; +and as all the beauty tends towards the west, each afternoon hour +deepens and also brightens it into mellower splendour. Not to keep +constantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed impossible--yet its still +waters soothe the soul, without holding it away from the woods and +cliffs, that, forming of themselves a perfect picture, are yet all +united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years +have elapsed--at our time of life ten are many--since we passed one +delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden +bridge over the Teith, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness +of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large +enough for a fairy's kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of +Roes--nor need the angler try to penetrate the underwood; for every +shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the +living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the checkered waters. +Safe there are all the little singing-birds from hawk or gled--and it is +indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the +natural woods--and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in +beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his +own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings. + +But let us rise from the greensward, and before we pace along the sweet +shores of Loch Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more than a mile +off, turn away up from the Brigg of Turk into Glenfinlas. A strong +mountain-torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul of Salvator +Rosa, might find studies inexhaustible for years, tumbles on the left of +a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a +numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence, +freshening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual +spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as +you advance, and you come out of that sylvan prison into a plain of +meadows and cornfields, alive with the peaceful dwellings of industrious +men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are +without heather--a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of +brackens, and a little sheep-sheltering grove. Skeletons of old trees of +prodigious size lie covered with mosses and wildflowers, or stand with +their barkless trunks and white limbs unmoved when the tempest blows. +Glenfinlas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but +hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi. + +A more beautiful vale never inspired pastoral poet in Arcadia, nor did +Sicilian shepherds of old ever pipe to each other for prize of oaten +reed, in a lovelier nook than where yonder cottage stands, shaded, but +scarcely sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth not a +cottage--but a very SHIELING, part of the knoll adhering to the side of +the mountain. Not another dwelling--even as small as itself--within a +mile in any direction. Those goats, that seem to walk where there is no +footing along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to be milked at +evening to a house beyond the hill, without any barking dog to set them +home. There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, except one leading +through the coppice-wood to the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs +those shallows, and the heron has them to himself, watching often with +motionless neck all day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and has +been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it +for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a +little smoke hovers over it--very faint if it be smoke at all--and +nothing else tells that within is life. + +It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and +lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir +with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature, +without any extraordinary bereavements, she outlived all the household, +except one, on whom fell the saddest affliction that can befall a human +being--the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her +husband, and all her other children, this son was her support; and there +was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her +natural cheerfulness never forsook her; and although fallen back in the +world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had +known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the widow +and her son were in that shieling as happy as any family in the parish. +He worked at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinning from +morning to night within--a constant occupation, soothing to one before +whose mind past times might otherwise have come too often, and that +creates contentment by its undisturbed sameness and invisible +progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour +or two every night, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept, +too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains +were on--for then he found some ingenious employment within the +shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the +lively or plaintive music of his native hills. Sometimes, in her +gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many +other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in +upon her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more than resignation; nor +was she averse to partake the sociality of the other huts, and sat +sedate among youthful merriment, when summer or winter festival came +round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence. + +But her trials, great as they had been, were not yet over; for this her +only son was laid prostrate by fever--and, when it left his body, he +survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and +intelligent, were now fixed in idiocy, or rolled about unobservant of +all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if +suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of understanding, +in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces +from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech, +all but a moaning as of pain or woe, which none but a mother could bear +to hear without shuddering--but she heard it during night as well as +day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer +was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of; +but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would +enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the +shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so +decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of +which the poor object himself was insensible and unconscious. +Henceforth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard +the torrents roar. She went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath where +the paralytic lay--and there she sung the lonely psalm, and said the +lonely prayer, unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits would have +thought--but it was not so; for in two years there came a meaning to his +eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that +of "Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face +was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see +the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep! Day +after day, the darkness that covered his brain grew less and less +deep--to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son +now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly +and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered +only events and scenes long past and distant--and believed that his +father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon +them by their names to come and kiss him--on them, who had all long been +buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and +remembrance--and he at last said, "Mother! did some accident befall me +yesterday at my work down the glen?--I feel weak, and about to die!" The +shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of +what had happened--and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the +mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been +granted in that one boon--and, when the coffin was borne away from the +shieling, she remained in it with a friend, assured that in this world +there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, +now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she +wishes by her poor neighbours--for to the poor sorrow is a sacred +thing--who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and +cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be +laid down without one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a +Christian's faith. + +The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who +among all the Highland maidens that danced on the greenswards among the +blooming heather on the mountains of Glenetive--who so fair as Flora, +the only daughter of the King's Forester, and grandchild to the Bard +famous for his songs of Fairies in the Hill of Peace, and the +Mermaid-Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far down beneath the +foam-waves of the sea? And who, among all the Highland youth that went +abroad to the bloody wars from the base of Benevis, to compare with +Ranald of the Red-Cliff, whose sires had been soldiers for centuries, in +the days of the dagger and Lochaber axe--stately in his strength amid +the battle as the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the birch-tree, +that whispers with all its leaves to the slightest summer-breath? If +their love was great when often fed at the light of each other's eyes, +what was it when Ranald was far off among the sands of Egypt, and Flora +left an orphan to pine away in her native glen? Beneath the shadow of +the Pyramids he dreamt of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the +dwelling of his love--and she, as she stood by the murmurs of that +sea-loch, longed for the wings of the osprey, that she might flee away +to the war-tents beyond the ocean, and be at rest! + +But years--a few years--long and lingering as they might seem to loving +hearts separated by the roar of seas--yet all too too short when 'tis +thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave--brought +Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas! for the poor +soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed +the trickling tears. Like many another gallant youth, he had lost his +eyesight from the sharp burning sand--and was led to the shieling of his +love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did +his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affecting on the calm +countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak--and his sighs were +deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow +ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in remorse over +some secret crime? + +Happy--completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a +sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside +the bed of one whose hair was getting fast grey, long before its time. +Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to +other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no +hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been +betrothed almost from their childhood, and would she--if he desired +it--fear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever, +in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty +required that the words should come; nor could she sometimes help +wondering, in half-upbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great +affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure--yet not +so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her +native Highlands, were there not worthy families far poorer than they? +But weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald remained in a neighbouring hut, +shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he thought none +were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering +to himself lamentable words--and, blind as his eyes were to all the +objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he +saw visions of woeful events about to befall one whom he loved. + +One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his +sleep--but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake--to the +hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to +speak a few words with him ere he died. They sat down together among the +heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the +morning he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart died within her, +when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had +suffered, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by +in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die. + +And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the bravest of the brave, that thus +shuddered in the fear of death like a felon at the tolling of the great +prison-bell? Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly +superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body +with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and +night the same vision yawned before him--an open grave in the corner of +the hill burial-ground without any kirk. + +Flora knew that his days were indeed numbered; for when had he ever been +afraid of death--and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere +common dream? Soon was she to be all alone in this world; yet when +Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and +there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be +buried in one grave. + +Such were her words to the dying man; and all at once he took her in his +arms, and asked her "If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole +nature seemed to undergo a change under the calm voice of her reply; and +he said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom?" +"Blessed will they be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my +wife--for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in +heaven--thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was +a gentle and gracious summer night--so clear, that the shepherds on the +hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there at +earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among +the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to +heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world. + + + + +AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. + + +Ours is a poetical age; but has it produced one Great Poem? Not one. + +Just look at them for a moment. There is "The Pleasures of Memory"--an +elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does +one's eyes good to gaze on--one's ears good to listen to--one's very +fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove +paper. Never will "The Pleasures of Memory" be forgotten till the world +is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem? About as much so as an +ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple +with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection--in the +shape of a cone--and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a +sky-piercer. You take it at a hop--and pursue your journey. Yet it +endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs and the sunshine, love +the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and +delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature. + +Then there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If +so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most +skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with +the materials of human life--homespun indeed; but though often coarse, +always strong--and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently +exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay--hold up the product +of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers +like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems +to be but of the "hodden grey;" when sunbeam or shadow smites it, and +lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger +ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St Paul's. + +Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No +wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they possess the +sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of +melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys +that are past"--is the text we should choose were we about to preach on +his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit now +breathe over the still receding Past. But time-sanctified are all the +shows that arise before his pensive imagination; and the common light of +day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying +sunset or moonlight, or the new-born dawn. His human sensibilities are +so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so +delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have been dear to +poets--having in them "more than meets the ear"--spiritual breathings +that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, +too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the +"faculty divine," have yet the "vision"--that is, the power of seeing +and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, +bringing them from afar out of the dust and dimness of evanishment. + +Mr Bowles has been a poet for good fifty years; and if his genius do not +burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone--yet we do not say +there is any abatement even of its brightness: it shines with a mellower +and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too +pensive--too melancholy--too pathetic--too woe-begone--in too great +bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sang with a thorn at his +breast--from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by +perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather monotonous, his strains were most +musical as well as melancholy; feeling was often relieved by fancy; and +one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of +moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of +dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Romance." A fine +enthusiasm too was his--in those youthful years--inspired by the poetry +of Greece and Rome; and in some of his happiest inspirations there was a +delightful and original union--to be found nowhere else that we can +remember--of the spirit of that ancient song,--the pure classical +spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus, with that +of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the "clear well of +English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but +his was no affected or pedantic scholarship--intrusive most when least +required; but the growth of a consummate classical education, of which +the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a +pupil of the Wartons--Joe and Tom--God bless their souls!--and his name +may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs--and with Mason's, and +Gray's, and Collins'--academics all; the works of them all showing a +delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own +English nature. Bowles's muse is always loth to forget--wherever she +roam or linger--Winchester and Oxford--the Itchin and the Isis. None +educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, +who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, +and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons +are those alone who pursued their poetical studies--in translations. +They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire. + +But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If he has, publish it, and we shall +make him a Bishop. + +What shall we say of "The Pleasures of Hope?" That the harp from which +that music breathed, was an Ęolian harp placed in the window of a high +hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might +be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a +magnificent aurora-borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic +march--now it swells into a holy hymn--and now it dies away +elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, +dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever +and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night--and +we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so?--In his youth Campbell +lived where "distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and +sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool--the sound as of the wheels +of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam +along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that +unaccountable county Argyllshire. The sea-roar cultivated his naturally +fine musical ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime +Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailors' sweethearts on +the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down +comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells beneath their +footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her +as if she were our own only daughter--filling our life with bliss, and +then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through +those giant woods! As for "Lochiel's Warning," there was heard the voice +of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the +Highland glooms--the Lament wails no more, + + "That man may not hide what God would reveal!" + +The Navy owes much to "Ye Mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed +ships till that strain arose--but ever since in our imagination have +they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that +Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yes--in the face even of the +Metropolitan! + +It was said many long years ago in the _Edinburgh Review_, that none but +maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery +was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner--and Christopher North a +sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he +assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we +always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in +his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are +the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled--and these +qualities shine serenely in "The Pelican Island." In earnestness and +fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in +sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it +moulder--not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so +rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a +fair form laid asleep in immortality--its face wearing, day and night, +summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly--a celestial +smile. That is a true image; but is "The Pelican Island" a Great Poem? +We pause not for a reply. + +Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches--and one of them, +"beautiful exceedingly" withbud, blossom, and fruit of balm and +brightness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, +hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is calm, and +ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the +sunshine, and glows wavingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the +loftiest region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, +perhaps foolish form of expression, employed at present to signify +Song-writing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever warbled, or +chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than +Thomas Moore. True that Robert Burns has indited many songs that slip +into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers +sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect +contentment. Or let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like +listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake, a laverock +in the sky. They sing in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches +them--and so did he; and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not +with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be +in Heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources +of Lyrical Poetry--when he was born a Scottish peasant. Now, Moore is an +Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and +translated--after a fashion--Anacreon. And Moore has lived much in towns +and cities--and in that society which will suffer none else to be called +good. Some advantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did--but then how +many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, +in the bondage of his poverty, was free! You see all that at a single +glance in their poetry. But all in humble life is not high--all in high +life is not low; and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in +hall--in "auld clay-bigging" as in marble palace. Burns sometimes wrote +like a mere boor--Moore has too often written like a mere man of +fashion. But take them both at their best--and both are inimitable. Both +are national poets--and who shall say, that if Moore had been born and +bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of +knowledge, and virtue, and religion as Scotland is--and surely, without +offence, we may say that it never was, and never will be--though we love +the Green Island well--that with his fine fancy, warm heart, and +exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as +Burns; while, take him as he is, who can deny that in richness, in +variety, in grace, and in the power of art, he is superior to the +ploughman. Of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Loves of the Angels," we defy you +to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is +easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a +Great Poem? + +Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here +is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his +profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the +Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. +Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, +moon, and stars, but + + "To murmur by the living brooks + A music sweeter than their own." + +What has been the result? Seven volumes (oh! why not seven more?) of +poetry, as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The +earth--the middle air--the sky--the heaven--the heart, mind, and soul of +man--are "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external +nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth--not even +Thomson; in imbuing her and making her pregnant with spiritualities, +till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she +had ever rejoiced in till such communion--he excels all the brotherhood. +Therein lies his especial glory, and therein the immortal evidences of +the might of his creative imagination. All men at times "muse on nature +with a poet's eye,"--but Wordsworth ever--and his soul has grown more +and more religious from such worship. Every rock is an altar--every +grove a shrine. We fear that there will be sectarians even in this +Natural Religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of +Nature--or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest +"in the metropolitan temple built in the heart of mighty poets." But has +he--even he--ever written a Great Poem? If he has--it is not "The +Excursion." Nay, "The Excursion" is not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, +all swimming in the light of poetry; some of them sweet and simple, some +elegant and graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some of "strength +and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it +has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by +the numerals on the page; and the most, serious apprehensions have been +very generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and +Solitary breathe the vital air, may "The Excursion," stop where it will, +be renewed; and as in its present shape it comprehends but a Three Days' +Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion of three weeks, three months, +or three years, to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life of man is +not always limited to the term of threescore and ten years. What a +Journal might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land +overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, +not a Great Poem--nay, not a Poem at all--nor ever to be so esteemed, +till the principles on which Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are +exploded, and the very names of Art and Science smothered and lost in +the bosom of Nature from which they arose. + +Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and +hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and subjected +for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's +monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren +wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather +feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the +sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight +with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of +flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the +daytime--and people are often ignorant of his place in the firmament. +But he keeps shining away at his leisure, as you would know were he to +suffer eclipse. Perhaps he--the sun--is at no other time a more +delightful luminary than when he is pleased to dispense his influence +through a general haze, or mist--softening all the day till meridian is +almost like the afternoon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, bursts +into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too +become him well--whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all +round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of +temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is it reasonable to find +fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on +the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on +setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles +Coleridge. It is easy to talk--not very difficult to speechify--hard to +speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal +man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world +loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam +and Eve listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the Garden of +Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for a while, +than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stilly sound." +Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too +curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole +just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not + + "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." + +Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagination another--but there +cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most +cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a +divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as +one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honeymoon. Then +his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the +Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows +nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey +Davy--and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leibnitz and +Newton, though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. Besides, he +thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, +in a twinkling--and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows +you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, +till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of +fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the +faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their +functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may +dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent +enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but +think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of +this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in +sweet delirium you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that +has fed since first it lisped on "honey-dew," and by lips that have +"breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic language, which, +all the while that it is English, is as grand as Greek and as soft as +Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is the alchymist that in his +crucible melts down hours to moments--and lo! diamonds sprinkled on a +plate of gold. + +What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like +Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything +else in a style of equal perfection! But pray, how does the man write +poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from +his inspired lips? Read "The Ancient Mariner," "The Nightingale," and +"Genevieve." In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the +sea--in the second, you thrill with the melodies of the woods--in the +third, earth is like heaven;--for you are made to feel that + + "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame!" + +Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem? No; for besides the +Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to +which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But +why should he who loveth to take "the wings of a dove that he may flee +away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at +rest--why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above +this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder? + +Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the +Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into +one class himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that +not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he +elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the +Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest +compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not +to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family +likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less +than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen +miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphilosophical though pensive +Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even +were there no other less patent and material than the Macadamised +turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our +living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of +them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the +different characters, customs, and manners of nations. "Joan of Arc" is +an English and French story--"Thalaba," Arabian--"Kehama," +Indian--"Madoc," Welsh and American--and "Roderick," Spanish and +Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was +a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr Southey has most +successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any +but the highest genius. In "Madoc," and especially in "Roderick," he has +relied on the truth of nature--as it is seen in the history of great +national transactions and events. In "Thalaba" and in "Kehama," though +in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he +follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of +wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power +in such different kinds of Poetry--in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a +Magician. + +It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge +gathered from books--and that we have but to look at the multifarious +accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are +not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there--often the raw +materials--seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into +beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own--and has +shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor +Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travellers. But had he not been a +Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen + + "The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste," + +where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent + + "How happily the years of Thalaba went by!" + +In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the +Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's +Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine +City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial +thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of +Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his Five +Chief Works--with the exception of "Joan of Arc," which was written in +very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthusiasm. +They are one and all National Poems--wonderfully true to the customs and +characters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the +scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises--and the Poet has +entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each +representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab--Madoc a true +Briton--King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a +personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter +confined himself in his poetry to Scotland--except in "Rokeby"--and his +might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and +romances he was at home when abroad--and nowhere else more gloriously +than with Saladin in the Desert. "Lalla Rookh" is full of brilliant +poetry; and one of the series--the "Fire-Worshippers"--is Moore's +highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental--and often in +pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the +East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one +of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is +more potent--and he was privileged to exclaim-- + + "Come, listen to a tale of times of old! + Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed + Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. + Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear + How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread + The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path, + And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew + The bloody altars of idolatry, + And planted on its fanes triumphantly + The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay." + +Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original; +in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of +original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest +and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for +ever from oblivion, embalming them in the spirit of delight and of love. +Fairy Tales, or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the +holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but "Thalaba" and "Kehama" do +so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most +wonderful and wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and talismans +that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest are +ever felt to be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic +affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is +Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether +matron or maid, mother or daughter--in joy or sorrow--as they appear +before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope +and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their +path! We feel, in perusing such pictures--"Purity! thy name is woman!" +and are not these Great Poems? We are silent. But should you answer +"yes," from us in our present mood you shall receive no contradiction. + +The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as +delightful from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the poets of the day +have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national +characters, and events, and actions, and catastrophes. Southey has +heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his +power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal +triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel--and as +long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, +with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy +verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already +often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his +patriotism in his politics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten +her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed +again--it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the +brightest--and the past became the present. We know now the character of +our own people as it showed itself in war and peace--in palace, castle, +hall, hut, hovel, and shieling--through centuries of advancing +civilisation, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld +Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her +inhabitants to call her the Modern Athens. This he has effected by means +of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty +characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or +herself, but the representative--so we offer to prove if you be +sceptical--of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the +Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gypsy, from the Bruce to +the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennison. We shall never say +that Scott is Shakespeare: but we shall say that he has conceived and +created--you know the meaning of these words--as many characters--real +living flesh-and-blood human beings--naturally, truly, and consistently, +as Shakespeare; who, always transcendently great in pictures of the +passions--out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all +rational being--was--nay, do not threaten to murder us--not seldom an +imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir +Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he +had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life--he and Burns +together--and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the +Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while--and shared in the general +and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to +him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing--though more +for Scotland than any other of her poets, except the Ploughman--and that +it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. +Hence the Prose Tales--Novels--and Romances--fresh floods of light +pouring all over Scotland--and occasionally illumining England, France, +and Germany, and even Palestine--whatever land had been ennobled by +Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue. + +Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general, +indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing +centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, +"'mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that +difficultly-distinguished and very debatable district called the +Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining-rod, and the +turf streamed out ghosts--some in woodmen's dresses--most in warrior's +mail: green archers leaped forth with yew-bow and quivers--and giants +stalked shaking spears. The grey chronicler smiled; and, taking up his +pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic +days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew +the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres--not they +indeed--nor phantoms of the brain--but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad +and glorious;--base-born cottage churls of the olden time, because +Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to +its pride did the high-born lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir +Walter is, that he has _harried_ all Scotland. Never was there such a +freebooter. He harries all men's cattle--kills themselves off-hand, and +makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated +all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with +their islands distinct by midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow +gloriously in the gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even see ships, +with all sails set, far at sea. His favourite themes in prose or +numerous verse are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," and their +Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish--of kings that fought for fame or +freedom--of fatal Flodden and bright Bannockburn--of the DELIVERER. If +that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtęus not +sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, +then, be cognomed by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the North--we +shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter. + +Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question--has he ever +written a Great Poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not; +for he has done this--he has exhibited human life in a greater variety +of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose +name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we +tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest +genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr Faustus. + +"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes--beyond compare. Byron +had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as +they are, occasionally standing prominently and boldly out from the flat +surface of this world; and in general, when his soul was up, he +described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external +world--of nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In +his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do +not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of "Childe +Harold" he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her +shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmness; but simply stating a fact. +He had something else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a +poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his +dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains. +Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a +cento--his model being Wordsworth. His merit, whatever it may be, is +limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is +not merely occasional or verbal; but all the descriptions are conceived +in the spirit of Wordsworth, coloured by it and shaped--from it they +live, and breathe, and have their being; and that so entirely, that had +"The Excursion" and "Lyrical Ballads" never been, neither had any +composition at all resembling, either in conception or execution, the +third canto of "Childe Harold." His soul, however, having been awakened +by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, +nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much fine description +pervades most of his subsequent works. He afterwards made much of what +he saw his own--and even described it after his own fashion; but a +greater in that domain was his instructor and guide--nor in his noblest +efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages, +which he had manifestly set as models before his imagination. With all +the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like +a poet of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of +them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that +burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canto, which is worth, ten +times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; +never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to +soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his +flight--that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently +cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of +perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate +excellence, they are found woefully wanting in the true fire. Many +passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in +thinking--at first--but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend, +not Mr Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True, +they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done +that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had +they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty +well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better +than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most +certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself +pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, +stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must +have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches +fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, +who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe +Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above +mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in +execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his +tales--the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of +Corinth," and so forth--they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate +performances--sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but +displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly +no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a +supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his +smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every +kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect. + +But there is another glory belonging to this age, and almost to this age +alone of our poetry--the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen +it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men; as if there +could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by sex, that they are +infinitely superior; not in understanding, thank Heaven, nor in +intellect, but in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify +and adorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this +delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worthless wretches, +that we wonder how women condescend to allow the world to be carried +on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of +maternal affection, which breathes as strongly in maid as in matron, and +may be beautifully seen in the child fondling its doll in its blissful +bosom. Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that interesting +speculation, suffice it for the present to say, that so far from having +no souls--a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies--women +are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they +alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception +and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetry. We--men we +mean--may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be +inspired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we sometimes--often--are truly so +inspired, and write like gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in +them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all +male rational creatures are, in the long run, vile, corrupt, and +polluted; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the +arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that +was ever iniquitously hanged for murdering what was called her poor +husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind +is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster--so is every +Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father +O'Leary to Dr Doyle. Confessions, indeed! Why, had Joseph himself +confessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's wife, she would +have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous +indignation, and so far from tearing off his garment, would not have +touched it for the whole world. But all women--till men by marriage, or +by something, if that be possible, worse even than marriage, try in vain +to reduce them nearly to their own level--are pure as dewdrops or +moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures +it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image +forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its +glory; and hence, when they write poetry, it is religious, sweet, soft, +solemn, and divine. + +Observe, however--to prevent all mistakes--that we speak but of British +women--and of British women of the present age. Of the German Fair Sex +we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouqué +is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any +allusion to Madame Genlis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French +school, who charitably adopted their own natural daughters, while other +less pious ladies, who had become mothers without being wives, sent +theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and +Matrons of this Island--and of this Age; and as it is of poetical genius +that we speak--we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia +Hemans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the +Lovely Norton; while we pronounce several other sweet-sounding Christian +surnames in whispering under-tones of affection, almost as inaudible as +the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening. + +Corinna and Sappho must have been women of transcendant genius so to +move Greece. For though the Greek character was most impressible and +combustible, it was so only to the finest finger and fire. In that +delightful land dunces were all dumb. Where genius alone spoke and sung +poetry, how hard to excel! Corinna and Sappho did excel--the one, it is +said, conquering Pindar--and the other all the world but Phaon. + +But our own Joanna has been visited with a still loftier inspiration. +She has created tragedies which Sophocles--or Euripides--nay, even +Ęschylus himself, might have feared, in competition for the crown. She +is our Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and +Sir Walter truly said--let them who dare deny it--that he saw her Genius +in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna +loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the +tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, passed +among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of +the dark Strathaven Muirs. + +Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" said one philosophical writer. +"This will never do!" It has done--perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of +all tragedy? The Stagyrite has told us--to purify the passions by pity +and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul--till its atmosphere is +like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on +the Passions. And all that Joanna intended--and it was a great intention +greatly effected--was in her Series of Dramas to steady her purposes by +ever keeping one great end in view, of which the perpetual perception +could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic. +One passion was, therefore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each +glorious tragedy--sovereign sometimes by divine right--sometimes an +usurper--generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of +Hate. But in his sister--the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light +sometimes opposed in sublime contrast--and sometimes the light +swallowing up the darkness--or "smoothing its raven down till it +smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave--for the light, +unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count +Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different +the love Basil feels for Victoria from Antony's for Cleopatra! Pure, +deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to +shame, destruction, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up +to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of +glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by +many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, +sometimes a dreadful brotherhood? + +Do you wonder how one mind can have such vivid consciousness of the +feelings of another, while their characters are cast in such different +moulds? It is, indeed, wonderful--but the power is that of sympathy and +genius. The dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all living +things, and whose overflowing tenderness diffuses itself over the beauty +even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his creative hand the +steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood--the lust of crime in +a mind polluted with wickedness--the remorse of acts which could never +pass in thought through his imagination as his own. For, in the act of +imagination he can suppress in his mind its own peculiar feelings--its +good and gracious affections--call up from their hidden places those +elements of our being, of which the seeds were sown in him as in +all--give them unnatural magnitude and power--conceive the disorder of +passions, the perpetration of crimes, the tortures of remorse, or the +scorn of that human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and +blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into +an imaginary and momentary sympathy with the wicked, just as his mind +falls of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose +character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and +workings of his mind in the spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he +knows and understands for himself what passes in the minds of others. +What is done in the highest degree by the highest genius, is done by all +of ourselves in lesser degree, and unconsciously, at every moment in our +intercourse with one another. To this kind of sympathy, so essential to +our knowledge of the human mind, and without which there can be neither +poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a largeness of heart which +willingly yields itself to conceive the feelings and states of others +whose character is utterly unlike its own, and freedom from any +inordinate overpowering passion which quenches in the mind the feelings +of nature it has already known, and places it in habitual enmity to the +affections and happiness of its kind. To paint bad passions is not to +praise them; they alone can paint them well who hate, fear, or pity +them; and therefore Baillie has done so--nay start not--better than +Byron. + +Well may our land be proud of such women. None such ever before adorned +her poetical annals. Glance over that most interesting volume, +"Specimens of British Poetesses," by that amiable, ingenious, and +erudite man, the Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence begins to +break towards the close of the eighteenth century! For ages on ages the +genius of English women had ever and anon been shining forth in song; +but faint though fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisoned in +clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those days bring tears to our eyes +by their simple pathos--for their poetry breathes of their own sorrows, +and shows that they were but too familiar with grief. But their strains +are mere melodies "sweetly played in tune." The deeper harmonies of +poetry seem to have been beyond their reach. The range of their power +was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchilsea--Catherine Phillips, known by +the name of Orinda--and Mrs Anne Killigrew, who, as Dryden says, was +made an angel, "in the last promotion to the skies"--showed, as they +sang on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in heaven. But what +were their hymns to those that are now warbled around us from many +sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but brighter far in their +genius, and more fortunate in its nurture? Poetry from female lips was +then half a wonder, and half a reproach. But now 'tis no longer +rare--not even the highest--yes, the highest--for Innocence and Purity +are of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts and feelings they +inspire, though breathed in words and tones, "gentle and low, an +excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as +the flowers beneath our feet. + +We have not forgotten an order of poets, peculiar, we believe, to our +own enlightened land--a high order of poets sprung from the lower orders +of the people--and not only sprung from them, but bred as well as born +in "the huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their condition by the +light of song. Such glory belongs--we believe--exclusively to this +country and to this age. Mr Southey, who in his own high genius and fame +is never insensible to the virtues of his fellow-men, however humble and +obscure the sphere in which they may move, has sent forth a volume--and +a most interesting one--on the uneducated poets; nor shall we presume to +gainsay one of his benevolent words. But this we do say, that all the +verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all the verse-writers of the +same sort of whom he does not treat, that ever existed on the face of +the earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled bundle of dry leaves or +sticks, compared with these Five--Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield, +and Clare. It must be a strong soil--the soil of this Britain--which +sends up such products; and we must not complain of the clime beneath +which they grow to such height, and bear such fruitage. The spirit of +domestic life must be sound--the natural knowledge of good and evil +high--the religion true--the laws just--and the government, on the +whole, good, methinks, that have all conspired to educate these children +of genius, whose souls Nature had framed of the finer clay. + +Such men seem to us more clearly and certainly men of genius, than many +who, under different circumstances, may have effected higher +achievements. For though they enjoyed in their condition ineffable +blessings to dilate their spirits, and touch them with all tenderest +thoughts, it is not easy to imagine, on the other hand, the deadening or +degrading influences to which by that condition they were inevitably +exposed, and which keep down the heaven-aspiring flame of genius, or +extinguish it wholly, or hold it smouldering under all sorts of rubbish. +Only look at the attempts in verse of the common run of clodhoppers. Buy +a few ballads from the wall or stall--and you groan to think that you +have been born--such is the mess of mire and filth which often, without +the slightest intention of offence, those rural, city, or suburban bards +of the lower orders prepare for boys, virgins, and matrons, who all +devour it greedily, without suspicion. Strange it is that even in that +mural minstrelsy, occasionally occurs a phrase or line, and even stanza, +sweet and simple, and to nature true; but consider it in the light of +poetry read, recited, and sung by the people, and you might well be +appalled by the revelation therein made of the tastes, feelings, and +thoughts of the lower orders. And yet in the midst of all the popularity +of such productions, the best of Burns's poems, his "Cottar's Saturday +Night," and most delicate of his songs, are still more popular, and read +by the same classes with a still greater eagerness of delight. Into this +mystery we shall not now inquire; but we mention it now merely to show +how divine a thing true genius is, which, burning within the bosoms of a +few favourite sons of nature, guards them from all such pollution, lifts +them up above it all, purifies their whole being, and without consuming +their family affections or friendships, or making them unhappy with +their lot, and disgusted with all about them, reveals to them all that +is fair and bright and beautiful in feeling and in imagination, makes +them very poets indeed, and should fortune favour, and chance and +accident, gains for them wide over the world the glory of a poet's name. + +From all such evil influences incident to their condition--and we are +now speaking but of the evil--the Five emerged; and first and +foremost--Burns. Our dearly beloved Thomas Carlyle is reported to have +said at a dinner given to Allan Cunningham in Dumfries, that Burns was +not only one of the greatest of poets, but likewise of philosophers. We +hope not. What he did may be told in one short sentence. His genius +purified and ennobled in his imagination and in his heart the character +and condition of the Scottish peasantry--and reflected them, ideally +true to nature, in the living waters of Song. That is what he did; but +to do that, did not require the highest powers of the poet and the +philosopher. Nay, had he marvellously possessed them, he never would +have written a single line of the poetry of the late Robert Burns. Thank +Heaven for not having made him such a man--but merely the Ayrshire +Ploughman. He was called into existence for a certain work, for the +fulness of time was come--but he was neither a Shakespeare, nor a Scott, +nor a Goethe; and therefore he rejoiced in writing the "Saturday Night," +and "The Twa Dogs," and "The Holy Fair," and "O' a' the Airts the Win' +can blaw," and eke "The Vision." But forbid it, all ye Gracious Powers! +that we should quarrel with Thomas Carlyle--and that, too, for calling +Robert Burns one of the greatest of poets and philosophers. + +Like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, we behold Burns in his golden +prime; and glory gleams from the Peasant's head, far and wide over +Scotland. See the shadow tottering to the tomb! frenzied with fears of a +prison--for some five-pound debt--existing, perhaps, but in his diseased +imagination--for, alas! sorely diseased it was, and he too, at last, +seemed somewhat insane. He escapes that disgrace in the grave. Buried +with his bones be all remembrances of his miseries! But the spirit of +song, which was his true spirit, unpolluted and unfallen, lives, and +breathes, and has its being, in the peasant-life of Scotland; his songs, +which are as household and sheepfold words, consecrated by the charm +that is in all the heart's purest affections, love and pity, and the joy +of grief, shall never decay, till among the people have decayed the +virtues which they celebrate, and by which they were inspired; and +should some dismal change in the skies ever overshadow the sunshine of +our national character, and savage storms end in sullen stillness, which +is moral death, in the poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands will +see how noble was once the degenerated race that may then be looking +down disconsolately on the dim grass of Scotland with the unuplifted +eyes of cowards and slaves. + +The truth ought always to be spoken; and therefore we say that in fancy +James Hogg--in spite of his name and his teeth--was not inferior to +Robert Burns--and why not? The Forest is a better schoolroom for Fancy +than ever Burns studied in; it overflowed with poetical traditions. But +comparisons are always odious; and the great glory of James is, that he +is as unlike Robert as ever one poet was unlike another. + +Among hills that once were a forest, and still bear that name, and by +the side of a river not unknown in song, lying in his plaid on a brae +among the "woolly people," behold that true son of genius--The Ettrick +Shepherd. We are never so happy as when praising James; but pastoral +poets are the most incomprehensible of God's creatures; and here is one +of the best of them all, who confesses the "Chaldee" and denies the +"Noctes!" + +"The Queen's Wake" is a garland of fair forest flowers, bound with a +band of rushes from the moor. It is not a poem--not it--nor was it +intended to be so; you might as well call a bright bouquet of flowers a +flower, which, by the by, we do in Scotland. Some of the ballads are +very beautiful; one or two even splendid; most of them spirited; and the +worst far better than the best that ever was written by any bard in +danger of being a blockhead. "Kilmeny" alone places our (ay, _our_) +Shepherd among the Undying Ones. London soon loses all memory of lions, +let them visit her in the shape of any animal they please. But the Heart +of the Forest never forgets. It knows no such word as absence. The Death +of a Poet there is but the beginning of a Life of Fame. His songs no +more perish than do flowers. There are no Annuals in the Forest. All are +perennial; or if they do indeed die, their fadings away are invisible in +the constant succession--the sweet unbroken series of everlasting bloom. +So will it be in his native haunts with the many songs of the Ettrick +Shepherd. The lochs may be drained--corn may grow where once the Yarrow +flowed--nor is such change much more unlikely than in the olden time +would have been thought the extirpation of all the vast oak-woods, where +the deer trembled to fall into the den of the wolf, and the wild boar +farrowed beneath the eagle's eyrie. All extinct now! But obsolete never +shall be the Shepherd's plaintive or pawky, his melancholy or merry, +lays. The ghost of "Mary Lee" will be seen in the moonlight coming down +the hills; the "Witch of Fife" on the clouds will still bestride her +besom; and the "Gude Grey Cat" will mew in imagination, were even the +last mouse on his last legs, and the feline species swept off by war, +pestilence, and famine, and heard to purr no more! + +It is here where Burns was weakest, that the Shepherd is strongest--the +world of shadows. The airy beings that to the impassioned soul of Burns +seemed cold, bloodless, unattractive, rise up lovely in their own silent +domains, before the dreaming fancy of the tender-hearted Shepherd. The +still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed all +his days, inspired him with ever-brooding visions of Fairy Land, till, +as he lay musing on the brae, the world of shadows seemed, in the clear +depths, a softened reflection of real life, like the hills and heavens +in the water of his native lake. When he speaks of Fairy Land, his +language becomes aerial as the very voice of the fairy people, serenest +images rise up with the music of the verse, and we almost believe in the +being of those unlocalised realms of peace, and of which he sings like a +native minstrel. + +Yes, James--thou wert but a poor shepherd to the last--poor in this +world's goods--though Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie--given +thee by the best of Dukes--with its few laigh sheep-braes--its somewhat +stony hayfield or two--its pasture where Crummie might unhungered +graze--nyuck for the potato's bloomy or ploomy shaws--and path-divided +from the porch the garden, among whose flowers "wee Jamie" played. But +nature had given thee, to console thy heart in all disappointments from +the "false smiling of fortune beguiling," a boon which thou didst hug to +thy heart with transport on the darkest day--the "gift o' genie," and +the power of immortal song. + +And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd been just--been generous--as +she was--or was not--to the Ayrshire peasant?--has she, in her conduct +to him, shown her contrition for her sin--whatever that may have +been--to Burns? It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the feathered +head--and gentility turns away her painted cheek from the Mountain Bard; +but when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever such votaries devoutly +worship? Cold, false, and hollow, ever has been their admiration of +genius--and different, indeed, from their evanescent ejaculations, has +ever been the enduring voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But +Scott, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Byron, and other great bards, +have all loved the Shepherd's lays--and Joanna the palm-crowned, and +Felicia the muse's darling, and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all +the other fair female spirits of song. And in his native land, all +hearts that love her streams, and her hills, and her cottages, and her +kirks, the bee-humming garden and the primrose-circled fold, the white +hawthorn and the green fairy-knowe, all delight in "Kilmeny" and "Mary +Lee," and in many another vision that visited the Shepherd in the +Forest. + +And what can surpass many of the Shepherd's songs? The most undefinable +of all undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are surely--Songs. They +seem to start up indeed from the dew-sprinkled soil of a poet's soul, +like flowers; the first stanza being root, the second leaf, the third +bud, and all the rest blossom, till the song is like a stalk laden with +its own beauty, and laying itself down in languid delight on the soft +bed of moss--song and flower alike having the same "dying fall!" + +A fragment! And the more piteous because a fragment. Go in search of the +pathetic, and you will find it tear-steeped, sigh-breathed, +moan-muttered, and groaned in fragments. The poet seems often struck +dumb by woe--his heart feels that suffering is at its acme--and that he +should break off and away from a sight too sad to be longer looked +on--haply too humiliating to be disclosed. So, too, it sometimes is with +the beautiful. The soul in its delight seeks to escape from the emotion +that oppresses it--is speechless--and the song falls mute. Such is +frequently the character--and the origin of that character--of our auld +Scottish Sangs. In their mournfulness are they not almost like the wail +of some bird distracted on the bush from which its nest has been +harried, and then suddenly flying away for ever into the woods? In their +joyfulness, are they not almost like the hymn of some bird, that +love-stricken suddenly darts from the tree-top down to the caresses that +flutter through the spring? And such, too, are often the airs to which +those dear auld sangs are sung. From excess of feeling--fragmentary; or +of one divine part to which genius may be defied to conceive another, +because but one hour in all time could have given it birth. + +You may call this pure nonsense--but 'tis so pure that you need not fear +to swallow it. All great song-writers, nevertheless, have been great +thieves. Those who had the blessed fate to flourish first--to be born +when "this auld cloak was new,"--the cloak we mean which nature +wears--scrupled not to creep upon her as she lay asleep beneath the +shadow of some single tree among + + "The grace of forest woods decay'd, + And pastoral melancholy," + +and to steal the very pearls out of her hair--out of the silken snood +which enamoured Pan himself had not untied in the Golden Age. Or if she +ventured, as sometimes she did, to walk along the highways of the earth, +they robbed her in the face of day of her dew-wrought reticule--without +hurting, however, the hand from which they brushed that net of gossamer. + +Then came the Silver Age of Song, the age in which we now live--and the +song-singers were thieves still--stealing and robbing from them who had +stolen and robbed of old; yet, how account you for this phenomenon--all +parties remain richer than ever--and Nature, especially, after all this +thieving and robbery, and piracy and plunder, many million times richer +than the day on which she received her dowry, + + "The bridal of the earth and sky;" + +and with "golden store" sufficient in its scatterings to enable all the +sons of genius she will ever bear, to "set up for themselves" in poetry, +accumulating capital upon capital, till each is a Croesus, rejoicing +to lend it out without any other interest than cent per cent, paid in +sighs, smiles, and tears, and without any other security than the +promise of a quiet eye, + + "That broods and sleeps on its own heart!" + +Amongst the most famous thieves in our time have been Rob, James, and +Allan. Burns never saw or heard a jewel or tune of a thought or a +feeling, but he immediately made it his own--that is, stole it. He was +too honest a man to refrain from such thefts. The thoughts and +feelings--to whom by divine right did they belong? To Nature. But Burns +beheld them "waif and stray," and in peril of being lost for ever. He +seized then on those "snatches of old songs," wavering away into the +same oblivion that lies on the graves of the nameless bards who first +gave them being; and now, spiritually interfused with his own lays, they +are secured against decay--and like them immortal. So hath the Shepherd +stolen many of the Flowers of the Forest--whose beauty had breathed +there ever since Flodden's fatal overthrow; but they had been long +fading and pining away in the solitary places, wherein so many of their +kindred had utterly disappeared, and beneath the restoring light of his +genius their bloom and their balm were for ever renewed. But the thief +of all thieves is the Nithsdale and Galloway thief--called by Sir +Walter, most characteristically, "Honest Allan!" Thief and forger as he +is--we often wonder why he is permitted to live. Many is the sweet +stanza he has stolen from Time--that silly old carle who kens not even +his own--many the lifelike line--and many the strange single word that +seems to possess the power of all the parts of speech. And, having +stolen them, to what use did he turn the treasures? Why, unable to give +back every man his own--for they were all dead, buried, and +forgotten--by a potent prayer he evoked from his Pool-Palace, +overshadowed by the Dalswinton woods, the Genius of the Nith, to +preserve the gathered flowers of song for ever unwithered, for that they +all had grown ages ago beneath and around the green shadows of Criffel, +and longed now to be embalmed in the purity of the purest river that +Scotland sees flowing in unsullied silver to the sea. But the Genius of +the Nith--frowning and smiling--as he looked upon his son alternately in +anger, love, and pride--refused the votive offering, and told him to be +gone; for that he--the Genius--was not a Cromek--and could distinguish +with half an eye what belonged to antiquity, from what had undergone, in +Allan's hands, change into "something rich and rare;" and above all, +from what had been blown to life that very year by the breath of Allan's +own genius, love-inspired by "his ain lassie," the "lass that he loe'd +best," springing from seeds itself had sown, and cherished by the dews +of the same gracious skies, that filled with motion and music the +transparency of the river-god's never-failing urn. + +We love Allan's "Maid of Elvar." It beats with a fine, free, bold, and +healthful spirit. Along with the growth of the mutual love of Eustace +and Sybil, he paints peasant-life with a pen that reminds us of the +pencil of Wilkie. He is as familiar with it all as Burns; and Burns +would have perused with tears many of these pictures, even the most +cheerful--for the flood-gates of Robin's heart often suddenly flung +themselves open to a touch, while a rushing gush--wondering gazers knew +not why--bedimmed the lustre of his large black eyes. Allan gives us +descriptions of Washings and Watchings o' claes, as Homer has done +before him in the Odyssey, and that other Allan in the Gentle +Shepherd--of Kirks, and Christenings, and Halloweens, and other +Festivals. Nor has he feared to string his lyre--why should he?--to such +themes as the Cottar's Saturday Night--and the simple ritual of our +faith, sung and said + + "In some small kirk upon the sunny brae, + That stands all by itself on some sweet Sabbath-day." + +Ay, many are the merits of this "Rustic Tale." To appreciate them +properly, we must carry along with us, during the perusal of the poem, a +right understanding and feeling of that pleasant epithet--Rustic. +Rusticity and Urbanity are polar opposites--and there lie between many +million modes of Manners, which you know are Minor Morals. But not to +puzzle a subject in itself sufficiently simple, the same person may be +at once rustic and urbane, and that too, either in his character of man +or of poet, or in his twofold capacity of both; for observe that, though +you may be a man without being a poet, we defy you to be a poet without +being a man. A Rustic is a clodhopper; an Urbane is a paviour. But it is +obvious that the paviour in a field hops the clod; that the clodhopper +in a street paces the pavé. At the same time, it is equally obvious that +the paviour, in hopping the clod, performs the feat with a sort of city +smoke, which breathes of bricks; that the clodhopper, in pacing the +pavé, overcomes the difficulty with a kind of country air, that is +redolent of broom. Probably, too, Urbanus through a deep fallow is seen +ploughing his way in pumps; Rusticus along the shallow stones is heard +clattering on clogs. But to cease pursuing the subject through all its +variations, suffice it for the present (for we perceive that we must +resume the discussion another time), to say, that Allan Cunningham is a +living example and lively proof of the truth of our Philosophy--it being +universally allowed in the best circles of town and country, that he is +an URBANE RUSTIC. + +Now, that is the man for our love and money, when the work to be done is +a Poem on Scottish Life. + +We can say of Allan what Allan says of Eustace,-- + + "Far from the pasture moor + He comes; the fragrance of the dale and wood + Is scenting all his garments, green and good." + +The rural imagery is fresh and fair; not copied Cockney wise, +from pictures in oil or water-colours--from mezzotintoes or +line-engravings--but from the free open face of day, or the dim retiring +face of eve, or the face, "black but comely," of night--by sunlight or +moonlight, ever Nature. Sometimes he gives us--Studies. Small, sweet, +sunny spots of still or dancing day-stream-gleam--grove-glow-- +sky-glimpse--or cottage-roof, in the deep dell sending up its smoke to +the high heavens. But usually Allan paints with a sweeping pencil. He +lays down his landscapes, stretching wide and far, and fills them with +woods and rivers, hills and mountains, flocks of sheep and herds of +cattle; and of all sights in life and nature, none so dear to his eyes +as the golden grain, ebbing like tide of sea before a close long line of +glancing sickles; no sound so sweet as--rising up into the pure +harvest-air, frost-touched though sunny--beneath the shade of +hedgerow-tree, after their mid-day meal, the song of the jolly reapers. +But are not his pictures sometimes too crowded? No. For there lies the +power of the pen over the pencil. The pencil can do much, the pen +everything; the Painter is imprisoned within a few feet of canvass, the +Poet commands the horizon with an eye that circumnavigates the globe; +even that glorious pageant, a painted Panorama, is circumscribed by +bounds, over which imagination, feeling them all too narrow, is uneasy +till she soars; but the Poet's Panorama is commensurate with the soul's +desires, and may include the Universe. + +This Poem reads as if it had been written during the "dewy hour of +prime." Allan must be an early riser. But, if not so now, some forty +years ago he was up every morning with the lark, + + "Walking to labour by that cheerful song," + +away up the Nith, through the Dalswinton woods; or, for anything we know +to the contrary, intersecting with stone-walls, that wanted not their +scientific coping, the green pastures of Sanquhar. Now he is familiar +with Chantrey's form-full statues; then, with the shapeless cairn on the +moor, the rude headstone on the martyr's grave. And thus it is that the +present has given him power over the past--that a certain grace and +delicacy, inspired by the pursuits of his prime, blend with the creative +dreams that are peopled with the lights and shadows of his youth--that +the spirit of the old ballad breathes still in its strong simplicity +through the composition of his "New Poem"--and that art is seen +harmoniously blending there with nature. + +We have said already that we delight in the story; for it belongs to an +"order of _fables_ grey," which has been ever dear to Poets. Poets have +ever loved to bring into the pleasant places and paths of lowly life, +persons (we eschew all manner of _personages_ and _heroes_ and +_heroines_, especially with the epithet "_our_" prefixed) whose native +lot lay in a higher sphere: for they felt that by such contrast, natural +though rare, a beautiful light was mutually reflected from each +condition, and that sacred revelations were thereby made of human +character, of which all that is pure and profound appertains equally to +all estates of this our mortal being, provided only that happiness knows +from whom it comes, and that misery and misfortune are alleviated by +religion. Thus Electra appears before us at her Father's Tomb, the +virgin-wife of the peasant Auturgus, who reverently abstains from the +intact body of the daughter of the king. Look into Shakespeare. Rosalind +was not so lovable at court as in the woods. Her beauty might have been +more brilliant, and her conversation too, among lords and ladies; but +more touching both, because true to tenderer nature, when we see and +hear her in dialogue with the neat-herdess--ROSALIND and _Audrey_! And +trickles not the tear down thy cheek, fair reader--burns not the heart +within thee, when thou thinkest of Florizel and Perdita on the Farm in +the Forest? + +Nor from those visions need we fear to turn to Sybil Lesley. We see her +in Elvar Tower, a high-born Lady--in Dalgonar Glen, a humble bondmaid. +The change might have been the reverse--as with the lassie beloved by +the Gentle Shepherd. Both are best. The bust that gloriously set off the +burnishing of the rounded silk, not less divinely shrouded its +enchantment beneath the swelling russet. Graceful in bower or hall were +those arms, and delicate those fingers when moving white along the rich +embroidery, or across the strings of the sculptured harp; nor less so +when before the cottage door they woke the homely music of the humming +wheel, or when on the brae beside the Pool, they playfully intertwined +their softness with the new-washed fleeces, or when among the laughing +lasses at the Linn, not loth were they to lay out the coarse linen in +the bleaching sunshine, conspicuous She the while among the rustic +beauties, as was Nausicaa of old among her nymphs at the Fountain. + +We are in love with Sybil Lesley. She is full of _spunk_. That is not a +vulgar word; or if it have been so heretofore, henceforth let it cease +to be so, and be held synonymous with spirit. She shows it in her +defiance of Sir Ralph on the shore of Solway--in her flight from the +Tower of Elvar; and the character she displays then and there, prepares +us for the part she plays in the peasant's cot in the glen of Dalgonar. +We are not surprised to see her take so kindly to the duties of a rustic +service; for we call to mind how she sat among the humble good-folks in +the hall, when Thrift and Waste figured in that rude but wise Morality, +and how the gracious lady showed she sympathised with the cares and +contentments of lowly life. + +England has singled out John Clare from among her humble sons (Ebenezer +Elliott belongs altogether to another order)--as the most conspicuous +for poetical genius, next to Robert Bloomfield. That is a proud +distinction--whatever critics may choose to say; and we cordially +sympathise with the beautiful expression of his gratitude to the Rural +Muse, when he says-- + + "Like as the little lark from off its nest, + Beside the mossy hill, awakes in glee, + To seek the morning's throne, a merry guest-- + So do I seek thy shrine, if that may be, + To win by new attempts another smile from thee." + +Now, England is out of all sight the most beautiful country in the whole +world--Scotland alone excepted--and, thank heaven, they two are one +kingdom--divided by no line, either real or imaginary--united by the +Tweed. We forget at this moment--if ever we knew it--the precise number +of her counties; but we remember that one and all of them--"alike, but +oh! how different"--are fit birthplaces and abodes for poets. Some of +them, we know well, are flat--and we in Scotland, with hills or +mountains for ever before our eyes, are sometimes disposed to find fault +with them on that ground--as if nature were not at liberty to find her +own level. Flat indeed! So is the sea. Wait till you have walked a few +miles in among the Fens--and you will be wafted along like a little +sail-boat, up and down undulations green and gladsome as waves. Think ye +there is no scenery there? Why, you are in the heart of a vast +metropolis!--yet have not the sense to see the silent city of mole-hills +sleeping in the sun. Call that pond a lake--and by a word how is it +transfigured? Now you discern flowers unfolding on its low banks and +braes--and the rustle of the rushes is like that of a tiny forest--how +appropriate to the wild! Gaze--and to your gaze what colouring grows! +Not in green only, or in russet brown, doth nature choose to be +apparelled in this her solitude--nor ever again will you call her dreary +here--for see how every one of those fifty flying showers lightens up +its own line of beauty along the plain--instantaneous as dreams--or +stationary as waking thought--till, ere you are aware that all was +changing, the variety has all melted away into one harmonious glow, +attempered by that rainbow. + +Let these few words suffice to show that we understand and feel the +flattest--dullest--tamest places, as they are most ignorantly +called--that have yet been discovered in England. Not in such did John +Clare abide--but many such he hath traversed; and his studies have been +from childhood upwards among scenes which to ordinary eyes might seem to +afford small scope and few materials for contemplation. But his are not +ordinary eyes--but gifted; and in every nook and corner of his own +county the Northamptonshire Peasant has, during some twoscore years and +more, every spring found without seeking either some lovelier aspect of +"the old familiar faces," or some new faces smiling upon him, as if +mutual recognition kindled joy and amity in their hearts. + +John Clare often reminds us of James Grahame. They are two of our most +artless poets. Their versification is mostly very sweet, though rather +flowing forth according to a certain fine natural sense of melody, than +constructed on any principles of music. So, too, with their imagery, +which seems seldom selected with much care; so that, while it is always +true to nature, and often possesses a charm from its appearing to rise +up of itself, and with little or no effort on the poet's part to form a +picture, it is not unfrequently chargeable with repetition--sometimes, +perhaps, with a sameness which, but for the inherent interest in the +objects themselves, might be felt a little wearisome--there is so much +still life. They are both most affectionately disposed towards all +manner of birds. Grahame's "Birds of Scotland" is a delightful poem; yet +its best passages are not superior to some of Clare's about the same +charming creatures--and they are both ornithologists after Audubon's and +our own heart. Were all that has been well written in English verse +about birds to be gathered together, what a sweet set of volumes it +would make! And how many, think ye--three, six, twelve? That would be +indeed an aviary--the only one we can think of with pleasure--out of the +hedgerows and the woods. Tories as we are, we never see a wild bird on +the wing without inhaling in silence "the Cause of Liberty all over the +world!" We feel then that it is indeed "like the air we breathe--without +it we die." So do they. We have been reading lately, for a leisure hour +or two of an evening--a volume by a worthy German, Doctor Bechstein--on +Cage Birds. The slave-dealer never for a moment suspects the wickedness +of kidnapping young and old--crimping them for life--teaching them to +draw water--and, _oh nefas!_ to sing! He seems to think that only in +confinement do they fulfil the ends of their existence--even the +skylark. Yet he sees them, one and all, subject to the most miserable +diseases--and rotting away within the wires. Why could not the Doctor +have taken a stroll into the country once or twice a-week, and in one +morning or evening hour laid in sufficient music to serve him during the +intervening time, without causing a single bosom to be ruffled for his +sake? Shoot them--spit them--pie them--pickle them--eat them--but +imprison them not; we speak as Conservatives--murder rather than immure +them--for more forgivable far it is to cut short their songs at the +height of glee, than to protract them in a rueful simulation of music, +in which you hear the same sweet notes, but if your heart thinks at all, +"a voice of weeping and of loud lament," all unlike, alas! to the +congratulation that from the free choirs is ringing so exultingly in +their native woods. + +How prettily Clare writes of the "insect youth." + + "These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard, + And happy units of a numerous herd + Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings, + Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings, + How merrily they creep, and run, and fly! + No kin they bear to labour's drudgery, + Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose, + And where they fly for dinner no one knows-- + The dewdrops feed them not--they love the shine + Of noon, whose sons may bring them golden wine. + All day they're playing in their Sunday dress-- + When night repose, for they can do no less; + Then to the heathbell's purple hood they fly, + And like to princes in their slumbers lie, + Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all, + In silken beds and roomy painted hall. + So merrily they spend their summer-day, + Now in the cornfields, now in the new-mown hay. + One almost fancies that such happy things, + With colour'd hoods and richly-burnish'd wings, + Are fairy folk in splendid masquerade + Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid. + Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still, + Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill." + +Time has been--nor yet very long ago--when such unpretending poetry as +this--humble indeed in every sense, but nevertheless the product of +genius which speaks for itself audibly and clearly in lowliest +strains--would not have passed by unheeded or unbeloved; nowadays it +may, to many who hold their heads high, seem of no more worth than an +old song. But as Wordsworth says, + + "Pleasures newly found are sweet, + Though they lie about our feet;" + +and if stately people would but stoop and look about their paths, which, +do not always run along the heights, they would often make discoveries +of what concerned them more than speculations among the stars. + +It is not to be thought, however, that the Northamptonshire Peasant does +not often treat earnestly of the common pleasures and pains, the cares +and occupations, of that condition of life in which he was born, and has +passed all his days. He knows them well, and has illustrated them well, +though seldomer in his later than in his earlier poems; and we cannot +help thinking that he might greatly extend his popularity, which in +England is considerable, by devoting his Rural Muse to subjects lying +within his ken, and of everlasting interest. Bloomfield's reputation +rests on his "Farmer's Boy"--on some exquisite passages in "News from +the Farm"--and on some of the tales and pictures in his "May-day with +the Muses." His smaller poems are very inferior to those of Clare--but +the Northamptonshire Peasant has written nothing in which all honest +English hearts must delight, at all comparable with those truly rural +compositions of the Suffolk shoemaker. It is in his power to do +so--would he but earnestly set himself to the work. He must be more +familiar with all the ongoings of rural life than his compeer could have +been; nor need he fear to tread again the same ground, for it is as new +as if it had never been touched, and will continue to be so till the end +of time. The soil in which the native virtues of the English character +grow, is unexhausted and inexhaustible; let him break it up on any spot +he chooses, and poetry will spring to light like clover from lime. Nor +need he fear being an imitator. His mind is an original one, his most +indifferent verses prove it; for though he must have read much poetry +since his earlier day--doubtless all our best modern poetry--he retains +his own style, which, though it be not marked by any very strong +characteristics, is yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it belongs to +himself, and is a natural gift. Pastorals--eclogues--and idyls--in a +hundred forms--remain to be written by such poets as he and his +brethren; and there can be no doubt at all that, if he will scheme +something of the kind, and begin upon it, without waiting to know fully +or clearly what he may be intending, before three winters, with their +long nights, are gone, he will find himself in possession of more than +mere materials for a volume of poems that will meet with general +acceptation, and give him a permanent place by the side of him he loves +so well--Robert Bloomfield. + +Ebenezer Elliott (of whom more another day)[A] claims with pride to be +the Poet of the Poor--and the poor might well be proud, did they know +it, that they have such a poet. Not a few of them know it now, and many +will know it in future; for a muse of fire like his will yet send its +illumination "into dark deep holds." May it consume all the noxious +vapours that infest such regions--and purify the atmosphere--till the +air breathed there be the breath of life. But the poor have other poets +besides him--Crabbe and Burns. We again mention their names--and no +more. Kindly spirits were they both; but Burns had experienced all his +poetry--and therefore his poetry is an embodiment of national character. +We say it not in disparagement or reproof of Ebenezer--conspicuous over +all--for let all men speak as they think or feel--but how gentle in all +his noblest inspirations was Robin! He did not shun sins or sorrows; but +he told the truth of the poor man's life, when he showed that it was, on +the whole, virtuous and happy--bear witness those immortal strains, "The +Twa Dogs," "The Vision," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the sangs voiced +all braid Scotland thorough by her boys and virgins, say rather her lads +and lasses--while the lark sings aloft and the linnet below, the mavis +in the golden broom accompanying the music in the golden cloud. We +desire--not in wilful delusion, but in earnest hope, in devout +trust--that poetry shall show that the paths of the peasant poor are +paths of pleasantness and peace. If they should seem in that light even +pleasanter and more peaceful than they ever now can be below the sun, +think not that any evil can arise "to mortal man who liveth here by +toil" from such representations--for imagination and reality are not two +different things--they blend in life; but there the darker shadows do +often, alas! prevail--and sometimes may be felt even by the hand; +whereas in poetry the lights are triumphant--and gazing on the glory +men's hearts burn within them--and they carry the joy in among their own +griefs, till despondency gives way to exultation, and the day's darg of +this worky world is lightened by a dawn of dreams. + +[Footnote A: _Professor Wilson's Works_, vol. vi., page 224.] + +This is the effect of all good poetry--according to its power--of the +poetry of Robert Bloomfield as of the poetry of Robert Burns. John +Clare, too, is well entitled to a portion of such praise; and therefore +his name deserves to become a household word in the dwellings of the +rural poor. Living in leisure among the scenes in which he once toiled, +may he once more contemplate them all without disturbance. Having lost +none of his sympathies, he has learnt to refine them all and see into +their source--and wiser in his simplicity than they who were formerly +his yoke-fellows are in theirs, he knows many things well which they +know imperfectly or not at all, and is privileged therein to be their +teacher. Surely in an age when the smallest contribution to science is +duly estimated, and useful knowledge not only held in honour but +diffused, poetry ought not to be despised, more especially when +emanating from them who belong to the very condition which they seek to +illustrate, and whose ambition it is to do justice to its natural +enjoyments and appropriate virtues. In spite of all they have suffered, +and still suffer, the peasantry of England are a race that may be +regarded with better feelings than pride. We look forward confidently to +the time when education--already in much good--and, if the plans of the +wisest counsellors prevail, about to become altogether good--will raise +at once their condition and their character. The Government has its +duties to discharge--clear as day. And what is not in the power of the +gentlemen of England? Let them exert that power to the utmost--and then +indeed they will deserve the noble name of "Aristocracy." We speak not +thus in reproach--for they better deserve that name than the same order +in any other country; but in no other country are such interests given +to that order in trust--and as they attend to that trust is the glory or +the shame, the blessing or the curse, of their high estate. + +But let us retrace our footsteps in moralising mood, not unmixed with +sadness--to the Mausoleum of Burns. Scotland is abused by England for +having starved Burns to death, or for having suffered him to drink +himself to death, out of a cup filled to the brim with bitter +disappointment and black despair. England lies. There is our gage-glove, +let her take it up, and then for mortal combat with sword and +spear--only not on horseback--for, for reasons on which it would be idle +to be more explicit, we always fight now on foot, and have sent our high +horse to graze all the rest of his life on the mountains of the moon. +Well then, Scotland met Burns, on his first sunburst, with one exulting +acclaim. Scotland bought and read his poetry, and Burns, for a poor man, +became rich--rich to his heart's desire--and reached the summit of his +ambition, in the way of this world's life, in a--Farm. Blithe Robin +would have scorned "an awmous" from any hands but from those of nature; +nor in those days needed he help from woman-born. True, that times +began by-and-by to go rather hard with him, and he with them; for his +mode of life was not + + "Such as grave livers do in Scotland use," + +and as we sow we must reap. His day of life began to darken ere +meridian--and the darkness doubtless had brought disturbance before it +had been perceived by any eyes but his own--for people are always +looking to themselves and their own lot; and how much mortal misery may +for years be daily depicted in the face, figure, or manners even of a +friend, without our seeing or suspecting it! Till all at once he makes a +confession, and we then know that he has been long numbered among the +most wretched of the wretched--the slave of his own sins and sorrows--or +thralled beneath those of another, to whom fate may have given sovereign +power over his whole life. Well, then--or rather ill, then--Burns +behaved as most men do in misery,--and the farm going to ruin--that is, +crop and stock to pay the rent--he desired to be, and was made--an +Exciseman. And for that--you ninny--you are whinnying scornfully at +Scotland! Many a better man than yourself--beg your pardon--has been, +and is now, an Exciseman. Nay, to be plain with you--we doubt if your +education has been sufficiently intellectual for an Exciseman. We never +heard it said of you, + + "And even the story ran that he could gauge." + +Burns then was made what he desired to be--what he was fit for, though +you are not--and what was in itself respectable--an Exciseman. His +salary was not so large certainly as that of the Bishop of Durham--or +even of London--but it was certainly larger than that of many a curate +at that time doing perhaps double or treble duty in those dioceses, +without much audible complaint on their part, or outcry from Scotland +against blind and brutal English bishops, or against beggarly England, +for starving her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or erudition +adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, it is true, at the age of +thirty-seven; on the same day died an English curate we could name, a +surpassing scholar, and of stainless virtue, blind, palsied, "old and +miserably poor"--without as much money as would bury him; and no wonder, +for he never had the salary of a Scotch Exciseman. + +Two blacks--nay twenty--won't make a white. True--but one black is as +black as another--and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse +with impunity the Northern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us +knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield? He was +not in genius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns--but he was +beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen +produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker +that ever handled an awl. The "Farmer's Boy" is a wonderful poem--and +will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield +in comfort, and scatter flowers along the smooth and sunny path that led +him to the grave? No. He had given him by some minister or other, we +believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other--most +uncongenial with all his nature and all his habits--of which the shabby +salary was insufficient to purchase for his family even the bare +necessaries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a +sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be +made by narrowest circumstances--and all the while Englishmen were +scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that +at his own earnest desire made Burns an Exciseman. Nay, when Southey, +late in Bloomfield's life, and when it was drawing mournfully to a +close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five +pounds, how many purse-strings were untied? how much fine gold was +poured out for the indigent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles the +sum out of sight--for it was not sufficient to have bought the +manumission of an old negro slave. + +It was no easy matter to deal rightly with such a man as Burns. In those +disturbed and distracted times, still more difficult was it to carry +into execution any designs for his good--and much was there even to +excuse his countrymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil +eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, +indeed, would it have been to make him happy--but he was as much +forgotten as if he had been dead; and when he died--did England mourn +over him--or, after having denied him bread, give him so much as a +stone? No. He dropt into the grave with no other lament we ever heard of +but a few copies of poorish verses in some of the Annuals, and seldom +or never now does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie! well may the +white rose blush red--and the red rose turn pale. Let England then leave +Scotland to her shame about Burns; and, thinking of her own treatment of +Bloomfield, cover her own face with both her hands, and confess that it +was pitiful. At least, if she will not hang down her head in humiliation +for her own neglect of her own "poetic child," let her not hold it high +over Scotland for the neglect of hers--palliated as that neglect was by +many things--and since, in some measure, expiated by a whole nation's +tears shed over her great poet's grave. + +What! not a word for Allan Ramsay? Theocritus was a pleasant Pastoral, +and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls together +are not equal in worth to the "Gentle Shepherd." Habbie's Howe is a +hallowed place now among the green airy Pentlands. Sacred for ever the +solitary murmur of that waterfa'! + + "A flowerie howm, between twa verdant braes, + Where lassies use to wash and bleach their claes; + A trotting burnie, wimpling through the ground, + Its channel pebbles, shining, smooth, and round: + Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear, + 'Twill please your eye, then gratify your ear; + While Jenny what she wishes discommends, + And Meg, with better sense, true love defends!" + +"About them and siclike" is the whole poem. Yet "faithful love shall +memorise the song." Without any scenery but that of rafters, which +overhead fancy may suppose a grove, 'tis even yet sometimes acted by +rustics in the barn, though nothing on this earth will ever persuade a +low-born Scottish lass to take a part in a play; while delightful is +felt, even by the lords and ladies of the land, the simple Drama of +humble life; and we ourselves have seen a high-born maiden look +"beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the +kirtle of a Shepherdess. + +We have been gradually growing national overmuch, and are about to grow +even more so, therefore ask you to what era, pray, did Thomson belong? +To none. Thomson had no precursor--and till Cowper no follower. He +effulged all at once sunlike--like Scotland's storm-loving, +mist-enamoured sun, which till you have seen on a day of thunder, you +cannot be said ever to have seen the sun. Cowper followed Thomson merely +in time. We should have had "The Task," even had we never had "The +Seasons." These two were "heralds of a mighty train ensuing;" add them, +then, to the worthies of our own age, and they belong to it--and all the +rest of the poetry of the modern world--to which add that of the +ancient--if multiplied by ten in quantity--and by twenty in +quality--would not so variously, so vigorously, and so truly image the +form and pressure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all--Nature. +Are then "The Seasons" and "The Task" Great Poems? Yes.--Why? What! Do +you need to be told that that Poem must be great, which was the first to +paint the rolling mystery of the year, and to show that all its Seasons +are but the varied God? The idea was original and sublime; and the +fulfilment thereof so complete, that some six thousand years having +elapsed between the creation of the world and of that poem, some sixty +thousand, we prophesy, will elapse between the appearance of that poem +and the publication of another equally great, on a subject external to +the mind, equally magnificent. We further presume, that you hold sacred +the "hearth." Now, in "The Task," the "hearth" is the heart of the poem, +just as it is of a happy house. No other poem is so full of domestic +happiness--humble and high; none is so breathed over by the spirit of +the Christian religion. + +Poetry, which, though not dead, had long been sleeping in Scotland, was +restored to waking life by THOMSON. His genius was national; and so, +too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his +genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and +passionate, and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its +power lay in the heart. "The Castle of Indolence" is distinguished by +purer taste and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that +poem is but the vision of a dream. "The Seasons" are glorious realities; +and the charm of the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its truth. +But what mean we by saying that "The Seasons" are a national +subject?--do we assert that they are solely Scottish? That would be too +bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made +them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, to +the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set in Scottish heavens; his +"deep-fermenting tempests are brewed in grim evening" Scottish skies; +Scottish is his thunder of cloud and cataract; his "vapours, and snows, +and storms" are Scottish; and, strange as the assertion would have +sounded in the ears of Samuel Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their +sugh, and their roar; nor less their stillness, more awful amidst the +vast multitude of steady stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are +swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of his native land was in his +heart when he cried in the solitude-- + + "Hail, kindred glooms! congenial horrors, hail!" + +The genius of HOME was national--and so, too, was the subject of his +justly famous Tragedy of "Douglas." He had studied the old Ballads; +their simplicities were sweet to him as wallflowers on ruins. On the +story of Gill Morice, who was an Earl's son, he founded the Tragedy, +which surely no Scottish eyes ever witnessed without tears. Are not +these most Scottish lines?-- + + "Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom + Accords with my soul's sadness!" + +And these even more so,-- + + "Red came the river down, and loud and oft + The angry Spirit of the water shriek'd!" + +The Scottish Tragedian in an evil hour crossed the Tweed, riding on +horseback all the way to London. His genius got Anglified, took a +consumption, and perished in the prime of life. But nearly half a +century afterwards, on seeing the Siddons in _Lady Randolph_, and +hearing her low, deep, wild, woe-begone voice exclaim, "My beautiful! my +brave!" "the aged harper's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again +lighted up for a moment with the fires of genius--say rather for a +moment bedewed with the tears of sensibility re-awakened from decay and +dotage. + +The genius of Beattie was national, and so was the subject of his +charming song--"The Minstrel." For what is its design? He tells us, to +trace the progress of a poetical genius born in a rude age, from the +first dawning of reason and fancy, till that period at which he may be +supposed capable of appearing in the world as a Scottish Minstrel; that +is, as an itinerant poet and musician--a character which, according to +the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred. + + "There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell, + A shepherd swain, a man of low degree; + Whose sires perchance in Fairyland might dwell, + Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady; + But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie; + A nation famed for song and beauty's charms; + Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free; + Patient of toil, serene amid alarms; + Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms. + + The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made, + On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock; + The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd: + An honest heart was almost all his stock; + His drink the living waters from the rock; + The milky dams supplied his board, and lent + Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock; + And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, + Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they went." + +Did patriotism ever inspire genius with sentiment more Scottish than +_that_? Did imagination ever create scenery more Scottish, Manners, +Morals, Life? + + "Lo! where the stripling rapt in wonder roves + Beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine; + And sees, on high, amidst th' encircling groves + From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine: + While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join, + And echo swells the chorus to the skies!" + +Beattie chants there like a man who had been at the Linn of Dee. He wore +a wig, it is true; but at times, when the fit was on him, he wrote like +the unshorn Apollo. + +The genius of Grahame was national, and so too was the subject of his +first and best poem--"The Sabbath." + + "How still the morning of the hallow'd day!" + +is a line that could have been uttered only by a holy Scottish heart. +For we alone know what is indeed Sabbath silence--an earnest of +everlasting rest. To our hearts, the very birds of Scotland sing holily +on that day. A sacred smile is on the dewy flowers. The lilies look +whiter in their loveliness; the blush-rose reddens in the sun with a +diviner dye; and with a more celestial scent the hoary hawthorn sweetens +the wilderness. Sorely disturbed of yore, over the glens and hills of +Scotland, was the Day of Peace! + + "O, the great goodness of the _Saints of Old_!" + +the Covenanters. Listen to the Sabbath bard,-- + + "With them each day was holy; but that morn + On which the angel said, 'See where the Lord + Was laid,' joyous arose; to die that day + Was bliss. Long ere the dawn by devious ways, + O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought + The upland muirs, where rivers, there but brooks, + Dispart to different seas. Fast by such brooks + A little glen is sometimes scoop'd, a plat + With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem + Amid the heathery wild, that all around + Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these, + Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foil'd + A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws. + There, leaning on his spear (one of the array + Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose + On England's banner, and had powerless struck + The infatuate monarch, and his wavering host!) + The lyart veteran heard the word of God + By Cameron thunder'd, or by Renwick pour'd + In gentle stream; then rose the song, the loud + Acclaim of praise. The wheeling plover ceased + Her plaint; the solitary place was glad; + And on the distant cairn the watcher's ear + Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note. + But years more gloomy follow'd; and no more + The assembled people dared, in face of day, + To worship God, or even at the dead + Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce, + And thunder-peals compell'd the men of blood + To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly + The scatter'd few would meet, in some deep dell + By rocks o'ercanopied, to hear the voice, + Their faithful pastor's voice. He by the gleam + Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book, + And words of comfort spake; over their souls + His accents soothing came, as to her young + The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of eve, + She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed + By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads + Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast + They cherish'd cower amid the purple bloom." + +Not a few other sweet singers or strong, native to this nook of our +isle, might we now in these humble pages lovingly commemorate; and "four +shall we mention, dearer than the rest," for sake of that virtue, among +many virtues, which we have been lauding all along, their +nationality;--These are AIRD and MOTHERWELL (of whom another hour), MOIR +and POLLOK. + +Of Moir, our own "delightful Delta," as we love to call him--and the +epithet now by right appertains to his name--we shall now say simply +this, that he has produced many original pieces which will possess a +permanent place in the poetry of Scotland. Delicacy and grace +characterise his happiest compositions; some of them are beautiful in a +cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy; and others +breathe the simplest and purest pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast +or inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times his pen drops touches +of light on minute objects, that till then had slumbered in the shade, +but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, as component and +characteristic parts of our lowland landscapes. Let others labour away +at long poems, and for their pains get neglect or oblivion; Moir is seen +as he is in many short ones, which the Scottish Muses may "not willingly +let die." And that must be a pleasant thought when it touches the heart +of the mildest and most modest of men, as he sits by his family-fire, +beside those most dear to him, after a day past in smoothing, by his +skill, the bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness to health, in +alleviating sufferings that cannot be cured, or in mitigating the pangs +of death. + +Pollok had great original genius strong in a sacred sense of religion. +Such of his short compositions as we have seen, written in early youth, +were but mere copies of verses, and gave little or no promise of power. +But his soul was working in the green moorland solitudes round about his +father's house, in the wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and +Mearns, separated by thee, O Yearn! sweetest of pastoral streams that +murmur through the west, asunder those broomy and birken banks and +trees, where the grey-linties sing, is formed the clear junction of the +rills, issuing, the one from the hill-spring above the Black-waterfall, +and the other from the Brother-loch. The poet in prime of youth (he died +in his twenty-seventh year) embarked on a high and adventurous emprise, +and voyaged the illimitable Deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in +a holy pride felt them to be broad, as they hovered over the dark abyss. +"The Course of Time," for so young a man, was a vast achievement. The +book he loved best was the Bible, and his style is often Scriptural. Of +our poets, he had studied, we believe, but Milton, Young, and Byron. He +had much to learn in composition; and, had he lived, he would have +looked almost with humiliation on much that is at present eulogised by +his devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is there, though often +dimly developed, and many passages there are, and long ones too, that +heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine enthusiasm. + + "His ears he closed, to listen to the strains + That Sion's bards did consecrate of old, + And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon." + +Let us fly again to England, and leaving for another hour Shelley and +Hunt and Keats, and Croly and Milman and Heber, and Sterling and Milnes +and Tennyson, with some younger aspirants of our own day; and Gray, +Collins, and Goldsmith, and lesser stars of that constellation, let us +alight on the verge of that famous era when the throne was occupied by +Dryden, and then by Pope--searching still for a Great Poem. Did either +of them ever write one? No--never. Sir Walter says finely of glorious +John, + + "And Dryden in immortal strain, + Had raised the Table Round again, + But that a ribald King and Court, + Bade him play on to make them sport, + The world defrauded of the high design, + Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line." + +But why, we ask, did Dryden suffer a ribald king and court to debase and +degrade him, and strangle his immortal strain? Because he was poor! But +could he not have died of cold, thirst, and hunger--of starvation? Have +not millions of men and women done so, rather than sacrifice their +conscience? And shall we grant to a great poet that indulgence which +many a humble hind would have flung with scorn in our teeth, and rather +than have availed himself of it, faced the fagot, or the halter, or the +stake set within the sea-flood? But it is satisfactory to know that +Dryden, though still glorious John, was not a Great Poet. He was seldom +visited by the pathetic or the sublime--else had his genius held fast +its integrity--been ribald to no ribald--and indignantly kicked to the +devil both court and king. But what a master of reasoning in verse! And +of verse what a volume of fire! "The long-resounding march and energy +divine." Pope, again, with the common frailties of humanity, was an +ethereal creature--and played on his own harp with finest taste, and +wonderful execution. We doubt, indeed, if such a finished style has ever +been heard since from any one of the King Apollo's musicians. His +versification may be monotonous, but without a sweet and potent charm +only to ears of leather. That his poetry has no passion is the creed of +critics "of Cambyses' vein;" "Heloļse" and "The Unfortunate Lady" have +made the world's heart to throb. As for Imagination, we shall continue +till such time as that Faculty has been distinguished from Fancy, to see +it shining in "The Rape of the Lock," with a lambent lustre; if high +intellect be not dominant in his "Epistles" and his "Essay on Man," you +will look for it in vain in the nineteenth century; all other Satires +seem complimentary to their victims when read after "The Dunciad"--and +could a man, whose heart was not heroic, have given us another Iliad, +which, all unlike as it is to the Greek, may be read with transport, +even after Homer's? + +We have not yet, it would seem, found the object of our search--a Great +Poem. Let us extend our quest into the Elizabethan age. We are at once +sucked into the theatre. With the whole drama of that age we are +conversant and familiar; but whether we understand it or not, is another +question. It aspires to give representations of Human Life in all its +infinite varieties, and inconsistencies, and conflicts, and turmoils +produced by the Passions. Time and space are not suffered to interpose +their unities between the Poet and his vast design, who, provided he can +satisfy the spectators by the pageant of their own passions moving +across the stage, may exhibit there whatever he wills from life, death, +or the grave. 'Tis a sublime conception--and sometimes has given rise to +sublime performance; but has been crowned with full success in no hands +but those of Shakespeare. Great as was the genius of many of the +dramatists of that age, not one of them has produced a Great Tragedy. A +Great Tragedy indeed! What! without harmony or proportion in the +plan--with all puzzling perplexities and inextricable entanglements in +the plot--and with disgust and horror in the catastrophe? As for the +characters, male and female--saw ye ever such a set of swaggerers and +rantipoles as they often are in one act--Methodist preachers and demure +young women at a love-feast in another--absolute heroes and heroines of +high calibre in a third--and so on, changing and shifting name and +nature, according to the laws of the Romantic Drama forsooth--but in +hideous violation of the laws of nature--till the curtain falls over a +heap of bodies huddled together, without regard to age or sex, as if +they had been overtaken in liquor. We admit that there is gross +exaggeration in the picture; but there is always truth in a tolerable +caricature--and this is one of a tragedy of Webster, Ford, or Massinger. + +It is satisfactory to know that the good sense, and good feeling, and +good taste of the people of England, will not submit to be belaboured by +editors and critics into unqualified admiration of such enormities. The +Old English Drama lies buried in the dust with all its tragedies. Never +more will they move across the stage. Scholars read them, and often with +delight, admiration, and wonder; for genius is a strange spirit, and has +begotten strange children on the body of the Tragic Muse. In the closet +it is pleasant to peruse the countenances, at once divine, human, and +brutal, of the incomprehensible monsters--to scan their forms, powerful +though misshapen--to watch their movements, vigorous though +distorted--and to hold up one's hands in amazement on hearing them not +seldom discourse most excellent music. But we should shudder to see them +on the stage enacting the parts of men and women--and call for the +manager. All has been done for the least deformed of the tragedies of +the Old English Drama that humanity could do, enlightened by the +Christian religion; but nature has risen up to vindicate herself against +such misrepresentations as they afford; and sometimes finds it all she +can do to stomach Shakespeare. + +But the monstrosities we have mentioned are not the worst to be found in +the Old English Drama. Others there are that, till civilised Christendom +fall back into barbarous Heathendom, must for ever be unendurable to +human ears, whether long or short--we mean the obscenities. That sin is +banished for ever from our literature. The poet who might dare to commit +it, would be immediately hooted out of society, and sent to roost in +barns among the owls. But the Old English Drama is stuffed with +ineffable pollutions; and full of passages that the street-walker would +be ashamed to read in the stews. We have not seen that volume of the +Family Dramatists which contains Massinger. But if made fit for female +reading, his plays must be mutilated and mangled out of all likeness to +the original wholes. To free them even from the grossest impurities, +without destroying their very life, is impossible; and it would be far +better to make a selection of fine passages, after the manner of Lamb's +Specimens--but with a severer eye--than to attempt in vain to preserve +their character as plays, and at the same time to expunge all that is +too disgusting, perhaps, to be dangerous to boys and virgins. Full-grown +men may read what they choose--perhaps without suffering from it; but +the modesty of the young clear eye must not be profaned--and we cannot, +for our own part, imagine a _Family_ Old English Dramatist. + +And here again bursts upon us the glory of the Greek Drama. The +Athenians were as wicked, as licentious, as polluted, and much more so, +we hope, than ever were the English; but they debased not with their +gross vices their glorious tragedies. Nature in her higher moods alone, +and most majestic aspects, trod their stage. Buffoons, and ribalds, and +zanies, and "rude indecent clowns," were confined to comedies; and even +there they too were idealised, and resembled not the obscene samples +that so often sicken us in the midst of "the acting of a dreadful thing" +in our old theatre. They knew that "with other ministrations, thou, O +Nature!" teachest thy handmaid Art to soothe the souls of thy +congregated children--congregated to behold her noble goings-on, and to +rise up and depart elevated by the transcendent pageant. The Tragic muse +was in those days a Priestess--tragedies were religious ceremonies; for +all the ancestral stories they celebrated were under consecration--the +spirit of the ages of heroes and demigods descended over the vast +amphitheatre; and thus were Ęschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, the +guardians of the national character, which, we all know, was, in spite +of all it suffered under, for ever passionately enamoured of all the +forms of greatness. + +Forgive us--spirit of Shakespeare! that seem'st to animate that +high-brow'd bust--if indeed we have offered any show of irreverence to +thy name and nature; for now, in the noiselessness of midnight, to our +awed but loving hearts do both appear divine! Forgive us--we beseech +thee--that on going to bed--which we are just about to do--we may be +able to compose ourselves to sleep--and dream of Miranda and Imogen, and +Desdemona and Cordelia. Father revered of that holy family! by the +strong light in the eyes of Innocence we beseech thee to forgive +us!--Ha! what old ghost art thou--clothed in the weeds of more than +mortal misery--mad, mad, mad--come and gone--was it Lear? + +We have found then, it seems--at last--the object of our search--a Great +Poem--ay--four Great Poems--"Lear"--"Hamlet"--"Othello"--"Macbeth." And +was the revealer of those high mysteries in his youth a deer-stealer in +the parks of Warwickshire, a linkboy in London streets? And died he +before his grand climacteric in a dimmish sort of a middle-sized +tenement in Stratford-on-Avon, of a surfeit from an overdose of +home-brewed humming ale? Such is the tradition. + +Had we a daughter--an only daughter--we should wish her to be like + + "Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb." + +In that one line has Wordsworth done an unappreciable service to +Spenser. He has improved upon a picture in "The Fairy Queen"--making +"the beauty still more beauteous," by a single touch of a pencil dipped +in moonlight, or in sunlight tender as Luna's smiles. Through Spenser's +many nine-lined stanzas the lovely lady glides along her own world--and +our eyes follow in delight the sinless wanderer. In Wordsworth's one +single celestial line we behold her neither in time nor space--an +immortal omnipresent idea at one gaze occupying the soul. + +And is not "The Fairy Queen" a Great Poem? Like "The Excursion," it is +at all events a long one--"slow to begin, and never ending." That fire +was a fortunate one in which so many books of it were burnt. If no such +fortunate fire ever took place, then let us trust that the moths +drillingly devoured the manuscript--and that 'tis all safe. Purgatorial +pains--unless indeed they should prove eternal--are insufficient +punishment for the impious man who invented Allegory. If you have got +anything to say, sir, out with it--in one or other of the many forms of +speech employed naturally by creatures to whom God has given the gift of +"discourse of reason." But beware of misspending your life in perversely +attempting to make shadow substance, and substance shadow. Wonderful +analogies there are among all created things, material and +immaterial--and millions so fine that Poets alone discern them--and +sometimes succeed in showing them in words. Most spiritual region of +poetry--and to be visited at rare times and seasons--nor all life long +ought bard there to abide. For a while let the veil of Allegory be drawn +before the face of Truth, that the light of its beauty may shine through +it with a softened charm--dim and drear--like the moon gradually +obscuring in its own halo on a dewy night. Such air-woven veil of +Allegory is no human invention. The soul brought it with her when + + "Trailing clouds of glory she did come + From heaven, which is her home." + +Sometimes, now and then, in moods strange and high--obey the bidding of +the soul--and allegorise; but live not all life-long in an +Allegory--even as Spenser did--Spenser the divine; for with all his +heavenly genius--and brighter visions never met mortal eyes than +his--what is he but a "dreamer among men," and what may save that +wondrous poem from the doom of oblivion? + +To this conclusion must we come at last--that in the English language +there is but one Great Poem. What! Not "Lear," Hamlet, "Othello," +"Macbeth?"--"PARADISE LOST." + + + + +INCH-CRUIN. + + +Oh! for the plumes and pinions of the poised Eagle, that we might now +hang over Loch Lomond and all her isles! From what point of the compass +would we come on our rushing vans? Up from Leven-banks, or down from +Glenfalloch, or over the hill of Luss, or down to Rowardennan; and then +up and away, as the chance currents in the sky might lead, with the +Glory of Scotland, blue, bright, and breaking into foam, thousands on +thousands of feet below, with every Island distinct in the peculiar +beauty of its own youthful or ancient woods? For remember, that with the +eagle's wing we must also have the eagle's eye; and all the while our +own soul to look with such lens and such iris, and with its own endless +visions to invest the pinnacles of all the far-down ruins of church or +castle, encompassed with the umbrage of undying oaks. + +We should as soon think of penning a critique on "Milton's Paradise +Lost" as on Loch Lomond. People there are in the world, doubtless, who +think them both too long; but to our minds, neither the one nor the +other exceeds the due measure by a leaf or a league. Toil may, if it so +pleaseth you, think it, in a mist, a Mediterranean Sea. For then you +behold many miles of tumbling waves, with no land beyond; and were a +ship to rise up in full sail, she would seem voyaging on to some distant +shore. Or you may look on it as a great arm only of the ocean, stretched +out into the mountainous mainland. Or say, rather, some river of the +first order, that shows to the sun Islands never ceasing to adorn his +course for a thousand leagues, in another day, about to be lost in the +dominion of the sea. Or rather look on it as it is, as Loch Lomond, the +Loch of a hundred Isles--of shores laden with all kinds of beauty, +throughout the infinite succession of bays and harbours--huts and +houses sprinkled over the sides of its green hills, that ever and anon +send up a wider smoke from villages clustering round the church-tower +beneath the wooded rocks--halls half-hidden in groves, for centuries the +residence of families proud of their Gaelic blood--forest that, however +wide be the fall beneath the axe when their hour is come, yet, far as +the eye can reach, go circling round the mountain's base, inhabited by +the roe and the red-deer;--but we have got into a sentence that +threatens to be without end--a dim, dreary, sentence, in the middle of +which the very writer himself gets afraid of ghosts, and fervently prays +for the period when he shall be again chatting with the reader on a +shady seat, under his own paragraph and his own pear-tree. + +Oh! for our admirable friend Mr Smith of Jordanhill's matchless cutter, +to glide through among the glittering archipelago! But we must be +contented with a somewhat clumsy four-oared barge, wide and deep enough +for a cattle ferry-boat. This morning's sunrise found us at the mouth of +the Goblin's Cave on Loch Katrine, and among Lomond's lovely isles shall +sunset leave us among the last glimmer of the softened gold. To which of +all those lovely isles shall we drift before the wind on the small +heaving and breaking waves? To Inch-Murrin, where the fallow-deer +repose--or to the yew-shaded Inch-Caillach, the cemetery of +Clan-Alpin--the Holy Isle of Nuns? One hushing afternoon hour may yet be +ours on the waters--another of the slowly-walking twilight--that time +which the gazing spirit is too wrapt to measure, while "sinks the +Day-star in the ocean's bed"--and so on to midnight, the reign of +silence and shadow, the resplendent Diana with her hair-halo, and all +her star-nymphs, rejoicing round their Queen. Let the names of all +objects be forgotten--and imagination roam over the works of nature, as +if they lay in their primeval majesty, without one trace of man's +dominion. Slow-sailing Heron, that cloudlike seekest thy nest on yonder +lofty mass of pines--to us thy flight seems the very symbol of a long +lone life of peace. As thou foldest thy wide wings on the topmost bough, +beneath thee tower the unguarded Ruins, where many generations sleep. +Onwards thou floatest like a dream, nor changest thy gradually +descending course for the Eagle, that, far above thy line of travel, +comes rushing unwearied from his prey in distant Isles of the sea. The +Osprey! off--off--to Inch-Loning--or the dark cliffs of Glenfalloch, +many leagues away, which he will reach almost like a thought! Close your +eyes but for a moment--and when you look again, where is the +Cloud-Cleaver now? Gone in the sunshine, and haply seated in his eyrie +on Ben Lomond's head. + +But amidst all this splendour and magnificence, our eyes are drawn +against our will, and by a sort of sad fascination which we cannot +resist, along the glittering and dancing waves, towards the melancholy +shores of Inch-Cruin, the Island of the Afflicted. Beautiful is it by +nature, with its bays, and fields, and woods, as any isle that sees its +shadow in the deeps; but human sorrows have steeped it in eternal gloom, +and terribly is it haunted to our imagination. Here no woodman's hut +peeps from the glade--here are not seen the branching antlers of the +deer moving among the boughs that stir not--no place of peace is this +where the world-wearied hermit sits penitent in his cell, and prepares +his soul for Heaven. Its inhabitants are a woeful people, and all its +various charms are hidden from their eyes, or seen in ghastly +transfiguration; for here, beneath the yew-tree's shade, sit moping, or +roam about with rueful lamentation, the soul-distracted and the insane! +Ay--these sweet and pleasant murmurs break round a Lunatic Asylum! And +the shadows that are now and then seen among the umbrage are laughing or +weeping in the eclipse of reason, and may never know again aught of the +real character of this world, to which, exiled as they are from it, they +are yet bound by the ties of a common nature that, though sorely +deranged, are not wholly broken, and still separate them by an awful +depth of darkness from the beasts that perish. + +Thither love, yielding reluctantly at last to despair, has consented +that the object on which all its wise solicitudes had for years been +unavailably bestowed both night and day, should be rowed over, perhaps +at midnight, and when asleep, and left there with beings like itself, +all dimly conscious of their doom. To many such the change may often +bring little or no heed--for outward things may have ceased to impress, +and they may be living in their own rueful world, different from all +that we hear or behold. To some it may seem that they have been +spirited away to another state of existence--beautiful, indeed, and fair +to see, with all those lovely trees and shadows of trees; but still a +miserable, a most miserable place, without one face they ever saw +before, and haunted by glaring eyes that shoot forth fear, suspicion, +and hatred. Others, again, there are, who know well the misty head of +Ben Lomond, which, with joyful pleasure-parties set free from the city, +they had in other years exultingly scaled, and looked down, perhaps, in +a solemn pause of their youthful ecstasy, on the far-off and melancholy +Inch-Cruin! Thankful are they for such a haven at last--for they are +remote from the disturbance of the incomprehensible life that bewildered +them, and from the pity of familiar faces that was more than could be +borne. + +So let us float upon our oars behind the shadow of this rock, nor +approach nearer the sacred retreat of misery. Let us not gaze too +intently into the glades, for we might see some figure there who wished +to be seen nevermore, and recognise in the hurrying shadow the living +remains of a friend. How profound the hush! No sigh--no groan--no +shriek--no voice--no tossing of arms--no restless chafing of feet! God +in mercy has for a while calmed the congregation of the afflicted, and +the Isle is overspread with a sweet Sabbath-silence. What medicine for +them like the breath of heaven--the dew--the sunshine--and the murmur of +the wave! Nature herself is their kind physician, and sometimes not +unfrequently brings them by her holy skill back to the world of clear +intelligence and serene affection. They listen calmly to the blessed +sound of the oar that brings a visit of friends--to sojourn with them +for a day--or to take them away to another retirement, where they, in +restored reason, may sit around the board, nor fear to meditate during +the midnight watches on the dream, which, although dispelled, may in all +its ghastliness return. There was a glorious burst of sunshine! And of +all the Lomond Isles, what one rises up in the sudden illumination so +bright as Inch-Cruin? + +Methinks we see sitting in his narrow and low-roofed cell, careless of +food, dress, sleep, or shelter alike, him who in the opulent mart of +commerce was one of the most opulent, and devoted heart and soul to show +and magnificence. His house was like a palace with its pictured and +mirrored walls, and the nights wore away to dance, revelry, and song. +Fortune poured riches at his feet, which he had only to gather up; and +every enterprise in which he took part prospered beyond the reach of +imagination. But all at once--as if lightning had struck the dome of his +prosperity, and earthquake let down its foundations, it sank, crackled, +and disappeared--and the man of a million was a houseless, infamous, and +bankrupt beggar. In one day his proud face changed into the ghastly +smiling of an idiot--he dragged his limbs in paralysis--and slavered out +unmeaning words foreign to all the pursuits in which his active +intellect had for many years been plunged. All his relations--to whom it +was known he had never shown kindness--were persons in humble condition. +Ruined creditors we do not expect to be very pitiful, and people asked +what was to become of him till he died. A poor creature, whom he had +seduced and abandoned to want, but who had succeeded to a small property +on the death of a distant relation, remembered her first, her only love, +when all the rest of the world were willing to forget him; and she it +was who had him conveyed thither, herself sitting in the boat with her +arm round the unconscious idiot, who now vegetates on the charity of her +whom he betrayed. For fifteen years he has continued to exist in the +same state, and you may pronounce his name on the busy Exchange of the +city where he flourished and fell, and haply the person you speak to +shall have entirely forgotten it. + +The evils genius sometimes brings to its possessor have often been said +and sung, perhaps with exaggerations, but not always without truth. It +is found frequently apart from prudence and principle; and in a world +constituted like ours, how can it fail to reap a harvest of misery or +death? A fine genius, and even a high, had been bestowed on One who is +now an inmate of that cottage-cell, peering between these two rocks. At +College he outstripped all his compeers by powers equally versatile and +profound--the first both in intellect and in imagination. He was a poor +man's son--the only son of a working carpenter--and his father intended +him for the church. But the youth soon felt that to him the trammels of +a strict faith would be unbearable, and he lived on from year to year, +uncertain what profession to choose. Meanwhile his friends, all inferior +to him in talents and acquirements, followed the plain, open, and +beaten path, that leads sooner or later to respectability and +independence. He was left alone in his genius, useless, although +admired--while those who had looked in high hopes on his early career, +began to have their fears that they might never be realised. His first +attempts to attract the notice of the public, although not absolute +failures--for some of his compositions, both in prose and verse, were +indeed beautiful--were not triumphantly successful, and he began to +taste the bitterness of disappointed ambition. His wit and colloquial +talents carried him into the society of the dissipated and the +licentious; and, before he was aware of the fact, he had got the +character of all others the most humiliating--that of a man who knew not +how to estimate his own worth, nor to preserve it from pollution. He +found himself silently and gradually excluded from the higher circle +which he had once adorned, and sunk inextricably into a lower grade of +social life. His whole habits became loose and irregular; his studies +were pursued but by fits and starts; his knowledge, instead of keeping +pace with that of the times, became clouded and obscure, and even +diminished; his dress was meaner; his manners hurried, and reckless, and +wild, and ere long he became a slave to drunkenness, and then to every +low and degrading vice. + +His father died, it was said, of a broken heart--for to him his son had +been all in all, and the unhappy youth felt that the death lay at his +door. At last, shunned by most--tolerated but by a few for the sake of +other times--domiciled in the haunts of infamy--loaded with a heap of +paltry debts, and pursued by the hounds of the law, the fear of a prison +drove him mad, and his whole mind was utterly and hopelessly overthrown. +A few of the friends of his boyhood raised a subscription in his +behoof--and within the gloom of these woods he has been shrouded for +many years, but not unvisited once or twice a summer by some one, who +knew, loved, and admired him in the morning of that genius that long +before its meridian brightness had been so fatally eclipsed. + +And can it be in cold and unimpassioned words like these that we thus +speak of Thee and thy doom, thou Soul of fire, and once the brightest of +the free, privileged by nature to walk along the mountain-ranges, and +mix their spirits with the stars! Can it be that all thy glorious +aspirations, by thyself forgotten, have no dwelling-place in the memory +of one who loved thee so well, and had his deepest affection so +profoundly returned! Thine was a heart once tremblingly alive to all the +noblest and finest sympathies of our nature, and the humblest human +sensibilities became beautiful when tinged by the light of thy +imagination. Thy genius invested the most ordinary objects with a charm +not their own; and the vision it created thy lips were eloquent to +disclose. What although thy poor old father died, because by thy hand +all his hopes were shivered, and for thy sake poverty stripped even the +coverlet from his dying-bed--yet we feel as if some dreadful destiny, +rather than thy own crime, blinded thee to his fast decay, and closed +thine ears in deafness to his beseeching prayer. Oh! charge not to +creatures such as we all the fearful consequences of our misconduct and +evil ways! We break hearts we would die to heal--and hurry on towards +the grave those whom to save we would leap into the devouring fire. Many +wondered in their anger that thou couldst be so callous to the old man's +grief--and couldst walk tearless at his coffin. The very night of the +day he was buried thou wert among thy wild companions, in a house of +infamy, close to the wall of the churchyard. Was not that enough to tell +us all that disease was in thy brain, and that reason, struggling with +insanity, had changed sorrow to despair. But perfect forgiveness-- +forgiveness made tender by profoundest pity--was finally extended to +thee by all thy friends--frail and erring like thyself in many things, +although not so fatally misled and lost, because in the mystery of +Providence not so irresistibly tried. It seemed as if thou hadst +offended the Guardian Genius, who, according to the old philosophy which +thou knewest so well, is given to every human being at his birth; and +that then the angel left thy side, and Satan strove to drag thee to +perdition. And hath any peace come to thee--a youth no more--but in what +might have been the prime of manhood, bent down, they say, to the +ground, with a head all floating with silver hairs--hath any peace come +to thy distracted soul in these woods, over which there now seems again +to brood a holy horror? Yes--thy fine dark eyes are not wholly without +intelligence as they look on the sun, moon, and stars; although all +their courses seem now confused to thy imagination, once regular and +ordered in their magnificence before that intellect which science +claimed as her own. The harmonies of nature are not all lost on thy ear, +poured forth throughout all seasons, over the world of sound and sight. +Glimpses of beauty startle thee as thou wanderest along the shores of +thy prison-isle; and that fine poetical genius, not yet extinguished +altogether, although faint and flickering, gives vent to something like +snatches of songs, and broken elegies, that seem to wail over the ruins +of thy own soul! Such peace as ever visits them afflicted as thou art, +be with thee in cell or on shore; nor lost to Heaven will be the wild +moanings of--to us--thy unintelligible prayers! + +But hark to the spirit-stirring voice of the bugle scaling the sky, and +leaping up and down in echoes among the distant mountains! Such a strain +animates the voltigeur, skirmishing in front of the line of battle, or +sending flashes of sudden death from the woods. Alas for him who now +deludes his yet high heart with a few notes of the music that so often +was accompanied by his sword waving on to glory! Unappalled was he ever +in the whizzing and hissing fire--nor did his bold broad breast ever +shrink from the bayonet, that with the finished fencer's art he has +often turned aside when red with death. In many of the pitched battles +of the Spanish campaigns his plume was conspicuous over the dark green +lines, that, breaking asunder in fragments like those of the flowing +sea, only to re-advance over the bloody fields, cleared the ground that +was to be debated between the great armaments. Yet in all such desperate +service he never received one single wound. But on a mid-day march, as +he was gaily singing a love-song, the sun smote him to the very brain, +and from that moment his right hand grasped the sword no more. + +Not on the face of all the earth--or of all the sea--is there a spot of +profounder peace than that isle that has long been his abode. But to him +all the scene is alive with the pomp of war. Every far-off precipice is +a fort, that has its own Spanish name--and the cloud above seems to his +eyes the tricolor, or the flag of his own victorious country. War, that +dread game that nations play at, is now to the poor insane soldier a +mere child's pastime, from which sometimes he himself will turn with a +sigh or a smile. For sense assails him in his delirium, for a moment and +no more; and he feels that he is far away, and for ever, from all his +companions in glory, in an asylum that must be left but for the grave! +Perhaps in such moments he may have remembered the night, when at +Badajos he led the forlorn hope; but even forlorn hope now hath he none, +and he sinks away back into his delusions, at which even his brother +sufferers smile--so foolish does the restless campaigner seem to these +men of peace! + +Lo! a white ghost-like figure, slowly issuing from the trees, and +sitting herself down on a stone, with face fixed on the waters! Now she +is so perfectly still, that had we not seen her motion thither, she and +the rock would have seemed but one! Somewhat fantastically dressed, even +in her apparent despair. Were we close to her, we should see a face yet +beautiful, beneath hair white as snow. Her voice too, but seldom heard, +is still sweet and low; and sometimes, when all are asleep, or at least +silent, she begins at midnight to sing! She yet touches the guitar--an +instrument in fashion in Scotland when she led the fashion--with +infinite grace and delicacy--and the songs she loves best are those in a +foreign tongue. For more than thirty years hath the unfortunate lady +come to the water's edge daily, and hour after hour continue to sit +motionless on that self-same stone, looking down into the loch. Her +story is now almost like a dim tradition from other ages, and the +history of those who come here often fades away into nothing. Everywhere +else they are forgotten--here there are none who can remember. Who once +so beautiful as the "Fair Portuguese?" It was said at that time that she +was a Nun--but the sacred veil was drawn aside by the hand of love, and +she came to Scotland with her deliverer! Yes, her deliverer! He +delivered her from the gloom--often the peaceful gloom that hovers round +the altar of Superstition--and after a few years of love and life and +joy--she sat where you now see her sitting, and the world she had +adorned moved on in brightness and in music as before! Since there has +to her been so much suffering--was there on her part no sin? No--all +believed her to be guiltless, except one, whose jealousy would have seen +falsehood lurking in an angel's eyes; but she was utterly deserted; and +being in a strange country, worse than an orphan, her mind gave way; for +say not--oh say not--that innocence can always stand against shame and +despair! The hymns she sings at midnight are hymns to the Virgin; but +all her songs are songs about love, and chivalry, and knights that went +crusading to the Holy Land. He who brought her from another sanctuary +into the one now before us, has been dead many years. He perished in +shipwreck--and 'tis thought that she sits there gazing down into the +loch, as on the place where he sank or was buried; for when told that he +was drowned, she shrieked, and made the sign of the cross--and since +that long-ago day that stone has in all weathers been her constant seat. + +Away we go westwards--like fire-worshippers devoutly gazing on the +setting sun. And another isle seems to shoot across our path, separated +suddenly, as if by magic, from the mainland. How beautiful, with its +many crescents, the low-lying shores, carrying here and there a single +tree quite into the water, and with verdant shallows guarding the lonely +seclusion even from the keel of canoe! Round and round we row, but not a +single landing-place. Shall we take each of us a fair burthen in his +arms, and bear it to that knoll, whispering and quivering through the +twilight with a few birches whose stems glitter like silver pillars in +the shade? No--let us not disturb the silent people, now donning their +green array for nightly revelries. It is the "Isle of Fairies," and on +that knoll hath the fishermen often seen their Queen sitting on a +throne, surrounded by myriads of creatures no taller than harebells; one +splash of the oar--and all is vanished. There, it is said, lives among +the Folk of Peace, the fair child, who, many years ago, disappeared from +her parents' shieling at Inversnayde, and whom they vainly wept over as +dead. One evening she had floated away by herself in a small boat--while +her parents heard, without fear, the clank--duller and duller--of the +oars, no longer visible in the distant moonshine. In an hour the +returning vessel touched the beech--but no child was to be seen--and +they listened in vain for the music of the happy creature's songs. For +weeks the loch rolled and roared like the sea--nor was the body found +anywhere lying on the shore. Long, long afterwards, some little white +bones were interred in Christian burial, for the parents believed them +to be the remains of their child--all that had been left by the bill of +the raven. But not so thought many dwellers along the mountain-shores--for +had not her very voice been often heard by the shepherds, when the +unseen flight of Fairies sailed singing along up the solitary +Glenfalloch, away over the moors of Tynedrum, and down to the sweet +Dalmally, where the shadow of Cruachan darkens the old ruins of +melancholy Kilchurn. The lost child's parents died in their old age--but +she, 'tis said, is unchanged in shape and features--the same fair thing +she was the evening that she disappeared, only a shade of sadness is on +her pale face, as if she were pining for the sound of human voices, and +the gleam of the peat-fire of the shieling. Ever, when the Fairy-court +is seen for a moment beneath the glimpses of the moon, she is sitting by +the side of the gracious Queen. Words of might there are, that if +whispered at right season, would yet recall her from the shadowy world, +to which she has been spirited away; but small sentinels stand at their +stations all round the isle, and at nearing of human breath, a shrill +warning is given from sedge and water-lily, and like dewdrops melt away +the phantoms, while, mixed with peals of little laughter, overhead is +heard the winnowing of wings. For the hollow of the earth, and the +hollow of the air, is their Invisible Kingdom; and when they touch the +herbage or flowers of this earth of ours, whose lonely places they love, +then only are they revealed to human eyes--at all times else to our +senses unexistent as dreams! + + + + +A DAY AT WINDERMERE. + + +Old and gouty, we are confined to our chair; and occasionally, during an +hour of rainless sunshine, are wheeled by female hands along the +gravel-walks of our Policy, an unrepining and philosophical +valetudinarian. Even the Crutch is laid up in ordinary, and is encircled +with cobwebs. A monstrous spider has there set up his rest; and our +still study ever and anon hearkens to the shrill buzz of some poor fly +expiring between those formidable forceps--just as so many human +ephemerals have breathed their last beneath the bite of his indulgent +master. 'Tis pleasure to look at Domitian--so we love to call +him--sallying from the centre against a wearied wasp, lying, like a +silkworm, circumvoluted in the inextricable toils, and then seizing the +sinner by the nape of the neck, like Christopher with a Cockney, to see +the emperor haul him away into the charnel-house. But we have often less +savage recreations--such as watching our bee-hives when about to send +forth colonies--feeding our pigeons, a purple people that dazzle the +daylight--gathering roses as they choke our small chariot-wheels with +their golden orbs--eating grapes out of vine-leaf-draperied baskets, +beautifying beneath the gentle fingers of the Gentle into fairy network +graceful as the gossamer--drinking elder-flower frontignac from +invisible glasses, so transparent in its yellowness seems the liquid +radiance--at one moment eyeing a page of "Paradise Lost," and at another +of "Paradise Regained;" for what else is the face of her who often +visiteth our Eden, and whose coming and whose going is ever like a +heavenly dream? Then laying back our head upon the cushion of our +triumphal car, and with half-shut eyes, subsiding slowly into haunted +sleep or slumber, with our fine features up to heaven, a saint-like +image, such as Raphael loved to paint, or Flaxman to imbue with the +soul of stillness in the life-hushed marble. Such, dearest reader, are +some of our pastimes--and so do we contrive to close our ears to the +sound of the scythe of Saturn, ceaselessly sweeping over the earth, and +leaving, at every stride of the mower, a swathe more rueful than ever +after a night of shipwreck did strew with ghastliness a lee sea-shore! + +Thus do we make a virtue of necessity--and thus contentment wreathes +with silk and velvet the prisoner's chains. Once were we--long, long +ago--restless as a sunbeam on the restless wave--rapid as a river that +seems enraged with all impediments, but all the while in passionate love + + "Doth make sweet music with th' enamell'd stones"-- + +strong as a steed let loose from Arab's tent in the oasis to slake his +thirst at the desert well--fierce in our harmless joy as a red-deer +belling on the hills--tameless as the eagle sporting in the storm--gay +as the "dolphin on a tropic sea"--"mad as young bulls"--and wild as a +whole wilderness of adolescent lions. But now--alas! and alack-a-day! +the sunbeam is but a patch of sober verdure--the river is changed into a +canal--the "desert-born" is foundered--the red-deer is slow as an old +ram--the eagle has forsook his cliff and his clouds, and hops among the +gooseberry bushes--the dolphin has degenerated into a land +tortoise--without danger now might a very child take the bull by the +horns--and though something of a lion still, our roar is, like that of +the nightingale, "most musical, most melancholy"--and, as we attempt to +shake our mane, your grandmother--fair peruser--cannot choose but weep. + +It speaks folios in favour of our philanthropy, to know that, in our own +imprisonment, we love to see all life free as air. Would that by a word +of ours we could clothe all human shoulders with wings! Would that by a +word of ours we could plume all human spirits with thoughts strong as +the eagle's pinions, that they might winnow their way into the empyrean! +Tories! Yes! we are Tories. Our faith is in the Divine right of +kings--but easy, my boys, easy--all free men are kings, and they hold +their empire from heaven. That is our political--philosophical--moral-- +religious creed. In its spirit we have lived--and in its spirit we hope +to die--not on the scaffold like Sidney--no--no--no--not by any manner +of means like Sidney on the scaffold--but like ourselves, on a +hair-mattress above a feather-bed, our head decently sunk in three +pillows and one bolster, and our frame stretched out unagitatedly +beneath a white counterpane. But meanwhile--though almost as +unlocomotive as the dead in body--there is perpetual motion in our +minds. Sleep is one thing, and stagnation is another--as is well known +to all eyes that have ever seen, by moonlight and midnight, the face of +Christopher North, or of Windermere. + +Windermere! Why, at this blessed moment we behold the beauty of all its +intermingling isles. There they are--all gazing down on their own +reflected loveliness in the magic mirror of the airlike water, just as +many a holy time we have seen them all agaze, when, with suspended oar +and suspended breath--no sound but a ripple on the Naiad's bow, and a +beating at our own heart--motionless in our own motionless bark--we +seemed to float midway down that beautiful abyss between the heaven +above and the heaven below, on some strange terrestrial scene composed +of trees and the shadows of trees, by the imagination made +indistinguishable to the eye, and as delight deepened into dreams, all +lost at last, clouds, groves, water, air, sky, in their various and +profound confusion of supernatural peace. But a sea-born breeze is on +Bowness Bay; all at once the lake is blue as the sky: and that +evanescent world is felt to have been but a vision. Like swans that had +been asleep in the airless sunshine, lo! where from every shady nook +appear the white-sailed pinnaces; for on merry Windermere--you must +know--every breezy hour has its own Regatta. + +But intending to be useful, we are becoming ornamental; of us it must +not be said, that + + "Pure description holds the place of sense"-- + +therefore, let us be simple but not silly, as plain as is possible +without being prosy, as instructive as is consistent with being +entertaining, a cheerful companion and a trusty guide. + +We shall suppose that you have left Kendal, and are on your way to +Bowness. Forget, as much as may be, all worldly cares and anxieties, and +let your hearts be open and free to all genial impulses about to be +breathed into them from the beautiful and sublime in nature. There is +no need of that foolish state of feeling called enthusiasm. You have but +to be happy; and by-and-by your happiness will grow into delight. The +blue mountains already set your imaginations at work; among those clouds +and mists you fancy many a magnificent precipice--and in the valleys +that sleep below, you image to yourselves the scenery of rivers and +lakes. The landscape immediately around gradually grows more and more +picturesque and romantic; and you feel that you are on the very borders +of Fairyland. The first smile of Windermere salutes your impatient eyes, +and sinks silently into your heart. You know not how beautiful it may +be--nor yet in what the beauty consists; but your finest sensibilities +to nature are touched--and a tinge of poetry, as from a rainbow, +overspreads that cluster of islands that seems to woo you to their still +retreats. And now + + "Wooded Winandermere, the river-lake," + +with all its bays and promontories, lies in the morning light serene as +a Sabbath, and cheerful as a Holiday; and you feel that there is +loveliness on this earth more exquisite and perfect than ever visited +your slumbers even in the glimpses of a dream. The first sight of such a +scene will be unforgotten to your dying day--for such passive +impressions are deeper than we can explain--our whole spiritual being is +suddenly awakened to receive them--and associations, swift as light, are +gathered into one Emotion of Beauty which shall be imperishable, and +which, often as memory recalls that moment, grows into genius, and vents +itself in appropriate expressions, each in itself a picture. Thus may +one moment minister to years; and the life-wearied heart of old age by +one delightful remembrance be restored to primal joy--the glory of the +past brought beamingly upon the faded present--and the world that is +obscurely passing away from our eyes re-illumined with the visions of +its early morn. The shows of nature are indeed evanescent, but their +spiritual influences are immortal; and from that grove now glowing in +the sunlight may your heart derive a delight that shall utterly perish +but in the grave. + +But now you are in the White Lion, and our advice to you--perhaps +unnecessary--is immediately to order breakfast. There are many +parlours--some with a charming prospect, and some without any prospect +at all; but remember that there are other people in the world besides +yourselves--and therefore, into whatever parlour you may be shown by a +pretty maid, be contented, and lose no time in addressing yourselves to +your repast. That over, be in no hurry to get on the Lake. Perhaps all +the boats are engaged--and Billy Balmer is at the Waterhead. So stroll +into the churchyard, and take a glance over the graves. Close to the +oriel-window of the church is one tomb over which one might meditate +half an autumnal day. Enter the church, and you will feel the beauty of +these fine lines in "The Excursion"-- + + "Not raised in nice proportions was the pile, + But large and massy; for duration built; + With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld + By naked rafters intricately cross'd + Like leafless underboughs, 'mid some thick grove, + All wither'd by the depth of shade above!" + +Go down to the low terrace-walk along the Bay. The Bay is in itself a +Lake, at all times cheerful with its scattered fleet, at anchor or under +weigh--its villas and cottages, each rejoicing in its garden or +orchard--its meadows mellowing to the reedy margin of the pellucid +water--its heath-covered boathouses--its own portion of the Isle called +Beautiful--and beyond that sylvan haunt, the sweet Furness Fells, with +gentle outline undulating in the sky, and among its spiral larches +showing, here and there, groves and copses of the old unviolated woods. +Yes, Bowness Bay is in itself a Lake; but how finely does it blend away, +through its screens of oak and sycamore trees, into a larger +Lake--another, yet the same--on whose blue bosom you see bearing down to +windward--for the morning breeze is born--many a tiny sail. It has the +appearance of a race. Yes--it is a race; and the Liverpoolian, as of +yore, is eating them all out of the wind, and without another tack will +make her anchorage. But hark--Music! 'Tis the Bowness Band playing "See +the conquering Hero comes!"--and our old friend has carried away the +gold cup from all competitors. + +Now turn your faces up the hill above the village school. That green +mount is what is called a--Station. The villagers are admiring a grove +of parasols, while you--the party--are admiring the village--with its +irregular roofs--white, blue, grey, green, brown, and black +walls--fruit-laden trees so yellow--its central church-tower--and +environing groves variously burnished by autumn. Saw ye ever banks and +braes and knolls so beautifully bedropt with human dwellings? There is +no solitude about Windermere. Shame on human nature were Paradise +uninhabited! Here, in amicable neighbourhood, are halls and huts--here +rises through groves the dome of the rich man's mansion--and there the +low roof of the poor man's cottage beneath its one single sycamore! Here +are hundreds of small properties hereditary in the same families for +hundreds of years--and never, never, O Westmoreland! may thy race of +_statesmen_ be extinct--nor the virtues that ennoble their humble +households! See, suddenly brought forth by sunshine from among the old +woods--and then sinking away into her usual unobtrusive serenity--the +lake-loving Rayrig, almost level, so it seems, with the water, yet +smiling over her own quiet bay from the grove-shelter of her pastoral +mound. Within her walls may peace ever dwell with piety--and the light +of science long blend with the lustre of the domestic hearth! Thence to +Calgarth is all one forest--yet glade-broken, and enlivened by open +uplands; so that the roamer, while he expects a night of umbrage, often +finds himself in the open day, beneath the bright blue bow of heaven +haply without a cloud. The eye travels delighted over the multitudinous +tree-tops--often dense as one single tree--till it rests, in sublime +satisfaction, on the far-off mountains, that lose not a woody character +till the tree-sprinkled pastures roughen into rocks--and rocks tower +into precipices where the falcons breed. But the lake will not suffer +the eye long to wander among the distant glooms. She wins us wholly to +herself--and restlessly and passionately for a while, but calmly and +affectionately at last, the heart embraces all her beauty, and wishes +that the vision might endure for ever, and that here our tents were +pitched--to be struck no more during our earthly pilgrimage. Imagination +lapses into a thousand moods. O for a fairy pinnace to glide and float +for aye over those golden waves! A hermit-cell on sweet Lady-Holm! A +sylvan shieling on Loughrig side! A nest in that nameless dell, which +sees but one small slip of heaven, and longs at night for the +reascending visit of its few loving stars! A dwelling open to all the +skyey influence on the mountain-brow, the darling of the rising or the +setting sun, and often seen by eyes in the lower world glittering +through the rainbow! + +All this seems a very imperfect picture indeed, or panorama of +Windermere, from the hill behind the school-house in the village of +Bowness. So, to put a stop to such nonsense, let us descend to the White +Lion--and inquire about Billy Balmer. Honest Billy has arrived from +Waterhead--seems tolerably steady--Mr Ullock's boats may be trusted--so +let us take a voyage of discovery on the lake. Let those who have reason +to think that they have been born to die a different death from +drowning, hoist a sail. We to-day shall feather an oar. Billy takes the +stroke--Mr William Garnet's at the helm--and "row, vassals, row, for the +pride of the Lowlands," is the choral song that accompanies the Naiad +out of the bay, and round the north end of the Isle called Beautiful, +under the wave-darkening umbrage of that ancient oak. And now we are in +the lovely straits between that Island and the mainland of Furness +Fells. The village has disappeared, but not melted away; for hark! the +Church-tower tolls ten--and see the sun is high in heaven. High, but not +hot--for the first September frosts chilled the rosy fingers of the morn +as she bathed them in the dews, and the air is cool as a cucumber. Cool +but bland--and as clear and transparent as a fine eye lighted up by a +good conscience. There were breezes in Bowness Bay--but here there are +none--or, if there be, they but whisper aloft in the tree-tops, and +ruffle not the water, which is calm as Louisa's breast. The small isles +here are but few in number--yet the best arithmetician of the party +cannot count them--in confusion so rich and rare do they blend their +shadows with those of the groves on the Isle called Beautiful, and on +the Furness Fells. A tide imperceptible to the eye drifts us on among +and above those beautiful reflections--that downward world of hanging +dreams! and ever and anon we beckon unto Billy gently to dip his oar, +that we may see a world destroyed and recreated in one moment of time. +Yes, Billy! thou art a poet--and canst work more wonders with thine oar +than could he with his pen who painted "heavenly Una with her milk-white +lamb," wandering by herself in Fairyland. How is it, pray, that our +souls are satiated with such beauty as this? Is it because 'tis +unsubstantial all--senseless, though fair--and in its evanescence +unsuited to the sympathies that yearn for the permanencies of breathing +life? Dreams are delightful only as delusions within the delusion of +this our mortal waking existence--one touch of what we call reality +dissolves them all; blissful though they may have been, we care not when +the bubble bursts--nay, we are glad again to return to our own natural +world, care-haunted though in its happiest moods it be--glad as if we +had escaped from glamoury; and, oh! beyond expression sweet it is once +more to drink the light of living eyes--the music of living lips--after +that preternatural hush that steeps the shadowy realms of the +imagination, whether stretching along a sunset-heaven or the mystical +imagery of earth and sky floating in the lustre of lake or sea. + +Therefore "row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Lowlands;" and as +rowing is a thirsty exercise, let us land at the Ferry, and each man +refresh himself with a horn of ale. + +There is not a prettier place on all Windermere than the Ferry-House, or +one better adapted for a honey-moon. You can hand your bride into a boat +almost out of the parlour window, and be off among the islands in a +moment, or into nook or bay where no prying eye, even through telescope +(a most unwarrantable instrument), can overlook your happiness; or you +can secrete yourselves, like buck and doe, among the lady-fern on +Furness Fells, where not a sunbeam can intrude on your sacred privacy, +and where you may melt down hours to moments, in chaste connubial bliss, +brightening futurity with plans of domestic enjoyment, like long lines +of lustre streaming across the lake. But at present, let us visit the +fort-looking building among the cliffs called The Station, and see how +Windermere looks as we front the east. Why, you would not know it to be +the same lake. The Isle called Beautiful, which heretofore had scarcely +seemed an isle, appearing to belong to one or other shore of the +mainland, from this point of view is an isle indeed, loading the lake +with a weight of beauty, and giving it an ineffable character of +richness which nowhere else does it possess; while the other lesser +isles, dropt "in nature's careless haste" between it and the Furness +Fells, connect it still with those lovely shores from which it floats a +short way apart, without being disunited--one spirit blending the whole +together within the compass of a fledgling's flight. Beyond these + + "Sister isles, that smile + Together like a happy family + Of beauty and of love," + +the eye meets the Rayrig woods, with but a gleam of water between, only +visible in sunshine, and is gently conducted by them up the hills of +Applethwaite, diversified with cultivated enclosures, "all green as +emerald" to their very summits, with all their pastoral and arable +grounds besprinkled with stately single trees, copses, or groves. On the +nearer side of these hills is seen, stretching far off to other lofty +regions--Hill-bell and High-street conspicuous over the rest--the long +vale of Troutbeck, with its picturesque cottages, in "numbers without +number numberless," and all its sable pines and sycamores--on the +further side, that most sylvan of all sylvan mountains, where lately the +Hemans warbled her native wood-notes wild in her poetic bower, fitly +called Dove-nest, and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and Rydal Head, +magnificent giants looking westward to the Langdale Pikes (here unseen), + + "The last that parley with the setting sun." + +Immediately in front, the hills are low and lovely, sloping with gentle +undulations down to the lake, here grove-girdled along all its shores. +The elm-grove that overshadows the Parsonage is especially +conspicuous--stately and solemn in a green old age--and though now +silent, in spring and early summer clamorous with rooks in love or +alarm, an ancient family, and not to be expelled from their hereditary +seats. Following the line of shore to the right, and turning your eyes +unwillingly away from the bright and breezy Belfield, they fall on the +elegant architecture of Storr's Hall, gleaming from a glade in the thick +woods, and still looking southward they see a serene series of the same +forest scenery, along the heights of Gillhead and Gummer's-How, till +Windermere is lost, apparently narrowed into a river, beyond Townhead +and Fellfoot, where the prospect is closed by a beaconed eminence +clothed with shadowy trees to the very base of the Tower. The points and +promontories jutting into the lake from these and the opposite +shores--which are of a humbler, though not tame character--are all +placed most felicitously; and as the lights and shadows keep shifting on +the water, assume endless varieties of relative position to the eye, so +that often during one short hour you might think you had been gazing on +Windermere with a kaleidoscopical eye, that had seemed to create the +beauty which in good truth is floating there for ever on the bosom of +nature. + +That description, perhaps, is not so very much amiss; but should you +think otherwise, be so good as give us a better: meanwhile let us +descend from The Station--and its stained windows--stained into setting +sunlight--frost and snow--the purpling autumn--and the first faint +vernal green--and re-embark at the Ferry-House pier. Berkshire Island is +fair--but we have always looked at it with an evil eye since unable to +weather it in our old schooner, one day when the Victory, on the same +tack, shot by us to windward like a salmon. But now we are half-way +between Storr's Point and Rawlinson's Nab--so, my dear Garnet, down with +the helm and let us put about (who is that catching crabs?) for a fine +front view of the Grecian edifice. It does honour to the genius of +Gandy--and say what people choose of a classic clime, the light of a +Westmoreland sky falls beautifully on that marble-like stone, which, +whether the heavens be in gloom or glory, "shines well where it stands," +and flings across the lake a majestic shadow. Methought there passed +along the lawn the image of one now in his tomb! The memory of that +bright day returns, when Windermere glittered with all her sails in +honour of the great Northern Minstrel, and of him the Eloquent, whose +lips are now mute in the dust. Methinks we see his smile benign--that we +hear his voice silver-sweet! + + "But away with melancholy, + Nor doleful changes ring"-- + +as such thoughts came like shadows, like shadows let them depart--and +spite of that which happeneth to all men--"this one day we give to +merriment." Pull, Billy, pull--or we will turn you round--and in that +case there is no refreshment nearer than Newby-bridge. The Naiad feels +the invigorated impulse--and her cut-water murmurs to the tune of six +knots through the tiny cataract foaming round her bows. The woods are +all running down the lake,--and at that rate, by two _post meridiem_ +will be in the sea. + +Commend us--on a tour--to lunch and dinner in one. 'Tis a saving both of +time and money--and of all the dinner-lunches that ever were set upon a +sublunary table, the _facile principes_ are the dinner-lunches you may +devour in the White Lion, Bowness. Take a walk--and a seat on the green +that overlooks the village, almost on a level with the lead-roof of the +venerable church--while Hebe is laying the cloth for a repast fit for +Jove, Juno, and the other heathen gods and goddesses; and if you must +have politics--why, call for the _Standard_ or _Sun_ (Heavens! there is +that hawk already at the _Times_), and devote a few hurried and hungry +minutes to the French Revolution. Why, the Green of all Greens--often +traced by us of yore beneath the midnight moonlight, till a path was +worn along the edge of the low wall, still called "North's Walk"--is +absolutely converted into a reading-room, and our laking party into a +political club. There is Louisa with the _Leeds Intelligencer_--and +Matilda with the _Morning Herald_--and Harriet with that York paper +worth them all put together--for it tells of Priam, and the Cardinal, +and St Nicholas--but, hark! a soft footstep! And then a soft voice--no +dialect or accent pleasanter than the Westmoreland--whispers that the +dinner-lunch is on the table--and no leading article like a cold round +of beef, or a veal pie. Let the Parisians settle their Constitution as +they will--meanwhile let us strengthen ours; and after a single glass of +Madeira--and a horn of home-brewed--let us off on foot--on horseback--in +gig--car and chariot--to Troutbeck. + +It is about a Scottish mile, we should think, from Bowness to Cook's +House--along the turnpike road--half the distance lying embowered in the +Rayrig woods--and half open to lake, cloud, and sky. It is pleasant to +lose sight now and then of the lake along whose banks you are +travelling, especially if during separation you become a Druid. The +water woos you at your return with her bluest smile, and her whitest +murmur. Some of the finest trees in all the Rayrig woods have had the +good sense to grow by the roadside, where they can see all that is +passing--and make their own observations on us deciduous plants. Few of +them seem to be very old--not much older than Christopher North--and, +like him, they wear well, trunk sound to the core, arms with a long +sweep, and head in fine proportions of cerebral development, fortified +against all storms--perfect pictures of oaks in their prime. You may +see one--without looking for it--near a farmhouse called +Miller-ground--himself a grove. His trunk is clothed in a tunic of moss, +which shows the ancient Sylvan to great advantage, and it would be no +easy matter to give him a fall. Should you wish to see Windermere in all +her glory, you have but to enter a gate a few yards on this side of his +shade, and ascend an eminence called by us Greenbank--but you had as +well leave your red mantle in the carriage, for an enormous white, +long-horned Lancashire bull has for some years established his +head-quarters not far off, and you would not wish your wife to become a +widow, with six fatherless children. But the royal road of poetry is +often the most splendid--and by keeping the turnpike, you soon find +yourself on a terrace to which there was nothing to compare in the +hanging gardens of Babylon. There is the widest breadth of water--the +richest foreground of wood--and the most magnificent background of +mountains--not only in Westmoreland but--believe us--in all the world. +That blue roof is Calgarth--and no traveller ever pauses on this brow +without giving it a blessing--for the sake of the illustrious dead; for +there long dwelt in the body Richard Watson, the Defender of the Faith, +and there within the shadow of his memory still dwell those, dearest on +earth to his beatified spirit. So pass along in high and solemn thought, +till you lose sight of Calgarth in the lone road that leads by St +Catharine's, and then relapse into pleasant fancies and picturesque +dreams. This is the best way by far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and +downs in this life were ever more enlivening--not even the ups and downs +of a bird learning to fly. Sheep-fences, six feet high, are admirable +contrivances for shutting out scenery; and by shutting out much scenery, +why, you confer an unappreciable value on the little that remains +visible, and feel as if you could hug it to your heart. But sometimes +one does feel tempted to shove down a few roods of intercepting +stone-wall higher than the horse-hair on a cuirassier's casque--though +sheep should eat the suckers and scions, protected as they there shoot, +at the price of the concealment of the picturesque and the poetical from +beauty-searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is said, which has never +a turning; so this must be a short one, which has a hundred. You have +turned your back on Windermere--and our advice to you is, to keep your +face to the mountains. Troutbeck is a jewel--a diamond of a stream--but +Bobbin Mills have exhausted some of the most lustrous pools, changing +them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Deep dells are his +delight--and he loves the rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded +banks--and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang at intervals over +his winding course, and seem sometimes to block it up; but the miner +works his way out beneath galleries and arches in the living +stone--sometimes silent--sometimes singing--and sometimes roaring like +thunder--till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere he reaches the wooden +bridge in the bonny holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the swan +that sometimes sees his image in his breast, and through alder and +willow banks murmurs away his life in the Lake. + +Yes--that is Troutbeck Chapel--one of the smallest--and to our eyes the +very simplest--of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it be +remembered when more pretending edifices are forgotten--just like some +mild, sensible, but perhaps somewhat too silent person, whose +acquaintanceship--nay, friendship--we feel a wish to cultivate we scarce +know why, except that he is mild, sensible, and silent; whereas we would +not be civil to the _brusque_, upsetting, and loquacious puppy at his +elbow, whose information is as various as it is profound, were one word +or look of courtesy to save him from the flames. For Heaven's sake, +Louisa, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel. There is nothing but a square +tower--a horizontal roof--and some perpendicular walls. The outlines of +the mountains here have no specific character. That bridge is but a poor +feature--and the stream here very commonplace. Put them not on paper. +Yet alive--is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a +soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here--in this +utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil; and as the +bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green +pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled +heart whispers to itself, "this is peace!" + +The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your +Troutbeck _statesmen_, we have heard, are the most litigious--the most +quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath, in all the parish that has +not cost many pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant style is +referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the +Quarter Sessions. No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a +march-wall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a +frost-loosened stone tumble from some _skrees_ down upon a neighbour's +field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many +of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and +ears mainly to fee attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go the +same road--and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields, +will sue for something or another _in formā pauperis_, were it but the +worthless wood and second-hand nails that may be destined for his +coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life--but we must take +pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were +every whit as bad in the time of the patriarchs--else--whence the +satirical sneer, "sham Abraham?" Yonder is the village straggling away +up along the hill-side, till the furthest house seems a rock fallen with +trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in +clusters of twos or threes--with here and there what in Scotland we +should call a _clachan_--many a sma' toun within the ae lang toun; but +where in all braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of +rural dwellings, all dropt down where the Painter and the Poet would +have wished to plant them, on knolls and in dells, and on banks and +braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in +picturesque confusion by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, and by +flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich as those of the Hesperides? + +If you have no objections--our pretty dears--we shall return to Bowness +by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march--so that we may one +and all indulge in our own silent fancies--and let not a word be spoken, +virgins--under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable--till we crown +the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already--and we hear our +musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his +cottage, the head and shoulders of Windermere are seen in their most +majestic shape--and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale +so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland, +gorgeous land," by gazing on which for an hour we shall all become +poets and poetesses. Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same +critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round--and despises the +twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down--from head to +foot--from the Brathay to the Leven--of the proper breadth precisely--to +a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay--on which the birds +love to balance themselves--at low or high water, to be visible longer +or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such +occasions since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our +skiff from the Endeavour, the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be +impaired--so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of +its sylvan shores. True, there are flaws in the diamond--but only when +the squalls come; and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the +first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue as an angel's eyes. Lowood +Bay--we are now embarked in Mr Jackson's prettiest pinnace--when the sun +is westering--which it now is--surpasses all other bays in fresh-water +mediterraneans. Eve loves to see her pensive face reflected in that +serenest mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossible--but sure she +never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in +that truest of all glasses, set in the richest of all frames. Pleased +she retires--with a wavering motion--and casting "many a longing, +lingering look behind," fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods; +while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger--we really know not +which--takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with +her crescent-moon-coronet, wreathed perhaps with a white cloud, and just +over the silver bow the lustre of one large yellow star. + +As none of the party complain of hunger, let us crack among us a single +bottle of our worthy host's choice old Madeira--and then haste in the +barouche (ha! here it is) to Bowness. It is right now to laugh--and +sing--and recite poetry--and talk all manner of nonsense. Didn't ye hear +something crack? Can it be a spring--or merely the axle-tree? Our +clerical friend from Chester assures us 'twas but a string of his +guitar--so no more shrieking--and after coffee we shall have + + "Rise up, rise up, Xarifa, lay your golden cushion down!" + +And then we two, my dear sir, must have a contest at chess--at which, if +you beat us, we shall leave our bed at midnight, and murder you in your +sleep. "But where," murmurs Matilda, "are we going?" To Oresthead, +love--and Elleray--for you must see a sight these sweet eyes of thine +never saw before--a SUNSET. + +We have often wondered if there be in the world one woman indisputably +and undeniably the most beautiful of all women--or if, indeed, our first +mother were "the loveliest of her daughters, Eve." What human female +beauty is all men feel--but few men know--and none can tell--further +than that it is perfect spiritual health, breathingly embodied in +perfect corporeal flesh and blood, according to certain heaven-framed +adaptations of form and hue, that by a familiar yet inscrutable mystery, +to our senses and our souls express sanctity and purity of the immortal +essence enshrined within, by aid of all associated perceptions and +emotions that the heart and the imagination can agglomerate round them, +as instantly and as unhesitatingly as the faculties of thought and +feeling can agglomerate round a lily or a rose, for example, the +perceptions and emotions that make them--by divine right of inalienable +beauty--the Royal Families of Flowers. This definition--or description +rather--of human female beauty, may appear to some, as indeed it appears +to us, something vague; but all profound truths--out of the exact +sciences--are something vague; and it is manifestly the design of a +benign and gracious Providence that they should be so till the end of +time--till mortality puts on immortality--and earth is heaven. +Vagueness, therefore, is no fault in philosophy--any more than in the +dawn of morning, or the gloaming of eve. Enough, if each clause of the +sentence that seeks to elucidate a confessed mystery, has a meaning +harmonious with all the meanings in all the other clauses--and that the +effect of the whole taken together is musical--and a tune. Then it is +Truth. For all Falsehood is dissonant--and verity is consent. It is our +faith, that the souls of some women are angelic--or nearly so--by nature +and the Christian religion; and that the faces and persons of some women +are angelic, or nearly so--whose souls, nevertheless, are seen to be far +otherwise--and, on that discovery, beauty fades or dies. But may not +soul and body--spirit and matter--meet in perfect union at birth; and +grow together into a creature, though of spiritual mould, comparable +with Eve before the Fall? Such a creature--such creatures--may have +been; but the question is--did you ever see one? We almost think that we +have--but many long years ago; + + "She is dedde, + Gone to her death-bedde + All under the willow-tree." + +And it may be that her image in the moonlight of memory and imagination +may be more perfectly beautiful than she herself ever was, when + + "Upgrew that living flower beneath our eye." + +Yes--'tis thus that we form to ourselves--incommunicably within our +souls--what we choose to call Ideal Beauty--that is, a life-in-death +image or Eidolon of a Being whose voice was once heard, and whose +footsteps once wandered among the flowers of this earth. But it is a +mistake to believe that such beauty as this can visit the soul only +after the original in which it once breathed is no more. For as it can +only be seen by profoundest passion--and the profoundest are the +passions of Love, and Pity, and Grief--then why may not each and all of +these passions--when we consider the constitution of this world and this +life--be awakened in their utmost height and depth by the sight of +living beauty, as well as by the memory of the dead? To do so is surely +within "the reachings of our souls,"--and if so, then may the virgin +beauty of his daughter, praying with folded hands and heavenward face +when leaning in health on her father's knees, transcend even the ideal +beauty which shall afterwards visit his slumbers nightly, long years +after he has laid her head in the grave. If by ideal beauty you mean a +beauty beyond whatever breathed, and moved, and had its being on +earth--then we suspect that not even "that inner eye which is the bliss +of solitude" ever beheld it; but if you merely mean by ideal beauty, +that which is composed of ideas, and of the feelings attached by nature +to ideas, then, begging your pardon, my good sir, all beauty whatever is +ideal--and you had better begin to study metaphysics. + +But what we were wishing to say is this--that whatever may be the truth +with regard to human female beauty--Windermere, seen by sunset from the +spot where we now stand, Elleray, is at this moment the most beautiful +scene on this earth. The reasons why it must be so are multitudinous. +Not only can the eye take in, but the imagination, in its awakened +power, can master all the component elements of the spectacle--and while +it adequately discerns and sufficiently feels the influence of each, is +alive throughout all its essence to the divine agency of the whole. The +charm lies in its entirety--its unity, which is so perfect--so seemeth +it to our eyes--that 'tis in itself a complete world--of which not a +line could be altered without disturbing the spirit of beauty that lies +recumbent there, wherever the earth meets the sky. There is nothing here +fragmentary; and had a poet been born, and bred here all his days, nor +known aught of fair or grand beyond this liquid vale, yet had he sung +truly and profoundly of the shows of nature. No rude and shapeless +masses of mountains--such as too often in our own dear Scotland encumber +the earth with dreary desolation--with gloom without grandeur--and +magnitude without magnificence. But almost in orderly array, and +irregular just up to the point of the picturesque, where poetry is not +needed for the fancy's pleasure, stand the Race of Giants--mist-veiled +transparently--or crowned with clouds slowly settling of their own +accord into all the forms that Beauty loves, when with her sister-spirit +Peace she descends at eve from highest heaven to sleep among the shades +of earth. + +Sweet would be the hush of lake, woods, and skies, were it not so +solemn! The silence is that of a temple, and, as we face the west, +irresistibly are we led to adore. The mighty sun occupies with his +flaming retinue all the region. Mighty yet mild--for from his disc, +awhile insufferably bright, is effused now a gentle crimson light, that +dyes all the west in one uniform glory, save where yet round the cloud +edges lingers the purple, the green, and the yellow lustre, unwilling to +forsake the violet beds of the sky, changing, while we gaze, into +heavenly roses; till that prevailing crimson colour at last gains entire +possession of the heavens, and all the previous splendour gives way to +one, whose paramount purity, lustrous as fire, is in its steadfast +beauty sublime. And, lo! the lake has received that sunset into its +bosom. It, too, softly burns with a crimson glow--and, as sinks the sun +below the mountains, Windermere, gorgeous in her array as the western +sky, keeps fading away as it fades, till at last all the ineffable +splendour expires, and the spirit that has been lost to this world in +the transcendent vision, or has been seeing all things appertaining to +this world in visionary symbols, returns from that celestial sojourn, +and knows that its lot is, henceforth as heretofore, to walk weariedly +perhaps, and woe-begone, over the no longer divine but disenchanted +earth! + +It is very kind in the moon and stars--just like them--to rise so soon +after sunset. The heart sinks at the sight of the sky, when a +characterless night succeeds such a blaze of light--like dull reality +dashing the last vestiges of the brightest of dreams. When the moon is +"hid in her vacant interlunar cave," and not a star can "burst its +cerements," imagination in the dim blank droops her wings--our thoughts +become of the earth earthly--and poetry seems a pastime fit but for +fools and children. But how different our mood, when + + "Glows the firmament with living sapphires," + +and Diana, who has ascended high in heaven, without our having once +observed the divinity, bends her silver bow among the rejoicing stars, +while the lake, like another sky, seems to contain its own luminaries, a +different division of the constellated night! 'Tis merry Windermere no +more. Yet we must not call her melancholy--though somewhat sad she +seems, and pensive, as if the stillness of universal nature did touch +her heart. How serene all the lights--how peaceful all the shadows! +Steadfast alike--as if they would brood for ever--yet transient as all +loveliness--and at the mercy of every cloud. In some places, the lake +has disappeared--in others, the moonlight is almost like sunshine--only +silver instead of gold. Here spots of quiet light--there lines of +trembling lustre--and there a flood of radiance checkered by the images +of trees. Lo! the Isle called Beautiful has now gathered upon its +central grove all the radiance issuing from that celestial Urn; and +almost in another moment it seems blended with the dim mass of mainland, +and blackness enshrouds the woods. Still as seems the night to +unobservant eyes, it is fluctuating in its expression as the face of a +sleeper overspread with pleasant but disturbing dreams. Never for any +two successive moments is the aspect of the night the same--each smile +has its own meaning, its own character; and Light is felt to be like +Music, to have a melody and a harmony of its own--so mysteriously allied +are the powers and provinces of eye and ear, and by such a kindred and +congenial agency do they administer to the workings of the spirit. + +Well, that is very extraordinary--Rain--rain--rain! All the eyes of +heaven were bright as bright might be--the sky was blue as violets--that +braided whiteness, that here and there floated like a veil on the brow +of night, was all that recalled the memory of clouds--and as for the +moon, no faintest halo yellowed round her orb, that seemed indeed "one +perfect chrysolite;"--yet while all the winds seemed laid asleep till +morn, and beauty to have chained all the elements into peace--overcast +in a moment is the firmament--an evanishing has left it blank as +mist--there is a fast, thick, pattering on the woods--yes--rain--rain-- +rain--and ere we reach Bowness, the party will be wet through to their +skins. Nay--matters are getting still more serious--for there was +lightning--yea, lightning! Ten seconds! and hark, very respectable +thunder! With all our wisdom, we have not been weather-wise--or we +should have known, when we saw it, an electrical sunset. Only look now +towards the West. There floats Noah's Ark--a magnificent spectacle; and +now for the Flood. That far-off sullen sound proclaims cataracts. And +what may mean that sighing and moaning and muttering up among the +cliffs? See--see how the sheet lightning shows the long lake-shore all +tumbling with foamy breakers. A strong wind is there--but here there is +not a breath. But the woods across the lake are bowing their heads to +the blast. Windermere is in a tumult--the storm comes flying on wings +all abroad--and now we are in the very heart of the hurricane. See, in +Bowness is hurrying many a light--for the people fear we may be on the +lake; and faithful Billy, depend on't, is launching his life-boat to go +to our assistance. Well, this is an adventure.--But soft--what ails our +Argand Lamp! Our study is in such darkness that we cannot see our +paper--in the midst of a thunderstorm we conclude, and to bed by a flaff +of lightning. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +PROLOGUE. + + +Once we knew the Highlands absolutely too well--not a nook that was not +as familiar to us as our brown study. We had not to complain of the +lochs, glens, woods, and mountains alone, for having so fastened +themselves upon us on a great scale that we found it impossible to shake +them off; but the hardship in our case was, that all the subordinate +parts of the scenery, many of them dull and dreary enough, and some of +them intolerably tedious, had taken it upon themselves so to thrust +their intimacy upon us, in all winds and weathers, that without giving +them the cut direct there was no way of escaping from the burden of +their friendship. To courteous and humane Christians, such as we have +always been both by name and nature as far back as we can recollect, it +is painful to cut even an impudent stone, or an upsetting tree that may +cross our path uncalled for, or obtrude itself on our privacy when we +wish to be alone in our meditations. Yet, we confess, they used +sometimes sorely to try our temper. It is all very well for you, our +good sir, to say in excuse for them that such objects are inanimate. So +much the worse. Were they animate, like yourself, they might be reasoned +with on the impropriety of interrupting the stream of any man's +soliloquies. But being not merely inanimate but irrational, objects of +that class know not to keep their own place, which indeed, it may be +said in reply, is kept for them by nature. But that Mistress of the +Ceremonies, though enjoying a fine green old age, cannot be expected to +be equally attentive to the proceedings of all the objects under her +control. Accordingly, often when she is not looking, what more common +than for a huge hulking fellow of a rock, with an absurd tuft of trees +on his head, who has observed you lying half-asleep on the greensward, +to hang eavesdropping, as it were, over your most secret thoughts, +which he whispers to the winds, and they to all the clouds! Or for some +grotesque and fantastic ash, with a crooked back, and arms +disproportionately long, like a giant in extreme old age dwindling into +a dwarf, to jut out from the hole in the wall, and should your leaden +eye chance at the time to love the ground, to put his mossy fist right +in your philosophical countenance! In short, it is very possible to know +a country so thoroughly well, outside and in, from mountain to +mole-hill, that you get mutually tired of one another's company, and are +ready to vent your quarrel in reciprocal imprecations. + +So was it once with us and the Highlands. That "too much familiarity +breeds contempt" we learned many a long year ago, when learning to write +large text; and passages in our life have been a running commentary on +the theme then set us by that incomparable caligraphist, Butterworth. +All "the old familiar faces" occasionally come in for a portion of that +feeling; and on that account, we are glad that we saw, but for one day +and one night, Charles Lamb's. Therefore, some dozen years ago we gave +up the Highlands, not wishing to quarrel with them, and confined our +tender assiduities to the Lowlands, while, like two great flats as we +were, we kept staring away at each other, with our lives on the same +level. All the consequences that might naturally have been expected have +ensued; and we are now as heartily sick of the Lowlands, and they of us. +What can we do but return to our First Love? + +Allow us to offer another view of the subject. There is not about Old +Age one blessing more deserving gratitude to Heaven, than the gradual +bedimming of memory brought on by years. In youth, all things, internal +and external, are unforgetable, and by the perpetual presence of passion +oppress the soul. The eye of a woman haunts the victim on whom it may +have given a glance, till he leaps perhaps out of a four-story window. A +beautiful lake, or a sublime mountain, drives a young poet as mad as a +March hare. He loses himself in an interminable forest louring all round +the horizon of a garret six feet square. It matters not to him whether +his eyes be open or shut. He is at the mercy of all Life and all Nature, +and not for one hour can he escape from their persecutions. His soul is +the slave of the Seven Senses, and each is a tyrant with instruments of +torture, to whom and to which Phalaris, with his brazen bull, was a +pointless joke. But in old age "the heart of a man is oppressed with +care" no longer; the Seven Tyrants have lost their sceptres, and are +dethroned; and the grey-headed gentleman feels that his soul has "set up +its rest." His eyes are dazzled no more with insufferable light--no more +his ears tingle with music too exquisite to be borne--no more his touch +is transport. The scents of nature, stealing from the balmy mouths of +lilies and roses, are deadened in his nostrils. He is above and beyond +the reach of all the long arms of many-handed misery, as he is out of +the convulsive clutch of bliss. And is not this the state of best +happiness for mortal man? Tranquillity! The peaceful air that we breathe +as we are westering towards the sunset-regions of our Being, and feel +that we are about to drop down for ever out of sight behind the Sacred +Mountains. + +All this may be very fine, but cannot be said to help us far on with our +Prologue. Let us try it again. Old men, we remarked, ought to be +thankful to Heaven for their dim memories. Never do we feel that more +profoundly than when dreaming about the Highlands. All is confusion. +Nothing distinctly do we remember--not even the names of lochs and +mountains. Where is Ben Cru--Cru--Cru--what's-his-name? +Ay--ay--Cruachan. At this blessed moment we see his cloud-capped +head--but we have clean forgotten the silver sound of the name of the +county he encumbers. Ross-shire? Nay, that won't do--he never was at +Tain. We are assured by Dr Reid's, Dr Beattie's, and Dugald Stewart's +great Instinctive First Principle Belief, that oftener than once, or ten +times either, have we been in a day-long hollow among precipices dear to +eagles, called Glen-Etive. But where begins or where ends that "severe +sojourn" is now to us a mystery--though we hear the sound of the sea and +the dashing of cataracts. Yet though all is thus dim in our memory, +would you believe it that nothing is utterly lost? No, not even the +thoughts that soared like eagles vanishing in the light--or that dived +like ravens into the gloom. They all reappear--those from the +Empyrean--these from Hades--reminding us of the good or the evil borne +in other days, within the spiritual regions of our boundless being. The +world of eye and ear is not in reality narrowed because it glimmers; +ever and anon as years advance, a light direct from heaven dissipates +the gloom, and bright and glorious as of yore the landscape laughs to +the sea, the sea to heaven, and heaven back again to the gazing spirit +that leaps forward to the hailing light with something of the same +divine passion that gave wings to our youth. + +All this may be still finer, yet cannot be said, any more than the +preceding paragraph, much to help us on with our Prologue. To come then, +if possible, to the point at once--We are happy that our dim memory and +our dim imagination restore and revive in our mind none but the +characteristic features of the scenery of the Highlands, unmixed with +baser matter, and all floating magnificently through a spiritual haze, +so that the whole region is now more than ever idealised; and in spite +of all his present, past, and future prosiness--Christopher North, soon +as in thought his feet touch the heather, becomes a poet. + +It has long been well known to the whole world that we are a sad +egotist--yet our egotism, so far from being a detraction from our +attraction, seems to be the very soul of it, making it impossible in +nature for any reasonable being to come within its sphere, without being +drawn by sweet compulsion to the old wizard's heart. He is so _humane_! +Only look at him for a few minutes, and liking becomes love--love +becomes veneration. And all this even before he has opened his lips--by +the mere power of his ogles and his temples. In his large mild blue +eyes is written not only his nature, but miraculously, in German text, +his very name, #Christopher North#. Mrs Gentle was the first to discover +it; though we remember having been asked more than once in our youth, by +an alarmed virgin on whom we happened at the time to be looking tender, +"If we were aware that there was something preternatural in our eyes?" +#Christopher# is conspicuous in our right eye--#North# in our left; and +when we wish to be incog., we either draw their fringed curtains, or, +nun-like, keep the tell-tale orbs fixed on the ground. Candour whispers +us to confess, that some years ago a child was exhibited at sixpence +with WILLIAM WOOD legible in its optics--having been affiliated, by +ocular evidence, on a gentleman of that name, who, with his dying +breath, disowned the soft impeachment. But in that case nature had +written a vile scrawl--in ours her hand is firm, and goes off with a +flourish. + +Have you ever entered, all alone, the shadows of some dilapidated old +burial-place, and in a nook made beautiful by wild-briers and a +flowering thorn, beheld the stone image of some long-forgotten worthy +lying on his grave? Some knight who perhaps had fought in Palestine,--or +some holy man, who in the Abbey--now almost gone--had led a long still +life of prayer? The moment you knew that you were standing among the +dwellings of the dead, how impressive became the ruins! Did not that +stone image wax more and more lifelike in its repose? And as you kept +your eyes fixed on the features Time had not had the heart to +obliterate, seemed not your soul to hear the echoes of the Miserere sung +by the brethren? + +So looks Christopher--on his couch--in his ALCOVE. He is taking his +siesta--and the faint shadows you see coming and going across his face +are dreams. 'Tis a pensive dormitory, and hangs undisturbed in its +spiritual region as a cloud on the sky of the Longest Day when it falls +on the Sabbath. + +What think you of OUR FATHER, alongside of the Pedlar in "The +Excursion?" Wordsworth says-- + + "Amid the gloom, + Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms, + Appear'd a roofless hut; four naked walls + That stared upon each other! I look'd round, + And to my wish and to my hope espied + Him whom I sought; a man of reverend age, + But stout and hale, for travel unimpair'd. + There was he seen upon the cottage bench, + Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep; + An iron-pointed staff lay at his side." + +Alas! "stout and hale" are words that could not be applied, without +cruel mocking, to our figure. "Recumbent in the shade" unquestionably he +is--yet, "recumbent" is a clumsy word for such quietude; and, recurring +to our former image, we prefer to say, in the words of Wilson,-- + + "Still is he as a frame of stone + That in its stillness lies alone, + With silence breathing from its face, + For ever in some holy place, + Chapel or aisle--on marble laid, + With pale hands on his pale breast spread, + An image humble, meek, and low, + Of one forgotten long ago!" + +No "iron-pointed staff lies at his side"--but "Satan's dread," THE +CRUTCH! Wordsworth tells us over again that the Pedlar-- + + "With no appendage but a staff, + The prized memorial of _relinquish'd_ toils, + Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs, + Screen'd from the sun." + +On his couch, in his Alcove, Christopher is reposing--not his limbs +alone, but his very essence. THE CRUTCH is, indeed, both _de jure_ and +_de facto_ the prized memorial of toils--but, thank Heaven, not +_relinquished_ toils; and then how characteristic of the dear merciless +old man--hardly distinguishable among the fringed draperies of his +canopy, the dependent and independent KNOUT! + +Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep? We shrewdly suspect not--'twas but a +doze. "Recumbent in the shade, _as if asleep_"--"Upon that cottage-bench +_reposed_ his limbs" induce us to lean to the opinion that he was but on +the border of the Land of Nod. Nay, the poet gets more explicit, and +with that minute particularity so charming in poetical description, +finally informs us that + + "Supine the wanderer lay, + _His eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut_, + The shadows of the breezy elms above + Dappling his face." + +It would appear, then, on an impartial consideration of all the +circumstances of the case, that the "man of reverend age," though +"recumbent" and "supine" upon the "cottage bench," "as if asleep," and +"his eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut," was in a mood between +sleeping and waking; and this creed is corroborated by the following +assertion-- + + "He had not heard the sound + Of my approaching steps, and in the shade + Unnoticed did I stand some minutes' space. + At length I hail'd him, seeing that his hat + Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim + Had newly scoop'd a running stream." + +He rose; and so do We, for probably by this time you may have discovered +that we have been describing Ourselves in our siesta or mid-day +snooze--as we have been beholding in our mind's eye our venerated and +mysterious Double. + +We cannot help flattering ourselves--if indeed it be flattery--that +though no relative of his, we have a look of the Pedlar--as he is +elaborately painted by the hand of a great master in the aforesaid Poem. + + "Him had I mark'd the day before--alone, + And station'd in the public way, with, face + Turn'd to the sun then setting, while that staff + Afforded to the figure of the man, + Detain'd for contemplation or repose, + Graceful support," &c. + +As if it were yesterday, we remember our first interview with the Bard. +It was at the Lady's Oak, between Ambleside and Rydal. We were then in +the very flower of our age--just sixty; so we need not say the century +had then seen but little of this world. The Bard was a mere boy of some +six lustres, and had a lyrical-ballad look that established his identity +at first sight, all unlike the lackadaisical. His right hand was within +his vest on the region of the heart, and he ceased his crooning as we +stood face to face. What a noble countenance! at once austere and +gracious--haughty and benign--of a man conscious of his greatness while +yet companioning with the humble--an unrecognised power dwelling in the +woods. Our figure at that moment so impressed itself on his imagination, +that it in time supplanted the image of the real Pedlar, and grew into +the _Emeritus of the Three Days_. We were standing in that very +attitude--having deposited on the coping of the wall our Kit, since +adopted by the British Army, with us at once a library and a larder. + +And again--and even more characteristically,-- + + "Plain was his garb: + Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared + For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man + Whom no one could have pass'd without remark, + Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs + And his whole figure breathed intelligence. + Time had compress'd the freshness of his cheeks + Into a narrower circle of deep red, + But had not tamed his eye, that under brows, + Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it brought + From years of youth; whilst, like a being made + Of many beings, he had wondrous skill + To blend with knowledge of the years to come, + Human, or such as lie beyond the grave." + +In our intellectual characters we indulge the pleasing hope that there +are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty +will not permit us to dwell--and incur acquirements, more particularly +in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry:-- + + "While yet he linger'd in the rudiments + Of science, and among her simplest laws, + His triangles--they were the stars of heaven, + The silent stars! oft did he take delight + To measure the altitude of some tall crag, + That is the eagle's birthplace," &c. + +So it was with us. Give us but a base and a quadrant--and when a student +in Jemmy Millar's class, we could have given you the altitude of any +steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals. + +Occasionally, too, in a small party of friends, though, not proud of the +accomplishment, we have been prevailed on, as you may have heard, to +delight humanity with a song--"The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," +"Flee up, flee up, thou bonnie bonnie Cock," or "Auld Langsyne"--just as +the Pedlar + + "At request would sing + Old songs, the product of his native hills; + A skilful distribution of sweet sounds, + Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed + As cool refreshing water, by the care + Of the industrious husbandman diffused + Through a parch'd meadow-field in time of drought." + +Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as that of the "Vagrant +Merchant." + + "And surely never did there live on earth + A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports + And teasing ways of children vex'd not him: + Indulgent listener was he to the tongue + Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, + To his fraternal sympathy address'd, + Obtain reluctant hearing." + +Who can read the following lines, and not think of Christopher North? + + "Birds and beasts, + And the mute fish that glances in the stream, + And harmless reptile coiling in the sun, + And gorgeous insect hovering in the air, + The fowl domestic, and the household dog-- + In his capacious mind he loved them all." + +True, that our love of + + "The mute fish that glances in the stream," + +is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or +with the pleasure of "filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have +reason to know, was like his poet and ourselves, in that art a +craftsman, and for love beat the mole-catcher at busking a batch of +May-flies. We question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a +green dragon. "The harmless reptile coiling in the sun" we are not so +sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom in our simplicity we +mistook for a slow-worm--the very day, by the by, on which we were +poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for +mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as +the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin +between finger and thumb to compress their mealy wings. The household +dog we do indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicions we +prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic +fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing +them at their _walks_ + + "Among the rural villages and farms;" + +and though game to the back-bone, they are allowed to wear the spurs +nature gave them--to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is +the sward, like the _sod_, ever reddened with their heroic blood, for +hateful to our ears the war-song, + + "Welcome to your gory bed, + Or to victory!" + +'Tis our way, you know, to pass from gay to grave matter, and often from +a jocular to a serious view of the same subject--it being natural to +us--and having become habitual too, from our writing occasionally in +_Blackwood's Magazine_. All the world knows our admiration of +Wordsworth, and admits that we have done almost as much as Jeffrey or +Taylor to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles." But we +are not a nation of idolaters, and worship neither graven image nor man +that is born of a woman. We may seem to have treated the Pedlar with +insufficient respect in that playful parallel between him and Ourselves; +but there you are wrong again, for we desire thereby to do him honour. +We wish now to say a few words on the wisdom of making such a personage +the chief character in a Philosophical Poem. + +He is described as endowed by nature with a great intellect, a noble +imagination, a profound soul, and a tender heart. It will not be said +that nature keeps these her noblest gifts for human beings born in this +or that condition of life: she gives them to her favourites--for so, in +the highest sense, they are to whom such gifts befall; and not +unfrequently, in an obscure place, of one of the FORTUNATI + + "The fulgent head + Star-bright appears." + +Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of such a being in a humble +dwelling in the Highlands of Scotland. + + "Among the hills of Atholl he was born; + Where on a small hereditary farm, + An unproductive slip of barren ground, + His parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt; + A virtuous household, though exceeding poor." + +His childhood was nurtured at home in Christian love and truth--and +acquired other knowledge at a winter school; for in summer he "tended +cattle on the hill,"-- + + "that stood + Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge." + +And the influence of such education and occupation among such natural +objects, Wordsworth expounds in some as fine poetry as ever issued from +the cells of philosophic thought. + + "So the foundations of his mind were laid." + +The boy had small need of books-- + + "For many a tale + Traditionary, round the mountains hung, + And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, + Nourish'd Imagination in her growth, + And gave the mind that apprehensive power + By which she is made quick to recognise + The moral properties and scope of things." + +But in the Manse there were books--and he read + + "Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied, + The life and death of martyrs, who sustain'd, + With will inflexible, those fearful pangs, + Triumphantly display'd in records left + Of persecution and the Covenant." + +Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you +used to ride to the races on a pony, by the side of your sire the +Squire, this boy was your equal in knowledge, though you had a private +tutor all to yourself, and were then a promising lad, as indeed you are +now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had +small Latin, and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages may be +learned--trust us--by slow degrees--by the mind rejoicing in the +consciousness of its growing faculties--during leisure hours from other +studies--as they were by the Atholl adolescent. A Scholar--in your sense +of the word--he might not be called, even when he had reached his +seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and +Virgil; nor of English poetry had he read much--the less the better for +such a mind--at that age, and in that condition--for + + "Accumulated feelings press'd his heart + With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd + By nature, by the turbulence subdued + Of his own mind, by mystery and hope, + And the first virgin passion of a soul + Communing with the glorious Universe." + +But he had read Poetry--ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read +at the same age--and + + "Among the hills + He gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song, + The divine Milton." + +Thus endowed, and thus instructed, + + "By Nature, that did never yet betray + The heart that loved her," + +the youth was "greater than he knew;" yet that there was something great +in, as well as about him, he felt-- + + "Thus daily thirsting in that lonesome life," + +for some diviner communication than had yet been vouchsafed to him by +the Giver and Inspirer of his restless Being. + + "In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, + Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist + The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, + And every moral feeling of his soul + Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content + The keen, the wholesome air of poverty, + And drinking from the well of homely life." + +But he is in his eighteenth year, and + + "Is summon'd to select the course + Of humble industry that promised best + To yield him no unworthy maintenance." + +For a season he taught a village school, which many a fine, high, and +noble spirit has done and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills he +loved, and + + "That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains + The Savoyard to quit his native rocks, + The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales + (Spirit attach'd to regions mountainous + Like their own steadfast clouds), did now impel + His restless mind to look abroad with hope." + +It had become his duty to choose a profession--a trade--a calling. He +was not a gentleman, mind ye, and had probably never so much as heard a +rumour of the existence of a silver fork: he had been born with a wooden +spoon in his mouth--and had lived, partly from choice and partly from +necessity, on a vegetable diet. He had not ten pounds in the world he +could call his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his father's son was +to be trusted to that amount by any family that chanced to have it among +the Atholl hills--therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which + + "Gain'd merited respect in simpler times; + When squire, and priest, and they who round them dwelt + In rustic sequestration, all dependent + Upon the PEDLAR'S toil, supplied their wants, + Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought." + +Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the +hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be +Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest +nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by +working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the +Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without +victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to +the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay +homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous +human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are +Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a +shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand +cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core, +notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted, +the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to +consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths +uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence +there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a +faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to +indulge, and nearly let die. + +Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron's _Scotland_ an interesting passage, +illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class +of persons from whom he has chosen one--not, mind you, imaginary, though +for purposes of imagination--adding that "his own personal knowledge +emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As +they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form +habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation, and that, with all +their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish +the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. In North +America," says he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done +and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than +all the missionaries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent +among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more +than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of +Scotland to England for the purpose to _carry the pack_, was considered +as going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune of a gentleman. +When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment, +he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded +as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known +gentlemen who had carried the pack--one of them a man of great talents +and acquirements--who lived in his old age in the highest circles of +society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage--_for +he was then very rich_; but you could not sit ten minutes in his company +without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging +to the "aristocracy of Nature." + +You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious +Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon--and sometimes absurdly called +the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted +in colours that will never die--the Birds of the New World. He was a +weaver--a Paisley weaver--a useful trade, and a pleasant place--where +these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. +Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this +day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored +the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what +have I gained by it?--only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an +invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in +glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair +daughters of wealth and indolence--the ample mirror, flowery floor, and +magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his +wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting +echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with +squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the +resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting +this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there +sits poverty and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill rags, and +ever shivering over the fireless chimney. Ascending this stair, the +voice of joy bursts on my ear--the bridegroom and bride, surrounded by +their jocund companions, circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke, +or join in the raptures of the noisy dance--the squeaking fiddle +breaking through the general uproar in sudden intervals, while the +sounding floor groans beneath its unruly load. Leaving these happy +mortals, and ushering into this silent mansion, a more solemn--a +striking object presents itself to my view. The windows, the furniture, +and everything that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn +white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse, +while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless +clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their +brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their +gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for +consolation, her Bible; and in this house the wife brawls, the children +shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury +should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily +occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralised +upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of +mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never +had a being except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors." + +At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of +his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a +more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an +account in his journal, from which it appears that his success was far +from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character, +occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects +of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are +not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some +that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the wounded pride founded on +conscious merit. "You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are +susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the +least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest +thwartings of your expectations--think what I felt." Wilson himself +attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage +of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A _packman_ +is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The +idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are +mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every +opportunity, and using every mean art within their power, to cheat." +This is a sad account of the estimation in which a trade was then held +in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to +the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions +on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth +are in the right: both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen +were then, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally +esteemed to be--peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty +sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"--and +for a plack people will forget principle who have, as we say in +Scotland, missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there +was degradation in such a calling; and he latterly vented his +contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and +nature of _packman_. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in +better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years +over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there +can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and +of respect--his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very +happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very +great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like +Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher. + +Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we +may believe the truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the hand +and heart of a still wiser man--though his wisdom has been gathered from +less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay floors of the +labouring poor. + +It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" +of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns, "the +fient a pride, nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on +earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is +his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had +he not studied the character of his subjects in "huts where poor men +lie"--had he not "stooped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such +huts, as willingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious +laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration he +"derived from the light of setting suns," was not so sacred as that +which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, +when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty +high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. You are +a scholar, and love poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, and +will be sad to think that heaven had not made you a pedlar. + + "In days of yore how fortunately fared + The Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall, + Baronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with gifts + Munificent, and love, and Ladies' praise; + Now meeting on his road an armed Knight, + Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side + Of a clear brook;--beneath an Abbey's roof + One evening sumptuously lodged; the next + Humbly, in a religious Hospital; + Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood; + Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell. + Him, sleeping or awake, the Robber spared; + He walk'd--protected from the sword of war + By virtue of that sacred Instrument + His Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side, + His dear companion wheresoe'er he went, + Opening from Land to Land an easy way + By melody, and by the charm of verse. + Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race + Drew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughts + From his long journeyings and eventful life, + Than this obscure Itinerant had skill + To gather, ranging through the tamer ground + Of these our unimaginative days; + Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise, + Accoutred with his burden and his staff; + And now, when free to move with lighter pace. + + "What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School + Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes, + Look'd on this Guide with reverential love? + Each with the other pleased, we now pursued + Our journey--beneath favourable skies. + Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light + Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass, + Rarely a house, that did not yield to him + Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth + Some way-beguiling tale. + --Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts, + Huts where his charity was blest; his voice + Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. + And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute + With his own mind, unable to subdue + Impatience, through inaptness to perceive + General distress in his particular lot; + Or cherishing resentment, or in vain + Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd, + And finding in herself no steady power + To draw the line of comfort that divides + Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, + From the injustice of our brother men; + To him appeal was made as to a judge; + Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd + The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; + Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave + So grounded, so applied, that it was heard + With soften'd spirit--e'en when it condemn'd." + +What was to hinder such a man--thus born and thus bred--with such a +youth and such a prime--from being in his old age worthy of walking +among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting + + "On man, on nature, and on human life?" + +And remember he was a _Scotsman_--compatriot of CHRISTOPHER NORTH. + +What would you rather have had the Sage in "The Excursion" to have been? +The Senior Fellow of a College? A head? A retired Judge? An Ex-Lord +Chancellor? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire? or, at once to condescend +on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable +Custos Rotulorum? + +You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham +Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the +estates and honours of his ancestors? + + "Who is he that bounds with joy + On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy? + No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass + Light as the wind along the grass. + Can this be He that hither came + In secret, like a smother'd flame? + For whom such thoughtful tears were shed. + For shelter and a poor man's bread?" + +Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days +had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no +longer safe--and + + "The Boy must part from Mosedale groves, + And leave Blencathara's ragged coves, + And quit the flowers that summer brings + To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; + Must vanish, and his careless cheer + Be turn'd to heaviness and fear." + +Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his +foot on the mountains. + + "Again he wanders forth at will, + And tends a flock from hill to hill: + His garb is humble; ne'er was seen + Such garb with such a noble mien; + Among the shepherd grooms no mate + Hath he, a child of strength and state." + +So lives he till he is restored. + + "Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth; + The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more; + And, ages after he was laid in earth, + 'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!" + +Now mark--that Poem has been declared by one and all of the "Poets of +Britain" to be equal to anything in the language; and its greatness lies +in the perfect truth of the profound philosophy which so poetically +delineates the education of the naturally noble character of Clifford. +Does he sink in our esteem because at the Feast of the Restoration he +turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper who sings, + + "Happy day and mighty hour, + When our shepherd in his power, + Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword, + To his ancestors restored, + Like a reappearing star, + Like a glory from afar, + First shall head the flock of war"? + +No--his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and now deeply +imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget, +he appears noblest when showing himself faithful in his own hall to the +"huts where poor men lie;" while we know not, at the solemn close, which +life the Poet has most glorified--the humble or the high--whether the +Lord did the Shepherd more ennoble, or the Shepherd the Lord. + +Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth +thus records of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast of Brougham +Castle, and what he records of the low-born Pedlar in "The Excursion?" +None. They are both educated among the hills; and according to the +nature of their own souls and that of their education, is the +progressive growth and ultimate formation of their character. Both are +exalted beings--because both are wise and good--but to his own coeval he +has given, besides eloquence and genius, + + "The vision and the faculty divine," + +that + + "When years had brought the philosophic mind" + +he might walk through the dominions of the Intellect and the +Imagination, a Sage and a Teacher. + +Look into life, and watch the growth of character. Men are not what they +seem to the outward eye--mere machines moving about in customary +occupations--productive labourers of food and wearing apparel--slaves +from morn to night at taskwork set them by the Wealth of Nations. They +are the Children of God. The soul never sleeps--not even when its +wearied body is heard snoring by people living in the next street. All +the souls now in this world are for ever awake; and this life, believe +us, though in moral sadness it has often been rightly called so, is no +dream. In a dream we have no will of our own, no power over ourselves; +ourselves are not felt to be ourselves; our familiar friends seem +strangers from some far-off country; the dead are alive, yet we wonder +not; the laws of the physical world are suspended, or changed, or +confused by our phantasy; Intellect, Imagination, the Moral Sense, +Affection, Passion, are not possessed by us in the same way we possess +them out of that mystery: were Life a Dream, or like a Dream, it would +never lead to Heaven. + +Again, then, we say to you, look into life and watch the growth of +character. In a world where the ear cannot listen without hearing the +clank of chains, the soul may yet be free as if it already inhabited the +skies. For its Maker gave it LIBERTY OF CHOICE OF GOOD OR OF EVIL; and +if it has chosen the good it is a King. All its faculties are then fed +on their appropriate food provided for them in nature. It then knows +where the necessaries and the luxuries of its life grow, and how they +may be gathered--in a still sunny region inaccessible to blight--"no +mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother." In the beautiful language +of our friend Aird,-- + + "And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the Hills of God." + +Go, read the EXCURSION then--venerate the PEDLAR--pity the +SOLITARY--respect the PRIEST, and love the POET. + +So charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice--of all sounds +on earth the sweetest surely to our ears--and, therefore, we so dearly +love the monologue, and from the dialogue turn averse, impatient of him +ycleped the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, will keep prattling +and babbling on between the still deep pools of our discourse, which +nature feeds with frequent waterfalls--so charmed have we been with the +sound of our own voice, that, scarcely conscious the while of more than +a gentle ascent along the sloping sward of a rural Sabbath-day's +journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Highland +league--five miles--of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the +Mountain-top. True that his altitude is not very great--somewhere, we +should suppose, between two and three thousand feet--much higher than +the Pentlands--somewhat higher than the Ochils--a middle-sized Grampian. +Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable +bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so, +supporting the globe. So is Andes; but his strength has never been put +to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras--but we must not be +personal--so suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in +mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might +be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers? + +These mountains are neither immense nor enormous--nor are there any such +in the British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on Riddell's +ingenious Scale--in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland +the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole-hills to Chimborazo. +Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an +Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture--for Vulture he +is--flies league-high--the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself +half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long +river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of +the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, +can see the rising and the setting sun, and his march on the meridian, +without a telescope. If ever he fly by night--and we think we have seen +a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life--he must be a +rare astronomer. + + "High from the summit of a craggy cliff + Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown + On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race + Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, + The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young, + Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire. + Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own + He drives them from his fort, the towering seat + For ages of his empire; which in peace + Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea + He wings his course, and preys in distant isles." + +Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas! +such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions +would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds. +Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some +inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the +dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself +driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the +unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded +in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in +the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we +do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere +to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the +Himalayas would not satisfy our aspirations. But we can calculate the +distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon. + +Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains, +as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do +to ours--and let "Andes, giant of the Western Star," but dare to look at +us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from +his cloudy hands. There you stand--and were you to rear your summits +much higher into heaven, you would alarm the hidden stars. + +Yet we have seen you higher--but it was in storm. In calm like this you +do well to look beautiful--your solemn altitude suits the sunny season, +and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your +heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and +show them to the glens, crowned with fire. + +Are they a sea of mountains! No--they are mountains in a sea. And what a +sea! Waves of water, when at the prodigious, are never higher than the +foretop of a man-of-war. Waves of vapour--they alone are seen flying +mountains high--dashing, but howling not--and in their silent ascension, +all held together by the same spirit, but perpetually changing its +beautiful array, where order seems ever and anon to come in among +disorder, there is a grandeur that settles down in the soul of youthful +poet roaming in delirium among the mountain glooms, and "pacifies the +fever of his heart." + +Call not now these vapours waves; for movement there is none among the +ledges, and ridges, and roads, and avenues, and galleries, and groves, +and houses, and churches, and castles, and fairy palaces--all framed of +mist. Far up among and above that wondrous region, through which you +hear voices of waterfalls deepening the silence, behold hundreds of +mountain-tops--blue, purple, violet--for the sun is shining straight on +some and aslant on others--and on those not at all; nor can the shepherd +at your side, though he has lived among them all his life, till after +long pondering tell you the names of those most familiar to him; for +they seem to have all interchanged sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun +himself, the Eagle-Breeder, looks so serenely in his rainbow, that you +might almost mistake him for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds. + +Have you not seen sunsets in which the mountains were imbedded in masses +of clouds all burning and blazing--yes, blazing--with unimaginable +mixtures of all the colours that ever were born--intensifying into a +glory that absolutely became insupportable to the soul as insufferable +to the eyes--and that left the eyes for hours after you had retreated +from the supernatural scene, even when shut, all filled with floating +films of cross-lights, cutting the sky-imagery into gorgeous fragments? +And were not the mountains of such sunsets, whether they were of land or +of cloud, sufficiently vast for your utmost capacities and powers of +delight and joy longing to commune with the Region then felt to be in +very truth Heaven? Nor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, +conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond--while the senses themselves +seemed to have had given them a revelation, that as it was created could +be felt but by an immortal spirit. + +It elevates our being to be in the body near the sky--at once on earth +and in heaven. In the body? Yes--we feel at once fettered and free. In +Time we wear our fetters, and heavy though they be, and painfully +riveted on, seldom do we welcome Death coming to strike them off--but +groan at sight of the executioner. In eternity we believe that all is +spiritual--and in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes but to prove +that its foundation lies rooted far down below all earthquakes, +endurable is the sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, while +yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being absorbed in the great forms +of the outward universe, and they speak as if such absorption were +celestial and divine. But is not this a material creed? Let Imagination +beware how she seeks to glorify the objects of the senses, and having +glorified them, to elevate them into a kindred being with our own, +exalting them that we may claim with them that kindred being, as if we +belonged to them and not they to us, forgetting that they are made to +perish, we to live for ever! + +But let us descend the mountain by the side of this torrent. What a +splendid series of translucent pools! We carry "The Excursion" in our +pocket, for the use of our friends; but our own presentation-copy is +here--we have gotten it by heart. And it does our heart good to hear +ourselves recite. Listen, ye Naiads, to the famous picture of the Ram:-- + + "Thus having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd + The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalm'd + In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw + A twofold image; on a grassy bank + A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood + Another and the same! Most beautiful + On the green turf, with his imperial front + Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, + The breathing creature stood; as beautiful + Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart; + Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, + And each seem'd centre of his own fair world. + Antipodes unconscious of each other, + Yet, in partition, with their several spheres + Blended in perfect stillness to our sight. + Ah! what a pity were it to disperse + Or to disturb so fair a spectacle, + And yet a breath can do it." + +Oh! that the Solitary, and the Pedlar, and the Poet, and the Priest and +his Lady, were here to see a sight more glorious far than that +illustrious and visionary Ram. Two Christopher Norths--as Highland +chieftains--in the Royal Tartan--one burning in the air--the other in +the water--two stationary meteors, each seeming native to its own +element! This setting the heather, that the linn on fire--this ablaze +with war, that tempered into truce; while the Sun, astonied at the +spectacle, nor knowing the refulgent substance from the resplendent +shadow, bids the clouds lie still in heaven, and the winds all hold +their breath, that exulting nature may be permitted for a little while +to enjoy the miracle she unawares has wrought--alas! gone as she gazes, +and gone for ever! Our bonnet has tumbled into the Pool--and +Christopher--like the Ram in "The Excursion"--stands shorn of his +beams--no better worth looking at than the late Laird of Macnab. + +Now, since the truth must be told, that was but a Flight of Fancy--and +our apparel is more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a Highland chief. +'Tis all of a snuffy brown--an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. +Single-breasted our coatee--and we are in shorts. Were our name to be +imposed by our hat, it would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back a +wallet--and in our hand the Crutch. And thus, not without occasional +alarm to the cattle, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking along the +sward and swimming across the stream, and leaping over the quagmires--by +no means unlike that extraordinary pedestrian who has been accompanying +us for the last half-hour, far overhead up-by yonder, as if he meant +mischief; but he will find that we are up to a trick or two, and not +easily to be done brown by a native, a Cockney of Cloud-Land, a +long-legged awkward fellow with a head like a dragon and proud of his +red plush, in that country called thunder-and-lightning breeches, hot +very, one would think, in such sultry weather--but confound us if he has +not this moment stript them off, and be not pursuing his journey _in +puris naturalibus_--yes, as naked as the minute he was born--our Shadow +on the Clouds! + +The Picture of the Ram has been declared by sumphs in search of the +sublime to border on the Burlesque. They forget that a sumph may just as +truly be said to border on a sage. All things in heaven and on earth, +mediately and immediately, border on one another--much depends on the +way you look at them--and Poets, who are strange creatures, often love +to enjoy and display their power by bringing the burlesque into the +region of the sublime. Of what breed was the Tup? Cheviot, Leicester, +Southdown? Had he gained the Cup at the Great North Show? We believe +not, and that his owner saw in him simply a fine specimen of an ordinary +breed--a shapely and useful animal. In size he was not to be named on +the same day with the famous Ram of Derby, "whose tail was made a rope, +sir, to toll the market-bell." Jason would have thought nothing of him +compared with the Golden Fleece. The Sun sees a superior sire of flocks +as he enters Aries. Sorry are we to say it, but the truth must be +spoken, he was somewhat bandy-legged, and rather coarse in the wool. But +heaven, earth, air, and water conspired to glorify him, as the Poet and +his friends chanced to come upon him at the Pool, and, more than them +all united, the Poet's own soul; and a sheep that would not have sold +for fifty shillings, became Lord Paramount of two worlds, his regal mind +all the time unconscious of its empiry, and engrossed with the thought +of a few score silly ewes. + +Seldom have we seen so serene a day. It seems to have lain in one and +the same spirit over all the Highlands. We have been wandering since +sunrise, and 'tis now near sunset; yet not an hour without a visible +heaven in all the Lochs. In the pure element overflowing so many +spacious vales and glens profound, the great and stern objects of +nature have all day long been looking more sublime or more beautiful in +the reflected shadows, invested with one universal peace. The momentary +evanescence of all that imagery at a breath touches us with the thought +that all it represents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will as +utterly pass away. Such visions, when gazed on in that wondrous depth +and purity on a still slow-moving day, always inspire some such feeling +as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all things, when +the setting sun is seen to sink behind the mountain, and all the golden +pomp at the same instant to evanish from the Loch. + +Evening is preparing to let fall her shades--and Nature, cool, fresh, +and unwearied, is laying herself down for a few hours' sleep. There had +been a long strong summer drought, and a week ago you would have +pitied--absolutely pitied the poor Highlands. You missed the +cottage-girl with her pitcher at the well in the brae, for the spring +scarcely trickled, and the water-cresses were yellow before their time. +Many a dancing hill-stream was dead--only here and there one stronger +than her sisters attempted a _pas-seul_ over the shelving rocks; but all +choral movements and melodies forsook the mountains, still and silent as +so much painted canvass. Waterfalls first tamed their thunder, then +listened alarmed to their own echoes, wailed themselves away into +diminutive murmurs, gasped for life, died, and were buried at the feet +of the green slippery precipices. Tarns sank into moors; and there was +the voice of weeping heard and low lament among the water-lilies. Ay, +millions of pretty flowerets died in their infancy, even on their +mother's breast; the bee fainted in the desert for want of the +honey-dew, and the ground-cells of industry were hushed below the +heather. Cattle lay lean on the brownness of a hundred hills, and the +hoof of the red-deer lost its fleetness. Along the shores of lochs great +stones appeared, within what for centuries had been the lowest +water-mark; and whole bays, once bright and beautiful with reed-pointed +wavelets, became swamps, cracked and seamed, or rustling in the aridity +with a useless crop, to the sugh of the passing wind. On the shore of +the sea alone you beheld no change. The tides ebbed and flowed as +before--the small billows racing over the silver sands to the same goal +of shells, or climbing up to the same wildflowers that bathe the +foundation of some old castle belonging to the ocean. + +But the windows of heaven were opened,--and, like giants refreshed with +mountain-dew, the rivers flung themselves over the cliffs with roars of +thunder. The autumnal woods are fresher than those of summer. The mild +harvest-moon will yet repair the evil done by the outrageous sun; and, +in the gracious after-growth, the green earth far and wide rejoices as +in spring. Like people that have hidden themselves in caves when their +native land was oppressed, out gush the torrents, and descend with songs +to the plain. The hill-country is itself again when it hears the voice +of streams. Magnificent army of mists! whose array encompasses islands +of the sea, and who still, as thy glorious vanguard keeps deploying +among the glens, rollest on in silence more sublime than the trampling +of the feet of horses, or the sound of the wheels of chariots, to the +heath-covered mountains of Scotland, we bid thee hail! + +In all our wanderings through the Highlands, towards night we have +always found ourselves at home. What though no human dwelling was at +hand? We cared not--for we could find a bedroom among the casual +inclinations of rocks, and of all curtains the wild-brier forms itself +into the most gracefully-festooned draperies, letting in green light +alone from the intercepted stars. Many a cave we know of--cool by day, +and warm by night--how they happen to be so, we cannot tell--where no +man but ourselves ever slept, or ever will sleep; and sometimes, on +startling a doe at evening in a thicket, we have lain down in her lair, +and in our slumbers heard the rain pattering on the roofing birk-tree, +but felt not one drop on our face, till at dawning we struck a shower of +diamonds from the fragrant tresses. But to-night we shall not need to +sleep among the sylvans; for our Tail has pitched our Tent on the +Moor--and is now sweeping the mountain with telescope for sight of our +descending feet. Hark! signal-gun and bagpipe hail our advent, and the +Pyramid brightens in its joy, independent of the sunlight, that has left +but one streak in the sky. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT FIRST.--GLEN-ETIVE. + + +Yes! all we have to do is to let down their lids--to will what our eyes +shall see--and, lo! there it is--a creation! Day dawns, and for our +delight in soft illumination from the dim obscure floats slowly up a +visionary loch--island after island evolving itself into settled +stateliness above its trembling shadow, till, from the overpowering +beauty of the wide confusion of woods and waters, we seek relief, but +find none, in gazing on the sky; for the east is in all the glory of +sunrise, and the heads and the names of the mountains are uncertain +among the gorgeous colouring of the clouds. Would that we were a +painter! Oh! how we should dash, on the day and interlace it with night! +That chasm should be filled with enduring gloom, thicker and thicker, +nor the sun himself suffered to assuage the sullen spirit, now lowering +and threatening there, as if portentous of earthquake. Danger and fear +should be made to hang together for ever on those cliffs, and half-way +up the precipice be fixed the restless cloud ascending from the abyss, +so that in imagination you could not choose but hear the cataract. The +Shadows should seem to be stalking away like evil spirits before angels +of light--for at our bidding the Splendours should prevail against them, +deploying from the gates of Heaven beneath the banners of morn. Yet the +whole picture should be harmonious as a hymn--as a hymn at once sublime +and sweet--serene and solemn; nor should it not be felt as even +cheerful--and sometimes as if there were about to be merriment in +Nature's heart--for the multitude of the isles should rejoice--and the +new-woke waters look as if they were waiting for the breezes to enliven +them into waves, and wearied of rest to be longing for the motion +already beginning to rustle by fits along the sylvan shores. Perhaps a +deer or two--but we have opened a corner of the fringed curtains of our +eyes--the idea is gone--and Turner or Thomson must transfer from our +paper to his canvass the imperfect outline--for it is no more--and make +us a present of the finished picture. + +Strange that, with all our love of nature and of art, we never were a +Painter. True that in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at a Lion or +a Tiger--and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to +spring in keelivine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might +well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even yet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa +at a savage scene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up confused +shatterings of rocks, and flings a mountainous region into convulsions, +as if an earthquake heaved, _in a way that is no canny_, making people +shudder as if something had gone wrong with this planet of ours, and +creation were falling back into chaos. But we love scenes of beautiful +repose too profoundly ever to dream of "transferring them to canvass." +Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration--though we look +with delight on the work when done by others--the picture without the +process--the product of genius without thought of its mortal +instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, +feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world, as well as the inner, +is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetry--we +have proved _that_ to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech +you--how a little Loch seems to rise up with its tall heronry--a central +isle--and all its sylvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the +floor of our Cave, from which in three minutes we could hobble on our +crutch down the inclining greensward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in +that canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches--not any other kind of +tree--except a few pines, on whose tops the large nests repose--and here +and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for Roes! + +The great masters, were their eyes to fall on our idle words, might +haply smile--not contemptuously--on our ignorance of art--but graciously +on our knowledge of nature. All we have to do, then, is to learn the +theory and practice of art--and assuredly we should forthwith set about +doing so, had we any reasonable prospect of living long enough to open +an exhibition of pictures from our own easel. As it is, we must be +contented with that Gallery, richer than the Louvre, which our +imagination has furnished with masterpieces beyond all price or +purchase--many of them touched with her own golden finger, the rest the +work of high but not superior hands. Imagination, who limns in air, has +none of those difficulties to contend with that always beset, and often +baffle, artists in oils or waters. At a breath she can modify, alter, +obliterate, or restore; at a breath she can colour vacuity with rainbow +hues--crown the cliff with its castle--swing the drawbridge over the +gulf profound--through a night of woods roll the river along on its +moonlit reach--by fragmentary cinctures of mist and cloud, so girdle one +mountain that it has the power of a hundred--giant rising above giant, +far and wide, as if the mighty multitude, in magnificent and triumphant +disorder, were indeed scaling heaven. + +To speak more prosaically, every true and accepted lover of nature +regards her with a painter's as well as a poet's eye. He breaks not down +any scene rudely, and with "many an oft-repeated stroke;" but +unconsciously and insensibly he transfigures into Wholes, and all day +long, from morn till dewy eve, he is preceded, as he walks along, by +landscapes retiring in their perfection, one and all of them the birth +of his own inspired spirit. All non-essentials do of themselves drop off +and disappear--all the characteristics of the scenery range themselves +round a centre recognised by the inner sense that cannot err--and thus +it is that "beauty pitches her tents before him"--that sublimity +companions the pilgrim in the waste wilderness--and grandeur for his +sake keeps slowly sailing or settling in the clouds. With such pictures +has our Gallery been so thickly hung round for many years, that we have +often thought there was not room for one other single frame; yet a +vacant space has always been found for every new _chef-d'oeuvre_ that +came to add itself to our collection--and the light from that cupola so +distributes itself that it falls wherever it is wanted--wherever it is +wanted not how tender the shadow! or how solemn the gloom! + +Why, we are now in Glen-Etive--and sitting with our sketch-book at the +mouth of our Tent. Our oft-repeated passionate prayer, + + "O, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" + +has once more, after more than twenty years' absence, in this haunt of +our fanciful youth and imaginative manhood, been granted, and +Christopher, he thinks, could again bound along these cliffs like a +deer. Ay, well-nigh quarter of a century has elapsed since we pitched +this self-same snow-white Tent amid the purple heather, by the Linn of +Dee. How fleetly goes winnowing on the air even the weariest waving of +Time's care-laden wings! A few yellow weather-stains are on the +canvass--but the pole is yet sound--or call it rather mast--for we have +hoisted our topgallant, + + "And lo! the silver cross, to Scotland dear," + +languidly lifts itself up, an ineffectual streamer, in the fitful +morning breezes! + +Bold son, or bright daughter of England! hast thou ever seen a SCOTTISH +THRISSLE? What height are you--Captain of the Grenadier Guards? "Six +feet four on my stocking-soles." Poo--a dwarf! Stand up with your back +to that stalk. Tour head does not reach above his waist--he hangs high +over you--"his radious croun of rubies." There's a Flower! dear to Lady +Nature above all others, saving and excepting the Rose, and he is the +Rose's husband--the Guardian Genii of the land consecrated the Union, +and it has been blest. Eyeing the sun like an angry star that will not +suffer eclipse either from light or shadow--but burns proudly--fiercely--in +its native lustre--storm-brightened, and undishevelled by the tempest in +which it swings. See! it stoops beneath the blast within reach of your +hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and your hand will be as if it had +crushed a sleeping wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it--to do that would +require a giant with an iron glove. Then let it alone to dally with the +wind, and the sun, and the rain, and the snow--all alike dear to its +spears and rubies; and as you look at the armed lustre, you will see a +beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's warlike peace. The stalk +indeed is slender, but it sways without danger of breaking in the blast; +in the calm it reposes as gently as the gowan at its root. The softest +leaf that enfolds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, not greener +than those that sting not if but tenderly you touch them, for they are +green as the garments of the Fairies that dance by moonlight round the +Symbol of old Scotland, and unchristened creatures though they the +Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the AWFUL THRISSLE all the +health and happiness that are in the wholesome stars. + +The dawn is softly--slowly--stealing upon day; for the uprisen sun, +though here the edge of his disc as yet be invisible, is diffusing +abroad "the sweet hour of prime," and all the eastern region is tinged +with crimson, faint and fine as that which sleeps within the wreaths of +the sea-sounding shells. Hark! the eagle's earliest cry, yet in his +eyrie. Another hour, and he and his giant mate will be seen spirally +ascending the skies, in many a glorious gyration, tutoring their +offspring to dally with the sunshine, that, when their plumes are +stronger, they may dally with the storm. O, Forest of Dalness! how sweet +is thy name! Hundreds of red-deer are now lying half-asleep among the +fern and heather, with their antlers, could our eyes now behold them, +motionless as the birch-tree branches with which they are blended in +their lair. At the signal-belling of their king, a hero unconquered in a +hundred fights, the whole herd rises at once like a grove, and with +their stately heads lifted aloft on the weather-gleam, snuff the sweet +scent of the morning air, far and wide surcharged with the honey-dew yet +unmelting on the heather, and eye with the looks of liberty the glad +daylight that mantles the Black Mount with a many-coloured garment. Ha! +the first plunge of the salmon in the Rowan-tree Pool. There again he +shoots into the air, white as silver, fresh run from the sea! For +Loch-Etive, you must know, is one of the many million arms of Ocean, and +bright now are rolling in the billows of the far-heaving tide. Music +meet for such a morn and such mountains. Straight stretches the glen for +leagues, and then, bending through the blue gloom, seems to wind away +with one sweep into infinitude. The Great Glen of Scotland--Glen-More +itself--is not grander. But the Great Glen of Scotland is yet a living +forest. Glen-Etive has few woods or none--and the want of them is +sublime. For centuries ago pines and oaks in the course of nature all +perished; and they exist now but in tradition wavering on the tongues of +old bards, or deep down in the mosses show their black trunks to the +light, when the torrents join the river in spate, and the moor divulges +its secrets as in an earthquake. Sweetly sung, thou small, brown, +moorland bird, though thy song be but a twitter! And true to thy +time--even to a balmy minute--art thou, with thy velvet tunic of black +striped with yellow, as thou windest thy small but not sullen horn--by +us called in our pride HUMBLE-BEE--but not, methinks, so very humble, +while booming high in air in oft-repeated circles, wondering at our +Tent, and at the flag that now unfolds its gaudy length like a burnished +serpent, as if the smell of some far-off darling heather-bed had touched +thy finest instinct, away thou fliest straight southward to that rich +flower-store, unerringly as the carrier-pigeon wafting to distant lands +some love-message on its wings. Yet humble after all thou art; for all +day long, making thy industry thy delight, thou returnest at shut of +day, cheerful even in thy weariness, to thy ground-cell within the +knoll, where as Fancy dreams the Fairies dwell--a Silent People in the +Land of Peace. + +And why hast thou, wild singing spirit of the Highland Glenorchy, that +cheerest the long-withdrawing vale from Inveruren to Dalmally, and from +Dalmally Church-tower to the Old Castle of Kilchurn, round whose +mouldering turrets thou sweepest with more pensive murmur, till thy name +and existence are lost in that noble loch--why hast thou never had thy +Bard? "A hundred bards have I had in bygone ages," is thy reply; "but +the Sassenach understands not the traditionary strains, and the music of +the Gaelic poetry is wasted on his ear." Songs of war and of love are +yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when +the moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft +reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears +the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years. +Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to +thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and brackeny, +and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the +thick-falling dews perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier +music to every waterfall. + +There it was, on a little river-island, that once, whether sleeping or +waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard +small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to +the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly +instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the +stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem +came floating over our couch, and then alighted without footsteps among +the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living +creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing +but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical +dewdrops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our +eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision! +Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all +hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among +the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers +unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier, a Fairy, lying with +uncovered face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge +grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the +creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head +and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not +louder than the twittering of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up +the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The +flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and +in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever--the very dews +glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and, +with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar +off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the +disenthralled Orohy began to rejoice as before, through all her streams +and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of +the moon, we awoke. + +Age is the season of Imagination, youth of Passion; and having been long +young, shall we repine that we are now old? They alone are rich who are +full of years--the Lords of Time's Treasury are all on the staff of +Wisdom; their commissions are enclosed in furrows on their foreheads, +and secured to them for life. Fearless of fate, and far above fortune, +they hold their heritage by the great charter of nature for behoof of +all her children who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for their +decease; for every hour dispenses their wealth, and their bounty is not +a late bequest, but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sanctifies their +gifts to gratitude; and their worth is more clearly seen and profoundly +felt within the solemn gloom of the grave. + +And said we truly that Age is the season of Imagination? That Youth is +the season of Passion your own beating and bounding hearts now tell +you--your own boiling blood. Intensity is its characteristic; and it +burns like a flame of fire, too often but to consume. Expansion of the +soul is ours, with all its feelings and all its "thoughts, that wander +through eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have wings, for power +is given her, beyond the dove's or the eagle's, and no weariness can +touch her on that heavenward flight. + +Yet we are all of "the earth earthy," and, young and old alike, must we +love and honour our home. Your eyes are bright--ours are dim; but "it is +the soul that sees," and "this diurnal sphere" is visible through the +mist of tears. In that light how more than beautiful--how holy--appears +even this world! All sadness, save of sin, is then most sacred; and sin +itself loses its terrors in repentance, which, alas! is seldom perfect +but in the near prospect of dissolution. For temptation may intercept +her within a few feet of her expected rest, nay, dash the dust from her +hand that she has gathered from the burial-place to strew on her head; +but Youth sees flowery fields and shining rivers far-stretching before +her path, and cannot imagine for a moment that among life's golden +mountains there is many a Place of Tombs! + +But let us speak only of this earth--this world--this life--and is not +Age the season of Imagination? Imagination is Memory imbued by joy or +sorrow with creative power over the past, till it becomes the present, +and then, on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till +all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in +illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the Muses; and how +divinely indeed they sang around her as she lay in the pensive shade! + +You know the words of Milton-- + + "Till old experience doth attain + To something like prophetic strain;" + +and you know, while reading them, that Experience is consummate Memory, +Imagination wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with +Genius, and in its "prophetic strain"--Inspiration. + +We would fain lower our tone--and on this theme speak like what we are, +one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap now +twenty-three feet on level ground (our utmost might be twenty-three +inches), nevertheless we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty +minutes,"--ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. +What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first, worms +though we be, we cannot even crawl;--disdainful next of that +acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig;--pretty lambs, +we then totter to the terror of our deep-bosomed dames--till the welkin +rings with admiration to behold, _sans_ leading-strings, the weanlings +walk;--like wildfire then we run, for we have found the use of our +feet;--like wild-geese then we fly, for we may not doubt we have +wings;--in car, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and sky, and +universal nature. The car runs on a post--the ship on a rock--the "air +hath bubbles as the water hath"--the balloon is one of them, and bursts +like a bladder--and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons. +Where, pray, in all this is there a single symptom or particle of +Imagination? It is of Passion "all compact." + +True, this is not a finished picture--'tis but a slight sketch of the +season of Youth; but paint it as you will, and if faithful to nature you +will find Passion in plenty, and a dearth of Imagination. Nor is the +season of Youth therefore to be pitied--for Passion respires and expires +in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent as the unwise +lecture, it is mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth we are the +creatures, the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly +in spite of its severity; for ere long we come to discern through the +dust of our own raising, the pinnacles of towers and temples serenely +ascending into the skies, high and holy places for rule, for rest, or +for religion, where as kings we may reign, as priests minister, as +saints adore. + +We do not deny, excellent youth, that to your eyes and ears beautiful +and sublime are the sights and sounds of Nature--and of Art her Angel. +Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed ours, and deliver thyself up withouten +dread, or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, where night for ever +dwells--to the glory of skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. +Coming and going a thousand and a thousand times, yet, in its familiar +beauty, ever new as a dream--let thy soul span the heavens with the +rainbow. Ask thy heart in the wilderness if that "thunder, heard +remote," be from cloud or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shudder +at the shuddering moor, and your flesh creep upon your bones, as the +heather seems to creep on the bent, with the awe of a passing +earthquake. Let the sea-mew be thy guide up the glen, if thy delight be +in peace profounder than ever sat with her on the lull of summer waves! +For the inland loch seems but a vale overflowing with wondrous +light--and realities they all look, these trees and pastures, and rocks +and hills, and clouds--not softened images, as they are, of realities +that are almost stern even in their beauty, and in their sublimity +over-awing; look at yon precipice that dwindles into pebbles the granite +blocks that choke up the shore! + +Now all this, and a million times more than all this, have we too done +in our Youth, and yet 'tis all nothing to what we do whenever we will it +in our Age. For almost all _that_ is passion; spiritual passion +indeed--and as all emotions are akin, they all work with, and into one +another's hands, and, however remotely related, recognise and welcome +one another, like Highland cousins, whenever they meet. Imagination is +not the Faculty to stand aloof from the rest, but gives the one hand to +Fancy and the other to Feeling, and _sets_ to Passion, who is often so +swallowed up in himself as to seem blind to their _vis-ą-vis_, till all +at once he hugs all the Three, as if he were demented, and as suddenly +sporting _dos-ą-dos_--is off on a gallopade by himself right slick away +over the mountain-tops. + +To the senses of a schoolboy a green sour crab is as a golden pippin, +more delicious than any pine-apple--the tree which he climbs to pluck it +seems to grow in the garden of Eden--and the parish, moorland though it +be, over which he is let loose to play--Paradise. It is barely possible +there may be such a substance as matter, but all its qualities worth +having are given it by mind. By a necessity of nature, then, we are all +poets. We all make the food we feed on; nor is jealousy, the green-eyed +monster, the only wretch who discolours and deforms. Every evil thought +does so--every good thought gives fresh lustre to the grass--to the +flowers--to the stars. And as the faculties of sense, after becoming +finer and more fine, do then, because that they are earthly, gradually +lose their power, the faculties of the soul, because that they are +heavenly, become then more and more and more independent of such +ministrations, and continue to deal with images, and with ideas which +are diviner than images, nor care for either partial or total eclipse of +the daylight, conversant as they are, and familiar with a more +resplendent--a spiritual universe. + +You still look incredulous and unconvinced of the truth of our +position--but it was established in our first three paragraphs; and the +rest, though proofs too, are intended merely for illustrations. Age +alone understands the language of old Mother Earth--for Age alone, from +his own experience, can imagine its meanings in trouble or in +rest--often mysterious enough even to him in all conscience--but +intelligible though inarticulate--nor always inarticulate; for though +sobs and sighs are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and groans and +gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and cries, as if the old Earth were +undergoing a violent death--yet many a time and oft, within these few +years, have we heard her slowly syllabling words out of the Bible, and +as in listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed stars responded to +their truth, and, like Mercy visiting Despair, the Moon bore it into the +heart of the stormy clouds. + +And are there not now--have there never been young Poets? Many; for +Passion, so tossed as to leave, perhaps to give, the sufferer power to +reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical because creative, and loves to +express itself in "Prose or numerous verse," at once its nutriment and +relief. Nay, Nature sometimes gifts her children with an imaginative +spirit, that, from slight experiences of passion, rejoices to idealise +intentions, and incidents, and characters all coloured by it, or subject +to its sway; and these are Poets, not with old heads on young shoulders, +but with old hearts in young bosoms; yet such premature genius seldom +escapes blight, the very springs of life are troubled, and its possessor +sinks, pines, fades, and dies. So was it with Chatterton and Keats. + +It may be, after all, that we have only proved Age to be the strongest +season of Imagination; and if so, we have proved all we wish, for we +seek not to deny, but to vindicate. Knowledge is power to the poet as +it is power to all men--and indeed without Art and Science what is +Poetry? Without cultivation the faculty divine can have but imperfect +vision. The inner eye is dependent on the outward eye long familiar with +material objects--a finer sense, cognisant of spiritualities, but +acquired by the soul from constant communion with shadows--innate the +capacity, but awakened into power by gracious intercourse with Nature. +Thus Milton _saw_--after he became blind. + +But know that Age is not made up of a multitude of years--though that be +the vulgar reckoning--but of a multitude of experiences; and that a man +at thirty, if good for much, must be old. How long he may continue in +the prime of Age, God decrees; many men of the most magnificent +minds--for example, Michael Angelo--have been all-glorious in power and +majesty at fourscore and upwards; but one drop of water on the brain can +at any hour make it barren as desert dust. So can great griefs. + +Yestreen we had rather a hard bout of it in the Tent--the Glenlivet was +pithy--and our Tail sustained a total overthrow. They are snoring as if +it still were midnight. And is it thus that we sportsmen spend our time +on the Moors? Yet while "so many of our poorest subjects are yet +asleep," let us re-point the nib of our pen, and in the eye of the +sweet-breathed morning--moralise. + +Well-nigh quarter a century, we said, is over and gone since by the Linn +of Dee we pitched--on that famous excursion--THE TENT. Then was the +genesis of that white witch Maga-- + + "Like some tall Palm her noiseless fabric grew!" + +Nay, not noiseless--for the deafest wight that ever strove to hear with +his mouth wide open, might have sworn that he heard the sound of ten +thousand hammers. Neither grew she like a Palm--but like a Banyan-tree. +Ever as she threw forth branches from her great unexhausted stem, they +were borne down by the weight of their own beauty to the soil--the deep, +black rich soil in which she grew, originally sown there by a bird of +Paradise, that dropt the seed from her beak as she sailed along in the +sunshiny ether--and every limberest spray there again taking root, +reascended a stately scion, and so on ceaselessly through all the hours, +each in itself a spring-season, till the figurative words of Milton +have been fulfilled,-- + + --"Her arms + Branching so broad and long, that in the ground + The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow + About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade + High overarch'd, and echoing walks between; + There oft the Ettrick Shepherd, shunning heat, + Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds + At loopholes cut through thickest shade." + +But, alas! for the Odontist! He, the "_Delicię generis Humani_," is +dead. The best of all the Bishops of Bristol is no more. Mansel had not +a tithe of his wit--nor Kaye a tithe of his wisdom. And can it be that +we have not yet edited "His Remains!" "Alas! poor Yorick!" If Hamlet +could smile even with the skull of the Jester in his hands, whom when a +princely boy he had loved, hanging on his neck many a thousand times, +why may not we, in our mind's eye seeing that mirthful face "quite +chap-fallen," and hearing as if dismally deadened by the dust, the voice +that "so often set our table on a roar!" Dr Parr's wig, too, is all out +of frizzle; a heavier shot has dishevelled its horsehair than ever was +sent from the Shepherd's gun; no more shall it be mistaken for owl +a-blink on the mid-day bough, or ptarmigan basking in the sun high up +among the regions of the snow. It has vanished, with other lost things, +to the Moon; and its image alone remains for the next edition of the +celebrated treatise "_De Rebus Deperditis_," a suitable and a welcome +frontispiece, transferred thither by the engraver's cunning from the +first of those Eight Tomes that might make the Trone tremble, laid on +the shoulders of Atlas who threatens to put down the Globe, by the least +judicious and the most unmerciful of editors that ever imposed upon the +light living the heavy dead--John Johnson, late of Birmingham, Fellow of +the Royal Society, and of the Royal College of Physicians, whose +practice is duller than that of all Death's doctors, and his +prescriptions in that preface unchristianly severe. ODoherty, likewise, +has been gathered to his fathers. The Standard-bearer has lowered his +colours before the foe who alone is invincible. The Ensign, let us not +fear, has been advanced to a company without purchase, in the +Celestials; the Adjutant has got a Staff appointment. Tims was lately +rumoured to be in a galloping consumption; but the very terms of the +report, about one so sedentary, were sufficient to give it the lie. +Though puny, he is far from being unwell; and still engaged in polishing +tea-spoons and other plated articles, at a rate cheaper than travelling +gypsies do horn. Prince Leopold is now King of the Belgians--but we must +put an end in the Tent to that portentous snore. + + "Arise, awake, or be for ever fallen!" + +Ho--ho! gentlemen--so you have had the precaution to sleep in your +clothes. The sun, like Maga, is mounting higher and higher in heaven; so +let us, we beseech you, to breakfast, and then off to the Moors. + +"Substantial breakfast!" by Dugald Dhu, and by Donald Roy, and by Hamish +Bhan--heaped up like icebergs round the pole. How nobly stands in the +centre that ten-gallon Cask of Glenlivet! Proud is that Round to court +his shade. That twenty-pound Salmon lies beneath it even as yesterday he +lay beneath the cliff, while a column of light falls from him on that +Grouse-Pie. Is not that Ham beautiful in the calm consciousness of his +protection? That Tongue mutely eloquent in his praise? Tap him with your +knuckles, tenderly as if you loved him--and that with all your heart and +soul you do--and is not the response firm as from the trunk of the +gnarled oak? He is yet "Virgin of Proserpina"--"by Jove" he is; no +wanton lip has ever touched his mouth so chaste; so knock out the bung, +and let us hear him gurgle. With diviner music does he fill the pitcher, +and with a diviner liquidity of light than did ever Naiad from fount of +Helicon or Castaly, pour into classic urn gracefully uplifted by Grecian +damsel to her graceful head, and borne away, with a thanksgiving hymn, +to her bower in the olive-grove. + +All eggs are good eating; and 'tis a vulgar heresy which holds that +those laid by sea-fowl have a fishy taste. The egg of the Sew-mew is +exceeding sweet; so is that of the Gull. Pleasant is even the yolk of +the Cormorant--in the north of England ycleped the Scarth, and in the +Lowlands of Scotland the Black Byuter. Try a Black Byuter's egg, my dear +boy; for though not newly laid, it has since May been preserved in +butter, and is as fresh as a daisy after a shower. Do not be afraid of +stumbling on a brace of embryo Black Byuters in the interior of the +globe, for by its weight we pronounce it an egg in no peril of +parturition. You may now smack your lips, loud as if you were smacking +your palms, for that yellow morsel was unknown to Vitellius. Don't crush +the shell, but throw it into the Etive, that the Fairies may find it at +night, and go dancing in the fragile but buoyant canoe, in fits of small +shrill laughter, along with the foam-bells over the ebb-tide Rapids +above Connal's raging Ferry. + +The salmon is in shivers, and the grouse-pie has vanished like a dream. + + "So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies, + All that this world is proud of!" + +Only a goose remains! and would that he too were gone to return no more; +for he makes us an old man. No tradition survives in the Glen of the era +at which he first flourished. He seems to have belonged to some tribe of +the Anseres now extinct; and as for his own single individual self, our +senses tell us, in a language not to be misinterpreted, that he must +have become defunct in the darkness of antiquity. But nothing can be too +old for a devil--so at supper let us rectify him in Cayenne. + +Oh! for David Wilkie, or William Simpson (while we send Gibb to bring +away yonder Shieling and its cliff), to paint a picture--coloured, if +possible, from the life--of the Interior of our airy Pyramid. Door open, +and perpendicular canvass walls folded up--that settled but cloudy sky, +with here its broad blue fields, and there its broad blue glimpsing +glades--this greensward mound in the midst of a wilderness of +rock-strewn heather--as much of that one mountain, and as many of those +others, as it can be made to hold--that bright bend of the river--a +silver bow--and that white-sanded, shelly, shingly shore at Loch-Etive +Head, on which a troop of Tritons are "charging with all their +chivalry," still driven back and still returning, to the sound of +trumpets, of "flutes and soft recorders," from the sea. On the table, +all strewn and scattered "in confusion worse confounded," round the +Cask, which + + --"dilated stands + Like Teneriffe or Atlas _unremoved_," + +what "buttery touches" might be given to the + + --"reliquias Danaum atque inmitis Achillei!" + +Then the camp-beds tidily covered and arranged along their own +department of the circle--quaint dresses hanging from loops, all the +various apparelling of hunter, shooter, fisher, and forester--rods, +baskets, and nets occupying their picturesque division--fowling-pieces, +double and single, rejoicing through the oil-smooth brownness of their +barrels in the exquisite workmanship of a Manton and a Lancaster--American +rifles, with their stocks more richly silver-chased than you could have +thought within reach of the arts in that young and prosperous +land--duck-guns, whose formidable and fatal length had in Lincolnshire +often swept the fens--and on each side of the door, a brass carronade on +idle hours to awaken the echoes--sitting erect on their hurdies, +deer-hound, greyhound, lurcher, pointer, setter, spaniel, varmint, and +though last, not least, O'Bronte watching Christopher with his steadfast +eyes, slightly raised his large hanging triangular ears, his Thessalian +bull dewlaps betokening keen anxiety to be off and away to the mountain, +and with a full view of the white star on his coal-black breast;-- + + "Plaided and plumed in their tartan array" + +our three chosen Highlanders, chosen for their strength and their +fleetness from among the prime Children of the Mist--and Tickler the +Tall, who keeps growing after threescore and ten like a stripling, and +leaves his mark within a few inches of the top of the pole, arrayed in +tights of Kendal green, bright from the skylight of the inimitable +Vallance or the matchless Williams--green too his vest, and green also +his tunic--while a green feather in a green bonnet dances in its airy +splendour, and gold button-holes give at once lustre and relief to the +glowing verdure (such was Little John, when arrayed in all his glory; to +walk behind Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as they glided from tree to +tree, in wait for the fallow-deer in merry Sherwood)--North in his +Quaker garb--Quaker-like all but in cuffs and flaps, which, when he goes +to the Forest, are not--North, with a figure combining in itself all the +strength of a William Penn, _sans_ its corpulency, all the agility of a +Jem Belcher with far more than a Jem Belcher's bottom--with a face +exhibiting in rarest union all the philosophy of a Bacon, the +benevolence of a Howard, the wisdom of a Wordsworth, the fire of a +Byron, the gnosticity of a John Bee, and the up-to-trappishness combined +not only with perfect honesty, but with honour bright, of the Sporting +Editor of _Bell's Life in London_--and then, why if Wilkie or Simpson +fail in making a GEM of all that, they are not the men of genius we took +them for, that is all, and the art must be at a low ebb indeed in these +kingdoms. + +Well, our Tail has taken wings to itself and flown away with Dugald Dhu +and Donald Roy; and we, with Hamish Bhan, with Ponto, Piro, Basta, and +O'Bronte, are left by ourselves in the Tent. Before we proceed farther, +it may not be much amiss to turn up our little fingers--yestreen we were +all a leetle opstropelous--and spermaceti is not a more "sovereign +remedy for an inward bruise," than is a hair from the dog's tail that +bit you an antidote to any pus that produces rabies in the shape of +hydrophobia. Fill up the quaich, Hamish! a caulker of Milbank can harm +no man at any hour of the day--at least in the Highlands. Sma' Stell, +Hamish--assuredly Sma' Stell! + +Ere we start, Hamish, play us a Gathering--and then a Pibroch. "The +Campbells are coming" is like a storm from the mountain sweeping +Glen-More, that roars beneath the hastening hurricane with all its +woods. No earthquake like that which accompanies the trampling of ten +thousand men. So, round that shoulder, Hamish--and away for a mile up +the Glen--then, turning on your heel, blow till proud might be the +mother that bore you; and from the Tent-mouth Christopher will keep +smart fire from his Pattereroes, answered by all the echoes. +Hamish--indeed + + "The dun-deer's hide + On swifter foot was never tied--" + +for even now as that cloud--rather thunderous in his aspect--settles +himself over the Tent--ere five minutes have elapsed--a mile off is the +sullen sound of the bagpipe!--music which, if it rouse you not when +heard among the mountains, may you henceforth confine yourself to the +Jew's harp. Ay, here's a claymore--let us fling away the scabbard--and +in upon the front rank of the bayoneted muskets, till the Saxon array +reels, or falls just where it has been standing, like a swathe of grass. +So swept of old the Highlanders--shepherds and herdsmen--down the wooded +cliffs of the pass of Killiecrankie, till Mackay's red-coats lay redder +in blood among the heather, or passed away like the lurid fragments of a +cloud. "The Campbells are coming"--and we will charge with the heroes in +the van. The whole clan is maddening along the Moor--and Maccallum More +himself is at their head. But we beseech you, O'Bronte! not to look so +like a lion--and to hush in your throat and breast that truly Leonine +growl--for after all, 'tis but a bagpipe with ribands + + "Streaming like meteors to the troubled air," + +and all our martial enthusiasm has evaporated in--wind. + +But let us inspect Brown Bess. Till sixty, we used a single barrel. At +seventy we took to a double;--but dang detonators--we stick to the +flint. "Flint," says Colonel Hawker, "shoots strongest into the bird." A +percussion-gun is quicker, but flint is fast enough; and it does, +indeed, argue rather a confusion than a rapidity of ideas, to find fault +with lightning for being too slow. With respect to the flash in the pan, +it is but a fair warning to ducks, for example, to dive if they can, and +get out of the way of mischief. It is giving birds a chance for their +lives, and is it not ungenerous to grudge it? When our gun goes to our +shoulder, that chance is but small; for with double-barrel Brown Bess, +it is but a word and a blow,--the blow first, and long before you could +say Jack Robinson, the gorcock plays thud on the heather. But we beg +leave to set the question at rest for ever by one single clencher. We +have killed fifty birds--grouse--at fifty successive shots--one bird +only to the shot. And mind, not mere pouts--cheepers--for we are no +chicken-butchers--but all thumpers--cocks and hens as big as their +parents, and the parents themselves likewise; not one of which fell _out +of bounds_ (to borrow a phrase from the somewhat silly though skilful +pastime of pigeon-shooting), except one that suddenly soared half-way up +to the moon, and then + + "Into such strange vagaries fell + As he would dance," + +and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. Now, what more could have done +a detonator in the hands of the devil himself? Satan might have shot as +well, perhaps, as Christopher North--better we defy him; and we cannot +doubt that his detonator--given to him in a present, we believe, by Joe +Manton--is a prime article--one of the best ever manufactured on the +percussion system. But what more could he have done? When we had killed +our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the Christian reader, would not +the odds have been six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, at the +close of the match, ten birds behind perhaps, and with a bag shamefully +rich in poor pouts, that would have fallen to the ground had he but +thrown salt on their tails, have looked excessively sheepish? True, that +in rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from its detonating power, +more correctly than the common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon, +will then often not act at all; but that is its only advantage, and we +confess a great one, especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on the +country to say that it always rains, for it almost as often snows. +However, spite of wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor shall +any newfangled invention, howsoever ingenious, wean us from our First +Love. + +Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen--in whose veins the blood yet +gallops, canters, or trots--despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in whose +veins the blood creeps like a wearied pedestrian at twilight hardly able +to hobble into the wayside inn--for thus so long preferring the steel +pen to the steel barrel (the style of both is equally polished)--our +Bramah to our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, Tickler and the +Admiral, whose united ages amount to little more than a century and a +half, are already slaughtering their way along the mountain-side, the +one on Buachaille Etive, and the other on the Black Mount. But we love +not to commit murder long before meridian--"gentle lover of Nature" as +we are; so, in spite of the scorn of the more passionate sportsman, we +shall continue for an hour or two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting +our eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue sky, from +memorandum-book to mountain, from ink-bottle to loch, and delight +ourselves, and perchance a few thousand others, by a waking-dream +description of Glen-Etive. + +'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling anywhere speck-like on +the river-winding plain--or nest-like among the brushwood knolls--or +rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do +our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptom of life. Two +houses we know to be in the solitude--ay, two--one of them near the +head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen--but both +distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart +of the Moor. We were mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible--for +yonder it looms in a sullen light, and before we have finished the +sentence, may have again sunk into the moor. Ay, it is gone--for lights +and shadows coming and going, we know not whence nor whither, here +travel all day long--the sole tenants--very ghostlike--and seemingly in +their shiftings imbued with a sort of dim uncertain life. How far off +from our Tent may be the Loch? Miles--and silently as snow are seen to +break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs an aerial haze, +the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at +the head of the Glen? Miles--for though that speck in the sky into which +they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot +hear its cry. What giants are these right opposite our Pyramid?--Co--grim +chieftain--and his Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven cliffs! +This is what may be well called--Nature on a grand scale. And then, how +simple! We begin to feel ourselves--in spite of all we can do to support +our dignity by our pride--a mighty small and insignificant personage. We +are about six feet high--and everybody around us about four thousand. +Yes, that is the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no idea that in any +situation we could be such dwindled dwarfs, such perfect pigmies. Our +Tent is about as big as a fir-cone--and Christopher North an insect! + +What a wild world of clouds all over that vast central wilderness of +Northern Argyllshire lying between Cruachan and Melnatorran--Corryfinuarach +and Ben Slarive, a prodigious land! defying description, and in memory +resembling not realities, but like fragments of tremendous dreams. Is it +a sterile region? Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a blade of +grass--not a bent of heather--not even moss. And so they go shouldering +up into the sky--enormous masses--huger than churches or ships. And +sometimes not unlike such and other structures--all huddled together--yet +never jostling, so far as we have seen; and though often overhanging, as +if the wind might blow them over with a puff, steadfast in the storm +that seems rather to be an earthquake, and moving not an hair's-breadth, +while all the shingly sides of the mountains--you know shingle--with an +inconstant clatter--hurry-skurry--seem to be breaking up into debris. + +Is that the character of the whole region? No, you darling; it has vales +on vales of emerald, and mountains on mountains of amethyst, and streams +on streams of silver; and, so help us Heaven!--for with these eyes we +have seen them, a thousand and a thousand times--at sunrise and sunset, +rivers on rivers of gold. What kind of climate? All kinds, and all kinds +at once--not merely during the same season, but the same hour. Suppose +it three o'clock of a summer afternoon--you have but to choose your +weather. Do you desire a close sultry breathless gloom? You have it in +the stifling dens of Ben-An[=e]a, where lions might breed. A breezy +coolness, with a sprinkling of rain? Then open your vest to the green +light in the dewy vales of Benl[=u]ra. Lochs look lovely in mist, and so +thinks the rainbow--then away with you ere the rainbow fade--away, we +beseech you, to the wild shores of Lochan-a-L[=u]rich. But you would +rather see a storm, and hear some Highland thunder? There is one at this +moment on Unimore, and Cruachl[=i]a growls to Meallanuir, till the +cataracts of Glashgour are dumb as the dry rocks of Craig-te[=o]nan. + +In those regions we were, when a boy, initiated into the highest +mysteries of the Highlands. No guide dogged our steps--as well might a +red-deer have asked a cur to show him the Forest of Braemar, or +Beniglo--an eagle where best to build his eyrie have advised with the +Glasgow Gander. O heavens! how we were bewildered among the vast objects +that fed that delirium of our boyhood! We dimly recognised faces of +cliffs wearing dreadful frowns; blind though they looked, they seemed +sensible of our approach; and we heard one horrid monster mutter, "What +brings thee here, infatuated Pech?--begone!" At his impotent malice we +could not choose but smile, and shook our staff at the blockhead, as +since at many a greater blockhead even than he have we shook--and more +than shook our Crutch. But as through "pastures green and quiet waters +by," we pursued, from sunrise to sunset, our uncompanioned way, some +sweet spot, surrounded by heather, and shaded by fern, would woo us to +lie down on its bosom, and enjoy a visionary sleep! Then it was that the +mountains confidentially told us their names--and we got them all by +heart; for each name characterised its owner by some of his peculiar and +prominent qualities--as if they had been one and all christened by poets +baptising them from a font + + "Translucent, pure, + With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod." + +O! happy pastor of a peaceful flock! Thou hast long gone to thy reward! +One--two--three--four successors hast thou had in that manse--(now it +too has been taken down and the plough gone over it)--and they all did +their duty; yet still is thy memory fragrant in the glen; for deeds like +thine "smell sweet, and blossom in the dust!" Under heaven, we owed our +life to thy care of us in a brain fever. Sometimes thy face would grow +grave, never angry, at our sallies--follies--call them what you will, +but not sins. And methinks we hear the mild old man somewhat mournfully +saying, "Mad boy! out of gladness often cometh grief--out of mirth +misery; but our prayers, when thou leavest us, shall be, that never, +never may such be thy fate!" Were those prayers heard in heaven and +granted on earth? We ask our heart in awe, but its depths are silent, +and make no response. + +But is it our intention to sit scribbling here all day? Our fancy lets +our feet enjoy their sinecure, and they stretch themselves out in +indolent longitude beneath the Tent-table, while we are settled in +spirit, a silent thought, on the battlements of our cloud-castle on the +summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our cloud-castle rests upon a +foundation of granite precipices; and down along their hundred chasms, +from which the eye recoils, we look on Loch-Etive bearing on its bosom +stationary--so it seems in the sunshine--one snow-white sail! What +brings the creature there--and on what errand may she be voyaging up the +uninhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the uninhabited mountains? +Some poet, perhaps, steers her--sitting at the helm in a dream, and +allowing her to dance her own way, at her own will, up and down the +green glens and hills of the foam-crested waves--a swell rolling in the +beauty of light and music for ever attendant on her, as the Sea-mew--for +so we choose to name her--pursues her voyage--now on water, and now, as +the breezes drop, in the air--elements at times undistinguishable, as +the shadows of the clouds and of the mountains mingle their imagery in +the sea. Oh! that our head, like that of a spider, were all studded with +eyes--that our imagination, sitting in the "palace of the soul" (a noble +expression, borrowed or stolen by Byron from Waller), might see all at +once all the sights from centre to circumference, as if all rallying +around her for her own delight, and oppressing her with the poetry of +nature--a lyrical, an elegiac, an epic, or a tragic strain. Now the +bright blue water-gleams enchain her vision, and are felt to constitute +the vital, the essential spirit of the whole--Loch Awe land-serpent, +large as serpent of the sea, lying asleep in the sun, with his burnished +skin all bedropt with scales of silver and of gold--the lands of Lorn, +mottled and speckled with innumerous lakelets, where fancy sees millions +of water-lilies riding at anchor in bays where the breezes have fallen +asleep--Oban, splendid among the splendours of that now almost +motionless mediterranean, the mountain-loving Linnhe Loch--Jura, Islay, +Colonsay, and nameless other islands, floating far and wide away on--on +to Coll and Tiree, drowned beneath the faint horizon. But now all the +eyes in our spider-head are lost in one blaze of undistinguishable +glory; for the whole Highlands of Scotland are up in their power against +us--rivers, lochs, seas, islands, cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen +drops from our hand, and here we are--not on the battlements of the +air-palace on the summit of Cruachan, but sitting on a tripod or +three-legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our MS. before us, and +at our right hand a quaich of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder +ten-gallon cask--and here's to the health of "Honest men and bonny +lasses" all over the globe. + +So much for description--an art in which the Public (God bless her, +where is she now--and shall we ever see her more?) has been often +pleased to say that we excel. But let us off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto! +Basta! to your paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. Pointers! +ye are a noble trio. White, O Ponto! art thou as the foam of the sea. +Piro! thou tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's hide, and +fleet as he while thou rangest the mountain-brow, now hid in heather, +and now reappearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, Basta!--for +finest-scented though be thy scarlet nostrils, one bad trick alone hast +thou; and whenever that grey wing glances from some pillar-stone in the +wilderness, headlong goest thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself +to-day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail or sun herself on the +cliff. As for thee, O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright breast, +keep thou like a serf at our heels, and when our course lies over the +fens and marshes, thou mayest sweep like a hairy hurricane among the +flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake himself, and, with thy +fan-like tail proudly spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet, +with a smile, the monstrous mallard. + +But in what direction shall we go, callants--towards what airt shall we +turn our faces? Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and descend into +Glen-Creran, where the stony regions that the ptarmigan loves melt away +into miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we near the salmon-haunted +Loch so beautiful, loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights of +Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with sylvan shades, wherein the cushat coos, +and the roe glides through the secret covert? Or shall we away up by +Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of +Streams, that from all their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch +have never yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of +bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, or trunk of a +tree--none but trunks of trees there, and all dead for centuries--that +had sunk down where it grew, and spanned the flood that eddies round it +with a louder music? Wild region! yet not barren; for there are cattle +on a thousand hills, that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their heads +as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him in a +half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. There flocks of +goats--outliers from Dalness--may be seen as if following one another on +the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that frown down unfathomed +abysses--and there is frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's wing, +and his gobble gathering together his brood, scattered by the lightning +that in its season volleys through the silence, else far deeper than +that of death;--for the silence of death--that is, of a churchyard +filled with tombs--is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness that +prevails under the shadow of Unimore and Attchorachan, with their cliffs +on which the storms have engraven strange hieroglyphical inscriptions, +which, could but we read them wisely, would record the successive ages +of the Earth, from the hour when fire or flood first moulded the +mountains, down to the very moment that we are speaking, and with small +steel-hammer roughening the edges of our flints that they may fail not +to murder. Or shall we away down by Armaddy, where the Fox-Hunter +dwells--and through the woods of Inverkinglass and Achran, "double, +double, toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Benanea and +Mealcopucaich, and drop down like two unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae, +with a peep in the distance of the young tower of Dalmally, and the old +turrets of Kilchurn? Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, which +by that route lies between this our Tent and the many tarns that freshen +the wildernesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word--tip the wink--tongue +on your cheek--up with your forefinger--and we shall go; for hark, +Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight--a long day is yet before us--and +what if we be benighted? We have a full moon and plenty of stars. + +All these are splendid schemes--but what say you, Hamish, to one less +ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits +down by Armaddy--the Forge--Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in +some six or seven hours--and then let us try that famous salmon-cast +nearest the mansion--(you have the rods?)--and if time permit, an hour's +trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass of the Brander, for one of those +giants that have immortalised the names of a Maule, a Goldie, and a +Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, what a beard! You cannot have been shaved +since Whitsunday--and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those +dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot--mulish in nought +but an inveterate aversion to all stumbling. And now for the heather! +But are you sure, gents, _that we are on_? + +And has it come to this! Where is the grandson of the desert-born? + +Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta wert a flyer! A fencer beyond +compare! Dost thou remember how, for a cool five hundred, thou clearedst +yon canal in a style that rivalled that of the red-deer across the +chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do was to hold hard and not ride over +the hounds, when running breast-high on the rear of Reynard the savage +pack wakened the welkin with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, +and whipper-in and huntsman were flogging on their faltering flight in +vain through fields and forests flying behind thy heels that glanced +and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What steed like thee in all +Britain at a steeple-chase? Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and +skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other horses--heavy there as +dragoons--seemed fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, soil-sunk +to the knees. Ditches dwindled beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as +rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate +plunged thy sixteen hands and a-half height, like a Polar monster +leaping from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up thy small head +and fine neck and high shoulder, like a Draco from the weltering waters, +with a few proud pawings to which the recovered greensward rang, thy +whole bold, bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, crested by old +Christopher, and after one short snorting pause, over the miry +meadows--tantivy!--tantivy!--away! away! away! + +Oh! son of a Rep! were not those glorious days? But Time has laid his +finger on us both, Filho; and never more must we two be seen by the edge +of the cover, + + "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard + Upon the golden hills." + +'Tis the last learned and highest lesson of Wisdom, Filho, in man's +studious obedience to Nature's laws--_to know when to stop in his +career_. Pride, Passion, Pleasure, all urge him on; while Prudence, +Propriety, Peace, cry halt! halt! halt! That mandate we have timeously +obeyed; and having, unblamed we hope, and blameless, carried on the +pastimes of youth into manhood, and even through the prime of manhood to +the verge of age--on that verge, after some few farewell vagaries up and +down the debatable land, we had the resolution to drop our bridle-hand, +to unloosen the spurs from our heels, and to dismount from the +stateliest and swiftest steed, Filho, that ever wafted mortal man over +moor and mountain like a storm-driven cloud. + +You are sure _we are on_, Hamish? And that he will not run away? Come, +come, Surefoot, none of your funking! A better mane for holding on by we +could not imagine. Pure Shelty you say, Hamish? From his ears we should +have suspected his grandfather of having been at least a Zebra. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT SECOND--THE COVES OF CRUACHAN. + + +Comma--semicolon--colon--full-point! All three scent-struck into +attitude steady as stones. That is beautiful. Ponto straight as a +rod--Piro in a slight curve--and Basta a perfect semicircle. O'Bronte! +down on your marrowbones. But there is no need, Hamish, either for hurry +or haste. On such ground, and on such a day, the birds will lie as if +they were asleep. Hamish, the flask!--not the powder-flask, you +dotterel--but the Glenlivet. 'Tis thus we always love to steady our hand +for the first shot. It gives a fine feeling to the forefinger. + +Ha! the heads of the old cock and hen, like snakes, above the +heather--motionless, but with glancing eyes--and preparing for the +spring. Whirr--whirr--whirr--bang--bang--tapsilleery--tapsalteery--thud-- +thud--thud! Old cock and old hen both down, Hamish. No mean omen, no +awkward augury, of the day's sport. Now for the orphan family--marked ye +them round + + "The swelling instep of the mountain's foot?" + +"Faith and she's the teevil's nainsel--that is she--at the shutin'; for +may I tine ma mull, and never pree sneeshin' mair, if she haena richt +and left murdered fowre o' the creturs!"--"Four!--why, we only covered +the old people; but if younkers will cross, 'tis their own fault that +they bite the heather."--"They're a' fowre spewin', sir, except ane--and +her head's aff--and she's jumpin' about waur nor ony o' them, wi' her +bluidy neck. I wuss she mayna tak to her wings again, and owre the +knowe. But ca' in that great toozy outlandish dowg, sir, for he's +devourin' them--see hoo he's flingin' them, first ane and then anither, +outowre his shouther, and keppin' them afore they touch the grun' in his +mouth, like a mountebank wi' a shour o' oranges!"--"Hamish, are they +bagged?"--"Ou ay."--"Then away to windward, ye sons of bitches--Heavens, +how they do their work!" + +Up to the time of our grand climacteric we loved a wide range--and +thought nothing of describing and discussing a circle of ten miles +diameter in a day, up to our hips in heather. But for these dozen or +twenty years bypast we have preferred a narrow beat, snugly seated on a +shelty, and pad the hoof on the hill no more. Yonder is the kind of +ground we now love--for why should an old man make a toil of a pleasure? +'Tis one of the many small coves belonging to Glen-Etive, and looks down +from no very great elevation upon the Loch. Its bottom, and sides nearly +half-way up, are green pastures, sheep-nibbled as smooth as a lawn--and +a rill, dropping in diamonds from the cliffs at its upper end, betrays +itself, where the water is invisible, by a line of still livelier +verdure. An old dilapidated sheepfold is the only building, and seems to +make the scene still more solitary. Above the green pastures are the +richest beds and bosoms of heather ever bees murmured on--and above them +nothing but bare cliffs. A stiff breeze is now blowing into this cove +from the sea-loch; and we shall slaughter the orphan family at our +leisure. 'Tis probable they have dropped--single bird after single +bird--or in twos and threes--all along the first line of heather that +met their flight; and if so, we shall pop them like partridges in +turnips. Three points in the game! Each dog, it is manifest, stands to a +different lot of feathers; and we shall slaughter them, without +dismounting, _seriatim_. No, Hamish--we must dismount--give us your +shoulder--that will do. The Crutch--now we are on our pins. Take a +lesson. Whirr! Bang! Bag number one, Hamish. Ay, that is right, +Ponto--back Basta. Ditto, ditto. Now Ponto and Basta both back +Piro--right and left this time--and not one of the brood will be left to +cheep of Christopher. Be ready--attend us with the other double-barrel. +Whirr! Bang--bang--bang--bang! What think you of that, you son of the +mist? There is a shower of feathers! They are all at sixes and sevens +upon the greensward at the edge of the heather. Seven birds at four +shots! The whole family is now disposed of--father, mother, and eleven +children. If such fire still be in the dry wood, what must it have been +in the green? Let us lie down in the sheltered shade of the mossy walls +of the sheepfold--take a drop of Glenlivet--and philosophise. + +Hollo! Hamish, who are these strange, suspicious-looking strangers +thitherwards-bound, as hallan-shaker a set as may be seen on an August +day? Ay, ay, we ken the clan. A week's residence to a man of gumption +gives an insight into a neighbourhood. Unerring physiognomists and +phrenologists are we, and what with instinctive, and what with intuitive +knowledge, we keek in a moment through all disguise. He in the centre of +the group is the stickit minister--on his right stands the drunken +dominie--on his left the captain, who in that raised look retains token +of _delirium tremens_--the land-louper behind him is the land-measurer, +who would be well to do in the world were he "monarch of all he +surveyed,"--but has been long out at elbows, and his society not much +courted since he was rude to the auld wife at the time the gudeman was +at the peats. That fine tall youth, the widow's son in Gleno, and his +friend the Sketcher, with his portfolio under his arm, are in +indifferent company, Hamish; but who, pray, may be the phenomenon in +plush, with bow and arrow, and tasseled horn, bonnet jauntily screwed to +the sinister, glass stuck in socket, and precisely in the middle of his +puckered mouth a cigar. You do not say so--a grocer's apprentice from +the Gorbals! + +No need of confabulating there, gemmen, on the knowe--come forward and +confront Christopher North. We find we have been too severe in our +strictures. After all, they are not a bad set of fellows, as the world +goes--imprudence must not be too harshly condemned--Shakespeare taught +us to see the soul of good in things evil--these two are excellent lads; +and, as for impertinence, it often proceeds from _mauvais honte_, and +with a glance we shall replace the archer behind his counter. + +How goes it, Cappy? Rather stiff in the back, minister, with the mouth +of the fowling-piece peeping out between the tails of your long coat, +and the butt at the back of your head, by way of bolster? You will find +it more comfortable to have her in hand. That bamboo, dominie, is well +known to be an air-gun. Have you your horse-pistol with you to-day, +surveyor? Sagittarius, think you, you could hit, at twoscore, a +haystack flying? Sit down, gentlemen, and let's have a crack. + +So ho! so ho! so ho! We see her black eyes beneath a primrose tuft on +the brae. In spring all one bank of blossoms; but 'tis barish now and +sheep-nibbled, though few eyes but our own could have thus detected +there the brown back of Maukin. Dominie, your bamboo. Shoot her sitting? +Fie fie--no, no. Kick her up, Hamish. There she goes. We are out of +practice at single ball--but whizz! she has it between the shoulders. +Head-over-heels she has started another--why, that's funny--give us your +bow and arrow, you green grocer--twang! within an inch of her fud. +Gentlemen, suppose we tip you a song. Join all in the chorus. + +THE POWCHER'S SONG. + + When I was boon apprentice + In vamous Zoomerzet Shere, + Lauks! I zerved my meester truly + Vor neerly zeven yeer, + _U_ntil I took to _Pow_ching, + Az you zhall quickly heer. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + + Az me and ma coomerades + Were zetting on a snere, + Lauks! the Geamkeepoors caem oop to uz; + Vor them we did na kere, + 'Case we could fight or wrestle, lads, + Jump over ony wheere. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + + Az we went oot wan morning + Atwixt your vive and zeex, + We cautcht a here alive, ma lads, + We found un in a deetch; + We popt un in a bag, ma lads, + We yoiten off vor town, + + We took un to a neeghboor's hoose, + And we zold un vor a crown. + We zold un vor a crown, ma lads, + But a wont tell ye wheere. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + + Then here's success to Powching, + Vor A doos think it feere, + And here's look to ere a gentleman + Az wants to buy a heere, + And here's to ere a geamkeepoor, + Az woona zell it deere. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + +The Presbytery might have overlooked your fault, Mac, for the case was +not a flagrant one, and you were willing, we understand, to make her an +honest woman. Do you think you could recollect one of your sermons? In +action and in unction you had not your superior in the Synod. Do give us +a screed about Nimrod or Nebuchadnezzar. No desecration in a +sermon--better omitted, we grant, prayer and psalm. Should you be unable +to reproduce an entire discourse, yet by dove-tailing--that is, a bit +from one and a bit from another--surely you can be at no loss for half +an hour's miscellaneous matter--heads and tails. Or suppose we let you +off with a View of the Church Question. You look glum and shake your +head. Can you, Mac, how can you resist that Pulpit? + +Behold in that semicircular low-browed cliff, backed by a range of bonny +green braes dipping down from the hills that do themselves come shelving +from the mountains, what appears at first sight to be a cave, but is +merely a blind window, as it were, a few feet deep, arched and faced +like a beautiful work of masonry, though chisel never touched it, nor +man's hand dropped the line along the living stone thus wrought by +nature's self, who often shows us, in her mysterious processes, +resemblances of effects produced by us her children on the same +materials by our more most elaborate art. It is a very pulpit, and that +projecting slab is the sounding-board. That upright stone in front of +it, without the aid of fancy, may well be thought the desk. To us +sitting here, this spot of greensward is the floor; the sky that hangs +low, as if it loved it, the roof of the sanctuary; nor is there any harm +in saying, that we, if we choose to think so, are sitting in a kirk. + +Shall we mount the pulpit by that natural flight of steps, and, like a +Sedgwick or a Buckland, with a specimen in one hand, and before our eyes +mountains whose faces the scars of thunder have intrenched, tell you how +the globe, after formation on formation, became fit residence for +new-created man, and habitable no more to flying dragons? Or shall we, +rather, taking the globe as we find it, speculate on the changes wrought +on its surface by us, whom God gave feet to tread the earth, and faces +to behold the heavens, and souls to soar into the heaven of heavens, on +the wings of hope, aspiring through temporal shades to eternal light? + +Brethren!--The primary physical wants of the human being are food, +clothing, shelter, and defence. To supply these he has invented all his +arts. Hunger and Thirst cultivate the earth. Fear builds castles and +embattles cities. The animal is clothed by nature against cold and +storm, and shelters himself in his den. Man builds his habitation, and +weaves his clothing. With horns, or teeth, or claws, the strong and +deadly weapons with which nature has furnished them, the animal kinds +wage their war; he forges swords and spears, and constructs implements +of destruction that will send death almost as far as his eye can mark +his foe, and sweep down thousands together. The animal that goes in +quest of his food, that pursues or flies from his enemy, has feet, or +wings, or fins; but man bids the horse, the camel, the elephant, bear +him, and yokes them to his chariot. If the strong animal would cross the +river, he swims. Man spans it with a bridge. But the most powerful of +them all stands on the beach and gazes on the ocean. Man constructs a +ship, and encircles the globe. Other creatures must traverse the element +nature has assigned, with means she has furnished. He chooses his +element, and makes his means. Can the fish traverse the waters? So can +he. Can the bird fly the air? So can he. Can the camel speed over the +desert? He shall bear man as his rider. + +"That's beautifu'!" "Tuts, haud your tongue, and tak a chow. There's +some shag." "Is he gaun to be lang, Hamish?" "Wheesht! you micht as weel +be speakin in the kirk." + +But to see what he owes to inventive art, we should compare man, not +with inferior creatures, but with himself, looking over the face of +human society, as history or observation shows it. We shall find him +almost sharing the life of brutes, or removed from them by innumerable +differences, and incalculable degrees. In one place we see him +harbouring in caves, naked, living, we might almost say, on prey, +seeking from chance his wretched sustenance, food which he eats just as +he finds it. He lives like a beggar on the alms of nature. Turn to +another land, and you see the face of the earth covered with the works +of his hand--his habitation, widespreading stately cities--his clothing +and the ornaments of his person culled and fashioned from the three +kingdoms of nature. For his food the face of the earth bears him +tribute; and the seasons and changes of heaven concur with his own art +in ministering to his board. This is the difference which man has made +in his own condition by the use of his intellectual powers, awakened and +goaded on by the necessities of his physical constitution. + +The various knowledge, the endlessly multiplied observation, the +experience and reasonings of man added to man, of generation following +generation, which were required to bring to a moderate state of +advancement the great primary arts subservient to physical life--the +arts of providing food, habitation, clothing, and defence, _we_ are +utterly unable to conceive. We are _born_ to the knowledge which was +collected by the labours of many ages. How slowly were those arts reared +up which still remain to us! How many which had laboriously been brought +to perfection, have been displaced by superior invention, and fallen +into oblivion! Fenced in as we are by the works of our predecessors, we +see but a small part of the power of man contending with the +difficulties of his lot. But what a wonderful scene would be opened +before our eyes, with what intense interest should we look on, if we +could indeed behold him armed only with his own implanted powers, and +going forth to conquer the creation! If we could see him beginning by +subduing evils, and supplying painful wants--going on to turn those +evils and wants into the means of enjoyment--and at length, in the +wantonness and pride of his power, filling his existence with +luxuries;--if we could see him from his first step, in the untamed +though fruitful wilderness, advancing to subdue the soil, to tame and +multiply the herds--from bending the branches into a bower, to fell the +forest and quarry the rock--seizing into his own hands the element of +fire, directing its action on substances got from the bowels of the +earth--fashioning wood, and stone, and metal, to the will of his +thought--searching the nature of plants to spin their fibres, or with +their virtues to heal his diseases;--if we could see him raise his first +cities, launch his first ship, calling the winds and waters to be his +servants, and to do his work--changing the face of the earth--forming +lakes and rivers--joining seas, or stretching the continent itself into +the dominion of the sea;--if we could do all this in imagination, then +should we understand something of what man's intellect has done for his +physical life, and what the necessities of his physical life have done +in forcing into action all the powers of his intelligence. + +But there are still higher considerations arising from the influence of +man's physical necessities on the destiny of the species. It is this +subjugation of natural evil, and this created dominion of art, that +prepares the earth to be the scene of his social existence. His hard +conquest was not the end of his toil. He has conquered the kingdom in +which he was to dwell in his state. The full unfolding of his moral +powers was only possible in those states of society which are thus +brought into being by his conflict with all his physical faculties +against all the stubborn powers of the material universe; for out of the +same conquest Wealth is created. In this progress, and by means thus +brought into action, society is divided into classes. Property itself, +the allotment of the earth, takes place, because it is the bosom of the +earth that yields food. That great foundation of the stability of +communities is thus connected with the same necessity; and in the same +progress, and out of the same causes, arise the first great Laws by +which society is held together in order. Thus that whole wonderful +development of the Moral Nature of man, in all those various forms +which fill up the history of the race, in part arises out of, and is +always intimately blended with, the labours to which he has been aroused +by those first great necessities of his physical nature. But had the +tendency to increase his numbers been out of all proportion to the means +provided by nature, and infinitely multipliable by art, for the +subsistence of human beings, how could this magnificent march have moved +on? + +Hence we may understand on what ground the ancient nations revered so +highly, and even deified, the authors of the primary arts of life. They +considered not the supply of the animal wants merely; but they +contemplated that mighty change in the condition of mankind to which +these arts have given origin. It is on this ground that they had raised +the character of human life, that Virgil assigns them their place in the +dwellings of bliss, among devoted patriots and holy priests, among those +whom song or prophecy had inspired, among those benefactors of the race +whose names were to live for ever, giving his own most beautiful +expression to the common sentiment of mankind. + + "Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, + Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, + Quique pii vates, et Phoebo digna locuti, + _Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes_, + Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo; + _Omnibus his_ niveā cinguntur tempora vittā." + +"That's Latin for the minister and the dominie." "Wheesht! Heard you +ever the like o' that? Though I dinna understand a word o't, it gars me +a' grue." "Wheesht! wheesht!--we maun pit him intil Paurliment"--"Rather +intil the General Assembly, to tussle wi' the wild men." "He's nae +Moderate, man; and gin I'm no sair mistaen, he's a wild man himsel, and +wull uphaud the Veto." "Wheesht! wheesht! wheesht!" + +True, that in savage life men starve. But is that any proof that nature +has cursed the race with a fatal tendency to multiply beyond the means +of subsistence? None whatever. Attend for a little to this point. Of the +real power of the bodily appetites for food, and the sway they may +attain over the moral nature of the mind, we, who are protected by our +place among the arrangements of civil society from greatly suffering +under it, can indeed form no adequate conception. Let us not now speak +of those dreadful enormities which, in the midst of dismal famine, are +recorded to have been perpetrated by civilised men, when the whole moral +soul, with all its strongest affections and instinctive abhorrences, has +sunk prostrate under the force of that animal suffering. But the power +of which we speak, as attained by this animal feeling, subsists +habitually among whole tribes and nations. It is that power which it +acquires over the mind of the savage, who is frequently exposed to +suffer its severity, and who hunts for himself the food with which he is +to appease it. Compare the mind of the human being as you are accustomed +to behold him, knowing the return of this sensation only as a grateful +incitement to take the ready nourishment which is spread for his repast, +with that of his fellow-man bearing through the lonely woods the gnawing +pang that goads him to his prey. Hunger _is_ in his heart; hunger bears +along his unfatiguing feet; hunger lies in the strength of his arm; +hunger watches in his eye; hunger listens in his ear; as he couches down +in his covert, silently waiting the approach of his expected spoil, this +is the sole thought that fills his aching breast--"I shall satisfy my +hunger!" When his deadly aim has brought his victim to the ground, this +is the thought that springs up as he rushes to seize it, "I have got +food for my hungry soul!" What must be the usurpation of animal nature +here over the whole man! It is not merely the simple pain, as if it were +the forlornness of a human creature bearing about his famishing +existence in helplessness and despair--though that, too, is indeed a +true picture of some states of our race; but here is not a suffering and +sinking wretch--he is a strong hunter, and puts forth his strength +fiercely under the urgency of this passion. All his might in the +chase--all pride of speed, and strength, and skill--all thoughts of long +and hard endurance--all images of perils past--all remembrances and all +foresight--are gathered on that one strong and keen desire--are bound +down to the sense of that one bitter animal want. These feelings +recurring day by day in the sole toil of his life, bring upon his soul a +vehemence and power of desire in this object, of which we can have no +conception, till he becomes subjected to hunger as to a mighty animal +passion--a passion such as it rages in those fierce animal kinds which +it drives with such ferocity on their prey. He knows hunger as the wolf +knows it--he goes forth with his burning heart, like the tiger to lap +blood. But turn to man in another condition to which he has been brought +by the very agency of his physical on his intellectual and moral being! +How far removed is he now from that daily contention with such evils as +these! How much does he feel himself assured against them by belonging +to the great confederacy of social life! How much is it veiled from his +eyes by the many artificial circumstances in which the satisfaction of +the want is involved! The work in which he labours the whole day--on +which his eyes are fixed and his hands toil--is something altogether +unconnected with his own wants--connected with distant wants and +purposes of a thousand other men in which he has no participation. And +as far as it is a work of skill, he has to fix his mind on objects and +purposes so totally removed from himself, that they all tend still more +to sever his thoughts from his own necessities; and thus it is that +civilisation raises his moral character, when it protects almost every +human being in a country from that subjection to this passion, to which +even noble tribes are bound down in the wilderness of nature. + +"It's an awfu' thing hunger, Hamish, sure aneuch; but I wush he was +dune; for that vice o' his sing-sangin is makin me unco sleepy--and ance +I fa' owre, I'm no easy waukenin. But wha's that snorin?" + +Yet it is the most melancholy part of all such speculation, to observe +what a wide gloom is cast over them by this severe necessity, which is +nevertheless the great and constant cause of the improvement of their +condition. It is not suffering alone--for _that_ they may be inured to +bear,--but the darkness of the understanding, and the darkness of the +heart, which comes on under the oppression of toil, that is miserable to +see. Our fellow-men, born with the same spirit as ourselves, seem yet +denied the common privileges of that spirit. They seem to bring +faculties into the world that cannot be unfolded, and powers of +affection and desire which not their fault but the lot of their birth +will pervert and degrade. There is a humiliation laid upon our nature in +the doom which seems thus to rest upon a great portion of our species, +which, while it requires our most considerate compassion for those who +are thus depressed, compels us to humble ourselves under the sense of +our own participation in the nature from which it flows. Therefore, in +estimating the worth, the virtue of our fellow-men, whom Providence has +placed in a lot that yields to them the means, and little more than the +means, of supporting life in themselves and those born of them, let us +never forget how intimate is the necessary union between the wants of +the body and the thoughts of the soul. Let us remember, that over a +great portion of humanity the soul is in a struggle for its independence +and power with the necessities of that nature in which it is enveloped. +It has to support itself against sickening, or irritating, or maddening +thoughts, inspired by weariness, lassitude, want, or the fear of want. +It is chained down to the earth by the influence of one great and +constant occupation--that of providing the means of its mortal +existence. When it shows itself shook and agitated, or overcome in the +struggle, what ought to be the thoughts and feelings of the wise for +poor humanity! When, on the other hand, we see nature preserving itself +pure, bold, and happy amidst the perpetual threatenings or assaults of +those evils from which it cannot fly, and though oppressed by its own +weary wants, forgetting them all in that love which ministers to the +wants of others,--when we see the brow wrinkled and drenched by +incessant toil, the body in the power of its prime bowed down to the +dust, and the whole frame in which the immortal spirit abides marked, +but not dishonoured, by its slavery to fate,--and when, in the midst of +all this ceaseless depression and oppression, from which man must never +hope to escape on earth, we see him still seeking and still finding joy, +delight, and happiness in the finer affections of his spiritual being, +giving to the lips of those he loves the scanty morsel earned by his own +hungry and thirsty toil, purchasing by sweat, sickness, and fever, +Education and Instruction and Religion to the young creatures who +delight him who is starving for their sakes, resting with gratitude on +that day, whose return is ever like a fresh fountain to his exhausted +and weary heart, and preserving a profound and high sense of his own +immortality among all the earth-born toils and troubles that would in +vain chain him down to the dust;--when we see all this, and think of all +this, we feel indeed how rich may be the poorest of the poor, and learn +to respect the moral being of man in its triumphs over the power of his +physical nature. But we do not learn to doubt or deny the wisdom of the +Creator. We do not learn from all these struggles, and all these +defeats, and all these victories, and all these triumphs, that God sent +us His creatures into this life to starve, because the air, the earth, +and the waters have not wherewithal to feed the mouths that gape for +food through all the elements! Nor do we learn that want is a crime, and +poverty a sin--and that they who _would_ toil, but cannot, and they who +_can_ toil, but have no work set before them, are intruders at Nature's +table, and must be driven, by those who are able to pay for their seats, +to famine, starvation, and death--almost denied a burial!--Finis. Amen. + +Often has it been our lot, by our conversational powers to set the table +on a snore. The more stirring the theme, the more soporific the sound of +our silver voice. Look there, we beseech you! In a small spot of +"stationary sunshine"--lie Hamish, and Surefoot, and O'Bronte, and +Ponto, and Piro, and Basta, all sound asleep! Dogs are troubled +sleepers--but these four are now like the dreamless dead. Horses, too, +seem often to be witch-ridden in their sleep. But at this moment +Surefoot is stretched more like a stone than a shelty in the land of +Nod. As for Hamish, were he to lie so braxy-like by himself on the hill, +he would be awakened by the bill of the raven digging into his sockets. +We are Morpheus and Orpheus in one incarnation--the very Pink of +Poppy--the true spirit of Opium--of Laudanum the concentrated +Essence--of the black Drop the Gnome. + +Indeed, gentlemen, you have reason to be ashamed of yourselves--but +where is the awkward squad? Clean gone. They have stolen a march on us, +and while we have been preaching they have been poaching--_sans_ mandate +of the Marquess and Monzie. We may catch them ere close of day; and, if +they have a smell of slaughter, we shall crack their sconces with our +Crutch. No apologies, Hamish--'tis only making the matter worse; but we +expected better things of the Dogs. O'Bronte! fie! fie! sirrah. Your +sire would not have fallen asleep during a speech of ours--and such a +speech!--he would have sat it out without winking--at each more splendid +passage testifying his delight by a yowl. Leap over the Crutch, you +reprobate, and let us see thee scour. Look at him, Hamish, already +beckoning to us on his hurdies from the hill-top. Let us scale those +barriers--and away over the table-land between that summit and the head +of Gleno. No sooner said than done--and here we are on the level--such a +level as the ship finds on the main sea, when in the storm-lull she +rides up and down the green swell, before the trade-winds that cool the +tropics. The surface of this main land-sea is black in the gloom, and +green in the glimmer, and purple in the light, and crimson in the +sunshine. O, never looks Nature so magnificent + + "As in this varying and uncertain weather, + When gloom and glory force themselves together, + When calm seems stormy, and tempestuous light + At day's meridian lowers like noon of night!" + +Whose are these fine lines? Hooky Walker, OUR OWN. Dogs! +Down--down--down--be stonelike, O Shelty!--and Hamish, sink thou into +the heather like a lizard; for if these old dim eyes of ours may be in +aught believed, yonder by the birches stands a Red-Deer snuffing the +east wind! Hush! hush! hush! He suspects an enemy in that airt--but +death comes upon him with stealthy foot, from the west; and if Apollo +and Diana--the divinities we so long have worshipped--be now propitious, +his antlers shall be entangled in the heather, and his hoofs beat the +heavens. Hamish, the rifle! A tinkle as of iron, and a hiss accompanying +the explosion--and the King of the Wilderness, bounding up into the air +with his antlers higher than ever waved chieftain's plume, falls down +stone-dead where he stood; for the blue-pill has gone through his +vitals, and lightning itself could hardly have withered him into more +instantaneous cessation of life! + +He is an enormous animal. What antlers! Roll him over, Hamish, on his +side! See, up to our breast, nearly, reaches the topmost branch. He is +what the hunter of old called a "Stag of Ten." His eye has lost the +flash of freedom--the tongue that browsed the brushwood is bitten +through by the clenched teeth--the fleetness of his feet has felt that +fatal frost--the wild heart is hushed, Hamish--tame, tame, tame; and +there the Monarch of the Mountains--the King of the Cliffs--the Grand +Llama of the Glens--the Sultan of the Solitudes--the Dey of the +Deserts--the Royal Ranger of the Woods and Forests--yea, the very Prince +of the Air and Thane of Thunder--"shorn of all his beams," lies +motionless as a dead Jackass by the wayside, whose hide was not thought +worth the trouble of flaying by his owners the gypsies! "To this +complexion has he come at last"--he who at dawn had borrowed the wings +of the wind to carry him across the cataracts! + +A sudden pang shoots across our heart. What right had we to commit this +murder? How, henceforth, shall we dare to hold up our head among the +lovers of liberty, after having thus stolen basely from behind on him, +the boldest, brightest, and most beautiful of all her sons! We, who for +so many years have been just able to hobble, and no more, by aid of the +Crutch--who feared to let the heather-bent touch our toe, so sensitive +in its gout--We, the old and impotent, all last winter bed-ridden, and +even now seated like a lameter on a shelty, strapped by a patent buckle +to a saddle provided with a pummel behind as well as before--such an +unwieldy and weary wretch as We--"fat, and scant of breath"--and with +our hand almost perpetually pressed against our left side, when a +coughing-fit of asthma brings back the stitch, seldom an absentee--to +assassinate THAT RED-DEER, whose flight on earth could accompany the +eagles in heaven; and not only to assassinate him, but, in a moral vein, +to liken his carcass to that of a Jackass! It will not bear further +reflection; so, Hamish, out with your whinger, and carve him a dish fit +for the gods--in a style worthy of Sir Tristrem, Gill Morice, Robin +Hood, or Lord Ranald. No; let him lie till nightfall, when we shall be +returning from Inveraw with strength sufficient to bear him to the Tent. + +But hark, Hamish, to that sullen croak from the cliff! The old raven of +the cove already scents death-- + + "Sagacious of his quarry from afar!" + +But where art thou, Hamish? Ay, yonder is Hamish, wriggling on his very +belly, like an adder, through the heather to windward of the croaker, +whose nostrils, and eyes, and bill, are now all hungrily fascinated, and +as it were already fastened into the very bowels of the beast. His days +are numbered. That sly serpent, by circuitous windings insinuating his +limber length through among all obstructions, has ascended unseen the +drooping shoulder of the cliff, and now cautiously erects his crest +within a hundred yards or more of the unsuspecting savage, still +uttering at intervals his sullen croak, croak, croak! Something +crumbles, and old Sooty, unfolding his huge wings, lifts himself up like +Satan, about to sail away for a while into another glen; but the rifle +rings among the rocks--the lead has broken his spine--and look! how the +demon, head-over-heels, goes tumbling down, down, down, many hundred +fathoms, dashed to pieces and impaled on the sharp-pointed granite! Ere +nightfall the bloody fragments will be devoured by his mate. Nothing now +will disturb the carcass of the deer. No corbies dare enter the cove +where the raven reigned; the hawk prefers grouse to venison, and so does +the eagle, who, however, like a good Catholic as he is--this is +Friday--has gone out to sea for a fish dinner, which he devours to the +music of the waves on some isle-rock. Therefore lie there, dethroned +king! till thou art decapitated; and ere the moon wanes, that haunch +will tower gloriously on our Tent-table at the Feast of Shells. + +What is your private opinion, O'Bronte, of the taste of Red-deer blood? +Has it not a wild twang on the tongue and palate, far preferable to +sheep's-head? You are absolutely undergoing transfiguration into a +deer-hound! With your fore-paws on the flank, your tail brandished like +a standard, and your crimson flews (thank you, Shepherd, for that word) +licked by a long lambent tongue red as crimson, while your eyes express +a fierce delight never felt before, and a stifled growl disturbs the +star on your breast--just as you stand now, O'Bronte, might Edwin +Landseer rejoice to paint thy picture, for which, immortal image of the +wilderness, the Duke of Bedford would not scruple to give a draft on his +banker for one thousand pounds! + +Shooting grouse after red-deer is, for a while at first, felt to be like +writing an anagram in a lady's album, after having given the +finishing-touch to a tragedy or an epic poem. 'Tis like taking to +catching shrimps in the sand with one's toes, on one's return from +Davis' Straits in a whaler that arrived at Peterhead with sixteen fish, +each calculated at ten tun of oil. Yet, 'tis strange how the human soul +can descend, pleasantly at every note, from the top to the bottom of +passion's and imagination's gamut. + +A Tarn--a Tarn! with but a small circle of unbroken water in the centre, +and all the rest of its shallowness bristling, in every bay, with reeds +and rushes, and surrounded, all about the mossy flat, with marshes and +quagmires! What a breeding-place--"procreant cradle" for water-fowl! Now +comes thy turn, O'Bronte--for famous is thy name, almost as thy sire's, +among the flappers. Crawl down to leeward, Hamish, that you may pepper +them--should they take to flight overhead to the loch. Surefoot, taste +that greensward, and you will find it sweet and succulent. Dogs, +heel--heel!--and now let us steal, on our Crutch, behind that knoll, and +open a sudden fire on the swimmers, who seem to think themselves out of +shot at the edge of that line of water-lilies; but some of them will +soon find themselves mistaken, whirling round on their backs, and vainly +endeavouring to dive after their friends that disappear beneath the +agitated surface shot-swept into spray. Long Gun! who oft to the +forefinger of Colonel Hawker has swept the night-harbour of Poole all +alive with widgeons, be true to the trust now reposed in thee by Kit +North! And though these be neither geese, nor swans, nor hoopers, yet +send thy leaden shower among them feeding in their play, till all the +air be afloat with specks, as if at the shaking of a feather-bed that +had burst the ticking, and the tarn covered with sprawling mawsies and +mallards, in death-throes among the ducklings! There it lies on its +rest--like a telescope. No eye has discovered the invention--keen as +those wild eyes are of the plouterers on the shallows. Lightning and +thunder! to which all the echoes roar. But we meanwhile are on our back; +for of all the recoils that ever shook a shoulder, that one was the +severest--but 'twill probably cure our rheumatism and----Well +done--nobly, gloriously done, O'Bronte! Heaven and earth, how otter-like +he swims! Ha, Hamish! you have cut off the retreat of that airy +voyager--you have given it him in his stern, Hamish--and are reloading +for the flappers. One at a time in your mouth, O'Bronte! Put about with +that tail for a rudder--and make for the shore. What a stately creature! +as he comes issuing from the shallows, and bearing the old mallard +breast-high, walks all dripping along the greensward, and then shakes +from his curled ebony the flashing spray-mist. He gives us one look as +we crown the knoll, and then in again with a spang and a plunge far into +the tarn, caring no more for the reeds than for so many windle-straes, +and, fast as a sea-serpent, is among the heart of the killed and +wounded. In unerring instinct he always seizes the dead--and now a +devil's dozen lie along the shore. Come hither, O'Bronte, and caress thy +old master. Ay--that showed a fine feeling--did that long shake that +bedrizzled the sunshine. Put thy paws over our shoulders, and round our +neck, true son of thy sire--oh! that he were but alive, to see and share +thy achievements: but indeed, two such dogs, living together in their +prime at one era, would have been too great glory for this sublunary +canine world. Therefore Sirius looked on thy sire with an evil eye, and +in jealousy-- + + "Tantęne animis cęlestibus irę!" + +growled upon some sinner to poison the Dog of all Dogs, who leapt up +almost to the ceiling of the room where he slept--our own bedroom--under +the agony of that accursed arsenic, gave one horrid howl, and expired. +Methinka we know his murderer--his eye falls when it meets ours on the +Street of Princes; and let him scowl there but seldom--for though 'tis +but suspicion, this fist, O'Bronte, doubles at the sight of the +miscreant--and some day, impelled by wrath and disgust, it will smash +his nose flat with the other features, till his face is a pancake. Yea! +as sure as Themis holds her balance in the skies, shall the poisoner be +punished out of all recognition by his parents, and be disowned by the +Irish Cockney father that begot him, and the Scotch Cockney mother that +bore him, as he carries home a tripe-like countenance enough to make his +paramour the scullion miscarry, as she opens the door to him on the +fifth flat of a common stair. But we are getting personal, O'Bronte, a +vice abhorrent from our nature. + +There goes our Crutch, Hamish, whirling aloft in the sky like a rainbow +flight, even like the ten-pound hammer from the fling of George Scougal +at the St Ronans games. Our gout is gone--so is our asthma--eke our +rheumatism--and, like an eagle, we have renewed our youth. There is hop, +step, and jump, for you, Hamish--we should not fear, young and agile as +you are, buck, to give you a yard. But now for the flappers. Pointers +all, stir your stumps and into the water. This is rich. Why, the reeds +are as full of flappers as of frogs. If they can fly, the fools don't +know it. Why, there is a whole musquito-fleet of yellow boys, not a +month old. What a prolific old lady must she have been, to have kept on +breeding till July. There she sits, cowering, just on the edge of the +reeds, uncertain whether to dive or fly. By the creak and cry of the +cradle of thy first-born, Hamish, spare the plumage on her yearning and +quaking breast. The little yellow images have all melted away, and are +now, in holy cunning of instinct, deep down beneath the waters, shifting +for themselves among the very mud at the bottom of the reeds. By-and-by +they will be floating with but the points of their bills above the +surface, invisible among the air-bells. The parent duck has also +disappeared; the drake you disposed of, Hamish, as the coward was +lifting up his lumbering body, with fat doup and long neck in the air, +to seek safer skies. We male creatures--drakes, ganders, and men +alike--what are we, when affection pleads, in comparison with females! +In our passions, we are brave, but these satiated, we turn upon our heel +and disappear from danger, like dastards. But doves, and ducks, and +women, are fearless in affection to the very death. Therefore have we +all our days, sleeping or waking, loved the sex, virgin and matron; nor +would we hurt a hair of their heads, grey or golden, for all else that +shines beneath the sun. + +Not the best practice this in the world, certainly, for pointers--and it +may teach them bad habits on the hill; but, in some situations, all dogs +and all men are alike, and cross them as you will, not a breed but shows +a taint of original sin, when under a temptation sufficiently strong to +bring it out. Ponto, Piro, and Basta, are now, according to their +abilities, all as bad as O'Bronte--and never, to be sure, was there such +a worrying in this wicked world. But now we shall cease our fire, and +leave the few flappers that are left alive to their own meditations. Our +conduct for the last hour must have seemed to them no less unaccountable +than alarming, and something to quack over during the rest of the +season. Well, we do not remember ever to have seen a prettier pile of +ducks and ducklings. Hamish, take census. What do you say--two score? +That beats cockfighting. Here's a hank of twine, Hamish, tie them +altogether by the legs, and hang them, in two divisions of equal +weights, over the crupper of Surefoot. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT THIRD--STILL LIFE. + + +We have been sufficiently slaughterous for a man of our fine +sensibilities and moderate desires, Hamish; and as, somehow or other, +the scent seems to be beginning not to lie well--yet the air cannot be +said to be close and sultry either--we shall let Brown Bess cool herself +in both barrels--relinquish, for an hour or so, our seat on Shelty, and, +by way of a change, pad the hoof up that smooth ascent, strangely left +stoneless--an avenue positively looking as if it were artificial, as it +stretches away, with its beautiful green undulations, among the blocks; +for though no view-hunter, we are, Hamish, what in fine language is +called a devout worshipper of Nature, an enthusiast in the sublime; and +if Nature do not show us something worth gazing at when we reach yonder +altitudes, she must be a grey deceiver, and we shall never again kneel +at her footstool, or sing a hymn in her praise. + +The truth is, we have a rending headache, for Bess has been for some +hours on the kick, and Surefoot on the jog, and our exertions in the +pulpit were severe--action, Hamish, action, action, being, as +Demosthenes said some two or three thousand years ago, essential to +oratory; and you observed how nimbly we kept changing legs, Hamish, how +strenuously brandishing arms, throughout our discourse--saving the +cunning pauses, thou simpleton, when, by way of relief to our auditors, +we were as gentle as sucking-doves, and folded up our wings as if about +to go to roost, whereas we were but meditating a bolder flight--about to +soar, Hamish, into the empyrean. Over and above all that, we could not +brook Tickler's insolence, who, about the sma' hours, challenged us, you +know, quaich for quaich; and though we gave him a fair back-fall, yet we +suffered in the tulzie, and there is at this moment a throbbing in our +temples that threatens a regular brain-fever. We burn for an air-bath on +the mountain-top. Moreover, we are seized with a sudden desire for +solitude--to be plain, we are getting sulky; so ascend, Surefoot, +Hamish, and be off with the pointers--O'Bronte goes with us--north-west, +making a circumbendibus round the _Tomhans_, where Mhairhe M'Intyre +lived seven years with the fairies; and in a couple of hours or so you +will find us under the Merlin Crag. + +We offer to walk any man of our age in Great Britain. But what _is_ our +age? Confound us if we know within a score or two. Yet we cannot get rid +of the impression that we are under ninety. However, as we seek no +advantage, and give no odds, we challenge the octogenarians of the +United Kingdom--fair toe and heel--a twelve-hour match--for love, fame, +and a legitimate exchequer bill for a thousand. Why, these calves of +ours would look queer, we confess, on the legs of a Leith porter; but +even in our prime they were none of your big vulgar calves, but they +handled like iron--now more like butter. There is still a spring in our +instep; and our knees, sometimes shaky, are to-day knit as Pan's and +neat as Apollo's. Poet we may not be, but Pedestrian we are; with +Wordsworth we could not walk along imaginative heights, but, if not +grievously out of our reckoning; on the turnpike road we could keep pace +with Captain Barclay for a short distance--say from Dundee to Aberdeen. + +Oh! Gemini! but we are in high spirits. Yes--delights there indeed are, +which none but pedestrians know. Much--all depends on the character of +the wanderer; he must have known what it is to commune with his own +thoughts and feelings, and be satisfied with them even as with the +converse of a chosen friend. Not that he must always, in the solitudes +that await him, be in a meditative mood, for ideas and emotions will of +themselves arise, and he will only have to enjoy the pleasures which his +own being spontaneously affords. It would indeed be a hopeless thing, if +we were always to be on the stretch for happiness. Intellect, +Imagination, and Feeling, all work of their own free-will, and not at +the order of any taskmaster. A rill soon becomes a stream--a stream a +river--a river a loch--and a loch a sea. So it is with the current +within the spirit. It carries us along, without either oar or sail, +increasing in depth, breadth, and swiftness, yet all the while the easy +work of our own wonderful minds. While we seem only to see or hear, we +are thinking and feeling far beyond the mere notices given by the +senses; and years afterwards we find that we have been laying up +treasures, in our most heedless moments, of imagery, and connecting +together trains of thought that arise in startling beauty, almost +without cause or any traceable origin. The Pedestrian, too, must not +only love his own society, but the society of any other human beings, if +blameless and not impure, among whom his lot may for a short season be +cast. He must rejoice in all the forms and shows of life, however simple +they may be, however humble, however low; and be able to find food for +his thoughts beside the ingle of the loneliest hut, where the inmates +sit with few words, and will rather be spoken to than speak to the +stranger. In such places he will be delighted--perhaps surprised--to +find in uncorrupted strength all the primary elements of human +character. He will find that his knowledge may be wider than theirs, and +better ordered, but that it rests on the same foundation, and +comprehends the same matter. There will be no want of sympathies between +him and them; and what he knows best, and loves most, will seldom fail +to be that also which they listen to with greatest interest, and +respecting which there is the closest communion between the minds of +stranger and host. He may know the courses of the stars according to the +revelation of science--they may have studied them only as simple +shepherds, "whose hearts were gladdened" walking on the mountain-top. +But they know--as he does--who sowed the stars in heaven, and that their +silent courses are all adjusted by the hand of the Most High. + +Oh! blessed, thrice blessed years of youth! would we choose to live over +again all your forgotten and unforgotten nights and days! Blessed, +thrice blessed we call you, although, as we then felt, often darkened +almost into insanity by self-sown sorrows springing out of our restless +soul. No, we would not again face such troubles, not even for the +glorious apparitions that familiarly haunted us in glens and forests, on +mountains and on the great sea. But all, or nearly all, that did once so +grievously disturb, we can lay in the depths of the past, so that +scarcely a ghastly voice is heard, a ghastly face beheld; while all +that so charmed of yore, or nearly all, although no longer the daily +companions of our life, still survive to be recalled at solemn hours, +and with a "beauty still more beauteous" to reinvest the earth, which +neither sin nor sorrow can rob of its enchantments. We can still travel +with the solitary mountain-stream from its source to the sea, and see +new visions at every vista of its winding waters. The waterfall flows +not with its own monotonous voice of a day or an hour, but like a choral +anthem pealing with the hymns of many years. In the heart of the blind +mist on the mountain-ranges we can now sit alone, surrounded by a world +of images, over which time holds no power but to consecrate or +solemnise. Solitude we can deepen by a single volition, and by a single +volition let in upon it the stir and noise of the world and life. Why, +therefore, should we complain, or why lament the inevitable loss or +change that time brings with it to all that breathe? Beneath the shadow +of the tree we can yet repose, and tranquillise our spirit by its +rustle, or by the "green light" uncheckered by one stirring leaf. From +sunrise to sunset, we can lie below the old mossy tower, till the +darkness that shuts out the day, hides not the visions that glide round +the ruined battlements. Cheerful as in a city can we traverse the +houseless moor; and although not a ship be on the sea, we can set sail +on the wings of imagination, and when wearied, sink down on savage or +serene isle, and let drop our anchor below the moon and stars. + +And 'tis well we are so spiritual; for the senses are of no use here, +and we must draw for amusement on our internal sources. A day-like night +we have often seen about midsummer, serenest of all among the Hebrides; +but a night-like day, such as this, ne'er before fell on us, and we +might as well be in the Heart o' Mid-Lothian. 'Tis a dungeon, and a dark +one--and we know not for what crime we have been condemned to solitary +confinement. Were it mere mist we should not mind; but the gloom is +palpable, and makes resistance to the hand. We did not think clouds +capable of such condensation--the blackness may be felt like velvet on a +hearse. Would that something would rustle--but no--all is breathlessly +still, and not a wind dares whistle. If there be anything visible or +audible hereabout, then are we stone-blind and stone-deaf. We have a +vision! + +See! a great City in a mist! All is not shrouded--at intervals something +huge is beheld in the sky--what we know not, tower, temple, spire, dome, +or a pile of nameless structures--one after the other fading away, or +sinking and settling down into the gloom that grows deeper and deeper +like a night. The stream of life seems almost hushed in the blind blank, +yet you hear ever and anon, now here, now there, the slow sound of feet +moving to their own dull echoes, and lo! the Sun + + "Looks through the horizontal misty air, + Shorn of his beams," + +like some great ghost. Ay, he _looks_! does he not? straight on _your_ +face, as if you two were the only beings there--and were held _looking_ +at each other in some strange communion. Surely you must sometimes have +felt that emotion, when the Luminary seemed no longer luminous, but a +dull-red brazen orb, sick unto the death--obscure the Shedder of Light +and the Giver of Life lifeless! + +The Sea has sent a tide-borne wind to the City, and you almost start in +wonder to behold all the heavens clear of clouds (how beautiful was the +clearing!) and bending in a mighty blue bow, that brightly overarches +all the brightened habitations of men! The spires shoot up into the +sky--the domes tranquilly rest there--all the roofs glitter as with +diamonds, all the white walls are lustrous, save where, here and there, +some loftier range of buildings hangs its steadfast shadow o'er square +or street, magnifying the city, by means of separate multitudes of +structures, each town-like in itself, and the whole gathered together by +the outward eye, and the inward imagination, worthy indeed of the name +of Metropolis. + +Let us sit down on this bench below the shadow of the Parthenon. The air +is now so rarified, that you can see not indistinctly the figure of a +man on Arthur's Seat. The Calton, though a city hill, is as green as the +Carter towering over the Border-forest. Not many years ago, no stone +edifice was on his unviolated verdure--he was a true rural Mount, where +the lassies bleached their claes, in a pure atmosphere, aloof from the +city smoke almost as the sides and summit of Arthur's Seat. Flocks of +sheep might have grazed here, had there been enclosures, and many milch +cows. But in their absence a pastoral character was given to the Hill by +its green silence, here and there broken by the songs and laughter of +those linen-bleaching lassies, and by the arm-in-arm strolling of lovers +in the morning light or the evening shade. Here married people used to +walk with their children, thinking and feeling themselves to be in the +country; and here elderly gentlemen, like ourselves, with gold-headed +canes or simple crutches, mused and meditated on the ongoings of the +noisy lower world. Such a Hill, so close to a great City, yet +undisturbed by it, and imbued at all times with a feeling of sweeter +peace, because of the immediate neighbourhood of the din and stir of +which its green recess high up in the blue air never partook, seems now, +in the mingled dream of imagination and memory, to have been a +super-urban Paradise! But a city cannot, ought not to be, controlled in +its growth; the natural beauty of this hill has had its day; now it is +broken all round with wide walks, along which you might drive chariots +abreast; broad flights of stone-stairs lead up along the once elastic +brae-turf; and its bosom is laden with towers and temples, monuments and +mausoleums. Along one side, where hanging gardens might have been, +magnificent as those of the old Babylon, stretches the macadamised Royal +Road to London, flanked by one receptacle for the quiet dead, and by +another for the unquiet living--a churchyard and a prison dying away in +a bridewell. But, making amends for such hideous deformities, with front +nobly looking to the cliffs, over a dell of dwellings seen dimly through +the smoke-mist, stands, sacred to the Muses, an Edifice that might have +pleased the eye of Pericles! Alas, immediately below one that would have +turned the brain of Palladio! Modern Athens indeed! Few are the Grecians +among thy architects; those who are not Goths are Picts--and the King +himself of the Painted People designed Nelson's Monument. + +But who can be querulous on such a day? Weigh all its defects, designed +and undesigned, and is not Edinburgh yet a noble city? Arthur's Seat! +how like a lion! The magnificent range of Salisbury Crags, on which a +battery might be built to blow the whole inhabitation to atoms! Our +friend here, the Calton, with his mural crown! Our Castle on his Cliff! +gloriously hung round with national histories along all his battlements! +Do they not embosom him in a style of grandeur worthy, if such it be, of +a "City of Palaces?" Call all things by their right names, in heaven +and on earth. Palaces they are not--nor are they built of marble; but +they are stately houses, framed of stone from Craig-Leith quarry, almost +as pale as the Parian; and when the sun looks fitfully through the +storm, or as now, serenely through the calm, richer than Parian in the +tempestuous or the peaceful light. Never beheld we the city wearing such +a majestic metropolitan aspect. + + "Ay, proudly fling thy white arms to the sea, + Queen of the unconquer'd North!" + +How near the Firth! Gloriously does it supply the want of a river. It is +a river, though seeming, and sweeping into, the sea; but a river that +man may never bridge; and though still now as the sky, we wish you saw +it in its magnificent madness, when brought on the roarings of the +stormful tide + + "Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began." + +Coast-cities alone are Queens. All inland are but Tributaries. Earth's +empiry belongs to the Power that sees its shadow in the sea. Two +separate Cities, not twins--but one of ancient and one of modern +birth--how harmoniously, in spite of form and features characteristically +different, do they coalesce into one Capital! This miracle, methinks, is +wrought by the Spirit of Nature on the World of Art. Her great features +subdue almost into similarity a Whole constructed of such various +elements, for it is all felt to be kindred with those guardian cliffs. +Those eternal heights hold the Double City together in an amity that +breathes over both the same national look--the impression of the same +national soul. In the olden time, the city gathered herself almost under +the very wing of the Castle; for in her heroic heart she ever heard, +unalarmed but watchful, the alarums of war, and that cliff, under +heaven, was on earth the rock of her salvation. But now the foundation +of that rock, whence yet the tranquil burgher hears the morning and the +evening bugle, is beautified by gardens that love its pensive shadow, +for it tames the light to flowers by rude feet untrodden, and yielding +garlands for the brows of perpetual peace. Thence elegance and grace +arose; and while antiquity breathes over that wilderness of antique +structures picturesquely huddled along the blue line of sky--as Wilkie +once finely said, like the spine of some enormous animal; yet all along +this side of that unrivered and mound-divided dell, now shines a new +world of radiant dwellings, declaring by their regular but not +monotonous magnificence, that the same people, whose "perfervid genius" +preserved them by war unhumbled among the nations in days of darkness, +have now drawn a strength as invincible from the beautiful arts which +have been cultivated by peace in the days of light. + +And is the spirit of the inhabitation there worthy of the place +inhabited? We are a Scotsman. And the great English Moralist has asked, +where may a Scotsman be found who loves not the honour or the glory of +his country better than truth? We are that Scotsman--though for our +country would we die. Yet dearer too than life is to us the honour--if +not the glory of our country; and had we a thousand lives, proudly would +we lay them all down in the dust rather than give--or see given--one +single stain + + "Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear," + +on which as yet no stain appears save those glorious weather-stains, +that have fallen on its folds from the clouds of war and the storms of +battle. Sufficient praise to the spirit of our land, that she knows how +to love, admire, and rival--not in vain--the spirit of high-hearted and +heroic England. Long as we and that other noble Isle + + "Set as an emerald in the casing sea," + +in triple union breathe as one, + + "Then come against us the whole world in arms, + And we will meet them!" + +What is a people without pride? But let them know that its root rests on +noble pillars; and in the whole range of strength and stateliness, what +pillars are there stronger and statelier than those glorious two--Genius +and Liberty? Here valour has fought--here philosophy has meditated--here +poetry has sung. Are not our living yet as brave as our dead? All wisdom +has not perished with the sages to whom we have built or are building +monumental tombs. The muses yet love to breathe the pure mountain-air of +Caledon. And have we not amongst us one myriad-minded man, whose name, +without offence to that high-priest of nature, or his devoutest +worshippers, may flow from our lips even when they utter that of +SHAKESPEARE? + +The Queen of the North has evaporated--and we again have a glimpse of +the Highlands. But where's the Sun? We know not in what airt to look for +him, for who knows but it may now be afternoon? It is almost dark enough +for evening--and if it be not far on in the day, then we shall have +thunder. What saith our repeater? One o'clock. Usually the brightest +hour of all the twelve--but anything but bright at this moment. Can +there be an eclipse going on--an earthquake at his toilette--or merely a +brewing of storm? Let us consult our almanac. No eclipse set down for +to-day--the old earthquake dwells in the neighbourhood of Comrie, and +has never been known to journey thus far north--besides, he has for some +years been bed-ridden; argal, there is about to be a storm. What a fool +of a land-tortoise were we to crawl up to the top of a mountain, when we +might have taken our choice of half-a-dozen glens with cottages in them +every other mile, and a village at the end of each with a comfortable +Change-house! And up which of its sides, pray, was it that we crawled? +Not this one--for it is as steep as a church--and we never in our life +peeped over the brink of an uglier abyss. Ay, Mister Merlin, 'tis wise +of you to be flying home into your crevice--put your head below your +wing, and do cease that cry.--Croak! croak! croak! Where is the sooty +sinner? We hear he is on the wing--but he either sees or smells us, +probably both, and the horrid gurgle in his throat is choked by some +cloud. Surely that was the sughing of wings! A Bird! alighting within +fifty yards of us--and, from his mode of folding his wings--an Eagle! +This is too much--within fifty yards of an Eagle on his own +mountain-top. Is he blind? Age darkens even an Eagle's eyes--but he is +not old, for his plumage is perfect--and we see the glare of his +far-keekers as he turns his head over his shoulder and regards his eyrie +on the cliff. We would not shoot him for a thousand a-year for life. Not +old--how do we know that? Because he is a creature who is young at a +hundred--so says Audubon--Swainson--our brother James--and all +shepherds. Little suspects he who is lying so near him with his Crutch. +Our snuffy suit is of a colour with the storm-stained granite--and if he +walk this way he will get a buffet. And he _is_ walking this way--his +head up, and his tail down,--not hopping like a filthy raven--but one +foot before the other--like a man--like a King. We do not altogether +like it--it is rather alarming--he may not be an Eagle after all--but +something worse--"Hurra! ye Sky-scraper! Christopher is upon you! take +that, and that, and that"--all one tumbling scream, there he goes, +Crutch and all, over the edge of the Cliff. Dashed to death--but +impossible for us to get the body. Whew! dashed to death indeed! There +he wheels, all on fire, round the thunder gloom. Is it electric matter +in the atmosphere--or fear and wrath that illumine his wings? + +We wish we were safe down. There is no wind here yet--none to speak of; +but there is wind enough, to all appearance, in the region towards the +west. The main body of the clouds is falling back on the reserve--and +observing that movement the right wing deploys; as for the left, it is +broken, and its retreat will soon be a flight. Fear is contagious--the +whole army has fallen into irremediable disorder--has abandoned its +commanding position--and in an hour will be self-driven into the sea. We +call that a Panic. + +Glory be to the corps that covers the retreat. We see now the cause of +that retrograde movement. In the north-west, "far off its coming shone," +and "in numbers without number numberless," lo! the adverse Host! Thrown +out in front, the beautiful rifle brigade comes fleetly on, extending in +open order along the vast plain between the aerial Pine-mountains to yon +Fire-cliffs. The enemy marches in masses--the space between the +divisions now widening and now narrowing--and as sure as we are alive we +hear the sound of trumpets. The routed army has rallied and +reappears--and, hark, on the extreme left a cannonade. Never before had +the Unholy Alliance a finer park of artillery--and now its fire opens +from the great battery in the centre, and the hurly-burly is general far +and wide over the whole field of battle. + +But these lead drops dancing on our bonnet tell us to take up our crutch +and be off--for there it is sticking--by-and-by the waters will be in +flood, and we may have to pass a night on the mountain. Down we go. + +We do not call this the same side of the mountain we crawled up? There, +all was purple except what was green--and we were happy to be a +heather-legged body, occasionally skipping like a grasshopper on turf. +Here, all rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ptarmigans. We hate +shingle from the bottom of our ---- oh dear! oh dear! but _this_ is +painful--sliddering on shingle away down what is anything but an +inclined plane--feet foremost--accompanied with rattling debris--at +railroad speed--every twenty yards or so dislodging a stone as big as +oneself, who instantly joins the procession, and there they go hopping +and jumping along with us, some before, some at each side, and, we +shudder to think of it, some behind--well somersetted over our head, +thou Grey Wackč--but mercy on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this +lasts, in another minute we are all at the bottom of that pond of pitch. +Take care of yourself, O'Bronte! + +Here we are--sitting! How we were brought to assume this rather uneasy +posture we do not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to the fact. +Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape appears to have been little less than +miraculous, and must have been mainly owing, under Providence, to the +Crutch. Who's laughing? 'Tis you, you old Witch, in hood and cloak, +crouching on the cliff as if you were warming your hands at the fire. +Hold your tongue--and you may sit there to all eternity if you +choose--you cloud-ridden hag! No--there will be a blow-up some day--as +there evidently has been here before now; but no more Geology--from the +tarn, who is a 'tarnation deep 'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our +guide down to the Low Country. + +Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green +serenity--not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable +to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell--"the air is balm." No +sultriness--how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had +wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury--Cherub we never were +nor Cauliflower--by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we +have made one day a whole week--with, at the end, a Sabbath. For all +over the really moun_taineous_ region of the Highlands, every glen has +its own indescribable kind of day--all vaguely comprehended under the +One Day that may happen to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists, +meeting in the evening after a long absence--having, perhaps, parted +that morning--on comparing notes lose their temper, and have been even +known to proceed to extremities in defence of facts well established of +a most contradictory and irreconcilable nature. + +Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In the glen beyond that range he +would have used the minnow--and in the huge hollow behind our friends to +the South-east, he might just as well try the bare hook--though it is +not universally true that trouts don't rise when there is thunder. Let +us see how he throws. What a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, you +there; friend, what sport? What sport we say? No answer; are you deaf? +Dumb? He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try what a whack on +the back may elicit. Down he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of +most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a goat, is off like a shot. +Alas! we have frightened the wretch out of his few poor wits, and he may +kill himself among the rocks. He is indeed an idiot--an innocent. We +remember seeing him near this very spot forty years ago--and he was not +young then--they often live to extreme old age. No wonder he was +terrified--for we are duly sensible of the _outre tout ensemble_ we must +have suddenly exhibited in the glimmer that visits those weak red +eyes--he is an albino. That whack was rash, to say the least of it--our +Crutch was too much for him; but we hear him whining--and moaning--and, +good God! there he is on his knees with hands clasped in +supplication--"Dinna kill me--dinna kill me--'am silly--'am silly--and +folk say 'am auld--auld--auld." The harmless creature is convinced we +are not going to kill him--takes from our hand what he calls his +fishing-rod and tackle--and laughs like an owl. "Ony meat--ony meat--ony +meat?" "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this wallet, and you and we +shall have our dinner." "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a can say +the Lord's Prayer." "What's your name, my man?" "Daft Dooggy the +Haveril." "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this--a drop of water on +the brain will do it--so wise physicians say, and we believe it. For all +that, the brain is not the soul. He takes the food with a kind of +howl--and carries it away to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by +mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a +saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!" + +This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet so +congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is +familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days--as if that cottage +were our dwelling-place--and we had retired hither to await the close. +Were we never here before--in the olden and golden time? Those dips in +the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a +morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost +as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which +we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness +often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among +the past times in the dormitory--call it not the burial-place--overshadowed +by sweet or solemn imagery--in the inland regions; nor can we question +the recollections as they rise--being ghosts, they are silent--their +coming and their going alike a mystery--but sometimes--as now--they are +happy hauntings--and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning +youth. + +'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands--yet we know not that +a painter would see in it the subject of a picture--for the sprinklings +of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no +reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the +remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent +with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green +wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools +there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but +each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that +above its homehills there are mountains--and these are cliffs on which +the eagle might not disdain to build--but the range wheels away in its +grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits +swimming in the distant clouds. + +God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what +Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most +lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a +look at thy happiness--for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and +think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee +and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may +lay our hands on it and bless it--and promise, as thou art growing up +here, sometimes to think of the voice that spake to thee by the +Birk-tree well. Love, fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches--and +whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven. + +Do not be afraid of him, sweet one! O'Bronte would submit to be flayed +alive rather than bite a child: see, he offers you a paw--take it +without trembling; nay, he will let thee ride on his back, my pretty +dear--won't thou, O'Bronte?--and scamper with thee up and down the +knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing to bear the Fairy Queen. +Thou tellest us thy father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are +dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as plaintive. Smile--laugh-- +sing--as thou wert doing a minute ago--as thou hast done for many a +morning--and shalt do for many a morning more on thy way to the well--in +the woods--on the braes--in the house,--often all by thyself when the +old people are out of doors not far off--or when sometimes they have for +a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words--and no +evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne,--and +nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth will ever be able to +hurt a hair on thy head. + +My stars! what a lovely little animal! A tame fawn, by all that is +wild--kneeling down--to drink--no--no--at his lady's feet. The collie +catched it--thou sayest--on the edge of the Auld wood--and by the time +its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon +learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of +this--and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human +dwellings. What! it dances like a kid--does it--and sometimes you put a +garland of wildflowers round its neck--and pursue it like a huntress, as +it pretends to be making its escape into the forest? + +Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts +with a spring--so--and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign, +and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush--that was a graceful curtsy. Keep +the crooked sixpence for good-luck, and you never will want. With the +yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what +else you like; and now--you two, lead the way--try a race to the +door--and old Christopher North will carry the pitcher--balancing it on +his head--thus--ha! O'Bronte galloping along as umpire. The Fawn has it, +and by a neck has beat Camilla. + +We shall lunch ere we go--and lunch well too--for this is a poor man's, +not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer--"give us this +day our daily bread." Sweeter--richer bannocks of barley-meal never met +the mouth of mortal man--nor more delicious butter. "We salt it, sir, +for a friend in Glasgow--but now and then we tak a bite of the fresh--do +oblige us a', sir, by eatin, and you'll maybe find the mutton-ham no +that bad, though I've kent it fatter--and, as you hae a lang walk afore +you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggeest a glass o' +speerit in your milk. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his +life--but we keep it for a cordial--and that bottle--to be sure it's a +gey big ane--and would thole replenishing--has lasted us sin' +Whitsuntide." + +So presseth us to take care of number one the gudewife, while the +gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith +nothing, and the bonny wee bit lassie sits on her stool at the wunnock +wi' her coggie ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or +nothing, out of bashfulness in presence of Christopher North, who she +believes is a good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great man. Our +third bannock has had the gooseberry jam laid on it thick by "the +gudewife's ain hand,"--and we suspect at that last wide bite we have +smeared the corners of our mouth--but it will only be making matters +worse to attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! thou hast a +cunning look--purring on our knees--and though those glass een o' thine +are blinking at the cream on the saucer--with which thou jalousest we +intend to let thee wet thy whiskers,--we fear thou mak'st no bones of +the poor birdies in the brake, and that many an unlucky leveret has lost +its wits at the spring of such a tiger. Cats are queer creatures, and +have an instinctive liking to Warlocks. + +And these two old people have survived all their children--sons and +daughters! They have told us the story of their life--and as calmly as +if they had been telling of the trials of some other pair. Perhaps, in +our sympathy, though we say but little, they feel a strength that is not +always theirs--perhaps it is a relief from silent sorrow to speak to one +who is a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, a brother in +affliction--but prayer like thanksgiving assures us that there is in +this hut a Christian composure, far beyond the need of our pity, and +sent from a region above the stars. + +There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidiness, it is pleasant to know, has +for a good many years past been establishing itself in Scotland among +the minor domestic virtues. Once established it will never decay; for it +must be felt to brighten, more than could be imagined by our fathers, +the whole aspect of life. No need for any other household fairy to sweep +this floor. An orderly creature we have seen she is, from all her +movements out and in doors--though the guest of but an hour. They have +told us that they had known what are called better days--and were once +in a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in +the country; and their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of its +serene and simple spirit--at once Lowland and Highland--to us a pleasant +union, not without a certain charm of grace. + +What loose leaves are those lying on the Bible? A few odd numbers of the +SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. We shall take care, our friends, that all the +Numbers, bound in three large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, be +lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite to you, our worthy friends, a +small sacred Poem, which we have by heart. Christian, keep your eye on +the page, and if we go wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you say +many psalms and hymns? But we need not ask--for + + "Piety is sweet to infant minds;" + +what they love they remember--for how easy--how happy--to get dear +things by heart! Happiest of all--the things held holy on earth as in +heaven--because appertaining here to Eternal Life. + + TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. + + BY THE REV. DUNCAN GRANT, A.M., MINISTER OF FORRES. + + "Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains, + May our HERALD'S feet appear; + Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains, + May his voice be to our ear. + Let the tenants of our rocks, + Shepherds watching o'er their flocks, + Village swain and peasant boy, + Thee salute with songs of joy! + + CHRISTIAN HERALD! spread the story + Of Redemption's wondrous plan; + 'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory, + 'Tis His highest gift to man; + Angels on their harps of gold, + Love its glories to unfold; + Heralds who its influence wield, + Make the waste a fruitful field. + + To the fount of mercy soaring, + On the wings of faith and love; + And the depths of grace exploring, + By the light shed from above; + Show us whence life's waters flow, + And where trees of blessing grow, + Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom, + Breathing Eden's rich perfume. + + Love to God and man expressing, + In thy course of mercy speed; + Lead to springs of joy and blessing, + And with heavenly manna feed + Scotland's children high and low, + Till the Lord they truly know: + As to us our fathers told, + He was known by them of old. + + To the young, in season vernal, + Jesus in His grace disclose; + As the tree of life eternal, + 'Neath whose shade they may repose, + Shielded from the noontide ray, + And from ev'ning's tribes of prey; + And refresh'd with fruits of love, + And with music from above. + + CHRISTIAN HERALD! may the blessing + Of the Highest thee attend, + That, this chiefest boon possessing, + Thou may'st prove thy country's friend + Tend to make our land assume + Something of its former bloom, + When the dews of heaven were seen + Sparkling on its pastures green, + + When the voice of warm devotion + To the throne of God arose-- + Mighty as the sound of ocean, + Calm as nature in repose; + Sweeter, than when Araby + Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree, + Rising 'bove the shining sphere, + To Jehovah's list'ning ear." + +It is time we were going--but we wish to hear how thy voice sounds, +Christian, when it reads. So read these same verses, first "into +yourself," and then to us. They speak of mercies above your +comprehension, and ours, and all men's; for they speak of the infinite +goodness and mercy of God--but though thou hast committed in thy short +life no sins, or but small, towards thy fellow-creatures--how couldst +thou? yet thou knowest we are all sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest +on whose merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Thank you, +Christian. Three minutes from two by your house-clock--she gives a clear +warning--and three minutes from two by our watch--rather curious this +coincidence to such a nicety--we must take up our Crutch and go. Thank +thee, bonny wee Christian--in wi' the bannocks intil our pouch--but we +fear you must take us for a sad glutton. + + "Zickety, dickety, dock, + The mouse ran up the nock; + The nock struck one, + Down the mouse ran, + Zickety, dickety, dock." + +Come closer, Christian--and let us put it to thine ear. What a pretty +face of wonder at the chime! Good people, you have work to do in the +hay-field--let us part--God bless you--Good-by--farewell! + +Half an hour since we parted--we cannot help being a little sad--and +fear we were not so kind to the old people--not so considerate as we +ought to have been--and perhaps, though pleased with us just now, they +may say to one another before evening that we were too merry for our +years. Nonsense. We were all merry together--daft Uncle among the +lave--for the creature came stealing in and sat down on his own stool in +the corner; and what's the use of wearing a long face at all times like +a Methodist minister? A Methodist minister! Why, John Wesley was facete, +and Whitfield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty--though he, we believe, +was not a Methody; yet were their hearts fountains of tears--and ours is +not a rock--if it be, 'tis the rock of Horeb. + +Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the Merlin Crag. What sport? Why, five +brace is not so much amiss--and they are thumpers. Fifteen brace in all. +Ducks and flappers. Seven leash. We are getting on. + + "But what are these, + So wither'd and so wild in their attire; + That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth, + And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught + That man may question? You seem to understand me, + By each at once her choppy finger laying + Upon her skinny lips:--you should be women, + And yet your beards forbid me to interpret + That you are so!" + +Shakespeare is not familiar, we find, among the natives of Loch-Etive +side--else these figures would reply, + + "All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glammis!" + +But not satisfied with laying their choppy fingers on their skinny lips, +they now put them to their plooky noses, having first each dipped fore +and thumb in his mull, and gibber Gaelic, to us unintelligible as the +quacking of ducks, when a Christian auditor has been prevented from +catching its meaning by the gobbling of turkeys. + +Witches at the least, and about to prophesy to us some pleasant events, +that are to terminate disastrously in after years. Is there no nook of +earth perfectly solitary--but must natural or supernatural footsteps +haunt the remotest and most central places? But now we shall have our +fortunes told in choice Erse, for sure these are the Children of the +Mist, and perhaps they will favour us with a running commentary on +Ossian. Stout, grim, heather-legged bodies they are, one and all, and +luckily we are provided with snuff and tobacco sufficient for the whole +crew. Were they even ghosts they will not refuse a sneeshin, and a +Highland spirit will look picturesque puffing a cigar!--Hark! we know +them and their vocation. These are the Genii of the Mountain-dew; and +their hidden enginery, depend on't, is not far off, but buried in the +bowels of some brae. See!--a faint mist dissipating itself over the +heather! There--at work, shaming the idle waste, and in use and wont to +break even the Sabbath-day, is a STILL! + +Do we look like Excisemen? The Crutch has indeed a suspicious family +resemblance to a gauging-rod; and literary characters, like us, may well +be mistaken for the Supervisor himself. But the smuggler's eye knows his +enemy at a glance, as the fox knows a hound; and the whispering group +discern at once that we are of a nobler breed. That one fear dispelled, +Highland hospitality bids us welcome, even into the mouth of the +malt-kiln, and, with a smack on our loof, the Chief volunteers to +initiate us into the grand mysteries of the Worm. + +The turf-door is flung outward on its lithe hinges, and already what a +gracious smell! In we go, ushered by unbonneted Celts, gentlemen in +manners wherever the kilt is worn; for the tartan is the symbol of +courtesy, and Mac a good password all the world over between man and +man. Lowland eyes are apt to water in the peat-reek, but ere long we +shall have another "drappie in our ee," and drink to the Clans in the +"uuchristened cretur." What a sad neglect in our education, among all +the acquired lingoes extant, to have overlooked the Gaelic! Yet nobody +who has ever heard P. R. preach an Erse Sermon, need despair of +discoursing in that tongue after an hour's practice; so let us forget, +if possible, every word of English, and the language now needed will +rise up in its place. + +And these figures in men's coats and women's petticoats are females? We +are willing to believe it in spite of their beards. One of them +absolutely suckling a child! Thank you, my dear sir, but we cannot +swallow the contents of that quaich. Yet, let us try.--A little too +warm, and rather harsh; but meat and drink to a man of age. That seems +to be goat-milk cheese, and the scones are barley; and they and the +speerit will wash one another down in an amicable plea, nor quarrel at +close quarters. Honey too--heather-honey of this blessed year's produce. +Hecate's forefinger mixes it in a quaich with mountain-dew--and that is +Atholl-brose? + +There cannot be the least doubt in the world that the Hamiltonian +system of teaching languages is one of the best ever invented. It will +enable any pupil of common-run powers of attention to read any part of +the New Testament in Greek in some twenty lessons of an hour each. But +what is that to the principle of the Worm? Half a blessed hour has not +elapsed since we entered into the door of this hill-house, and we offer +twenty to one that we read Ossian _ad aperturam libri_, in the original +Gaelic. We feel as if we could translate the works of Jeremy Bentham +into that tongue--ay, even Francis Maximus Macnab's Theory of the +Universe. We guarantee ourselves to do both, this identical night before +we go to sleep, and if the printers are busy during the intermediate +hours, to correct the press in the morning. Why, there are not above +five thousand roots--but we are getting a little gizzy--into a state of +civilation in the wilderness--and, gentlemen, let us drink--in solemn +silence--the "Memory of Fingal." + +O St Cecilia! we did not lay our account with a bagpipe! What is the +competition of pipers in the Edinburgh Theatre, small as it is, to this +damnable drone in an earth-cell, eight feet by six! Yet while the drums +of our ears are continuing to split like old parchment title-deeds to +lands nowhere existing, and all our animal economy, from finger to toe, +is one agonising dirl, Ęolus himself sits as proud as Lucifer in +Pandemonium; and as the old soldiers keep tending the Worm in the reek +as if all were silence, the male-looking females, and especially the +he-she with the imp at her breast, nod, and smirk, and smile, and snap +their fingers, in a challenge to a straspey--and, by all that is +horrible, a red hairy arm is round our neck, and we are half choked with +the fumes of whisky-kisses. An hour ago we were dreaming of Malvina! and +here she is with a vengeance, while we in the character of Oscar are +embraced till almost all the Lowland breath in our body expires. + +And this is STILL-LIFE. + +Extraordinary it is, that, go where we will, we are in a wonderfully +short time discovered to be Christopher North. A few years ago, the +instant we found our feet in a mine in Cornwall, after a descent of +about one-third the bored earth's diameter, we were saluted by name by a +grim Monops who had not seen the upper regions for years, preferring the +interior of the planet; and forthwith "Christopher North," "Christopher +North," reverberated along the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking +in all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a glimpse of the famous +Editor. On another occasion, we remember, when coasting the south of +Ireland in our schooner, falling in with a boat like a cockle-shell, +well out of the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked Paddies that +were ensnaring the finny race, two smoked us at the helm, and bawled up, +"Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a balloon, and by any accident +descend in the interior of Africa, we have not the slightest doubt that +Sultan Belloo would know us in a jiffy, having heard our person so +frequently described by Major Denham and Captain Clapperton. So we are +known, it seems, in the Still--by the men of the Worm? Yes--the +principal proprietor in the concern is a schoolmaster over about +Loch-Earn-Head--a man of no mean literary abilities, and an occasional +contributor to the Magazine. He visits The Shop in breeches--but now +mounts the kilt--and astonishes us by the versatility of his talents. In +one of the most active working bees we recognise a cadie, formerly in +Auld Reekie ycleped "The Despatch," now retired to the Braes of +Balquhidder, and breathing strongly the spirit of his youth. With that +heather-houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of Day, we were, for +the quarter of a century that we held a large grazing farm, in the +annual practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; and--wonderful, +indeed, to think how old friends meet--we were present at the amputation +of the right leg of that timber-toed hero with the bushy whiskers--in +the Hospital of Rosetta--having accompanied Sir David Baird's splendid +Indian army into Egypt. + +Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing +the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the +true influence of THE STILL? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of +idleness is that which consists in being up night and day--traversing +moors and mountains in all weathers--constantly contriving the most +skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some +disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert--when all is +lost except honour--hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!) +wickedly wasted among the heather-roots, and the whole beautiful +Apparatus lying battered and spiritless in the sun beneath the accursed +blows of the Pagans--returns, after a few weeks set apart to natural +grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to the self-same work, even +within view of the former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the first +amalgamated hotness that deserves the name of speerit, devotes the whole +Board of Excise to the Infernal Gods? + +The argument of idleness has not a leg to stand on, and falls at once to +the ground.--But the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that there is a +certain degree of dishonesty in cheating the Excise; and we shall allow +yourself to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the sma' still as +any moral writer on Honesty with whom we have the pleasure occasionally +to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows either grow or purchase +their own malt. They do not steal it; and many is the silent benediction +that we have breathed over a bit patch of barley, far up on its stony +soil among the hills, bethinking us that it would yield up its precious +spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge for it any very extravagant +price--for what is twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a-gallon for such +drink divine as is now steaming before us in that celestial caldron? + +Having thus got rid of the charge of idleness and dishonesty, nothing +more needs to be said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and we come +now, in the second place, to consider it in a Social Light. The biggest +bigot will not dare to deny, that without whisky the Highlands of +Scotland would be uninhabitable. And if all the population were gone, or +extinct, where then would be your social life? Smugglers are seldom +drunkards; neither are they men of boisterous manners or savage +dispositions. In general, they are grave, sedate, peaceable characters, +not unlike elders of the Kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on rare +occasions when human patience is exhausted, to be merciful. Four +pleasanter men do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, than the +friends with whom we are now on the hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet--a +profound and beautiful reflection--and no doubt originally made by some +peripatetic philosopher at a Still. The very soul of the strong drink +evaporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. An evil day would it +indeed be for Scotland, that should witness the extinguishment of all +her free and unlicensed mountain stills! The charm of Highland +hospitality would be wan and withered, and the _doch-an-dorras_, instead +of a blessing, would sound like a ban. + +We have said that smugglers are never drunkards, not forgetting that +general rules are proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and declare +that the Highlanders are the soberest people in Europe. Whisky is to +them a cordial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the umbrella and +wraprascal! were you ever in the Highlands? We shall produce a single +day from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that will out-argue you +on the present subject, in half an hour. What sound is that? The rushing +of rain from heaven, and the sudden outcry of a thousand waterfalls. +Look through a chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for the mists, +the heath-covered desert is steaming like the smoke of a smouldering +fire. Winds biting as winter come sweeping on their invisible chariots +armed with scythes, down every glen, and scatter far and wide over the +mountains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you have a taste of the +summer cold, more dangerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes +"aitches" into the unprepared bones, and congeals the blood of the +shelterless shepherd on the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit +down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and bold as a rainbow he faces +the reappearing sun, and feels assured (though there he may be mistaken) +of dying at a good old age. + +Then think, oh think, how miserably poor are most of those men who have +fought our battles, and so often reddened their bayonets in defence of +our liberties and our laws! Would you grudge them a little whisky? And +depend upon it, a little is the most, taking one day of the year with +another, that they imbibe. You figure to yourself two hundred thousand +Highlanders, taking snuff, and chewing tobacco, and drinking whisky, all +year long. Why, one pound of snuff, two of tobacco, and two gallons of +whisky, would be beyond the mark of the yearly allowance of every +grown-up man! Thousands never taste such luxuries at all--meal and +water, potatoes and salt, their only food. The animal food, sir, and the +fermented liquors of various kinds, Foreign and British, which to our +certain knowledge you have swallowed within the last twelve months, +would have sufficed for fifty families in our abstemious region of mist +and snow. We have known you drink a bottle of champagne, a bottle of +port, and two bottles of claret, frequently at a sitting, equal, in +prime cost, to three gallons of the best Glenlivet! And YOU (who, by the +way, are an English clergyman, a circumstance we had entirely forgotten, +and have published a Discourse against Drunkenness, dedicated to a +Bishop) pour forth the Lamentations of Jeremiah over the sinful +multitude of Small Stills! Hypocrisy! hypocrisy! where shalt thou hide +thy many-coloured sides? + +Whisky is found by experience to be, on the whole, a blessing in so +misty and mountainous a country. It destroys disease and banishes death; +without some such stimulant the people would die of cold. You will see a +fine old Gael, of ninety or a hundred, turn up his little finger to a +caulker with an air of patriarchal solemnity altogether scriptural; his +great-grandchildren eyeing him with the most respectful affection, and +the youngest of them toddling across the floor, to take the quaich from +his huge, withered, and hairy hand, which he lays on the amiable +Joseph's sleek craniology, with a blessing heartier through the +Glenlivet, and with all the earnestness of religion. There is no +disgrace in getting drunk--in the Highlands--not even if you are of the +above standing--for where the people are so poor, such a state is but of +rare occurrence; while it is felt all over the land of sleet and snow, +that a 'drap o' the cretur' is a very necessary of life, and that but +for its 'dew' the mountains would be uninhabitable. At fairs, and +funerals, and marriages, and suchlike merry meetings, sobriety is sent +to look after the sheep; but, except on charitable occasions of that +kind, sobriety stays at home among the peat-reek, and is contented with +crowdy. Who that ever stooped his head beneath a Highland hut would +grudge a few gallons of Glenlivet to its poor but unrepining inmates? +The seldomer they get drunk the better--and it is but seldom they do so; +but let the rich man--the monied moralist, who bewails and begrudges the +Gael a modicum of the liquor of life, remember the doom of a certain +Dives, who, in a certain place that shall now be nameless, cried, but +cried in vain, for a drop of water. Lord bless the Highlanders, say we, +for the most harmless, hospitable, peaceable, brave people that ever +despised breeches, blew pibrochs, took invincible standards, and +believed in the authenticity of Ossian's poems. In that pure and lofty +region ignorance is not, as elsewhere, the mother of vice--penury cannot +repress the noble rage of the mountaineer as "he sings aloud old songs +that are the music of the heart;" while superstition herself has an +elevating influence, and will be suffered, even by religion, to show her +shadowy shape and mutter her wild voice through the gloom that lies on +the heads of the remote glens, and among the thousand caves of echo in +her iron-bound coasts, dashed on for ever--night and day--summer and +winter--by those sleepless seas, who have no sooner laid their heads on +the pillow than up they start with a howl that cleaves the Orcades, and +away off in search of shipwrecks round the corner of Cape Wrath. + +In the third place, what shall we say of the poetical influence of +STILLS? What more poetical life can there be than that of the men with +whom we are now quaffing the barley-bree? They live with the moon and +stars. All the night winds are their familiars. If there be such things +as ghosts, and fairies, and apparitions--and that there are, no man who +has travelled much by himself after sunset will deny, except from the +mere love of contradiction--they see them; or when invisible, which they +generally are, hear them--here--there--everywhere--in sky, forest, cave, +or hollow-sounding world immediately beneath their feet. Many poets walk +these wilds; nor do their songs perish. They publish not with Blackwood +or with Murray--but for centuries on centuries, such songs are the +preservers, often the sources, of the oral traditions that go glimmering +and gathering down the stream of years. Native are they to the mountains +as the blooming heather, nor shall they ever cease to invest them with +the light of poetry--in defiance of large farms, Methodist preachers, +and the Caledonian Canal. + +People are proud of talking of solitude. It redounds, they opine, to the +honour of their great-mindedness to be thought capable of living, for an +hour or two, by themselves, at a considerable distance from knots or +skeins of their fellow-creatures. Byron, again, thought he showed his +superiority by swearing as solemnly as a man can do in the Spenserian +stanza that + + "To sit alone, and muse o'er flood and fell," + +has nothing whatever to do with solitude--and that, if you wish to know +and feel what solitude really is, you must go to Almack's. + + "This is to be alone,--this, this is solitude." + +His Lordship's opinions were often peculiar--but the passage has been +much admired; therefore we are willing to believe that the Great Desert +is, in point of loneliness, unable to stand a philosophical, much less a +poetical comparison, with a well-frequented Fancy-ball. But is the +statement not borne out by facts? Zoology is on its side--more +especially two of its most interesting branches, Entomology and +Ornithology. + +Go to a desert and clap your back against a cliff. Do you think yourself +alone? What a ninny! Your great clumsy splay feet are bruising to death +a batch of beetles. See that spider whom you have widowed, running up +and down your elegant leg, in distraction and despair, bewailing the +loss of a husband who, however savage to the ephemerals, had always +smiled sweetly upon her. Meanwhile your shoulders have crushed a colony +of small red ants settled in a moss city beautifully roofed with +lichens--and that accounts for the sharp tickling behind your ear, which +you keep scratching, no Solomon, in ignorance of the cause of that +effect. Should you sit down--we must beg to draw a veil over your +hurdies, which at the moment extinguish a fearful amount of animal +life--creation may be said to groan under them; and, insect as you are +yourself, you are defrauding millions of insects of their little day. +All the while you are supposing yourself alone! Now, are you not, as we +hinted, a prodigious ninny? But the whole wilderness--as you choose to +call it--is crawling with various life. London with its million and a +half of inhabitants--including of course the suburbs--is, compared with +it, an empty joke. Die--and you will soon be picked to the bones. The +air swarms with sharpers--and an insurrection of radicals will attack +your corpse from the worm-holes of the earth. Corbies, ravens, hawks, +eagles, all the feathered furies of beak and bill, will come flying ere +sunset to anticipate the maggots, and carry your remains--if you will +allow us to call them so--over the whole of Argyllshire in many living +sepulchres. We confess ourselves unable to see the solitude of this--and +begin to agree with Byron, that a man is less crowded at a masquerade. + +But the same subject may be illustrated less tragically, and even with +some slight comic effect. A man among mountains is often surrounded on +all sides with mice and moles. What cosy nests do the former construct +at the roots of heather, among tufts of grass in the rushes, and the +moss on the greensward! As for the latter, though you think you know a +mountain from a molehill, you are much mistaken; for what is a mountain, +in many cases, but a collection of molehills--and of fairy +knolls?--which again introduce a new element into the composition, and +show, in still more glaring colours, your absurdity in supposing +yourself to be in solitude. The "Silent People" are around you at every +step. You may not see them--for they are dressed in invisible green; but +they see you, and that unaccountable whispering and buzzing sound one +often hears in what we call the wilderness, what is it, or what can it +be, but the fairies making merry at your expense, pointing out to each +other the extreme silliness of your meditative countenance, and laughing +like to split at your fond conceit of being alone among a multitude of +creatures far wiser than yourself. + +But should all this fail to convince you that you are never less alone +than when you think yourself alone, and that a man never knows what it +is to be in the very heart of life till he leaves London, and takes a +walk in Glen-Etive--suppose yourself to have been leaning with your back +against that knoll, dreaming of the far-off race of men, when all at +once the support gives way inwards, and you tumble head over heels in +among a snug coterie of kilted Celts, in the very act of creating +Glenlivet in a great warlock's caldron, seething to the top with the +Spirit of Life! + +Such fancies as these, among many others, were with us in the Still. But +a glimmering and a humming and a dizzy bewilderment hangs over that time +and place, finally dying away into oblivion. Here are we sitting in a +glade of a birch-wood in what must be Gleno--some miles from the Still. +Hamish asleep, as usual, whenever he lies down, and all the dogs +yowffing in dreams, and Surefoot standing with his long beard above +ours, almost the same in longitude. We have been more, we suspect, than +half-seas over, and are now lying on the shore of sobriety, almost a +wreck. The truth is, that the new spirit is even more dangerous than the +new light. Both at first dazzle, then obfuscate, and lastly darken into +temporary death. There is, we fear, but one word of one syllable in the +English language that could fully express our late condition. Let our +readers solve the enigma. Oh! those quaichs! By + + "What drugs, what spells, + What conjurations, and what mighty magic" + +was Christopher overthrown! A strange confusion of sexes, as of men in +petticoats and women in breeches--gowns transmogrified into +jackets--caps into bonnets--and thick naked hairy legs into slim ankles +decent in hose--all somewhere whirling and dancing by, dim and obscure, +to the sound of something groaning and yelling, sometimes +inarticulately, as if it came from something instrumental, and then +mixed up with a wild gibberish, as if shrieking, somehow or other, from +living lips, human and brute--for a dream of yowling dogs is over +all--utterly confounds us as we strive to muster in recollection the few +last hours that have passed tumultuously through our brain--and then a +wide black moor, sometimes covered with day, sometimes with night, +stretches around us, hemmed in on all sides by the tops of mountains +seeming to reel in the sky. Frequent flashes of fire, and a whirring as +of the wings of birds--but sound and sight alike uncertain--break again +upon our dream. Let us not mince the matter--we can afford the +confession--we have been overtaken by liquor--sadly intoxicated--out +with it at once! Frown not, fairest of all sweet--for we lay our +calamity, not to the charge of the Glenlivet circling in countless +quaichs, but at the door of that inveterate enemy to sobriety--the Fresh +Air. + +But now we are as sober as a judge. Pity our misfortune--rather than +forgive our sin. We entered that Still in a State of innocence before +the Fall. Where we fell, we know not--in divers ways and sundry +places--between that magic cell on the breast of Benachochie, and this +glade in Gleno. But + + "There are worse things in life than a fall among heather." + +Surefoot, we suppose, kept himself tolerably sober--and O'Bronte, at +each successive cloit, must have assisted us to remount--for Hamish, +from his style of sleeping, must have been as bad as his master; and, +after all, it is wonderful to think how we got here--over hags and +mosses, and marshes, and quagmires, like those in which "armies whole +have sunk." But the truth is, that never in the whole course of our +lives--and that course has been a strange one--did we ever so often as +once lose our way. Set us down blindfolded on Zahara, and we will beat +the caravan to Timbuctoo. Something or other mysteriously indicative of +the right direction touches the soles of our feet in the shape of the +ground they tread; and even when our souls have gone soaring far away, +or have sunk within us, still have our feet pursued the shortest and the +safest path that leads to the bourne of our pilgrimage. Is not that +strange? But not stranger surely than the flight of the bee, on his +first voyage over the coves of the wilderness to the far-off +heather-bells--or of the dove that is sent by some Jew stock-jobber, to +communicate to Dutchmen the rise or fall of the funds, from London to +Hamburg, from the clear shores of silver Thames to the muddy shallows of +the Zuyder Zee. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT FOURTH--DOWN RIVER AND UP LOCH. + + +Let us inspect the state of Brown Bess. Right barrel empty--left +barrel--what is the meaning of this?--crammed to the muzzle! Ay, that +comes of visiting Stills. We have been snapping away at the coveys and +single birds all over the moor, without so much as a pluff, with the +right-hand cock--and then, imagining that we had fired, have kept +loading away at the bore to the left, till, see! the ramrod absolutely +stands upright in the air, with only about three inches hidden in the +hollow! What a narrow--a miraculous escape has the world had of losing +Christopher North! Had he drawn that trigger instead of this, Brown Bess +would have burst to a moral certainty, and blown the old gentleman +piecemeal over the heather. "In the midst of life we are in death!" +Could we but know one in a hundred of the close approachings of the +skeleton, we should lead a life of perpetual shudder. Often and often do +his bony fingers almost clutch our throat, or his foot is put out to +give us a cross-buttock. But a saving arm pulls him back, ere we have +seen so much as his shadow. We believe all this--but the belief that +comes not from something steadfastly present before our eyes, is barren; +and thus it is, since believing is not seeing, that we walk hoodwinked +nearly all our days, and worst of all blindness is that of ingratitude +and forgetfulness of Him whose shield is for ever over us, and whose +mercy shall be with us in the world beyond the grave. + +By all that is most beautifully wild in animated nature, a Roe! a Roe! +Shall we slay him where he stands, or let him vanish in silent glidings +in among his native woods? What a fool for asking ourselves such a +question! Slay him where he stands to be sure--for many pleasant seasons +hath he led in his leafy lairs, a life of leisure, delight, and love, +and the hour is come when he must sink down on his knees in a sudden +and unpainful death--fair sylvan dreamer! We have drawn that +multitudinous shot--and both barrels of Brown Bess now are loaded with +ball--for Hamish is yet lying with his head on the rifle. Whiz! whiz! +one is through lungs, and another through neck--and seemingly rather to +sleep than die (so various are the many modes of expiration!) + + "In quietness he lays him down + Gently, as a weary wave + Sinks, when the summer breeze has died, + Against an anchor'd vessel's side." + +Ay--Hamish--you may start to your feet--and see realised the vision of +your sleep. What a set of distracted dogs! But O'Bronte first catches +sight of the quarry--and clearing, with grasshopper spangs, the patches +of stunted coppice, stops stock-still beside the roe in the glade, as if +admiring and wondering at the beauty of the fair spotted creature! Yes, +dogs have a sense of the beautiful. Else how can you account for their +loving so to lie down at the feet and lick the hands of the virgin whose +eyes are mild, and forehead meek, and hair of placid sunshine, rather +than act the same part towards ugly women, who, coarser and coarser in +each successive widow-hood, when at their fourth husband are beyond +expression hideous, and felt to be so by the whole canine tribe? Spenser +must have seen some dog like O'Bronte lying at the feet and licking the +hand of some virgin--sweet reader, like thyself--else never had he +painted the posture of that Lion who guarded through Fairyland + + "Heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb." + +A divine line of Wordsworth's, which we shall never cease quoting on to +the last of our inditings, even to our dying day! + +But where, Hamish, are all the flappers, the mawsies, and the mallards? +What! You have left them--hare, grouse, bag, and all, at the Still! We +remember it now--and all the distillers are to-night to be at our Tent, +bringing with them feathers, fur, and hide--ducks, pussy, and deer. But +take the roe on your stalwart shoulders, Hamish, and bear it down to the +sylvan dwelling at the mouth of Gleno. Surefoot has a sufficient burden +in us--for we are waxing more corpulent every day--and ere long shall be +a Silenus. + +Ay, travel all the world over, and a human dwelling lovelier in its +wildness shall you nowhere find, than the one that hides itself in the +depth of its own beauty, beneath the last of the green knolls +besprinkling Gleno, dropt down there in presence of the peacefulest bay +of all Loch-Etive, in whose cloud-softened bosom it sees itself +reflected among the congenial imagery of the skies. And, hark! a murmur +as of swarming bees! 'Tis a Gaelic school--set down in this loneliest of +all places, by that religious wisdom that rests not till the seeds of +saving knowledge shall be sown over all the wilds. That greyhaired +minister of God, whom all Scotland venerates, hath been here from the +great city on one of his holy pilgrimages. And, lo! at his bidding, and +that of his coadjutors in the heavenly work, a Schoolhouse has risen +with its blue roof--the pure diamond-sparkling slates of +Ballahulish--beneath a tuft of breeze-breaking trees. But whence come +they--the little scholars--who are all murmuring there? We said that the +shores of Loch-Etive were desolate. So seem they to the eye of +Imagination, that loves to gather up a hundred scenes into one, and to +breathe over the whole the lonesome spirit of one vast wilderness. But +Imagination was a liar ever--a romancer and a dealer in dreams. Hers are +the realms of fiction, + + "A boundless contiguity of shade!" + +But the land of truth is ever the haunt of the heart--there her eye +reposes or expatiates, and what sweet, humble, and lowly visions arise +before it, in a light that fadeth not away, but abideth for ever! +Cottages, huts, shielings, she sees hidden--few and far between +indeed--but all filled with Christian life--among the hollows of the +hills--and up, all the way up the great glens--and by the shores of the +loneliest lochs--and sprinkled, not so rarely, among the woods that +enclose little fields and meadows of their own--all the way down--more +and more animated--till children are seen gathering before their doors +the shells of the contiguous sea. + +Look and listen far and wide through a sunshiny day, over a rich wooded +region, with hedgerows, single trees, groves, and forests, and yet haply +not one bird is to be seen or heard--neither plumage nor song. Yet many +a bright lyrist is there, all mute till the harbinger-hour of sunset, +when all earth, air, and heaven, shall be ringing with one song. Almost +even so is it with this mountain-wilderness. Small bright-haired, +bright-eyed, bright-faced children, come stealing out in the morning +from many hidden huts, each solitary in its own site, the sole dwelling +on its own brae or its own dell. Singing go they one and all, alone or +in small bands, trippingly along the wide moors; meeting into pleasant +parties at cross-paths or at fords, till one stated hour sees them all +gathered together, as now in the small Schoolhouse of Gleno, and the +echo of the happy hum of the simple scholars is heard soft among the +cliffs. But all at once the hum now ceases, and there is a hurry out of +doors, and an exulting cry; for the shadow of Hamish, with the roe on +his shoulders, has passed the small lead-latticed window, and the +Schoolroom has emptied itself on the green, which is now brightening +with the young blossoms of life. "A roe--a roe--a roe!"--is still the +chorus of their song; and the Schoolmaster himself, though educated at +college for the kirk, has not lost the least particle of his passion for +the chase, and with kindling eyes assists Hamish in laying down his +burden, and gazes on the spots with a hunter's joy. We leave you to +imagine his delight and his surprise when, at first hardly trusting his +optics, he beholds CHRISTOPHER ON SUREFOOT, and then, patting the shelty +on the shoulder, bows affectionately and respectfully to the Old Man, +and while our hands grasp, takes a pleasure in repeating over and over +again that celebrated surname--North--North--North. + +After a brief and bright hour of glee and merriment, mingled with grave +talk, nor marred by the sweet undisturbance of all those elves maddening +on the Green around the Roe, we express a wish that the scholars may all +again be gathered together in the Schoolroom, to undergo an examination +by the Christian Philosopher of Buchanan Lodge. 'Tis in all things +gentle, in nothing severe. All slates are instantly covered with +numerals, and 'tis pleasant to see their skill in finest fractions, and +in the wonder-working golden rule of three. And now the rustling of +their manuals is like that of rainy breezes among the summer leaves. No +fears are here that the Book of God will lose its sanctity by becoming +too familiar to eye, lip, and hand. Like the sunlight in the sky, the +light that shines there is for ever dear--and unlike any sunlight in +any skies, never is it clouded, permanently bright, and undimmed before +pious eyes by one single shadow. We ought, perhaps, to be ashamed, but +we are not so--we are happy that not an urchin is there who is not fully +better acquainted with the events and incidents recorded in the Old and +New Testaments than ourselves; and think not that all these could have +been so faithfully committed to memory without the perpetual operation +of the heart. Words are forgotten unless they are embalmed in spirit; +and the air of the world, blow afterwards rudely as it may, shall never +shrivel up one syllable that has been steeped into their souls by the +spirit of the Gospel--felt by these almost infant disciples of Christ to +be the very breath of God. + +It has turned out one of the sweetest and serenest afternoons that ever +breathed a hush over the face and bosom of August woods. Can we find it +in our mind to think, in our heart to feel, in our hand to write, that +Scotland is now even more beautiful than in our youth! No--not in our +heart to feel--but in our eyes to see--for they tell us it is the truth. +The people have cared for the land which the Lord their God hath given +them, and have made the wilderness to blossom like the rose. The same +Arts that have raised their condition have brightened their habitation; +Agriculture, by fertilising the loveliness of the low-lying vales, has +sublimed the sterility of the stupendous mountain heights--and the +thundrous tides, flowing up the lochs, bring power to the cornfields and +pastures created on hill-sides once horrid with rocks. The whole country +laughs with a more vivid verdure--more pure the flow of her streams and +rivers--for many a fen and marsh has been made dry, and the rainbow +pictures itself on clearer cataracts. + +The Highlands were, in our memory, overspread with a too dreary gloom. +Vast tracts there were in which Nature herself seemed miserable; and if +the heart find no human happiness to repose on, Imagination will fold +her wings, or flee away to other regions, where in her own visionary +world she may soar at will, and at will stoop down to the homes of this +real earth. Assuredly the inhabitants are happier than they then +were--_better off_--and therefore the change, whatever loss it may +comprehend, has been a gain in good. Alas! poverty--penury--want--even +of the necessaries of life--are too often there still rife; but patience +and endurance dwell there, heroic and better far, Christian--nor has +Charity been slow to succour regions remote but not inaccessible, +Charity acting in power delegated by Heaven to our National Councils. +And thus we can think not only without sadness, but with an elevation of +soul inspired by such example of highest virtue in humblest estate, and +in our own sphere exposed to other trials be induced to follow it, set +to us in many "a virtuous household, though exceeding poor." What are +the poetical fancies about "mountain scenery," that ever fluttered on +the leaves of albums, in comparison with any scheme, however prosaic, +that tends in any way to increase human comforts? The best sonnet that +ever was written by a versifier from the South to the Crown of +Benlomond, is not worth the worst pair of worsted stockings trotted in +by a small Celt going with his dad to seek for a lost sheep among the +snow-wreaths round his base. As for eagles, and ravens, and red-deer, +"those magnificent creatures so stately and bright," let them shift for +themselves--and perhaps in spite of all our rhapsodies--the fewer of +them the better; but among geese, and turkeys, and poultry, let +propagation flourish--the fleecy folk baa--and the hairy hordes bellow +on a thousand hills. All the beauty and sublimity on earth--over the +Four Quarters of the World--is not worth a straw if valued against a +good harvest. An average crop is satisfactory; but a crop that soars +high above an average--a golden year of golden ears--sends joy into the +heart of heaven. No prating now of the degeneracy of the potato. We can +sing now with our single voice, like a numerous chorus, of + + "Potatoes drest both ways, both roasted and boiled;" + +sixty bolls to the acre on a field of our own of twenty acres--mealier +than any meal--Perth reds--to the hue on whose cheeks dull was that on +the face of the Fair Maid of Perth, when she blushed to confess to +Burn-y-win' that hand-over-hip he had struck the iron when it was hot, +and that she was no more the Glover's. O bright are potato blooms!--O +green are potato-shaws!--O yellow are potato-plums! But how oft are +blighted summer hopes and broken summer promises! Spare not the +shaw--heap high the mounds--that damp nor frost may dim a single eye; so +that all winter through poor men may prosper, and spring see settings +of such prolific vigour, that they shall yield a thousandfold--and the +sound of rumbledethumps be heard all over the land. + +Let the people eat--let them have food for their bodies, and then they +will have heart to care for their souls; and the good and the wise will +look after their souls with sure and certain hope of elevating them from +their hovels to heaven, while prigs, with their eyes in a fine frenzy +rolling, rail at railroads, and all the other vile inventions of an +utilitarian age to open up and expedite communication between the +Children of the Mist and the Sons and Daughters of the Sunshine, to the +utter annihilation of the sublime Spirit of Solitude. Be under no sort +of alarm for Nature. There is some talk, it is true, of a tunnel through +Cruachan to the Black Mount, but the general impression seems to be that +it will be a _great bore_. A joint-stock company that undertook to +remove Ben-Nevis, is beginning to find unexpected obstructions. Feasible +as we confess it appeared, the idea of draining Loch Lomond has been +relinquished for the easier and more useful scheme of converting the +Clyde from below Stonebyres to above the Bannatyne Fall into a +canal--the chief lock being, in the opinion of the most ingenious +speculators, almost ready-made at Corra Linn. Shall we never be done +with our soliloquy? It may be a little longish, for age is prolix--but +every whit as natural and congenial with circumstances, as Hamlet's "to +be or not to be, that is the question." O beloved Albin! our soul +yearneth towards thee, and we invoke a blessing on thy many thousand +glens. The man who leaves a blessing on any one of thy solitary places, +and gives expression to a good thought in presence of a Christian +brother, is a missionary of the church. What uncomplaining and +unrepining patience in thy solitary huts! What unshrinking endurance of +physical pain and want, that might well shame the Stoic's philosophic +pride! What calm contentment, akin to mirth, in so many lonesome +households, hidden the greatest part of the year in mist and snow! What +peaceful deathbeds, witnessed but by a few, a very few grave but +tearless eyes! Ay, how many martyrdoms for the holy love and religion of +nature, worse to endure than those of old at the stake, because +protracted through years of sore distress, for ever on the very limit of +famine, yet for ever far removed from despair! Such is the people among +whom we seek to drop the books, whose sacred leaves are too often +scattered to the winds, or buried in the dust of Pagan lands. Blessed is +the fount from whose wisely-managed munificence the small house of God +will rise frequent in the wide and sea-divided wilds, with its humble +associate, the heath-roofed school, in which, through the silence of +nature, will be heard the murmuring voices of the children of the poor, +instructed in the knowledge useful for time, and of avail for eternity. + +We leave a loose sovereign or two to the Bible Fund; and remounting +Surefoot, while our friend the schoolmaster holds the stirrup tenderly +to our toe, jog down the road which is rather alarmingly like the +channel of a drought-dried torrent, and turning round on the saddle, +send our farewell salutes to the gazing scholars, first, bonnet waved +round our head, and then, that replaced, a kiss flung from our hand. +Hamish, relieved of the roe, which will be taken up (how, you shall +by-and-by hear) on our way back to the Tent, is close at our side, to be +ready should Shelty stumble; O'Bronte as usual bounds in the van; and +Ponto, Piro, and Basta, impatient for the next heather hill, keep close +at our heels through the wood. + +We do not admire that shooting-ground which resembles a poultry-yard. +Grouse and barn-door fowls are constructed on opposite principles, the +former being wild, and the latter tame creatures, when in their +respective perfection. Of all dull pastimes, the dullest seems to us +sporting in a preserve; and we believe that we share that feeling with +the Grand Signior. The sign of a lonely wayside inn in the Highlands, +ought not to be the Hen and Chickens. Some shooters, we know, sick of +common sport, love slaughter. From sunrise to sunset of the First Day of +the Moors, they must bag their hundred brace. That can only be done +where pouts prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where you have +half-a-dozen attendants to hand you double-barrels _sans_ intermission, +for a round dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire. Commend us to a +plentiful sprinkling of game; to ground which seems occasionally barren, +and which it needs a fine instructed eye to traverse scientifically, and +thereof to detect the latent riches. Fear and Hope are the Deities whom +Christopher in his Sporting Jacket worships; and were they +unpropitious, the Moors would lose all their witchcraft. We are a dead +shot, but not always, for the forefinger of our right hand is the most +fitful forefinger in all this capricious world. Like all performers in +the Fine Arts, our execution is very uncertain; and though "_toujours +pret_" is the impress on one side of our shield, "_hit and miss_" is +that on the other, and often the more characteristic. A gentleman ought +not to shoot like a gamekeeper, any more than at billiards to play like +a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to tool his prads like the +Portsmouth Dragsman. We choose to shoot like a philosopher as we are, +and to preserve the golden mean in murder. We hold, with Aristotle, that +all virtue consists in the middle between the two extremes; and thus we +shoot in a style equidistant from that of the gamekeeper on the one +hand, and that of the bagman on the other, neither killing nor missing +every bird; but, true to the spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine, +leaning with a decided inclination towards the first rather than the +second predicament. If we shoot too well one day, we are pretty sure to +make amends for it by shooting just as much too ill another; and thus, +at the close of the week, we can go to bed with a clear conscience. In +short, we shoot like gentlemen, scholars, poets, philosophers as we are; +and looking at us, you have a sight + + "Of him who walks (rides) in glory and in joy, + Following his dog upon the mountain-side,"-- + +a man evidently not shooting for a wager, and performing a match from +the mean motive of avarice or ambition, but blazing away "at his own +sweet will," and, without seeming to know it, making a great noise in +the world. Such, believe us, is ever the mode in which true genius +displays at once the earnestness and the modesty of its character.--But, +Hamish--Hamish--Hamish--look with both thine eyes on yonder bank--yonder +sunny bank, beneath the shade of that fantastic cliff's superincumbent +shadow--and seest thou not basking there a miraculous amount of the +right sort of feathers? They have packed, Hamish--they have packed, +early as it yet is in the season; and the question is--_What shall we +do?_ We have it. Take up a position--Hamish--about a hundred yards in +the rear--on yonder knoll--with the Colonel's Sweeper. Fire from the +rest--mind, from the rest, Hamishright into the centre of that bed of +plumage, and we shall be ready, with Brown Bess and her sister, to pour +in our quartette upon the remains as they rise--so that not escape shall +one single feather. Let our coming "to the present" be your +signal.--Bang! Whew!--what a flutter! Now take that--and that--and +that--and that! Ha! Hamish--as at the springing of a mine, the whole +company has perished. Count the dead. Twenty-one! Life is short--and by +this compendious style we take Time by the forelock. But where the devil +are the ducks? Oh, yes! with the deer at the Still. Bag, and be +stirring. For the Salmon-pond is murmuring in our ear; and in another +hour we must be at Inveraw. Who said that Cruachan was a steep mountain? +Why, with a gentle, smooth, and easy slope, he dips his footsteps in the +sea-salt waters of Loch Etive's tide, as if to accommodate the old +gentleman who, half-a-century ago, used to beard him in his pride on his +throne of clouds. Heaven bless him!--he is a kind-hearted mountain, +though his forehead be furrowed, and his aspect grim in stormy weather. +A million memories "o' auld lang syne" revive, as almost "smooth-sliding +without a step" Surefoot travels through the sylvan haunts, by us +beloved of yore, when every day was a dream, and every dream filled to +overflowing with poetic visions that swarmed in every bough, on every +bent, on every heather-bell, on every dewdrop, in every mote o' the sun, +in every line of gossamer, all over greenwood and greensward, grey +cliff, purple heath, blue lock, "wine-faced sea," + + "with locks divinely spreading, + Like sullen hyacinths in vernal hue," + +and all over the sky, seeming then a glorious infinitude, where light, +and joy, and beauty had their dwelling in calm and storm alike for +evermore. + +Heaven bless thee--with all her sun, moon, and stars! there thou art, +dearest to us of all the lochs of Scotland--and they are all +dear--mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, grove-girdled, +wide-winding, and far-stretching, with thy many-bayed banks and braes of +brushwood, fern, broom, and heather, rejoicing in their huts and +shielings, thou glory of Argyllshire, rill-and-river-fed, sea-arm-like, +floating in thy majesty, magnificent Loch Awe! + +Comparisons, so far from being odious, are always suggested to our +hearts by the spirit of love. We behold Four Lochs--Loch Awe, before our +bodily eyes, which sometimes sleep--Loch Lomond, Windermere, Killarney, +before those other eyes of ours that are waking ever. The longest is +Loch Awe, which from that bend below Sonnachan to distant Edderline, +looks like a river. But cut off, with the soft scythe or sickle of +fancy, twenty miles of the length of the mottled snake, who never coils +himself up except in misty weather, and who is now lying outstretched in +the sunshine, and the upper part, the head and shoulders, are of +themselves a Loch. Pleasant are his many hills, and magnificent his one +mountain. For you see but Cruachan. He is the master-spirit. Call him +the noblest of Scotland's Kings. His subjects are princes; and +gloriously they range around him, stretching high, wide, and far away, +yet all owing visible allegiance to him, their sole and undisputed +sovereign. The setting and the rising sun do him homage. Peace loves--as +now--to dwell within his shadow; but high among the precipices are the +halls of the storms. Green are the shores as emerald. But the dark +heather with its purple bloom sleeps in sombre shadow over wide regions +of dusk, and there is an austere character in the cliffs. Moors and +mosses intervene between holms and meadows, and those black spots are +stacks of last year's peats--not huts, as you might think; but those +other specks are huts, somewhat browner--few roofed with straw, almost +all with heather--though the better houses are slated--nor is there in +the world to be found slate of a more beautiful pale-green colour than +in the quarries of Ballahulish. The scene is vast and wild; yet so much +beauty is interfused, that at such an hour as this its character is +almost that of loveliness; the rude and rugged is felt to be rural, and +no more; and the eye, gliding from the cottage gardens on its banks to +the islands on the bosom of the Loch, loses sight of the mighty masses +heaved up to the heavens, while the heart forgets that they are there, +in its sweet repose. The dim-seen ruins of castle or religious house, +secluded from all the stir that disturbed the shore, carries back our +dreams to the olden time, and we awake from our reveries of "sorrows +suffered long ago," to enjoy the apparent happiness of the living world. + +Loch Lomond is a sea! Along its shores might you voyage in your swift +schooner, with shifting breezes, all a summer's day, nor at sunset, when +you dropped anchor, have seen half the beautiful wonders. It is +many-isled; and some of them are in themselves little worlds, with woods +and hills. Houses are seen looking out from among old trees, and +children playing on the greensward that slopes safely into deep water, +where in rushy havens are drawn up the boats of fishermen, or of +woodcutters who go to their work on the mainland. You might live all +your life on one of those islands, and yet be no hermit. Hundreds of +small bays indent the shores, and some of a majestic character take a +fine bold sweep with their towering groves, enclosing the mansion of a +Colquhoun or a Campbell at enmity no more, or the turreted castle of the +rich alien, who there finds himself as much at home as in his hereditary +hall, Sassenach and Gael now living in gentle friendship. What a +prospect from the Point of Firkin! The Loch in its whole length and +breadth--the magnificent expanse unbroken, though bedropped, with +unnumbered isles--and the shores diversified with jutting cape and +far-shooting peninsula, enclosing sweet separate seclusions, each in +itself a loch. Ships might be sailing here, the largest ships of war; +and there is anchorage for fleets. But the clear course of the lovely +Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with gravelly shallows, and guards +Loch Lomond from the white-winged roamers that from all seas come +crowding into the Firth of Clyde, and carry their streaming flags above +the woods of Ardgowan. And there stands Ben. What cares he for all the +multitude of other lochs his gaze commands--what cares he even for the +salt-sea foam tumbling far away off into the ocean? All-sufficient for +his love is his own loch at his feet. How serenely looks down the Giant! +Is there not something very sweet in his sunny smile? Yet were you to +see him frown--as we have seen him--your heart would sink; and what +would become of you--if all alone by your own single self, wandering +over the wide moor that glooms in utter houselessness between his +corries and Glenfalloch--what if you were to hear the strange mutterings +we have heard, as if moaning from an earthquake among quagmires, till +you felt that the sound came from the sky, and all at once from the +heart of night that had strangled day burst a shattering peal that +might waken the dead--for Benlomond was in wrath, and vented it in +thunder? + +Perennially enjoying the blessing of a milder clime, and repaying the +bounty of nature by beauty that bespeaks perpetual gratitude--merry as +May, rich as June, shady as July, lustrous as August, and serene as +September, for in her meet the characteristic charms of every season, +all delightfully mingled by the happy genius of the place commissioned +to pervade the whole from heaven, most lovely yet most majestic, we +breathed the music of thy name, and start in this sterner solitude at +the sweet syllabling of Windermere, Windermere! Translucent thy waters +as diamond without a flaw. Unstained from source to sea are all the +streams soft issuing from their silver springs among those beautiful +mountains. Pure are they all as dew--and purer look the white clouds +within their breast. These are indeed the Fortunate Groves! Happy is +every tree. Blest the "Golden Oak," which seems to shine in lustre of +his own, unborrowed from the sun. Fairer far the flower-tangled grass of +those wood-encircled pastures than any meads of Asphodel. Thou need'st +no isles on thy heavenly bosom, for in the sweet confusion of thy shores +are seen the images of many isles, fragments that one might dream had +been gently loosened from the land, and had floated away into the lake +till they had lost themselves in the fairy wilderness. But though thou +need'st them not, yet hast thou, O Windermere! thine own steadfast and +enduring isles--her called the Beautiful--and islets not far apart that +seem born of her; for theirs the same expression of countenance--that of +celestial calm--and, holiest of the sisterhood, one that still retains +the ruins of an oratory, and bears the name of the Virgin Mother Mild, +to whom prays the mariner when sailing, in the moonlight, along Sicilian +seas. + +Killarney! From the village of Cloghereen issued an uncouth figure, who +called himself the "Man of the Mountain;" and pleased with Pan, we +permitted him to blow his horn before us up to the top of Mangerton, +where the Devil, 'tis believed, scooped out the sward beneath the cliffs +into a Punch-bowl. No doubt he did, and the Old Potter wrought with +fire. 'Tis the crater of an extinct volcano. Charles Fox, Weld says, and +Wright doubts, swam the Pool. Why not? 'Tis not so cold as the Polar +Sea. We swam across it--as Mulcocky, were he alive, but he is dead, +could vouch; and felt braced like a drum. What a panorama! Our first +feeling was one of grief that we were not an Irishman. We knew not where +to fix our gaze. Surrounded by the dazzling bewilderment of all that +multitudinous magnificence, the eye, as if afraid to grapple with the +near glory--for such another day never shone from heaven--sought relief +in the remote distance, and slid along the beautiful river Kenmare, +insinuating itself among the recesses of the mountains, till it rested +on the green glimmer of the far-off sea. The grandeur was felt, far off +as it was, of that iron-bound coast. Coming round with an easy sweep, as +the eyes of an eagle may do, when hanging motionless aloft he but turns +his head, our eyes took in all the mighty range of the Reeks, and rested +in awe on Carran Tual. Wild yet gentle was the blue aerial haze over the +glimpses of the Upper Lake, where soft and sweet, in a girdle of rocks, +seemed to be hanging, now in air and now in water--for all was strangely +indistinct in the dim confusion--masses of green light that might be +islands with their lovely trees; but suddenly tipt with fire shone out +the golden pinnacles of the Eagle's Nest; and as again they were tamed +by cloud-shadow, the glow of Purple Mountain for a while enchained our +vision, and then left it free to feast on the forests of Glena, till, +wandering at the capricious will of fancy, it floated in delight over +the woods of Mucruss, and long lost among the trembling imagery of the +water, found lasting repose on the steadfast beauty of the sylvan isle +of Inisfallen. + +But now for the black mass of rapid waters that, murmuring from loch to +river, rush roaring through that rainbow-arch, and bathe the green woods +in freshening spray-mist through a loveliest landscape, that steals +along with its meadow-sprinkling trees close to the very shore of Loch +Etive, binding the two lochs together with a sylvan band--her whose +calmer spirit never knows the ebb or flow of tide, and her who +fluctuates even when the skies are still with the swelling and subsiding +tumult duly sent up into and recalled down from the silence of her +inland solitude. And now for one pool in that river, called by eminence +the Salmon Pool, whose gravelly depths are sometimes paved with the blue +backs of the silver-scaled shiners, all strong as sunbeams, for a while +reposing there, till the river shall blacken in its glee to the floods +falling in Glen-Scrae and Glenorchy, and then will they shoot through +the cataract--for 'tis all one fall between the lochs--passionate of the +sweet fresh waters in which the Abbey-Isle reflects her one ruined +tower, or Kilchurn, at all times dim or dark in the shadow of Cruachan, +see his grim turrets, momentarily less grim, imaged in the tremblings of +the casual sunshine. Sometimes they lie like stones, nor, unless you +stir them up with a long pole, will they stir in the gleam, more than if +they were shadows breathed from trees when all winds are dead. But at +other times, they are on feed; and then no sooner does the fly drop on +the water in its blue and yellow gaudiness (and oh! but the brown +mallard wing is bloody--bloody!) than some snout sucks it in--some snout +of some swine-necked shoulder-bender; and instantly--as by dexterously +dropping your elbow you give him the butt, and strike the barb through +his tongue--down the long reach of the river vista'd along that straight +oak-avenue--but with clear space of greensward between wood and +water--shoots the giant steel-stung in his fear, bounding blue-white +into the air, and then down into the liquid element with a plunge as of +a man, or rather a horse, till your heart leaps to your mouth, or, as +the Greeks we believe used to say, to your nose, and you are seen +galloping along the banks, by spectators in search of the picturesque, +and ignorant of angling, supposed in the act of making your escape, with +an incomprehensible weapon in both hands, from some rural madhouse. + +Eh? eh? not in our hat--not in our waistcoat--not in our jacket--not in +our breeches! By the ghost of Autolycus some pickpocket, while we were +moralising, has abstracted our Lascelles! We may as well tie a stone to +each of our feet, and sink away from all sense of misery in the Salmon +Pool. Oh! that it had been our purse! Who cares for a dozen dirty +sovereigns and a score of nasty notes? And what's the use of them to us +now, or indeed at any time? And what's the use of this identical rod? +Hang it, if a little thing would not make us break it! A multiplying +reel, indeed! The invention of a fool. The Tent sees not us again; this +afternoon we shall return to Edinburgh. Don't talk to us of flies at the +next village. There are no flies at the village--there is no village. O +Beelzebub! O Satan! was ever man tempted as we are tempted? See--see a +Fish--a fine Fish--an enormous Fish--leaping to insult us! Give us our +gun that we may shoot him--no--no, dang guns--and dang this great clumsy +rod! There--let it lie there for the first person that passes--for we +swear never to angle more. As for the Awe, we never liked it--and wonder +what infatuation brought us here. We shall be made to pay for this +yet--whew! there was a twinge--that big toe of ours we'll warrant is as +red as fire, and we bitterly confess that we deserve the gout. Och! och! +och! + +But hark! whoop and hollo, and is that too the music of the hunter's +horn? Reverberating among the woods a well-known voice salutes our ear; +and there! bounds Hamish over the rocks like a chamois taking his +pastime. Holding up our LASCELLES! he places it with a few respectful +words--hoping we have not missed it--and standing aloof--leaves us to +our own reflections and our flies. Nor do those amount to remorse--nor +these to more than a few dozens. Samson's strength having been +restored--we speak of our rod, mind ye, not of ourselves--we lift up our +downcast eyes, and steal somewhat ashamed a furtive glance at the trees +and stones that must have overheard and overseen all our behaviour. We +leave those who have been in anything like the same predicament to +confess--not publicly--there is no occasion for that--nor on their +knees--but to their own consciences, if they have any, their grief and +their joy, their guilt, and, we hope, their gratitude. Transported +though they were beyond all bounds, we forgive them; for even those +great masters of wisdom, the Stoics, were not infallible, nor were they +always able to sustain, at their utmost strength, in practice the +principles of their philosophy. + +Phin! this Rod is thy masterpiece. And what Gut! _There she has it!_ +Reel-music for ever! Ten fathom are run out already--and see how she +shoots, Hamish;--such a somerset as that was never thrown from a +spring-board. Just the size for strength and agility--twenty pound to an +ounce--jimp weight, Hamish--ha! Harlequin art thou--or Columbine? +Assuredly neither Clown nor Pantaloon. Now we have turned her ladyship's +nose up the stream, her lungs, if she have any, must be beginning to +labour, and we almost hear her snore. What! in the sulks already--sullen +among the stones. But we shall make you mudge, madam, were we to tear +the very tongue out of your mouth. Ay, once more down the middle to the +tune of that spirited country-dance--"Off she goes!" Set corners, and +reel! The gaff, Hamish--the gaff! and the landing-net! For here is a +shallow of the silver sand, spreading into the bay of a ford--and ere +she recovers from her astonishment, here will we land her--with a strong +pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether--just on the edge of the +greensward--and then smite her on the shoulder, Hamish--and, to make +assurance doubly sure, the net under her tail, and hoist her aloft in +the sunshine, a glorious prize, dazzling the daylight, and giving a +brighter verdure to the woods. + +He who takes two hours to kill a fish--be its bulk what it may--is no +man, and is not worth his meat, nor the vital air. The proportion is a +minute to the pound. This rule were we taught by the "Best at Most" +among British sportsmen--Scrope the Matchless on moor, mountain, river, +loch, or sea; and with exquisite nicety have we now carried it into +practice. Away with your useless steelyards. Let us feel her teeth with +our forefinger, and then held out at arm's length--so--we know by +feeling, that she is, as we said soon as we saw her side, a +twenty-pounder to a drachm, and we have been true to time, within two +seconds. She has literally no head; but her snout is in her shoulders. +That is the beauty of a fish--high and round shoulders, short-waisted, +no loins, but all body, and not long of terminating--the shorter still +the better--in a tail sharp and pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent +in the sky. + +And lo, and behold! there is Diana--but not crescent--for round and +broad is she as the sun himself--shining in the south, with as yet a +needless light--for daylight has not gone down in the west--and we can +hardly call it gloaming. Chaste and cold though she seem, a nunlike +luminary who has just taken the veil--a transparent veil of fine fleecy +clouds--yet, alas! is she frail as of old, when she descended on the top +of Latmos, to hold dalliance with Endymion. She has absolutely the +appearance of being in the family way--and not far from her time. Lo! +two of her children stealing from ether towards her feet. One on her +right hand, and another on her left--the fairest daughters that ever +charmed mother's heart--and in heaven called stars. What a celestial +trio the three form in the sky! The face of the moon keeps brightening +as the lesser two twinkle into darker lustre; and now, though day is +still lingering, we feel that it is Night. When the one comes and when +the other goes, what eye can note, what tongue can tell--but what heart +feels not in the dewy hush divine--as the power of the beauty of earth +decays over us, and a still dream descends upon us in the power of the +beauty of heaven! + +But hark! the regular twang and dip of oars coming up the river--and lo! +indistinct in the distance, something moving through the moonshine--and +now taking the likeness of a boat--a barge--with bonneted heads leaning +back at every flashing stroke--and, Hamish, list! a choral song in thine +own dear native tongue! Sent hither by the Queen of the sea-fairies to +bear back in state Christopher North to the Tent? No. 'Tis the big coble +belonging to the tacksman of the Awe--and the crew are going to pull her +through the first few hours of the night--along with the flowing +tide--up to Kinloch-Etive, to try a cast with their long net at the +mouth of the river, now winding dim like a snake from King's House +beneath the Black Mount, and along the bays at the head of the Loch. A +rumour that we were on the river had reached them--and see an awning of +tartan over the stern, beneath which, as we sit, the sun may not smite +our head by day, nor the moon by night. We embark--and descending the +river like a dream, rapidly but stilly, and kept in the middle of the +current by cunning helmsman, without aid of idle oar, all six suspended, +we drop along through the sylvan scenery, gliding serenely away back +into the mountain-gloom, and enter into the wider moonshine trembling on +the wavy verdure of the foam-crested sea. May this be Loch-Etive? +Yea--verily; but so broad here is its bosom, and so far spreads the +billowy brightness, that we might almost believe that our bark was +bounding over the ocean, and marching merrily on the main. Are we--into +such a dream might fancy for a moment half beguile herself--rowing back, +after a day among the savage islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in +the offing, on a voyage of discovery round the world? + +Where are all the dogs? Ponto, Piro, Basta, trembling partly with cold, +partly with hunger, partly with fatigue, and partly with fear, among and +below the seats of the rowers--with their noses somewhat uncomfortably +laid between their fore-paws on the tarry timbers; but O'Bronte boldly +sitting at our side, and wistfully eyeing the green swell as it heaves +beautifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap overboard, and +wallow like a walrus in the brine, of which you might almost think he +was born and bred, so native seems the element to the "Dowg o' Dowgs." +Ay, these are sea-mews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in the +moonshine; but we _shall_ not shoot them--no--no--no--we _will_ not +shoot you, ye images of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly +attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts of the billows, in +motion quick almost as your slowest flight, while ye linger around, and +behind, and before our path, like fair spirits wiling us along up this +great Loch, farther and farther through gloom and glimmer, into the +heart of profounder solitude. On what errands of your own are ye +winnowing your way, stooping ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in +the waves, and then up into the open air--the blue light filling this +magnificent hollow--or seen glancing along the shadows of the mountains +as they divide the Loch into a succession of separate bays, and often +seem to block it up, till another moonlight reach is seen extending far +beyond, and carries the imagination on--on--on--into inland recesses +that seem to lose at last all connection with the forgotten sea. All at +once the moon is like a ghost;--and we believe--Heaven knows why--in the +authenticity of Ossian's Poems. + +Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We devoutly hope there was--for if +so, then there were a prodigious number of fine fellows, besides his +Bardship, who after their death figured away as their glimmering ghosts, +with noble effect, among the moonlight mists of the mountains. The +poetry of Ossian has, it is true, since the days of Macpherson, in no +way coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr Wordsworth, who has +written beautiful lines about the old Phantom, states that fact as an +argument against its authenticity. He thinks Ossian, as we now possess +him, no poet; and alleges, that if these compositions had been the good +things so many people have thought them, they would, in some way or +other, have breathed their spirit over the poetical genius of the land. +Who knows that they may not do so yet? The time may not have come. But +must all true poetry necessarily create imitation, and a school of +imitators? One sees no reason why it must. Besides, the life which the +poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly passed away; and the poetry +itself, good, bad, or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imitate +it at all you must almost transcribe it. That, for a good many years, +was often done, but naturally inspired any other feeling than delight or +admiration. But the simple question is, Do the poems of Ossian delight +greatly and widely? We think they do. Nor can we believe that they would +not still delight such a poet as Mr Wordsworth. What dreariness +overspreads them all! What a melancholy spirit shrouds all his heroes, +passing before us on the cloud, after all their battles have been +fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The very picture of the old +blind Hero-bard himself, often attended by the weeping virgins whom war +has made desolate, is always touching, often sublime. The desert is +peopled with lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap them with +ghosts, whose remembrances of this life are all dirge and elegy. True, +that the images are few and endlessly reiterated; but that, we suspect, +is the case with all poetry composed not in a philosophic age. The great +and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all +its purposes. The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his +hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same +strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any +greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived +and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we +suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think +dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and +mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, +and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no +tenderness--no pathos--no beauty? Alas for thousands of hearts and souls +if it be even so! For then are many of their holiest dreams worthless +all, and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of the understanding, +which a bit of philosophical criticism will purge away, as the leech's +phial does a disease of the blood. + +Macpherson's "Ossian," is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not--but +Christopher North says it is--with all reverence for the King. Let its +antiquity be given up--let such a state of society as is therein +described be declared impossible--let all the inconsistencies and +violations of nature ever charged against it be acknowledged--let all +its glaring plagiarisms from poetry of modern date inspire what derision +they may--and far worse the perpetual repetition of its own imbecilities +and inanities, wearying one down even to disgust and anger;--yet, in +spite of all, are we not made to feel, not only that we are among the +mountains, but to forget that there is any other world in existence, +save that which glooms and glimmers, and wails and raves around us in +mists and clouds, and storms and snows--full of lakes and rivers, +sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, with a sky as troublous as the +earth--yet both at times visited with a mournful beauty that sinks +strangely into the soul--while the shadowy life depictured there eludes +not our human sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they be--so sweet and +sad are their voices--do there float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or +unhonoured--single, or in bands--the ghosts of the brave and beautiful; +when the few stars are dim, and the moon is felt, not seen, to be +yielding what faint light there may be in the skies. + +The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not only so, but all the +mountains are bagpipes, and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes in the +world are here, and they fill heaven and earth. 'Tis no +exaggeration--much less a fiction--but the soul and body of truth. There +Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the boat hangs by midships on +the very point that commands all the echoes, he fills the whole night +with the "Campbells are coming," till the sky yells with the gathering +as of all the Clans. His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to catch +their emotions; his fingers cease their twinkling; and still that wild +gathering keeps playing of itself among the mountains--fainter and +fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, till it dies away far--far +off--as if in infinitude--sweet even and soft in its evanescence as some +lover's lute. + +We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters +the whole face of nature, confusing its most settled features, and with +a gentle glamoury blending with the greensward what once was the grey +granite, and investing with apparent woodiness what an hour ago was the +desolation of herbless cliffs--yet not all the changes that wondrous +nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could +metamorphose out of our recognition that Glen, in which, one +night--long--long ago-- + + "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!" + +we were visited by a dream--a dream that shadowed forth in its +inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life--the +graves--the tombs where many we loved are now buried--that churchyard, +where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest. + +But who shouts from the shore, Hamish--and now, as if through his +fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky? Ah, +ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. 'Tis +the schoolmaster of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat--kilted, +we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but +stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong +in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red +hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat, and followed it himself +like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties--my heroes--the +wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots +an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the lantern, +twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent. + +In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be +so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might, + + "Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!" + +A sound there is in the sea-green swell, and the hollows of the rocks, +that keep muttering and muttering, as their entrances feel the touch of +the tide. But nothing beneath the moon can be more solemn, now that her +aspect is so wan, and that some melancholy spirit has obscured the +lustre of the stars. We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry were +visiting our slumber. All is sad within us, yet why we know not; and the +sadness is stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost foolish +pastime, spent by a being who believes that he is immortal, and that +this life is but the threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and paltry +pastimes indeed are they all! But are they more so than those pursuits +of which the moral poet has sung, + + "The paths of glory lead but to the grave!" + +Methinks, now, as we are entering into a sabler mass of shadow, that the +doctrine of eternal punishment of sins committed in time--but-- + + "Here's a health to all good lasses, + Here's a health to all good lasses, + Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses; + Let the bumper toast go round, + Let the bumper toast go round!" + +Best on your oars, lads. Hamish! the quaich! give each man a caulker, +that his oar may send a bolder twang from its rollock, and our +fish-coble walk the waves like a man-of-war's gig, with the captain on +board, going ashore, after a long cruise, to meet his wife. Now she +spins! and lo! lights at Kinloch-Etive, and beyond on the breast of the +mountain, bright as Hesperus--the Pole-star of our Tent! + +Well, this is indeed the Londe of Faery! A car with a nag caparisoned at +the water edge! On with the roe, and in with Christopher and the Fish. +Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. After a cast or two, which, may they be +successful as the night is auspicious, your presence, gentlemen, will be +expected in the Tent. Now, Hamish, handle thou the ribbons--alias the +hair-tether--and we will touch him behind, should he linger, with a +weapon that might + + "Create a soul under the ribs of death." + +Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, as he carries us along a +fine natural causeway, like Ossian's car-borne heroes. From the size and +state of the stones over which we make such a clatter, we shrewdly +suspect that the parliamentary grant for destroying the old Highland +torrent-roads has not extended its ravages to Glen-Etive. O'Bronte, + + "Like panting Time, toils after us in vain;" + +and the pointers are following us by our own scent, and that of the roe, +in the distant darkness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise we shall +overshoot our mark, and meet with some accident or other, perhaps a +capsize on Buachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had no idea the +circle of greensward in front of the Tent was so spacious. Why, there is +room for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to turn with its eight +horses, and that enormous ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could +have made us think at this moment of London? Certes, the association of +ideas is a droll thing, and also sometimes most magnificent. Dancing in +the Tent, among strange figures! Celebration of the nuptials of some +Arab chief, in an oasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia! Heavens! +look at Tickler! How he hauls the Hizzies! There is no time to be +lost--he and the Admiral must not have all the sport to themselves; and, +by-and-by, spite of age and infirmity, we shall show the Tent a touch of +the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers! Christopher is upon +you--behold the Tenth Avatar incarnated in North. + +But what Apparitions at the Tent-door salute our approach? + + "Back step these two fair angels, half afraid + So suddenly to see the Griesly King!" + +Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Glencreran or Glenco, kilted to the +knee, and not unconscious of their ankles, one twinkle of which is +sufficient to bid "Begone dull care" for ever. One hand on a shoulder of +each of the mountain-nymphs--sweet liberties--and then embraced by both, +half in their arms, and half on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so +pleasantly let down from triumphal car, on the soft surface of his +mother-earth? Ay, there lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller +slain! But was there ever such a rush of dogs! We shall be extinguished. +Down, dogs, down--nay, ladies and gentlemen, be seated--on one another's +knees as before--we beseech you--we are but men like yourselves--and + + "Without the smile from partial beauty won, + Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun!" + +What it is to be the darling of gods and men, and women and children! +Why the very stars burn brighter--and thou, O Moon! art like the Sun. We +foresee a night of dancing and drinking--till the mountain-dew melt in +the lustre of morn. Such a day should have a glorious death--and a +glorious resurrection. Hurra! Hurra! + +THE MOORS FOR EVER! THE MOORS! THE MOORS! + + + + +HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM. + + +What do you mean by original genius? By that fine line in the "Pleasures +of Hope"-- + + "To muse on Nature with a poet's eye?" + +Why--genius--one kind of it at least--is transfusion of self into all +outward things. The genius that does that--naturally, but novelly--is +original; and now you know the meaning of one kind of original genius. +Have we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have you? Yea, both of Us. +Our spirits animate the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, smiles, +laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though +perhaps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to +drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus--and lo! +list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened +heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in +communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the +hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. +What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps that ever stung had been +revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We +are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be +seen any more than if we were in the middle of the sea. Yet a wan glare +shows that the snow-storm is strangely shadowed by superincumbent +cliffs; and though you cannot see, you _hear_ the mountains. Rendings +are going on, frequent, over your head--and all around the blind +wilderness--the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the +moanings, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were +angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the +cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning, and rooking and tossing of +old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate? + + "Red comes the river down, and loud and oft + The angry spirit of the water shrieks," + +more fearful than at midnight in this night-like day--whose meridian is +a total sun eclipse. The river runs by, blood-like, through the +snow--and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, +that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible--more and +more terrible--as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan--ere +long he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining +rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into +the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear +thunder, though you know that cannot be--but sublimer than thunder is +the nameless noise so like that of agonised life--that eddies far and +wide around--high and huge above--fear all the while being at the bottom +of your heart--an objectless, dim, dreary, undefinable fear, whose +troubled presence--if any mortal feeling be so--is sublime. Your +imagination is troubled, and dreams of death, but of no single corpse, +of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourself--for the Hut in which you +thus enjoy the storm is safer than the canopied cliff-calm of the +eagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from its deepest and darkest +foundations, and all that lay hidden there of the wild and wonderful, +the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and pathetic, is now upturned +in dim confusion, and imagination, working among the hoarded gatherings +of the heart, creates out of them moods kindred and congenial with the +hurricane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till +that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which +is heard, undergo alternate mutual transfiguration; and the blind +Roaring Day--at once substance, shadow, and soul--is felt to be one with +ourselves--the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive. + +We are in a Highland Hut--if we called it a Shieling we did so merely +because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once +brings to eye and ear--the rustling of leaves on a summer sylvan bower, +by simple art slightly changed from the form of the growth of nature, +or the waving of fern on the turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with +wildflowers and mosses, and moulded by one single season into a +knoll-like beauty, beside its guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all +evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the +Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet +Shieling-season, when, far away from all other human dwellings, on the +dip of some great mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journey-long +glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with +him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk +and cross--Luath his sole companion--his sole care the pasturing +herds--the sole sounds he hears the croak of the raven on the cliff, or +bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in +some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid +the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his +tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the +sunny, moonlight, starry months,--the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her +dying father gave into his arms--the old blind soldier--knowing that the +boy would shield her innocence when every blood-relation had been +buried--now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the +Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird--the happiest +of all living things--her own Ronald's dark-haired Bride. + +We are in a Highland Hut among a Highland Snow-storm--and all at once +amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of +Burns--the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound +pathos are they charged! + + "List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle; + I think me on the ourie cattle, + Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle + O' winter war, + And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, + Beneath a scaur! + + Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, + That, in the merry months o' spring, + Delighted me to hear thee sing, + What comes o' thee? + Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, + An' close thy ee? + + Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd, + Lone from your savage homes exiled, + The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd, + My heart forgets, + While pitiless the tempest wild + Sore on you beats." + +Burns is our Lowland bard--but poetry is poetry all over the world, when +streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of +inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes +of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the +Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm +that enshrouds the day. Ay--the one single door of this Hut--the one +single "winnock," does "rattle"--by fits--as the blast smites it, in +spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all round the buried +dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan--fear +has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle--and all the +other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the +meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent, +now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have +been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when +summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle +in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks +feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all +the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia--a realm of +wrath--woe--danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood--when +the bagpipe blows--is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The +limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of +battle within the shadow of the Pyramids, + + "Brought from the dust the sound of liberty," + +while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old +Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on "that +thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the +banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyrie the eagle's +wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night +imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand-in-hand as is their wont when +crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its +strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful +inland or the more wrathful sea. + + "They think upon the ourie cattle + And silly sheep," + +and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct. + +How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the +noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it,-- + + "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, + That, in the merry months o' spring, + Delighted me to hear thee sing, + What comes o' thee? + Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, + An' close thy ee?" + +The whole earth is for a moment green again--trees whisper--streamlets +murmur--and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her +groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those +sweet-singers are now dead--or that they "cow'r the chittering +wing"--never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the ee" +that shall never more be re-illumined with love, when the Season of +Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with +the survivors of some gentler climate. + +The poet's heart, humanised to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its +own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each +syllable tells--each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the +life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at +such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos +reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these +few simplest words,-- + + "My heart forgets, + While pitiless the tempest wild + Sore on you beats!" + +They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the "silly sheep;" but who knows +that they are not _sent_ on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear +has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about +to perish!--an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on +which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, +that we felt that interference providential--as if we had indeed seen +the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We +all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot +it--but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday. + +One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco--the families of +two brothers--seldom visiting each other on working-days--seldom meeting +even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk--seldom coming +together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these +are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken +together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each +family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible +threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two +dwellings together--as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to +another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings +were. _That_ in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered +rock--lown in all storms--with greensward and garden on a slope down to +a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once woefully reddened!) and +_growing_--so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge +stones that overshadow it--out of the earth. _That_ in Glencreran, more +conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between +mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when +the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark +indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old +oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan; +but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, +near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive; +and, except this old oak-like grove of pines, there is not a tree, and +hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are +kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a +perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light +is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts--for they are huts and no +more--and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the +beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your +heart--and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, +not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes +they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be +allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the +bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay. + +These Huts belonged to brothers--and each had an only child--a son and a +daughter--born on the same day--and now blooming on the verge of youth. +A year ago, and they were but mere children--but what wondrous growth of +frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before +our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn +and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought +closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most +sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the +sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins +grown up before their parents' eyes, Flora Macdonald--a name hallowed of +yore--the fairest, and Ranald Cameron, the boldest of all the living +flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday, +and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow. +Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and +Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the +many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of +February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, +so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same +hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the +happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the +smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water +glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along +the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place--a bank of birch-trees +beneath a cliff that takes its name from the Eagles. + +On their meeting seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly +inspired with joy and beauty? Insects unheard by them before, hummed and +glittered in the air--from tree-roots, where the snow was thin, little +flowers, or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were seen looking +out as if alive--the trees themselves seemed budding as if it were +already spring--and rare as in that rocky region are the birds of song, +a faint trill for a moment touched their ears, and the flutter of a +wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest. +Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills +unreached by the frost--and merry, thought they, was the music of these +contented prisoners. Not Summer's self, in its deepest green, so +beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of Winter; +and as their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen +before a sky of such perfect blue, a sun so gentle in its brightness, or +altogether a week-day in any season, so like a Sabbath in its stillness, +so like a holyday in its joy! Lovers were they--although as yet they +scarcely knew it; for from love only could have come such bliss as now +was theirs, a bliss that while it beautified was felt to come from the +skies. + +Flora sang to Ranald many of her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs +that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the +branches of storm-tossed trees when the subsiding tempest is about to +let them rest. Monotonous music! But irresistible over the heart it has +once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it +breathes--a mournfulness brooding and feeding on the same note that is +at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment--of which the +singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is +haunted by all that is most piteous, by the faces of the dead in their +paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may +pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears! + +How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to +see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of +great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea--tales which +he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over +Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of +blood! + + "The sun sat high in his meridian tower," + +but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings +believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they +had met in the prime of the morn! + +The boy starts to his feet--and his keen eye looks along the ready +rifle--for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion +of the chase was hereditary in his blood, Lo! a deer from Dalness, +hound-driven or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, +then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and then away--away! The +rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the +animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh! +for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering +heavily along, the snow spotted as he bounds with blood, the huge animal +at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me, +Flora!" the boy-hunter cries--and flinging down their plaids, they turn +their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the +stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl--and Ranald, as he ever and +anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion +as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and +more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the +deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off--now standing at +bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the +forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd +while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly +to him with my rifle--and shoot him through the heart!" + +Up--up--up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round +many a jutting promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer +kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then, +for some hundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while the boy, +maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more +looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was +hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion--till at last he struck +the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air +was spurned by the convulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald upon +the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lifted up a look of triumph to +the mountain-tops. + +Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her--and he is alone--nor knows +it--he and the Red-deer--an enormous animal--fast stiffening in the +frost of death. + +Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and they seem to waver and +whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and +faster--the flakes are almost as large as leaves--and overhead whence so +suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are you? where +are you, Flora?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that +no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck far off upon the snow! +'Tis she--'tis she--and again Ranald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and +the heart of the hunter burns within him like a new-stirred fire. Shrill +as the eagle's cry disturbed in his eyrie, he sends a shout down the +glen--and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last at his +side. Panting and speechless she stands--and then dizzily sinks on his +breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face +all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not falling but driven--for the +day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the skies are now +lowering savage symptoms of a fast-coming night-storm. + +Bare is poor Flora's head, and sorely drenched her hair, that an hour or +two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the +warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had +kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would +the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in +his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! "Oh! Flora! +if you would not fear to stay here by yourself--under the protection of +God, who surely will not forsake you--soon will I go and come from the +place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we +may be able to outlive the hurricane--you wrapped up in them--and +folded--O my dearest sister--in my arms!"--"I will go with you down the +glen, Ranald!" and she left his breast--but, weak as a day-old lamb, +tottered and sank down on the snow. The cold--intense as if the air were +ice--had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race; and +it was manifest that here she must be for the night--to live or to die. +And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while +the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring +long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a +sea-born tempest from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both knew the tide +was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow-blasts from afar; and +from the opposite quarter of the sky an inland tempest was raging to +meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all +hands they were environed with death. + +"I will go--and, till I return, leave you with God."--"Go, Ranald!" and +he went and came--as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings! + +Miles away--and miles back had he flown--and an hour had not been with +his going and his coming--but what a dreary wretchedness meanwhile had +been hers! She feared that she was dying--that the cold snow-storm was +killing her--and that she would never more see Ranald, to say to him +farewell. Soon as he was gone, all her courage had died. Alone, she +feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus +miserably to die. He came--and her whole being was changed. Folded up in +both the plaids, she felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me--kiss me, Ranald--for +your love--great as it is--is not as my love. You must never forget me, +Ranald--when your poor Flora is dead." + +Religion with these two young creatures was as clear as the light of the +Sabbath-day--and their belief in heaven just the same as in earth. The +will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parents' +will--and the same was their loving obedience to its decrees. If she was +to die--supported now by the presence of her brother--Flora was utterly +resigned; if she were to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms +of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes--ceased +breathing--and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell +around them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, thinking that she +was dead. + +"Wretched sinner that I am!--my wicked madness brought her here to die +of cold!" And he smote his breast--and tore his hair--and feared to look +up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm. + +All at once, without speaking a word, Ranald lifted Flora in his arms, +and walked away up the glen--here almost narrowed into a pass. +Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that +of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly +remembered, were but a short way off--whether or not they had any roof, +he had forgotten; but the thought even of such shelter seemed a thought +of salvation. There it was--a snow-drift at the opening that had once +been a door--snow up the holes once windows--the wood of the roof had +been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if +they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was +all trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low +lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the +hurricane, and that all huddled together looked on him as on the +shepherd come to see how they were faring in the storm. + +And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms. +All colour--all motion--all breath seemed to be gone--and yet something +convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, +but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung as a +sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in +cruel weather--some pine-branches left by the woodcutters who had felled +the few trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that +corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there +with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of +his distracted heart might be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse. +The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, +and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place +in which it seemed possible that she might revive--miserable as it was +with mire-mixed snow--and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And +she did revive--and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be +not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the afternoon--night-like though +it was--and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red +returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death +away. + +"Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I dreamt to-night he was perishing +in the snow!"--"Flora, fear not--God is with us." "Wild swans, they say, +are come to Loch-Phoil--let us go, Ranald, and see them--but no +rifle--for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where +they lay bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way +beneath the increasing weight;--but there it still hung--though the +drift came over their feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing +upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and +fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me--and what noise is +this in our house?"--"Fear not--fear not, Flora--God is with us." +"Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm! +Oh! I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these +Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep--which soon becomes that +of death. + +Night itself came--but Flora and Ranald knew it not--and both lay now +motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions--though earth-born, +heavenly all--pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last +despair--had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the +brave boy--who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a +fever--with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore +afraid of some nameless ill, had submitted to lay down his head beside +his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and +all its storms! + +Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco--and +they were among the happiest of the humbly happy, blessing this the +birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet +songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran--and tender thoughts of +her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to +their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own +ghosts, and all its own ghost-like visitings, and they had seen their +Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the +quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too Love, who starts at +shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to +realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the +dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left +them in the morning--night had come, and he and Flora were not +there--but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their +infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed +their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had +laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by +bringing back to them Flora on her birthday--and, strange though it +afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear +from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay +down in untroubled sleep. + +And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good +or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? +As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the +inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's +House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions +where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the +long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buachaille-Etive and the Black +Mount, towards the lone House of Dalness, that lives in everlasting +shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred +frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength--and then away over the +drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with their sheep-dogs +scouring the loose snows--in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his +head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the Correi where last +he tasted blood. All "plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds +laughed at the storm--and hark! you hear the bagpipe play--the music the +Highlanders love both in war and in peace. + + "They think then of the ourie cattle, + And silly sheep;" + +and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night--for the snow-storm will +sweep her out of heaven--up the mountain and down the glen they go, +marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at +nightfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth +where once stood the old Grove of Pines. Following the dogs, who know +their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now +close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so--and why howls +Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead +body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest, when the +antlers went by! Not dead--nor dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in +both is frozen--and will the iced blood in their veins ever again be +thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the roofless ruin--and the frightened sheep +know not what is the terrible Shape that is howling there. But a man +enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of them +at the doorway--and then lifts up the other; and, by the flash of a +rifle, they see that it is Ranald Cameron and Flora Macdonald, +seemingly both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds +burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured +that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not +there--and licks the face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to his +eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their +plaids--how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the +field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and +wounded, they bore away the shattered body--yet living--of the youthful +warrior, who had shown that of such a Clan, he was worthy to be the +Chief. + +The storm was with them all the way down the glen--nor could they have +heard each other's voices had they spoke--but mutely they shifted the +burden from strong hand to hand--thinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of +what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind +people walk through what to them is the night of crowded +daystreets--unpausing turn round corners--unhesitatingly plunge down +steep stairs--wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life--and +reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For +God is with the blind. So is he with all who walk on works of mercy. +This saving band had no fear--and therefore there was no danger--on the +edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the +mountains shown momentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful +night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow +at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The +dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did +not deceive them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct were guides +that erred not, and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves did +Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way, as +if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting +their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges +were--stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the +wild-fowl feed. And thus Instinct, and Reason, and Faith conducted the +saving band along--and now they are at Glenco--and at the door of the +Hut. + +To life were brought the dead; and there at midnight sat they up like +ghosts. Strange seemed they--for a while--to each other's eyes--and at +each other they looked as if they had forgotten how dearly once they +loved. Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each other's faces, +thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. "Flora!" said +Ranald--and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, +reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom +they had put their trust had sent them deliverance. Flora, too, knew her +parents, who were on their knees--and she strove to rise up and kneel +down beside them--but she was powerless as a broken reed--and when she +thought to join with them in thanksgiving, her voice was gone. Still as +death sat all the people in the hut--and one or two who were fathers +were not ashamed to weep. + +Who were they--the solitary pair--all alone by themselves save a small +image of her on whose breast it lay--whom--seven summers after--we came +upon in our wanderings, before their Shieling in Correi-Vollach at the +foot of Ben Chrulas, who sees his shadow in a hundred lochs? Who but +Ranald and Flora! + + * * * * * + +Nay, dry up--Daughter of our Age, dry up thy tears! and we shall set a +vision before thine eyes to fill them with unmoistened light. + +Oft before have those woods and waters--those clouds and mountains--that +sun and sky, held thy spirit in Elysium,--thy spirit, that then was +disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glory of the elements. +'TIS WINDERMERE--WINDERMERE! Never canst thou have forgotten those more +than fortunate--those thrice-blessed Isles! But when last we saw them +within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, summer suns had overloaded +them with beauty, and they stooped their flowers and foliage down to the +blushing, the burning deep, that glowed in its transparency with other +groves as gorgeous as themselves, the whole mingling mass of reality and +of shadow forming one creation. But now, lo! Windermere in Winter. All +leafless now the groves that girdled her as if shifting rainbows were in +love perpetually letting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. Gone +now are her banks of emerald that carried our calm gazings with them, +sloping away back into the cerulean sky. Her mountains, shadowy in +sunshine, and seeming restless as seas, where are they now?--The +cloud-cleaving cliffs that shot up into the blue region where the +buzzard sailed? All gone. But mourn not for that loss. Accustom thine +eye--and through it thy soul, to that transcendent substitution, and +deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou ever the bosom of the Lake +hushed into profounder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides through the +sunshine--no clanking oar is heard leaving or approaching cape, point, +or bay--no music of voice, stop, or string, wakens the sleeping echoes. +How strangely dim and confused on the water the fantastic frostwork +imagery, yet more steadfastly hanging there than ever hung the banks of +summer! For all one sheet of ice, now clear as the Glass of Glamoury in +which that lord of old beheld his Geraldine--is Windermere, the +heaven-loving and the heaven-beloved. Not a wavelet murmurs in all her +bays, from the sylvan Brathay to where the southern straits narrow into +a river--now chained too the Leven on his sylvan course towards that +perilous Estuary afar off raging on its wreck-strewn sands. The frost +came after the last fall of snow--and not a single flake ever touched +that surface; and now that you no longer miss the green twinkling of the +large July leaves, does not imagination love those motionless frozen +forests, cold but not dead, serene but not sullen, inspirative in the +strangeness of their appareling of wild thoughts about the scenery of +foreign climes, far away among the regions of the North, where Nature +works her wonders aloof from human eyes, and that wild architect Frost, +during the absence of the sun, employs his night of months in building +and dissolving his ice-palaces, magnificent beyond the reach of any +power set to work at the bidding of earth's crowned and sceptred kings? +All at once a hundred houses, high up among the hills, seem on fire. The +setting sun has smitten them, and the snow-tracts are illuminated by +harmless conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted up by a lurid +splendour, in its strong suddenness sublime. But look, look we beseech +you, at the sun--the sunset--the sunset region--and all that kindred and +corresponding heaven, effulgent where a minute ago lay in its cold +glitter the blue bosom of the lake. Who knows the laws of light and the +perpetual miracle of their operation? God--not thou. The snow-mountains +are white no more, but gorgeous in their colouring as the clouds. Lo! +Pavey-Ark--magnificent range of cliffs--seeming to come forward, while +you gaze!--How it glows with a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers +decked the precipice in that delicate splendour! Langdale-Pikes, +methinks, are tinged with finest purple, and the thought of violets is +with us as we gaze on the tinted bosom of the mountains dearest to the +setting sun. But that long broad slip of orange-coloured sky is +yellowing with its reflection almost all the rest of our Alps--all but +yon stranger--the summit of some mountain belonging to another +region--ay--the Great Gabel--silent now as sleep--when last we clomb his +cliffs, thundering in the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud he +stands pallid like a ghost. Beyond the reach of the setting sun he lours +in his exclusion from the rejoicing light, and imagination personifying +his solitary vastness into forsaken life, pities the doom of the forlorn +Giant. Ha! just as the eye of day is about to shut, one smile seems sent +afar to that lonesome mountain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his +forehead. + +On which of the two sunsets art thou now gazing? Thou who art to our old +loving eyes so like the "mountain nymph, sweet Liberty?" On the sunset +in the heaven--or the sunset in the lake? The divine truth is--O +Daughter of our Age!--that both sunsets are but visions of our own +spirits. Again both are gone from the outward world--and nought remains +but a forbidding frown of the cold bleak snow. But imperishable in thy +imagination will both sunsets be--and though it will sometimes retire +into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there among the unsuspected +treasures of forgotten imagery that have been unconsciously accumulating +there since first those gentle eyes of thine had perfect vision given to +their depths--yet mysteriously brought back from vanishment by some one +single silent thought, to which power has been yielded over that bright +portion of the Past, will both of them sometimes reappear to thee in +solitude--or haply when in the very heart of life. And then surely a few +tears will fall for sake of him--then no more seen--by whose side thou +stoodest, when that double sunset enlarged thy sense of beauty, and made +thee in thy father's eyes the sweetest--best--and brightest +poetess--whose whole life is musical inspiration--ode, elegy, and hymn, +sung not in words but in looks--sigh-breathed or speechlessly distilled +in tears flowing from feelings the farthest in this world from grief. + +So much, though but little, for the beautiful--with, perhaps, a tinge of +the sublime. Are the two emotions different and distinct--think'st thou, +O! metaphysical critic of the gruesome countenance--or modifications of +one and the same? 'Tis a puzzling question--and we, Sphinx, might wait +till doomsday, before you, Oedipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly +a Rose is one thing and Mount Ętna is another--an antelope and an +elephant--an insect and a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun--a little +lucid well in which the fairies bathe, and the Polar Sea in which +Leviathan is "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait"--the jewelled +finger of a virgin bride, and grim Saturn with his ring--the upward eye +of a kneeling saint, and a comet "that from his horrid hair shakes +pestilence and war." But let the rose bloom on the mouldering ruins of +the palace of some great king--among the temples of Balbec or Syrian +Tadmor--and in its beauty, methinks, 'twill be also sublime. See the +antelope bounding across a raging chasm--up among the region of eternal +snows on Mont Blanc--and deny it, if you please--but assuredly we think +that there is sublimity in the fearless flight of that beautiful +creature, to whom nature grudged not wings, but gave instead the power +of plumes to her small delicate limbs, unfractured by alighting among +the pointed rocks. All alone, by your single solitary self, in some +wide, lifeless desert, could you deny sublimity to the unlooked-for hum +of the tiniest insect, or to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his +gauze-wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to quench your thirst in +that little lucid well where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the +image of the evening star shining in some strange subterranean world? We +suspect that you would hold in your breath, and swear devoutly that it +was sublime. Dead on the very evening of her marriage day is that virgin +bride whose delicacy was so beautiful; and as she lies in her white +wedding garments that serve for a shroud, that emblem of eternity and of +eternal love, the ring, upon her finger--with its encased star shining +brightly now that her eyes, once stars, are closed--would, methinks, be +sublime to all Christian hearts. In comparison with all these beautiful +sublimities, Mount Ętna, the elephant, the man-of-war, Leviathan +swimming the ocean-stream, Saturn with his ring, and with his horrid +hair the comet--might be all less than nothings. Therefore beauty and +sublimity are twin-feelings--one and the same birth--seldom +inseparable;--if you still doubt it, become a fire-worshipper, and sing +your morning and evening orisons to the rising and the setting sun. + + + + +THE HOLY CHILD. + + +This house of ours is a prison--this Study of ours a cell. Time has laid +his fetters on our feet--fetters fine as the gossamer, but strong as +Samson's ribs, silken-soft to wise submission, but to vain impatience +galling as cankered wound that keeps ceaselessly eating into the bone. +But while our bodily feet are thus bound by an inevitable and inexorable +law, our mental wings are free as those of the lark, the dove, or the +eagle--and they shall be expanded as of yore, in calm or tempest, now +touching with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved earth, and now +aspiring heavenwards, beyond the realms of mist and cloud, even unto the +very core of the still heart of that otherwise unapproachable sky which +graciously opens to receive us on our flight, when, disencumbered of the +burden of all grovelling thoughts, and strong in spirituality, we exult +to soar + + "Beyond this visible diurnal sphere," + +nearing and nearing the native region of its own incomprehensible being. + +Now touching, we said, with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved +earth! How sweet that attraction to imagination's wings! How delightful +in that lower flight to skim along the green ground, or as now along the +soft-bosomed beauty of the virgin snow! We were asleep all night +long--sound asleep as children--while the flakes were falling, "and soft +as snow on snow" were all the descendings of our untroubled dreams. The +moon and all her stars were willing that their lustre should be veiled +by that peaceful shower; and now the sun, pleased with the purity of the +morning earth, all white as innocence, looks down from heaven with a +meek unmelting light, and still leaves undissolved the stainless +splendour. There is Frost in the air--but he "does his spiriting +gently," studding the ground-snow thickly with diamonds, and shaping the +tree-snow according to the peculiar and characteristic beauty of the +leaves and sprays, on which it has alighted almost as gently as the dews +of spring. You know every kind of tree still by its own spirit showing +itself through that fairy veil--momentarily disguised from +recognition--but admired the more in the sweet surprise with which again +your heart salutes its familiar branches, all fancifully ornamented with +their snow-foliage, that murmurs not like the green leaves of summer, +that like the yellow leaves of autumn strews not the earth with decay, +but often melts away into changes so invisible and inaudible, that you +wonder to find that it is all vanished, and to see the old tree again +standing in its own faint-green glossy bark, with its many million buds, +which perhaps fancy suddenly expands into a power of umbrage +impenetrable to the sun in Scorpio. + +A sudden burst of sunshine! bringing back the pensive spirit from the +past to the present, and kindling it, till it dances like light +reflected from a burning mirror. A cheerful Sun-scene, though almost +destitute of life. An undulating Landscape, hillocky and hilly, but not +mountainous, and buried under the weight of a day and night's incessant +and continuous snow-fall. The weather has not been windy--and now that +the flakes have ceased falling, there is not a cloud to be seen, except +some delicate braidings here and there along the calm of the Great Blue +Sea of Heaven. Most luminous is the sun, yet you can look straight on +his face, almost with unwinking eyes, so mild and mellow is his large +light as it overflows the day. All enclosures have disappeared, and you +indistinctly ken the greater landmarks, such as a grove, a wood, a hall, +a castle, a spire, a village, a town--the faint haze of a far-off and +smokeless city. Most intense is the silence; for all the streams are +dumb, and the great river lies like a dead serpent in the strath. Not +dead--for, lo! yonder one of his folds glitters--and in the glitter you +see him moving--while all the rest of his sullen length is palsied by +frost, and looks livid and more livid at every distant and more distant +winding. What blackens on that tower of snow? Crows roosting innumerous +on a huge tree--but they caw not in their hunger. Neither sheep nor +cattle are to be seen or heard--but they are cared for;--the folds and +the farmyards are all full of life--and the ungathered stragglers are +safe in their instincts. There has been a deep fall--but no storm--and +the silence, though partly that of suffering, is not that of death. +Therefore, to the imagination, unsaddened by the heart, the repose is +beautiful. The almost unbroken uniformity of the scene--its simple and +grand monotony--lulls all the thoughts and feelings into a calm, over +which is breathed the gentle excitation of a novel charm, inspiring many +fancies, all of a quiet character. Their range, perhaps, is not very +extensive, but they all regard the home-felt and domestic charities of +life. And the heart burns as here and there some human dwelling +discovers itself by a wreath of smoke up the air, or as the +robin-redbreast, a creature that is ever at hand, comes flitting before +your path with an almost pert flutter of his feathers, bold from the +acquaintanceship he has formed with you in severer weather at the +threshold or window of the tenement, which for years may have been the +winter sanctuary of the "bird whom man loves best," and who bears a +Christian name in every clime he inhabits. Meanwhile the sun waxes +brighter and warmer in heaven--some insects are in the air, as if that +moment called to life--and the mosses that may yet be visible here and +there along the ridge of a wall or on the stem of a tree, in variegated +lustre frost-brightened, seem to delight in the snow, and in no other +season of the year to be so happy as in winter. Such gentle touches of +pleasure animate one's whole being, and connect, by many a fine +association, the emotions inspired by the objects of animate and of +inanimate nature. + +Ponder on the idea--the emotion of purity--and how finely soul-blent is +the delight imagination feels in a bright hush of new-fallen snow! Some +speck or stain--however slight--there always seems to be on the most +perfect whiteness of any other substance--or "dim suffusion veils" it +with some faint discolour--witness even the leaf of the lily or the +rose. Heaven forbid that we should ever breathe aught but love and +delight in the beauty of these consummate flowers! But feels not the +heart, even when the midsummer morning sunshine is melting the dews on +their fragrant bosoms, that their loveliness is "of the earth +earthy"--faintly tinged or streaked, when at the very fairest, with a +hue foreboding languishment and decay? Not the less for its sake are +those soulless flowers dear to us--thus owning kindred with them whose +beauty is all soul enshrined for a short while on that perishable face. +Do we not still regard the insensate flowers--so emblematical of what, +in human life, we do most passionately love and profoundly pity--with a +pensive emotion, often deepening into melancholy that sometimes, ere the +strong fit subsides, blackens into despair! What pain doubtless was in +the heart of the Elegiac Poet of old, when he sighed over the transitory +beauty of flowers-- + + "Conquerimur natura brevis quam gratia Florum!" + +But over a perfectly pure expanse of night-fallen snow, when unaffected +by the gentle sun, the first fine frost has encrusted it with small +sparkling diamonds, the prevalent emotion is Joy. There is a charm in +the sudden and total disappearance even of the grassy green. All the +"old familiar faces" of nature are for a while out of sight, and out of +mind. That white silence shed by heaven over earth carries with it, far +and wide, the pure peace of another region--almost another life. No +image is there to tell of this restless and noisy world. The +cheerfulness of reality kindles up our reverie ere it becomes a dream; +and we are glad to feel our whole being complexioned by the passionless +repose. If we think at all of human life, it is only of the young, the +fair, and the innocent. "Pure as snow," are words then felt to be most +holy, as the image of some beautiful and beloved being comes and goes +before our eyes--brought from a far distance in this our living world, +or from a distance further still in a world beyond the grave--the image +of virgin growing up sinlessly to womanhood among her parents' prayers, +or of some spiritual creature who expired long ago, and carried with her +her native innocence unstained to heaven. + +Such Spiritual Creature--too spiritual long to sojourn below the +skies--wert Thou--whose rising and whose setting--both most +starlike--brightened at once all thy native vale, and at once left it in +darkness. Thy name has long slept in our heart--and there let it sleep +unbreathed--even as, when we are dreaming our way through some solitary +place, without naming it we bless the beauty of some sweet wildflower, +pensively smiling to us through the snow. + +The Sabbath returns on which, in the little kirk among the hills, we saw +thee baptised. Then comes a wavering glimmer of five sweet years, that +to Thee, in all their varieties, were but as one delightful season, one +blessed life--and, finally, that other Sabbath, on which, at thy own +dying request--between services thou wert buried. + +How mysterious are all thy ways and workings, O gracious Nature! Thou +who art but a name given by us to the Being in whom all things are and +have life. Ere three years old, she, whose image is now with us, all +over the small sylvan world that beheld the evanescent revelation of her +pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of Sin--inherited +from those who disobeyed in Paradise--seemed from her fair clay to have +been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. +So pious people almost believed, looking on her so unlike all other +children, in the serenity of that habitual smile that clothed the +creature's countenance with a wondrous beauty, at an age when on other +infants is but faintly seen the dawn of reason, and their eyes look +happy just like the thoughtless flowers. So unlike all other +children--but unlike only because sooner than they she seemed to have +had given to her, even in the communion of the cradle, an intimation of +the being and the providence of God. Sooner, surely, than through any +other clay that ever enshrouded immortal spirit, dawned the light of +religion on the face of the "Holy Child." + +Her lisping language was sprinkled with words alien from common +childhood's uncertain speech, that murmurs only when indigent nature +prompts; and her own parents wondered whence they came, when first they +looked upon her kneeling in an unbidden prayer. As one mild week of +vernal sunshine covers the braes with primroses, so shone with fair and +fragrant feelings--unfolded, ere they knew, before her parents' +eyes--the divine nature of her who for a season was lent to them from +the skies. She learned to read out of the Bible--almost without any +teaching--they knew not how--just by looking gladly on the words, even +as she looked on the pretty daisies on the green--till their meanings +stole insensibly into her soul, and the sweet syllables, succeeding each +other on the blessed page, were all united by the memories her heart had +been treasuring every hour that her father or her mother had read aloud +in her hearing from the Book of Life. "Suffer little children to come +unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of +heaven"--how wept her parents, as these the most affecting of our +Saviour's words dropt silver-sweet from her lips, and continued in her +upward eyes among the swimming tears! + +Be not incredulous of this dawn of reason, wonderful as it may seem to +you, so soon becoming morn--almost perfect daylight--with the "Holy +Child." Many such miracles are set before us--but we recognise them not, +or pass them by with a word or a smile of short surprise. How leaps the +baby in its mother's arms, when the mysterious charm of music thrills +through its little brain! And how learns it to modulate its feeble +voice, unable yet to articulate, to the melodies that bring forth all +round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows what then may be the +thoughts and feelings of the infant awakened to the sense of a new +world, alive through all its being to sounds that haply glide past our +ears unmeaning as the breath of the common air! Thus have mere infants +sometimes been seen inspired by music, till, like small genii, they +warbled spell-strains of their own, powerful to sadden and subdue our +hearts. So, too, have infant eyes been so charmed by the rainbow +irradiating the earth, that almost infant hands have been taught, as if +by inspiration, the power to paint in finest colours, and to imitate +with a wondrous art, the skies so beautiful to the quick-awakened spirit +of delight. What knowledge have not some children acquired, and gone +down scholars to their small untimely graves! Knowing that such things +have been--are--and will be--why art thou incredulous of the divine +expansion of soul, so soon understanding the things that are divine--in +the "Holy Child?" + +Thus grew she in the eye of God, day by day waxing wiser and wiser in +the knowledge that tends towards the skies; and, as if some angel +visitant were nightly with her in her dreams, awakening every morn with +a new dream of thought, that brought with it a gift of more +comprehensive speech. Yet merry she was at times with her companions +among the woods and braes, though while they all were laughing, she only +smiled; and the passing traveller, who might pause for a moment to bless +the sweet creatures in their play, could not but single out one face +among the many fair, so pensive in its paleness, a face to be +remembered, coming from afar, like a mournful thought upon the hour of +joy. + +Sister or brother of her own had she none--and often both her +parents--who lived in a hut by itself up among the mossy stumps of the +old decayed forest--had to leave her alone--sometimes even all the day +long from morning till night. But she no more wearied in her +solitariness than does the wren in the wood. All the flowers were her +friends--all the birds. The linnet ceased not his song for her, though +her footsteps wandered into the green glade among the yellow broom, +almost within reach of the spray from which he poured his melody--the +quiet eyes of his mate feared her not when her garments almost touched +the bush where she brooded on her young. Shyest of the winged sylvans, +the cushat clapped not her wings away on the soft approach of such +harmless footsteps to the pine that concealed her slender nest. As if +blown from heaven, descended round her path the showers of the painted +butterflies, to feed, sleep, or die--undisturbed by her--upon the +wildflowers--with wings, when motionless, undistinguishable from the +blossoms. And well she loved the brown, busy, blameless bees, come +thither for the honey-dews from a hundred cots sprinkled all over the +parish, and all high overhead sailing away at evening, laden and +wearied, to their straw-roofed steps in many a hamlet garden. The leaf +of every tree, shrub, and plant, she knew familiarly and lovingly in its +own characteristic beauty; and she was loth to shake one dewdrop from +the sweetbrier rose. And well she knew that all nature loved in +return--that they were dear to each other in their innocence--and that +the very sunshine, in motion or in rest, was ready to come at the +bidding of her smiles. Skilful those small white hands of hers among the +reeds and rushes and osiers--and many a pretty flower-basket grew +beneath their touch, her parents wondering on their return home to see +the handiwork of one who was never idle in her happiness. Thus +early--ere yet but five years old--did she earn her mite for the +sustenance of her own beautiful life. The russet garb she wore she +herself had won--and thus Poverty, at the door of that hut, became even +like a Guardian Angel, with the lineaments of heaven on her brow, and +the quietude of heaven beneath her feet. + +But these were but her lonely pastimes, or gentle taskwork self-imposed +among her pastimes, and itself the sweetest of them all, inspired by a +sense of duty that still brings with it its own delight, and hallowed +by religion, that even in the most adverse lot changes slavery into +freedom--till the heart, insensible to the bonds of necessity, sings +aloud for joy. The life within the life of the "Holy Child," apart from +even such innocent employments as these, and from such recreations as +innocent, among the shadows and the sunshine of those sylvan haunts, was +passed--let us fear not to say the truth, wondrous as such worship was +in one so very young--was passed in the worship of God; and her +parents--though sometimes even saddened to see such piety in a small +creature like her, and afraid, in their exceeding love, that it +betokened an early removal from this world of one too perfectly pure +ever to be touched by its sins and sorrows--forbore, in an awful pity, +ever to remove the Bible from her knees, as she would sit with it there, +not at morning and at evening only, or all the Sabbath long, as soon as +they returned from the kirk, but often through all the hours of the +longest and sunniest weekdays, when, had she chosen to do so, there was +nothing to hinder her from going up the hill-side, or down to the little +village, to play with the other children, always too happy when she +appeared--nothing to hinder her but the voice she heard speaking in that +Book, and the hallelujahs that, at the turning over of each blessed +page, came upon the ear of the "Holy Child" from white-robed saints all +kneeling before His throne in heaven. + +Her life seemed to be the same in sleep. Often at midnight, by the light +of the moon shining in upon her little bed beside theirs, her parents +leant over her face, diviner in dreams, and wept as she wept, her lips +all the while murmuring, in broken sentences of prayer, the name of Him +who died for us all. But plenteous as were her penitential +tears--penitential in the holy humbleness of her stainless spirit, over +thoughts that had never left a dimming breath on its purity, yet that +seemed in those strange visitings to be haunting her as the shadows of +sins--soon were they all dried up in the lustre of her returning smiles. +Waking, her voice in the kirk was the sweetest among many sweet, as all +the young singers, and she the youngest far, sat together by themselves, +and within the congregational music of the psalm uplifted a silvery +strain that sounded like the very spirit of the whole, even like +angelic harmony blent with a mortal song. But sleeping, still more +sweetly sang the "Holy Child;" and then, too, in some diviner +inspiration than ever was granted to it while awake, her soul composed +its own hymns, and set the simple scriptural words to its own mysterious +music--the tunes she loved best gliding into one another, without once +ever marring the melody, with pathetic touches interposed never heard +before, and never more to be renewed! For each dream had its own +breathing, and many-visioned did then seem to be the sinless creature's +sleep. + +The love that was borne for her all over the hill-region, and beyond its +circling clouds, was almost such as mortal creatures might be thought to +feel for some existence that had visibly come from heaven. Yet all who +looked on her, saw that she, like themselves, was mortal, and many an +eye was wet, the heart wist not why, to hear such wisdom falling from +such lips; for dimly did it prognosticate, that as short as bright would +be her walk from the cradle to the grave. And thus for the "Holy Child" +was their love elevated by awe, and saddened by pity--and as by herself +she passed pensively by their dwellings, the same eyes that smiled on +her presence, on her disappearance wept. + +Not in vain for others--and for herself, oh! what great gain!--for those +few years on earth did that pure spirit ponder on the word of God! Other +children became pious from their delight in her piety--for she was +simple as the simplest among them all, and walked with them hand in +hand, nor declined companionship with any one that was good. But all +grew good by being with her--and parents had but to whisper her name, +and in a moment the passionate sob was hushed--the lowering brow +lighted--and the household in peace. Older hearts owned the power of the +piety so far surpassing their thoughts; and time-hardened sinners, it is +said, when looking and listening to the "Holy Child," knew the error of +their ways, and returned to the right path as at a voice from heaven. + +Bright was her seventh summer--the brightest, so the aged said, that had +ever, in man's memory, shone over Scotland. One long, still, sunny, blue +day followed another, and in the rainless weather, though the dews kept +green the hills, the song of the streams was low. But paler and paler, +in sunlight and moonlight, became the sweet face that had been always +pale; and the voice that had been always something mournful, breathed +lower and sadder still from the too perfect whiteness of her breast. No +need--no fear--to tell her that she was about to die. Sweet whispers had +sung it to her in her sleep--and waking she knew it in the look of the +piteous skies. But she spoke not to her parents of death more than she +had often done--and never of her own. Only she seemed to love them with +a more exceeding love--and was readier, even sometimes when no one was +speaking, with a few drops of tears. Sometimes she disappeared--nor, +when sought for, was found in the woods about the hut. And one day that +mystery was cleared; for a shepherd saw her sitting by herself on a +grassy mound in a nook of the small solitary kirkyard, a long mile off +among the hills, so lost in reading the Bible, that shadow or sound of +his feet awoke her not; and, ignorant of his presence, she knelt down +and prayed--for a while weeping bitterly--but soon comforted by a +heavenly calm--that her sins might be forgiven her! + +One Sabbath evening, soon after, as she was sitting beside her parents +at the door of their hut, looking first for a long while on their faces, +and then for a long while on the sky, though it was not yet the stated +hour of worship, she suddenly knelt down, and leaning on their knees, +with hands clasped more fervently than her wont, she broke forth into +tremulous singing of that hymn which from her lips they never heard +without unendurable tears: + + "The hour of my departure's come, + I hear the voice that calls me home; + At last, O Lord, let trouble cease, + And let thy servant die in peace!" + +They carried her fainting to her little bed, and uttered not a word to +one another till she revived. The shock was sudden, but not unexpected, +and they knew now that the hand of death was upon her, although her eyes +soon became brighter and brighter, they thought, than they had ever been +before. But forehead, cheeks, lips, neck, and breast, were all as white, +and, to the quivering hands that touched them, almost as cold, as snow. +Ineffable was the bliss in those radiant eyes; but the breath of words +was frozen, and that hymn was almost her last farewell. Some few words +she spake--and named the hour and day she wished to be buried. Her lips +could then just faintly return the kiss, and no more--a film came over +the now dim blue of her eyes--the father listened for her breath--and +then the mother took his place, and leaned her ear to the unbreathing +mouth, long deluding herself with its lifelike smile; but a sudden +darkness in the room, and a sudden stillness, most dreadful both, +convinced their unbelieving hearts at last, that it was death. + +All the parish, it may be said, attended her funeral--for none stayed +away from the kirk that Sabbath--though many a voice was unable to join +in the Psalm. The little grave was soon filled up--and you hardly knew +that the turf had been disturbed beneath which she lay. The afternoon +service consisted but of a prayer--for he who ministered had loved her +with love unspeakable--and, though an old grey-haired man, all the time +he prayed he wept. In the sobbing kirk her parents were sitting, but no +one looked at them--and when the congregation rose to go, there they +remained sitting--and an hour afterwards, came out again into the open +air, and parting with their pastor at the gate, walked away to their +hut, overshadowed with the blessing of a thousand prayers. + +And did her parents, soon after she was buried, die of broken hearts, or +pine away disconsolately to their graves? Think not that they, who were +Christians indeed, could be guilty of such ingratitude. "The Lord +giveth, and the Lord taketh away--blessed be the name of the Lord!" were +the first words they had spoke by that bedside; during many, many long +years of weal or woe, duly every morning and night, these same blessed +words did they utter when on their knees together in prayer--and many a +thousand times besides, when they were apart, she in her silent hut, and +he on the hill--neither of them unhappy in their solitude, though never +again, perhaps, was his countenance so cheerful as of yore--and though +often suddenly amidst mirth or sunshine their eyes were seen to +overflow. Happy had they been--as we mortal beings ever can be +happy--during many pleasant years of wedded life before she had been +born. And happy were they--on to the verge of old age--long after she +had here ceased to be. Their Bible had indeed been an idle Book--the +Bible that belonged to "the Holy Child,"--and idle all their kirk-goings +with "the Holy Child," through the Sabbath-calm--had those intermediate +years not left a power of bliss behind them triumphant over death and +the grave. + + + + +OUR PARISH. + + +Nature must be bleak and barren indeed to possess no power over the +young spirit daily expanding on her breast into new susceptibilities, +that ere long are felt to fill life to overflowing with a perpetual +succession--an infinite series--of enjoyments. Nowhere is she destitute +of that power--not on naked sea-shores--not in central deserts. But our +boyhood was environed by the beautiful--its home was among moors and +mountains, which people in towns and cities called dreary, but which we +knew to be the cheerfullest and most gladsome parish in all braid +Scotland--and well it might be, for it was in her very heart. Mountains +they seemed to us in those days, though now we believe they are only +hills. But such hills!--undulating far and wide away till the highest +even on clear days seemed to touch the sky, and in cloudy weather were +verily a part of heaven. Many a valley, and many a glen--and many a +hollow that was neither valley nor glen--and many a flat, of but a few +green acres, which we thought plains--and many a cleft waterless with +its birks and breckans, except when the rains came down, and then they +all sang a new song in merry chorus--and many a wood, and many a grove, +for it takes no great number of trees to make a wood, and four firs by +themselves in a lonesome place are a grove--and many a single sycamore, +and many a single ash, kenned afar-off above its protected cottage--and +many an indescribable spot of scenery at once pastoral and agricultural +and sylvan, where, if house there was, you hardly knew it among the +rocks;--so was Our Parish, which people in towns and cities called +dreary, composed; but the composition itself,--as well might we hope +thus to show it to your soul's eye, as by a few extracts however fine, +and a few criticisms however exquisite, to give you the idea of a +perfect poem. + +But we have not given you more than a single hint of a great part of our +Parish--the Moor. It was then ever so many miles long, and ever so many +miles broad, and nobody thought of guessing how many miles round--but +some twenty years ago it was absolutely measured to a rood by a +landlouper of a land-surveyor--distributed--drained--enclosed--utterly +ruined for ever. No, not for ever. Nature laughs to scorn acts of +Parliament, and we predict that in a quarter of a century she will +resume her management of that moor. We rejoice to hear that she is +beginning already to take lots of it into her own hands. Wheat has no +business there, and should keep to the carses. In spring, she takes him +by the braird till he looks yellow in the face long before his time--in +summer, by the cuff of the neck till he lies down on his back and rots +in the rain--in autumn, by the ears, and rubs him against the grain till +he expires as fushionless as the windle-straes with which he is +interlaced--in winter, she shakes him in the stook till he is left but a +shadow which pigeons despise. See him in stack at Christmas, and you +pity the poor straw. Here and there bits of bear or big, and barley, she +permits to flourish--nor is she loth to see the flowers and shaws and +apples on the poor man's plant, the life-sustaining potato--which none +but political economists hate and all Christians love. She is not so +sure about turnips, but as they are a green crop she leaves them to the +care of the fly. But where have her gowans gone? There they still are in +flocks, which no cultivation can scatter or eradicate--inextinguishable +by all the lime that was ever brought unslokened from all the kilns that +ever glowed--by all the dung that was ever heaped up fresh and fuming +from all the Augean stables in the land. Yet her heart burns within her +to behold, even in the midst of what she abhors, the large dew-loved +heads of clover whitening or reddening, or with their rival colours +amicably intermingled, a new birth glorious in the place of reedy marish +or fen where the catspaws nodded--and them she will retain unto herself +when once more she shall rejoice in her Wilderness Restored. + +And would we be so barbarous as to seek to impede the progress of +improvement, and to render agriculture a dead letter? We are not so +barbarous, nor yet so savage. We love civilised life, of which we have +long been one of the smaller but sincerest ornaments. But agriculture, +like education, has its bounds. It is, like it, a science, and woe to +the country that encourages all kinds of quacks. Cultivate a moor! +educate a boor! First understand the character of Clods and Clodhoppers. +To say nothing now of the Urbans and Suburbans--a perilous people--yet +of great capabilities; for to discuss that question would lead us into +lanes; and as it is a long lane that has never a turning, for the +present we keep in the open air, and abstain from wynds. We are no +enemies to poor soils, far less to rich ones ignorantly and stupidly +called poor, which under proper treatment effuse riches; but to expect +to extract from paupers _a return_ for the expenditure squandered by +miserly greed on their reluctant bottoms, cold and bare, is the insanity +of speculation, and such schemers deserve being buried along with their +capital in quagmires. Heavens! how they--the quagmires--suck in the +dung! You say they don't suck it in--well, then, they spew it out--it +evaporates--and what is the worth of weeds? Lime whitens a moss, that is +true, but so does snow. Snow melts--what becomes of lime no mortal knows +but the powheads--them it poisons, and they give up the ghost. Drains +are dug deep nowadays--and we respect Mr Johnstone. So are gold mines. +But from gold mines that precious metal--at a great expense, witness its +price--is exterred; in drains that precious metal, witness wages, is +interred, and then it becomes _squash_. Stirks starve--heifers are hove +with windy nothing--with oxen frogs compete in bulk with every prospect +of a successful issue, and on such pasturage where would be the virility +of the Bulls of Bashan? + +If we be in error, we shall be forgiven at least by all lovers of the +past, and what to the elderly seems the olden time. Oh, misery for that +Moor! Hundreds, thousands, loved it as well as we did; for though it +grew no grain, many a glorious crop it bore--shadows that glided like +ghosts--the giants stalked--the dwarfs crept; yet sometimes were the +dwarfs more formidable than the giants, lying like blackamoors before +your very feet, and as you stumbled over them in the dark, throttling as +if they sought to strangle you, and then leaving you at your leisure to +wipe from your mouth the mire by the light of a straggling +star;--sunbeams that wrestled with the shadows in the gloom--sometimes +clean flung, and then they cowered into the heather, and insinuated +themselves into the earth; sometimes victorious, and then how they +capered in the lift, ere they shivered away--not always without a hymn +of thunder--in behind the clouds, to refresh themselves in their +tabernacle in the sky. + +Won't you be done with this Moor, you monomaniac? Not for yet a little +while--for we see Kitty North all by himself in the heart of it, a boy +apparently about the age of twelve, and happy as the day is long, though +it is the Longest Day in all the year. Aimless he seems to be, but all +alive as a grasshopper, and is leaping like a two-year-old across the +hags. Were he to tumble in, what would become of the personage whom +Kean's Biographer would call "the future Christopher the First?" But no +fear of that--for at no period of his life did he ever overrate his +powers--and he knows now his bound to an inch. Cap, bonnet, hat, he has +none; and his yellow hair, dancing on his shoulders like a mane, gives +him the look of a precocious lion's whelp. Leonine too in his aspect, +yet mild withal; and but for a certain fierceness in his gambols, you +would not suspect he was a young creature of prey. A fowling-piece is in +his left hand, and in his right a rod. And what may he be purposing to +shoot? Anything full-fledged that may play whirr or sugh. Good +grouse-ground this; but many are yet in the egg, and the rest are but +cheepers--little bigger than the small brown moorland bird that goes +birling up with its own short epithalamium, and drops down on the rushes +still as a stone. Them he harms not on their short flight--but marking +them down, twirls his piece like a fugleman, and thinks of the Twelfth. +Safer methinks wilt thou be a score or two yards further off, O Whaup! +for though thy young are yet callow, Kit is beginning to think they may +shift for themselves; and that long bill and that long neck, and those +long legs and that long body--the _tout-ensemble_ so elegant, so +graceful, and so wild--are a strong temptation to the trigger;--click-- +clack--whizz--phew--fire--smoke and thunder--head-over-heels topsy-turvy +goes the poor curlew--and Kit stands over him leaning on his +single-barrel, with a stern but somewhat sad aspect, exulting in his +skill, yet sorry for the creature whose wild cry will be heard no more. + +'Tis an oasis in the desert. That green spot is called a quagmire--an +ugly name enough--but itself is beautiful; for it diffuses its own light +round about it, like a star vivifying its halo. The sward encircling it +is firm--and Kit lays him down, heedless of the bird, with eyes fixed on +the oozing spring. How fresh the wild cresses! His very eyes are +drinking! His thirst is at once excited and satisfied by looking at the +lustrous leaves--composed of cooling light without spot or stain. What +ails the boy? He covers his face with his hands, and in the silence +sighs. A small white hand, with its fingers spread, rises out of the +spring, as if it were beckoning to heaven in prayer--and then is sucked +slowly in again out of sight with a gurgling groan. The spring so fresh +and fair--so beautiful with its cresses and many another water-loving +plant beside--is changed into the same horrid quagmire it was that +day--a holiday--three years ago--when racing in her joy Amy Lewars +blindly ran into it, among her blithe companions, and suddenly perished. +Childhood, they say, soon dries its tears, and soon forgets. God be +praised for all his goodness! true it is that on the cheek of childhood +tears are dried up as if by the sunshine of joy stealing from on +high--but, God be praised for all his goodness! false it is that the +heart of childhood has not a long memory, for in a moment the mournful +past revives within it--as often as the joyful--sadness becomes sorrow, +sorrow grief, and grief anguish, as now it is with the solitary boy +seated by that ghastly spot in the middle of the wide moor. + +Away he flies, and he is humming a tune. But what's this? A merry-making +in the moor? Ay, merry-making; but were you to take part in it, you +would find it about the hardest work that ever tried the strength of +your spine. 'Tis a party of divot-flaughters. The people in the parish +are now digging their peats, and here is a whole household, provident of +winter, borrowing fuel from the moss. They are far from coals, and wood +is intended by nature for other uses; but fire in peat she dedicated to +the hearth, and there it burns all over Scotland, Highland and Lowland, +far and near, at many a holy altar. 'Tis the mid-day hour of rest. Some +are half asleep, some yet eating, some making a sort of under-voiced, +under-hand love. "Mr North! Mr North! Mr North!" is the joyful +cry--horny-fists first--downy-fists next--and after heartiest greeting, +Master Kitty is installed, enthroned on a knowe, Master of the +Ceremonies--and in good time gives them a song. Then "galliards cry a +hall, a hall," and hark and lo! preluded by six smacks--three foursome +reels! "Sic hirdum-dirdum and sic din," on the sward, to a strathspey +frae the fiddle o' auld blin' Hugh Lyndsay, the itinerant musicianer, +who was noways particular about the number of his strings, and when one, +or even two snapped, used to play away at pretty much of the same tune +with redoubled energy and variations. He had the true old Niel-Gow yell, +and had he played on for ever, folk would have danced on for ever till +they had all, one after the other, dropped down dead. What steps! + +"Who will try me," cries Kit, "at loup-the-barrows?" "I will," quoth +Souple Tam. The barrows are laid--how many side by side we fear to +say--for we have become sensitive on our veracity--on a beautiful piece +of springy turf, an inclined plane with length sufficient for a run; and +while old and young line both sides of the lane near the loup, stript to +the sark and the breeks, Souple Tam, as he fondly thinks, shows the way +to win, and clears them all like a frog or a roebuck. "Clear the way, +clear the way for the callant, Kit's comin!" cries Ebenezer Brackenrigg, +the Elder, a douce man now, but a deevil in his youth, and like "a waff +o' lichtnin'" past their een, Kit clears the barrows a foot beyond +Souple Tam, and at the first fly is declared victor by acclamation. Oh, +our unprophetic soul, did the day indeed dawn--many long years after +this our earliest great conquest yet traditional in the parish--that ere +nightfall witnessed our defeat by--a tailor! The Flying Tailor of +Ettrick--the Lying Shepherd thereof--would they had never been born--the +one to triumph and the other to record that triumph;--yet let us be just +to the powers of our rival--for though all the world knows we were lame +when we leapt him, long past our prime, had been wading all day in the +Yarrow with some stones-weight in our creel, and allowed him a yard, + + "Great must I call him, for he vanquish'd ME." + +What a place at night was that Moor! At night! That is a most +indeterminate mode of expression, for there are nights of all sorts and +sizes, and what kind of a night do we mean? Not a mirk night, for no man +ever walked that moor on a mirk night, except one, and he, though +blind-fou, was drowned. But a night may be dark without being mirk, with +or without stars; and on many such a night have we, but not always +alone--who was with us you shall never know--threaded our way with no +other clue than that of evolving recollections, originally notices, +across that wilderness of labyrinths, fearlessly, yet at times with a +beating heart. Our companion had her clue too, one in her pocket, of +blue worsted, with which she kept in repair all the stockings belonging +to the family, and one in her memory, of green ethereal silk, which, +finer far than any spider's web, she let out as she tript along the +moor, and on her homeward way she felt, by some spiritual touch, the +invisible lines, along which she retript as safely as if they had been +moonbeams. During such journeyings we never saw the moor, how then can +you expect us to describe it? + +But oftener we were alone. Earthquakes abroad are dreadful occurrences, +and blot out the obituary. But here they are so gentle that the heedless +multitude never feel them, and on hearing you tell of them, they +incredulously stare. That moor made no show of religion, but was a +Quaker. We had but to stand still for five minutes or so, no easy matter +then, for we were more restless than a wave, or to lie down with our ear +to the ground, and the spirit was sure to move the old Quaker, who +forthwith began to preach and pray and sing Psalms. How he moaned at +times as if his heart were breaking! At times, as if some old forgotten +sorrow were recalled, how he sighed! Then recovering his +self-possession, as if to clear his voice, he gave a hem, and then a +short nasty cough like a patient in a consumption. Now all was hush, and +you might have supposed he had fallen asleep, for in that hush you heard +what seemed an intermitting snore. When all at once, whew, whew, whew, +as if he were whistling, accompanied with a strange rushing sound as of +diving wings. That was in the air--but instantly after you heard +something odder still in the bog. And while wondering, and of your +wonder finding no end, the ground, which a moment before had felt firm +as a road, began to shrink, and sink, and hesitate, and hurry, and +crumble, and mumble all around you, and close up to your very feet--the +quagmires gurgling as if choked--and a subterranean voice distinctly +articulating Oh! Oh! Oh! + +We have heard of people who pretend not to believe in ghosts--geologists +who know how the world was created; but will they explain that moor? And +how happened it that only by nights and dark nights it was so haunted? +Beneath a wakeful moon and unwinking stars it was silent as a frozen +sea. You listened then, and heard but the grass growing, and beautiful +grass it was, though it was called coarse, and made the sweetest-scented +hay. What crowds of bum-bees' bikes--foggies--did the scythe not reveal +as it heaped up the heavy swathes--three hundred stone to the acre--by +guess,--for there was neither weighing nor measuring there then-a-days, +but all was in the lump--and there the rush-roped stacks stood all the +winter through, that they might be near the "eerie outlan' cattle," on +places where cart-wheel never circled, nor axle-tree creaked--nor ever +car of antique make trailed its low load along--for the horse would have +been laired. We knew not then at all--and now we but imperfectly +know--the cause of the Beautiful. Then we believed the Beautiful to be +wholly extern; something we had nothing to do with but to look at, and +lo! it shone divinely there! Happy creed if false--for in it, with +holiest reverence, we blamelessly adored the stars. There they were in +millions as we thought--every one brighter than another, when by chance +we happened to fix on any individual among them, that we might look +through its face into its heart. All above gloriously glittering, all +below a blank. Our body here, our spirit there--how mean our birthplace, +our death-home how magnificent! "Fear God and keep his commandments," +said a small still voice--and we felt that if He gave us strength to +obey that law, we should live for ever beyond all those stars. + +But were there no Lochs in our parish? Yea. Four. The Little Loch--the +White Loch--the Black Loch--and the Brother Loch. Not a tree on the +banks of any one of them--yet he had been a blockhead who called them +bare. Had there been any need for trees, Nature would have sown them on +hills she so dearly loved. Nor sheep nor cattle were ever heard to +complain of those pastures. They bleated and they lowed as cheerily as +the moorland birdies sang--and how cheerily that was nobody knew who had +not often met the morning on the brae, and shaken hands with her the +rosy-fingered like two familiar friends. No want of lown places there, +in which the creatures could lie with wool or hair unruffled among +surrounding storms. For the hills had been dropt from the hollow of His +hand who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"--and even high up, where +you might see tempest-stricken stones--some of them like pillars--but +placed not there by human art--there were cosy bields in wildest +weather, and some into which the snow was never known to drift, green +all the winter through--perennial nests. Such was the nature of the +region where lay our Four Lochs. They were some quarter of a mile--some +half mile--and some whole mile--not more--asunder; but there was no +great height--and we have a hundred times climbed the highest--from +which they could be all seen at once--so cannily were they embosomed, so +needed not to be embowered. + +The LITTLE LOCH was the rushiest and reediest little rascal that ever +rustled, and he was on the very edge of the Moor. That he had fish we +all persisted in believing, in spite of all the successless angling of +all kinds that from time immemorial had assailed his sullen depths;--but +what a place for pow-heads! One continued bank of them--while yet they +were but eyes in the spawn--encircled it instead of water-lilies; and at +"the season of the year," by throwing in a few stones, you awoke a +croaking that would have silenced a rookery. In the early part of the +century a pike had been seen basking in the shallows, by eye-measurement +about ten feet long--but fortunately he had never been hooked, or the +consequences would have been fatal. We have seen the Little Loch alive +with wild-ducks; but it was almost impossible by position to get a shot +at them--and quite impossible, if you did, to get hold of the slain. Fro +himself--the best dog that ever dived--was baffled by the multiplicity +of impediments and obstructions--and at last refused to take the +water--sat down and howled in spiteful rage. Yet Imagination loved the +Little Loch, and so did Hope. We have conquered it in sleep both with +rod and gun--the weight of bag and basket has wakened us out of dreams +of murder that never were realised--yet once, and once only, in it we +caught an eel, which we skinned, and wore the shrivel for many a day +round our ankle--nor is it a vain superstition--to preserve it from +sprains. We are willing the Little Loch should be drained; but you would +have to dig a fearsome trench, for it used to have no bottom. A party of +us--six--ascertained that fact, by heaving into it a stone which +six-and-thirty schoolboys of this degenerate age could not have lifted +from its moss-bed--and though we watched for an hour, not a bubble rose +to the surface. It used sometimes to boil like a pot on breathless days, +for events happening in foreign countries disturbed the spring, and the +torments it suffered thousands of fathoms below, were manifested above +in turbulence that would have drowned a school-boy's skiff. + +The WHITE LOCH--so called from the silver sand of its shores--had +likewise its rushy and reedy bogs; but access to every part of the main +body was unimpeded, and you waded into it, gradually deeper and deeper, +with such a delightful descent, that up to the arm-pits and then to the +chin, you could keep touching the sand with your big-toe, till you +floated away off at the nail, out of your depth, without for a little +while discovering that it was incumbent on you, for sake of your +personal safety, to take to regular swimming--and then how buoyant was +the milk-warm water, without a wave but of your own creating, as the +ripples went circling away before your breast or your breath! It was +absolutely too clear--for without knitting your brows you could not see +it on bright airless days--and wondered what had become of it--when all +at once, as if it had been that very moment created out of nothing, +there it was! endued with some novel beauty--for of all the lochs we +ever knew--and to be so simple too--the White Loch had surely the +greatest variety of expression,--but all within the cheerful--for +sadness was alien altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere for +ever wore a smile. Swans--but that was but once--our own eyes had seen +on it--and were they wild or were they tame swans, certain it is they +were great and glorious and lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow. +No house was within sight, and they had nothing to fear--nor did they +look afraid--sailing in the centre of the loch--nor did we see them fly +away--for we lay still on the hill-side till in the twilight we should +not have known what they were, and we left them there among the shadows +seemingly asleep. In the morning they were gone, and perhaps making love +in some foreign land. + +The BLACK LOCH was a strange misnomer for one so fair--for black we +never saw him, except it might be for an hour or so before thunder. If +he really was a loch of colour the original taint had been washed out of +him, and he might have shown his face among the purest waters of Europe. +But then he was deep; and knowing that, the natives had named him, in no +unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black Loch. We have seen wild-duck +eggs five fathoms down so distinctly that we could count them--and +though that is not a bad dive, we have brought them up, one in our mouth +and one in each hand, the tenants of course dead--nor can we now +conjecture what sank them there; but ornithologists see unaccountable +sights, and they only who are not ornithologists disbelieve Audubon and +Wilson. Two features had the Black Loch which gave it to our eyes a +pre-eminence in beauty over the other three--a tongue of land that +half-divided it, and never on hot days was without some cattle grouped +on its very point, and in among the water--and a cliff on which, though +it was not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. Yet in misty +weather, when its head was hidden, the shrill cry seemed to come from a +great height. There were some ruins too--tradition said of some church +or chapel--that had been ruins long before the establishment of the +Protestant faith. But they were somewhat remote, and likewise somewhat +imaginary, for stones are found lying strangely distributed, and those +looked to our eyes not like such as builders use, but to have been +dropped there most probably from the moon. + +But the best beloved, if not the most beautiful, of them all was the +BROTHER LOCH. It mattered not what was his disposition or genius, every +one of us boys, however different might be our other tastes, preferred +it far beyond the rest, and for once that we visited any of them we +visited it twenty times, nor ever once left it with disappointed hopes +of enjoyment. It was the nearest, and therefore most within our power, +so that we could gallop to it on shank's naigie, well on in the +afternoon, and enjoy what seemed a long day of delight, swift as flew +the hours, before evening prayers. Yet was it remote enough to make us +always feel that our race thither was not for every day--and we seldom +returned home without an adventure. It was the largest too by far of the +Four--and indeed its area would have held the waters of all the rest. +Then there was a charm to our heart as well as our imagination in its +name--for tradition assigned it on account of three brothers that +perished in its waters--and the same name for the same reason belongs to +many another loch--and to one pool on almost every river. But above all +it was the Loch for angling, and we long kept to perch. What schools! +Not that they were of a very large size--though pretty well--but +hundreds all nearly the same size gladdened our hearts as they lay, at +the close of our sport, in separate heaps on the greensward shore, more +beautiful out of all sight than your silver or golden fishes in a +glass-vase, where one appears to be twenty, and the delusive voracity +is all for a single crumb. No bait so killing as cowshairn-mauks, fresh +from their native bed, scooped out with the thumb. He must have been a +dear friend to whom in a scarcity, by the water-side, when the corks +were dipping, we would have given a mauk. No pike. Therefore the trout +were allowed to gain their natural size--and that seemed to be about +five pounds--adolescents not unfrequent swam two or three--and you +seldom or never saw the smaller fry. But few were the days "good for the +Brother Loch." Perch rarely failed you, for by perseverance you were +sure to fall in with one circumnatatory school or other, and to do +murderous work among them with the mauk, from the schoolmaster himself +inclusive down to the little booby of the lowest form. Not so with +Trout. We have angled ten hours a-day for half a-week (during the +vacance), without ever getting a single rise, nor could even that be +called bad sport, for we lived in momentary expectation, mingled with +fear, of a monster. Better far from sunrise to sunset never to move a +fin, than oh! me miserable! to hook a huge hero with shoulders like a +hog--play him till he comes floating side up close to the shore, and +then to feel the feckless fly leave his lip and begin gamboling in the +air, while he wallops away back into his native element, and sinks +utterly and for evermore into the dark profound. Life loses at such a +moment all that makes life desirable--yet strange! the wretch lives +on--and has not the heart to drown himself, as he wrings his hands and +curses his lot and the day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that ghastly +fit of fancy is gone by, and we imagine one of those dark, scowling, +gusty, almost tempestuous days, "prime for the Brother Loch." No glare +or glitter on the water, no reflection of fleecy clouds, but a +black-blue undulating swell, at times turbulent--with now and then a +breaking wave,--that was the weather in which the giants fed, showing +their backs like dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and sucking in +the red heckle among your very feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then +the fly was all the rage. This is a mystery, for you could do nothing +with the worm. Oh! that we had then known the science of the spinning +minnow! But we were then but an apprentice--who are now Emeritus Grand +Master. Yet at this distance of time--half a century and more--it is +impious to repine. Gut was not always to be got; and on such days a +three-haired snood did the business--for they were bold as lions, and +rashly rushed on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted body with +star-y-pointed tail maddened them with desire--no dallying with the gay +deceiver--they licked him in--they gorged him--and while satiating their +passion got involved in inextricable fate. You have seen a single strong +horse ploughing up-hill. How he sets his brisket to it--and snooves +along--as the furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the gliding +share. So snooved along the Monarch of the Mere--or the +heir-apparent--or heir-presumptive--or some other branch of the royal +family--while our line kept steadily cutting the waves, and our rod +enclosing some new segment of the sky. + +But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even +angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion +wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle +alway," thinks the wise boy--"off to some other game we altogether +flew." Never were there such hills for hare and hounds. There couched +many a pussy--and there Bob Howie's famous Tickler--the Grew of all +Grews--first stained his flews in the blood of the Fur. But there is no +coursing between April and October--and during the intervening months we +used to have many a hunt on foot, without dogs, after the leverets. We +all belonged to the High School indeed, and here was its playground. +Cricket we had then never heard of; but there was ample room and verge +enough for football. Our prime delight, however, was the chase. We were +all in perpetual training, and in such wind that there were no bellows +to mend after a flight of miles. We circled the Lochs. Plashing through +the marishes we strained winding up the hill-sides, till on the cairn +called a beacon that crowned the loftiest summit of the range, we stood +and waved defiance to our pursuers scattered wide and far below, for +'twas a Deer Hunt. Then we became cavaliers. We caught the long-maned +and long-tailed colts, and mounting bare-backed, with rush helmets and +segg sabres charged the nowte till the stirks were scattered, and the +lowing lord of herds himself taken captive, as he stood pawing in a nook +with his nose to the ground and eyes of fire. That was the riding-school +in which we learned to witch the world with noble horsemanship. We thus +got confirmed in that fine, easy, unconstrained, natural seat, which we +carried with us into the saddle when we were required to handle the +bridle instead of the mane. 'Tis right to hold on by the knees, but +equally so to hold on by the calves of the legs and the heels. The +modern system of turning out the toes, and sticking out the legs as if +they were cork or timber, is at once dangerous and ridiculous; hence in +our cavalry the men got unhorsed in every charge. On pony-back we used +to make the soles of our feet smack together below the belly, for +quadruped and biped were both unshod, and hoof needed no iron on that +stoneless sward. But the biggest fun of all was to "grup the auld mare," +and ride her sextuple, the tallest boy sitting on the neck, and the +shortest on the rump with his face to the tail, and holding on by that +fundamental feature by which the urchin tooled her along as by a tiller. +How the silly foal whinnied, as with light-gathered steps he accompanied +in circles his populous parent, and seemed almost to doubt her identity, +till one by one we slipped off over her hurdies, and let him take a +suck! But what comet is yon in the sky--"with fear of change perplexing +mallards?" A Flying Dragon. Of many degrees is his tail, with a tuft +like that of Taurus terrified by the sudden entrance of the Sun into his +sign. Up goes Sandy Donald's rusty and rimless beaver as a messenger to +the Celestial. He obeys, and stooping his head, descends with many +diverse divings, and buries his beak in the earth. The feather kite +quails and is cowed by him of paper, and there is a scampering of cattle +on a hundred hills. + +The Brother Loch saw annually another sight, when on the Green-Brae was +pitched a Tent--a snow-white Pyramid, gathering to itself all the +sunshine. There lords and ladies, and knights and squires, celebrated +Old May-day, and half the parish flocked to the Festival. The Earl of +Eglintoun, and Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, and old Sir John of Polloc, and +Pollock of that Ilk, and other heads of illustrious houses, with their +wives and daughters, a beautiful show, did not disdain them of low +degree, but kept open table in the moor; and would you believe it, +high-born youths and maidens ministered at the board to cottage lads and +lasses, whose sunburnt faces hardly dared to smile, under awe of that +courtesy--yet whenever they looked up there was happiness in their eyes. +The young ladies were all arrayed in green; and after the feast, they +took bows and arrows in their lily hands, and shot at a target in a +style that would have gladdened the heart of Maid Marian--nay, of Robin +himself;--and one surpassing bright--the Star of Ayr--she held a hawk on +her wrist--a tercel gentle--after the fashion of the olden time; and +ever as she moved her arm you heard the chiming of silver bells. And her +brother--gay and gallant as Sir Tristrem--he blew his tasseled bugle--so +sweet, so pure, so wild the music, that when he ceased to breathe, the +far-off repeated echoes, faint and dim, you thought died away in heaven +like an angel's voice. + +Was it not a Paragon of a Parish? But we have not told you one half of +its charms. There was a charm in every nook--and Youth was the master of +the spell. Small magicians were we in size, but we were great in might. +We had but to open our eyes in the morning, and at one look all nature +was beautiful. We have said nothing about the Burns. The chief was the +Yearn--endearingly called the Humbie, from a farm near the Manse, and +belonging to the minister. Its chief source was, we believe, the Brother +Loch. But it whimpled with such an infantine voice from the lucid bay, +which then knew nor sluice nor dam, that for a while it was scarcely +even a rill, and you had to seek for it among the heather. In doing so, +ten to one some brooding birdie fluttered off her nest--but not till +your next step would have crushed them all--or perhaps--but he had no +nest there--a snipe. There it is--betrayed by a line of livelier +verdure. Ere long it sparkled within banks of its own and "braes of +green bracken," and as you footed along, shoals of minnows, and perhaps +a small trout or two, brastled away to the other side of the shallow, +and hid themselves in the shadows. 'Tis a pretty rill now--nor any +longer mute; and you hear it murmur. It has acquired confidence on its +course, and has formed itself into its first pool--a waterfall, three +feet high, with its own tiny rocks, and a single birk--no, it is a +rowan--too young yet to bear berries--else might a child pluck the +highest cluster. Imperceptibly, insensibly, it grows just like life. The +Burn is now in his boyhood; and a bold, bright boy he is--dancing and +singing--nor heeding which way he goes along the wild, any more than +that wee rosy-cheeked, flaxen-headed girl seems to heed, who drops you a +curtsy, and on being asked by you, with your hand on her hair, where she +is going, answers wi' a soft Scottish accent--ah! how sweet--"Owre the +hill to see my Mither." Is that a house? No--a fauld. For this is the +Washing-Pool. Look around you, and you never saw such perfectly white +sheep. They are Cheviots; for the black-faces are on the higher hills to +the north of the moor. We see a few rigs of flax--and "lint is in the +bell"--the steeping whereof will sadly annoy the bit burnie, but poor +people must spin--and as this is not the season, we will think of +nothing that can pollute his limpid waters. Symptoms of husbandry! +Potato-shaws luxuriating on lazy-beds, and a small field with alternate +rigs of oats and barley. Yes, that is a house--"an auld clay +bigging,"--in such Robin Burns was born--in such was rocked the cradle +of Pollok. We think we hear two separate liquid voices--and we are +right--for from the flats beyond Floak, and away towards Kingswells, +comes another yet wilder burnie, and they meet in one at the head of +what you would probably call a meadow, but which we call a holm. There +seems to be more arable land hereabouts than a stranger could have any +idea of; but it is a long time since the ploughshare traced those almost +obliterated furrows on the hill-side; and such cultivation is now wisely +confined, you observe, to the lower lands. We fear the Yearn--for that +is his name now--heretofore he was anonymous--is about to get flat. But +we must not grudge him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, lulled by +the murmur of millions of humble-bees--we speak within bounds--on their +honied flowerage. We are confusing the seasons, for a few minutes ago we +spoke of "lint being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream how +sweetly do the seasons all slide into one another! After sleep comes +play, and see and hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling over rocks, +nor will rest in any one linn, but impatient of each beautiful prison in +which one would think he might lie a willing thrall, hurries on as if he +were racing against time, nor casts a look at the human dwellings now +more frequent near his sides. But he will be stopped by-and-by, whether +he will or no; for there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a mill. +But the wheel is at rest--the sluice on the lade is down--with the lade +he has nothing more to do than to fill it; and with undiminished volume +he wends round the miller's garden--you see Dusty Jacket is a +florist--and now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any rocks. 'Tis +but some hundred yards across from bank to brae--and as you angle along +on either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating high overhead; for +though, the braes are steep, they are all intersected with sheep-walks, +and ever and anon among the broom and the brackens are little platforms +of close-nibbled greensward, yet not bare--and nowhere else is the +pasturage more succulent--nor do the young creatures not care to taste +the primroses, though were they to live entirely upon them, they could +not keep down the profusion--so thickly studded in places are the +constellations--among sprinklings of single stars. Here the +hill-blackbird builds--and here you know why Scotland is called the +lintie's land. What bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. But +here there are no larks--a little further down and you will hear one +ascending or descending over almost every field of grass or of the +tender braird. Down the dell before you, flitting from stone to stone, +on short flight seeks the water-pyet--seemingly a witless creature with +its bonnie white breast--to wile you away from the crevice, even within +the waterfall, that holds its young--or with a cock of her tail she dips +and disappears. There is grace in the glancing sandpiper--nor, though +somewhat fantastical, is the water-wagtail inelegant--either belle or +beau--an outlandish bird that makes himself at home wherever he goes, +and, vain as he looks, is contented if but one admire him in a solitary +place--though it is true that we have seen them in half-dozens on the +midden in front of the cottage door. The blue slip of sky overhead has +been gradually widening, and the dell is done. Is that snow? A +bleachfield. Lasses can bleach their own linen on the green near the +pool, "atween twa flowery braes," as Allan has so sweetly sung, in his +truly Scottish pastoral "The Gentle Shepherd." But even they could not +well do without bleachfields on a larger scale, else dingy would be +their smocks and their wedding-sheets. Therefore there is beauty in a +bleachfield, and in none more than in Bell's-Meadows. But where is the +Burn? They have stolen him out of his bed, and, alas! nothing but +stones! Gather up your flies, and away down to yonder grove. There he is +like one risen from the dead; and how joyful his resurrection! All the +way from this down to the Brigg o' Humbie the angling is admirable, and +the burn has become a stream. You wade now through longer +grass--sometimes even up to the knees; and half-forgetting pastoral +life, you ejaculate "Speed the plough!" Whitewashed houses--but still +thatched--look down on you from among trees, that shelter them in +front; while behind is an encampment of stacks, and on each side a line +of offices, so that they are snug in every wind that blows. The Auld +Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for though the turn was perilous sharp, +time had so coloured it that in a sunny shower we have mistaken it for a +rainbow. That's Humbie House, God bless it! and though we cannot here +with our bodily sense see the Manse, with our spiritual eye we can see +it anywhere. Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The wind we see +has shifted to the south; and ere we reach the Cart, we shall have to +stuff our pockets. The Cart!--ay, the river Cart--not that on which +pretty Paisley stands, but the Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for +sake of Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at Glasgow, we visited +every Play-Friday, and deepened the ivy on its walls with our first +sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn becomes even sylvan now; and +though still sweet its murmurs to our ear, they no longer sink into our +hearts. So let it mingle with the Cart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and +the Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the river becomes a firth, +and the firth the sea;--but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the +vision that showed us the solitary region dearest to our imagination and +our hearts, and opening them on completion of the charm that works +within the spirit when no daylight is there, rejoice to find ourselves +again sole-sitting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch. + +Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish--pray give us one of yours, +that both may gain by comparison. But is ours a true picture? True as +Holy Writ--false as any fiction in an Arabian tale. How is this? +Perception, memory, imagination, are all moods--states of mind. But +mind, as we said before, is one substance, and matter another; and mind +never deals with matter without metamorphosing it like a mythologist. +Thus truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, become all one and the +same; for they are so essentially blended, that we defy you to show what +is biblical--what apocryphal--and what pure romance. How we transpose +and dislocate while we limn in aerial colours! Where tree never grew we +drop it down centuries old--or we tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, +and steep what was once his shadow in sunshine--hills sink at a touch, +or at a beck mountains rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the +spirit of the place remains the same; for in that spirit has imagination +all along been working, and boon nature smiles on her son as he +imitates her creations--but "hers are heavenly, his an empty dream." + +Where lies Our Parish, and what is its name? Seek, and you will find it +either in Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. As for its name, +men call it the Mearns. M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter--and in +Scotland he has no superior--will perhaps accompany you to what once was +the Moor. All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there still; but the +Little Loch transmogrified into an auxiliar appurtenance to some cursed +Wark--the Brother Loch much exhausted by daily drains upon him by we +know not what wretch--the White Loch _larched_--and the Black Loch of a +ghastly blue, cruelly cultivated all close round the brim. From his moor + + "The parting genius is with sighing sent;" + +but sometimes, on blear-eyed days, he is seen disconsolately sitting in +some yet mossy spot among the ruins of his ancient reign. That painter +has studied the aspect of the Old Forlorn, and has shown it more than +once on bits of canvass not a foot long; and such pictures will survive +after the Ghost of the Genius has bade farewell to the ruined solitudes +he had haunted ever since the flood, or been laid beneath the yet +unprofaned Green-Brae, above the Brother Loch, whence we devoutly trust +he will re-issue, though ages may have to elapse, to see all his +quagmires in their primeval glory, and all his hags more hideously +beautiful, as they yawn back again into their former selves, frowning +over the burial in their bottoms of all the harvests that had dared to +ripen above their heads. + + + + + +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's note: | + | | + | Inconsistent hyphenation was not changed. | + | Table of Contents: Corrected 336 to 335 | + | Page 127: Corrected word order problem | + | Page 132: Changed "this to happen her" to "this to happen to her" | + +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, +VOLUME I (OF 2)*** + + +******* This file should be named 31666-8.txt or 31666-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/6/6/31666 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/31666-8.zip b/31666-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fdc7cde --- /dev/null +++ b/31666-8.zip diff --git a/31666-h.zip b/31666-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd4d9b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/31666-h.zip diff --git a/31666-h/31666-h.htm b/31666-h/31666-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d6f14f2 --- /dev/null +++ b/31666-h/31666-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,17307 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I (of 2), by John Wilson</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 1%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: left; + color: gray; + } /* page numbers */ + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + .toc {width: 40%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + .tocname {text-align: left; font-variant: small-caps;} + .tocpage {text-align: right;} + + .notes {background-color: #d3d3d3; color: #000000; + margin:auto; + width:60%; + padding:2em;} + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .newfont {font-family: gothice,fantasy,cursive,sans-serif;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i12 {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i16 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i30 {display: block; margin-left: 15em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i24 {display: block; margin-left: 12em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + pre {font-size: 85%;} + /*]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I +(of 2), by John Wilson</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I (of 2)</p> +<p>Author: John Wilson</p> +<p>Release Date: March 16, 2010 [eBook #31666]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, VOLUME I (OF 2)***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Joseph R. Hauser,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;"> +<img src="images/north.png" width="352" height="625" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<h1>RECREATIONS</h1> + +<h3>OF</h3> + +<h1>CHRISTOPHER NORTH</h1> + + + +<h3><i>A NEW EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES</i></h3> + +<h2>VOL. I.</h2> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h4>WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS<br /> +EDINBURGH AND LONDON<br /> +MDCCCLXVIII</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table class="toc" summary="TOC"> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"></td> + <td class="tocpage">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET:—</td> + <td class="tocpage"> </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FYTTE FIRST,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FYTTE SECOND,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_29'>29</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FYTTE THIRD,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_52'>52</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">TALE OF EXPIATION,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_75'>75</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">MORNING MONOLOGUE,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">THE FIELD OF FLOWERS,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">COTTAGES,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_135'>135</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_179'>179</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">INCH-CRUIN,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_231'>231</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">A DAY AT WINDERMERE,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_242'>242</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">THE MOORS!—</td> + <td class="tocpage"> </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">PROLOGUE,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_262'>262</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FLIGHT FIRST—GLEN-ETIVE,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_290'>290</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FLIGHT SECOND—THE COVES OF CRUACHAN,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_316'>316</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FLIGHT THIRD—STILL LIFE,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_335'>335</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FLIGHT FOURTH—DOWN RIVER AND UP LOCH,</span></td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_365'>365</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_390'>390</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">THE HOLY CHILD,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_410'>410</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tocname">OUR PARISH,</td> + <td class="tocpage"><a href='#Page_422'>422</a></td> +</tr> +</table></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFATORY_NOTE" id="PREFATORY_NOTE"></a>PREFATORY NOTE.</h2> + + +<p>Like most of Professor Wilson's miscellaneous writings, the articles +contained in the two following volumes appeared originally in +"Blackwood's Magazine." Having been revised and considerably remodelled +by their Author, they were published in three volumes, 8vo, in 1842, +under the general title, "The Recreations of Christopher North." In the +reprint, the special titles of some of the articles are different from +those which the same papers bear in the Magazine.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>RECREATIONS</h2> + +<h4>OF</h4> + +<h2>CHRISTOPHER NORTH.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET.</h2> +<h3>FYTTE FIRST.</h3> + + +<p>There is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on +flood, field, and fell. The principles in human nature on which they +depend, are in all the same; but those principles are subject to +infinite modifications and varieties, according to the difference of +individual and national character. All such pastimes, whether followed +merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate means of +sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and knowledge of nature and +nature's laws; nor less, patience, perseverance, courage even, and +bodily strength or activity, while the spirit which animates and +supports them is a spirit of anxiety, doubt, fear, hope, joy, +exultation, and triumph—in the heart of the young a fierce passion—in +the heart of the old a passion still, but subdued and tamed down, +without, however, being much dulled or deadened, by various experience +of all the mysteries of the calling, and by the gradual subsiding of all +impetuous impulses in the frames of all mortal men beyond perhaps +three-score, when the blackest head will be becoming grey, the most +nervous knee less firmly knit, the most steely-springed instep less +elastic, the keenest eye less of a far-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>keeker, and, above all, the most +boiling heart less like a caldron or a crater—yea, the whole man +subject to some dimness or decay, and, consequently, the whole duty of +man like the new edition of a book, from which many passages that formed +the chief glory of the <i>editio princeps</i> have been expunged—the whole +character of the style corrected without being thereby improved—just +like the later editions of the Pleasures of Imagination, which were +written by Akenside when he was about twenty-one, and altered by him at +forty—to the exclusion or destruction of many most <i>splendida vitia</i>, +by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its +brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse—perplexing +critics.</p> + +<p>Now, seeing that such pastimes are in number almost infinite, and +infinite the varieties of human character, pray what is there at all +surprising in your being madly fond of shooting—and your brother Tom +just as foolish about fishing—and cousin Jack perfectly insane on +fox-hunting—while the old gentleman your father, in spite of wind and +weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the +white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire wolds—and uncle Ben, as if +just escaped from Bedlam or St Luke's with Dr Haslam at his heels, or +with a few hundred yards' start of Dr Warburton, is seen galloping, in a +Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian +beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to +be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in +field and forest—"still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by +the name of Escape?</p> + +<p>Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have +thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the +alphabet; yet how many languages—some six thousand we believe, each of +which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you might +as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species +of sportsmen.</p> + +<p>There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound +development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and +deer-stalking—from being, in short, a universal genius in sports and +pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man.</p> + +<p>Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> pastimes. We do +not now speak of marbles—or knuckling down at taw—or trundling a +hoop—or pall-lall—or pitch and toss—or any other of the games of the +school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately +perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus Angling seems the earliest of +them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on +the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited +with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a +yarn-thread—for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut—his +rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his +play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing +had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after +month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul-engrossing +hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug—a tug! +With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, +he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull +away at the monster—and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans +and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far +away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, +two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, +and sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, +holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, +like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush +of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, +up-stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his +hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the +thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw—and at night, +"cabined, cribbed, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep—a +thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams!</p> + +<p>From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful daydream, haunted by +the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality—an art—a science—of +which the flaxen-headed schoolboy feels himself to be master—a mystery +in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now, all alone, in the +power of successful passion, to the distant brook—brook a mile +off—with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a +huge forest of six acres, between and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> house in which he is boarded +or was born! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy +shallows—there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The +scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, +disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. +And oh! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the +braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of +sunshine! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two +pieces—yes, his line is of hair twisted—plaited by his own +soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly! +And the Fates, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, +ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the paidler in the +brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at +the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the +bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a +race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots +through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life +expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden +brightens up the sky. <i>Fortuna favet fortibus</i>—and with one long pull, +and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve-incher on +the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where +such an exploit was possible, and dashing upon him like an osprey, soars +up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries +off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging +him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him +bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and +feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow +light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly +splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzlingly; but now +the radiance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye +of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of +clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine.</p> + +<p>Springs, summers, autumns, winters—each within itself longer, by many +times longer than the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at last +through one's fingers like a knotless thread—pass over the curled +darling's brow; and look at him now, a straight and strengthy stripling, +in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after +rock-ledge, nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> needing aught as he plashes knee-deep, or +waistband-high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of +his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely +seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the +sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown, rod of ash framed by +village wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is +dexterous; but a twenty-feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and +a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line +itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's +proboscis—the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw—from +butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," +the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses +materialised! A fish—fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore +to be woo'd—she is a salmon, therefore to be won"—but shy, timid, +capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any +other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in +spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last; and then +with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead, or worse than dead, +fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the lustre of her beauty, +insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable +things in a world of perishing!—But the salmon has grown sulky, and +must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct +with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver +bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very +head of the waterfall! Give her the butt—give her the butt—or she is +gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep!—Now comes the +trial of your tackle—and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge +of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards—right up the middle of +the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very +course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and +deep—and the line goes steady, boys, steady—stiff and steady as a Tory +in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal +fin—danger in the flap of her tail—and yet may her silver shoulder +shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, +and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now +level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or +obstruction—the coast is clear—no tree-roots here—no floating +branches—for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> during the night they have all been swept down to the +salt loch. <i>In medio tutissimas ibis</i>—ay, now you feel she begins to +fail—the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! +another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to +have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual +Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook!—you in the +tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the +devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?—Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is +that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you +think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tarn Grieve never gruppit sae +heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council.—Curse that collie! +Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks—if +that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, +come bellowing by between us and the river, then, "Madam! all is lost, +except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at +seven. Our will is made—ten thousand to the Foundling—ditto to the +Thames Tunnel—ha—ha—my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss +thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further +resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself +to death! No faith in female—she trusts to the last trial of her +tail—sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle +spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy +planet. Scrope—Bainbridge—Maule—princes among Anglers—oh! that you +were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious +sympathy—far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing +the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow +in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious +vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! +Poor Sandy—why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!—Peter! The +Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with +a swirl—whitening as she nears the sand—there she has it—struck right +into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or +Venus—and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of +beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The child is father of the man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I would wish my days to be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bound each to each by natural piety!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun, +formed of the last year's growth of a branch of the plane-tree—the +beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree—that +stands straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from +afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in +sheltered inland vale, still loving the roof of the fisherman's or +peasant's cottage.</p> + +<p>Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a very musket, such +as soldiers bear—a Christmas present from parent, once a colonel of +volunteers—nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, +formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hinder-end +of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon +tires of such ineffectual trigger—and his soul, as well as his hair, is +set on fire by that extraordinary compound—Gunpowder. He begins with +burning off his eyebrows on the King's birthday; squibs and crackers +follow, and all the pleasures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off +a gun—"and follows to the field some warlike lord"—in hopes of being +allowed to discharge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his +last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking +among the trees. This is his first practice in firearms, and from that +hour he is—a Shooter.</p> + +<p>Then there is in most rural parishes—and of rural parishes alone do we +condescend to speak—a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the +butt—perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is +bought, or borrowed, by the young shooter, who begins firing first at +barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living things—a strange cur, +who, from his lolling tongue, may be supposed to have the hydrophobia—a +cat that has purred herself asleep on the sunny churchyard wall, or is +watching mice at their hole-mouths among the graves—a water-rat in the +mill-lead—or weasel that, running to his retreat in the wall, always +turns round to look at you—a goose wandered from his common in +disappointed love—or brown duck, easily mistaken by the unscrupulous +for a wild one, in pond remote from human dwelling, or on meadow by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the +river-side, away from the clack of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, +shouted out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flying +mark to the more advanced class; or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh +of day close to the cottage door among the chickens; or a flock of +pigeons wheeling overhead on the stubble-field, or sitting so thick +together that every stock is blue with tempting plumage.</p> + +<p>But the pistol is discharged for a fowling-piece—brown and rusty, with +a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion +to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up +into the air—and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent +dent in copper metal; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming +swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held sacred, but shot at +on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him—an opinion +strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small +brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the +many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game—and +still more, the long-winged legless black devilet, that, if it falls to +the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the +corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of +cannon-shot, gambols in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a +thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's +flight. It seems to boyish eyes that the creatures near the earth, when +but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers +growing on the coign of vantage: the signal is given to fire; but the +devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips +with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground but a +tiny bit of mossy mortar, inhabited by a spider!</p> + +<p>But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the schoolboy, or rather the +college boy, returning to his rural vacation (for in Scotland college +winters tread close, too close, on the heels of academies), has a gun—a +gun in a case—a double-barrel too—of his own—and is provided with a +licence, probably without any other qualification than that of hit or +miss. On some portentous morning he effulges with the sun in velveteen +jacket and breeches of the same—many-buttoned gaiters, and an +unkerchiefed throat. 'Tis the fourteenth of Septem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>ber, and lo! a +pointer at his heels—Ponto, of course—a game-bag like a beggar's +wallet at his side—destined to be at eve as full of charity—and all +the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see +the sight, would be the "mother that bore him;" the heart of that old +sportsman, his daddy, would sing for joy! The chained mastiff in the +yard yowls his admiration; the servant lasses uplift the pane of their +garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in +their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab Roger, who has been +cleaning out the barn, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and away +go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pupil through the autumnal +rime, off to the uplands, where—for it is one of the earliest of +harvests—there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The +turnip-fields are bright green with hope and expectation—and coveys are +couching on lazy beds beneath the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, +ditch-guarded on either side, shelters its own brood—imagination hears +the whirr shaking the dewdrops from the broom on the brae—and first one +bird and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no +contemptible covey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in clouds, +from the coppice brushwood with here and there an intercepting standard +tree.</p> + +<p>Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or +having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent +nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, +shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his +points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between +those inexorable knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy +enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole +parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts; +and the schoolmaster, fastening a knowing eye on dunce and neerdoweel, +holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the tawes. Frequent flogging +will cow the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels +now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, +rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smelling strongly, he +draws slowly and beautifully, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There fix'd, a perfect semicircle stands."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his eagerness, stum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>bling among +the stubble, when, hark and lo! the gabble of grey goslings, and the +bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! Bang goes the right-hand barrel +at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be off to the tune of "ower the +hills and far awa'," while the young gentleman, half-ashamed and +half-incensed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the left-hand +barrel, with a highly improper curse, at the father of the feathered +family before him, who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, +throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird of his usual habits, and, +after biting the dust with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, +breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary scene—and leaves himself +to be paid for at the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly +irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long, and not only harmless, +but honourable and useful life.</p> + +<p>It is nearly as impossible a thing as we know, to borrow a dog about the +time the sun has reached his meridian, on the First Day of the +Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into +his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of "tired Nature's sweet +restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a collie, who, from +numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don +in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip-field to +stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no +objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto to +perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in +upon them open-mouthed, despatches them right and left, even like the +famous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westminster. The birds are +bagged with a gentle remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded with a +whang of cheese. Elated by the pressure on his shoulder, the young +gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, like winking, +at every uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle by bringing +down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and, +wearied with such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who +can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he +could kick her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is half +full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the +cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge +of a wood, and returning the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy +sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her brain, and +turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece +of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior pouch of the +jacket, yet unstained by blood, yawns to receive her—and in she goes +plump; paws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all—while Luath, all the way +home to the Mains, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through; for +well he knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy, +whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or +burrowed beneath a snow-wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite +of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory +shot.</p> + +<p>But let us trace no further thus, step by step, the Pilgrim's Progress. +Look at him now—a finished sportsman—on the moors—the bright black +boundless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching away, by long Loch Ericht side, +into the dim and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, over the +bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that the pluffer at partridge-pouts who +had nearly been the death of poor Ponto? Lord Kennedy himself might take +a lesson now from the straight and steady style in which, on the +mountain brow, and up to the middle in heather, he brings his Manton to +the deadly level! More unerring eye never glanced along brown barrel! +Finer forefinger never touched a trigger! Follow him a whole day, and +not one wounded bird. All most beautifully arrested on their flight by +instantaneous death! Down dropped right and left, like lead on the +heather—old cock and hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as +calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from among a pile of plumage. +No random shot within—no needless shot out of distance—covered every +feather before stir of finger—and body, back, and brain, pierced, +broken, shattered! And what perfect pointers! There they stand, still as +death—yet instinct with life—the whole half-dozen! Mungo, the +black-tanned—Don, the red-spotted—Clara, the snow-white—Primrose, the +pale yellow—Basto, the bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many +colours, often seen afar through the mists like a meteor.</p> + +<p>So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's Progress—now briefly for the +Hunter's. Hunting, in this country, unquestionably commences with cats. +Few cottages without a cat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> If you do not find her on the mouse watch +at the gable end of the house just at the corner, take a solar +observation, and by it look for her on bank or brae—somewhere about the +premises—if unsuccessful, peep into the byre, and up through a hole +among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is you see her eyes +glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into +the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the +baulks below the kipples. No. Well, then, let your eye travel along the +edge of that little wood behind the cottage—ay, yonder she is!—but she +sees both you and your two terriers—one rough and the other +smooth—and, slinking away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in +among the hazels, she either lies <i>perdu</i>, or is up a fir-tree almost as +high as the magpie's or corby's nest.</p> + +<p>Now, observe, shooting cats is one thing, and hunting them is +another—and shooting and hunting, though they may be united, are here +treated separately; so, in the present case, the cat makes her escape. +But get her watching birds—young larks, perhaps, walking on the lea—or +young linnets hanging on the broom—down-by yonder in the holm lands, +where there are no trees, except indeed that one glorious single tree, +the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by Glowrer, and then what a most +capital chase! Stretching herself up with crooked back, as if taking a +yawn—off she jumps, with tremendous spangs, and tail, thickened with +fear and anger, perpendicular. Youf—youf—youf—go the +terriers—head-over-heels perhaps in their fury—and are not long in +turning her—and bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all ablaze and +abristle. A she-devil incarnate! Hark—all at once now strikes up a +trio—Catalani caterwauling the treble—Glowrer taking the bass, and +Tearer the tenor—a cruel concert cut short by a squalling throttler. +Away—away along the holm—and over the knowe—and into the wood—for +lo! the gudewife, brandishing a besom, comes flying demented without her +mutch, down to the murder of her Tabby—her son, a stout stripling, is +seen skirting the potato-field to intercept our flight—and, most +formidable of all foes, the Man of the House himself, in his shirt +sleeves and flail in his hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, +across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off from the Manse. The +hunt's up—and 'tis a capital steeple-chase. Disperse—disperse! Down +the hill, Jack—up the hill, Gill—dive the dell,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Kit—thread the wood, +Pat—a hundred yards' start is a great matter—a stern chase is always a +long chase—schoolboys are generally in prime wind—the old man begins +to puff, and blow, and snort, and put his paws to his paunch—the son is +thrown out by a double of dainty Davy's—and the "sair begrutten mither" +is gathering up the torn and tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, +and invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on her pitiless +murderers. Some slight relief to her bursting and breaking heart to vow +that she will make the minister hear of it on the deafest side of his +head—ay, even if she have to break in upon him sitting on Saturday +night, getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in his ain study.</p> + +<p>Now, gentle reader, again observe, that though we have now described, +<i>con amore</i>, a most cruel case of cat-killing, in which we certainly did +play a most aggravated part some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we +from recommending such wanton barbarity to the rising generation. We are +not inditing a homily on humanity to animals, nor have we been appointed +to succeed the Rev. Dr Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the +Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual Gibsonian sermon on +that subject—we are simply stating certain matters of fact, +illustrative of the rise and progress of the love of pastime in the +soul, and leave our readers to draw the moral. But may we be permitted +to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often make the most pious men; +that it does not follow, according to the wise saws and modern instances +of prophetic old women of both sexes, that he who in boyhood has worried +a cat with terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on one of his own +species; or that peccadilloes are the progenitors of capital crimes. +Nature allows to growing lads a certain range of wickedness, <i>sans peur +et sans reproche</i>. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock +ancient females—to laugh at Quakers—to make mouths at a decent man and +his wife riding double to church—the matron's thick legs ludicrously +bobbing from the pillion, kept firm on Dobbin's rump by her bottom, +"<i>ponderibus librata suis</i>,"—to tip the wink to young women during +sermon on Sunday—and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, +whether they will or no, on high-road or by-path—and to perpetrate many +other little nameless enormities.</p> + +<p>No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>cious +character; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by +pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is +of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that +he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his +dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and +frolic, even when trespasses, are not guilt; and though a cat have nine +lives, she has but one ghost—and that will haunt no house where there +are terriers. What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent, +you would not wish your only boy—your son and heir—the blended image +of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty—to be a smug, +smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his +forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his +white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always +moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his +nose—botanising with his maiden aunts—doing the pretty at tea-tables +with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and +attending to the kettle—telling tales on all naughty boys and +girls—laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny-pig—keeping +all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer—having his own +peg for his uncrushed hat—saying his prayers precisely as the clock +strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's-buff—and +puffed up every Sabbath eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon +memory for a sermon—while all the other boys are scolded for having +fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write +sermons himself at his tender years, nay—even to be able to give you +chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far +that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even +of his Sunday clothes—blotting his copy—impiously pinning pieces of +paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father—going to +the fishing not only without leave, but against orders—bathing in the +forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned—drying powder before the +schoolroom fire, and blowing himself and two crack-skulled cronies to +the ceiling—tying kettles to the tails of dogs—shooting an old woman's +laying hen—galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps—climbing +trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> the +tooth-of-time-indented sides of old castles after wallflowers and +starlings—being run away with in carts by colts against turnpike +gates—buying bad ballads from young gypsy-girls, who, on receiving a +sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change +out of that;"—on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail—a +devil for galloping—not only attending country races for a saddle and +collar, but entering for and winning the prize—dancing like a devil in +barns at kirns—seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming +heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be +involved—fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn +beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen +blue—and, to conclude "this strange eventful history," once brought +home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom, and +found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the +moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate!</p> + +<p>Nay, start not, parental reader—nor, in the terror of anticipation, +send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, +mayhap pursuing even such another career. Trust thou to the genial, +gracious, and benign <i>vis medicatrix naturæ</i>. What though a few clouds +bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how +splendid the meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight the +beauty of the budding and blowing rose? Look how she revives beneath +dew, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even scarce endure the +lustre! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute the +snow of the swan? They fall off from her expanded wings, and, pure as a +spirit, she soars away, and descends into her own silver lake, stainless +as the water-lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immortal +soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its +nascent state—in this, less favoured than material and immaterial +things that perish? No—it is undergoing endless transmigrations,—every +hour a being different, yet the same—dark stains blotted out—rueful +inscriptions effaced—many an erasure of impressions once thought +permanent, but soon altogether forgotten—and vindicating, in the midst +of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial +origin, character, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, +like a taper in the wind, but all at once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> self-reillumined, and shining +in inextinguishable and self-fed radiance—like a star in heaven.</p> + +<p>Therefore, bad as boys too often are—and a disgrace to the mother who +bore them—the cradle in which they were rocked—the nurse by whom they +were suckled—the schoolmaster by whom they were flogged—and the +hangman by whom it was prophesied they were to be executed—wait +patiently for a few years, and you will see them all transfigured—one +into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all +men to be Christians—another into a parliamentary orator, who commands +the applause of listening senates, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Reads his history in a nation's eyes"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—one into a painter, before whose thunderous heavens the storms of +Poussin "pale their ineffectual fires"—another into a poet composing +and playing, side by side, on his own peculiar harp, in a concert of +vocal and instrumental music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth—one +into a great soldier, who, when Wellington is no more, shall, for the +freedom of the world, conquer a future Waterloo—another who, hoisting +his flag on the "mast of some tall ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in +the Temeraire, lay two three-deckers on board at once, and clothe some +now nameless peak or promontory in immortal glory, like that shining on +Trafalgar.</p> + +<p>Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. Cats have a look of +hares—kittens of leverets—and they are all called Pussy. The terriers +are useful still, preceding the line like skirmishers, and with finest +noses startling the maukin from bracken-bush or rush bower, her skylight +garret in the old quarry, or her brown study in the brake. Away with +your coursing on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are seen squatted +from a distance, and the sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, +are let slip by a Tryer, running for cups and collars before lords and +ladies, and squires of high and low degree—a pretty pastime enough, no +doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. But will it for a moment +compare with the sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld witch" +from the bunweed-covered lea, when the throat of every pedestrian is +privileged to cry "halloo—halloo—halloo"—and whipcord-tailed +greyhound and hairy lurcher, without any invidious distinction of birth +or bearing, lay their deep breasts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> to the sward at the same moment, to +the same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing +Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with retroverted +eyes she turns her face to the mountain, and seeks the cairn only a +little lower than the falcon's nest.</p> + +<p>What signifies any sport in the open air, except in congenial scenery of +earth and heaven? Go, thou gentle Cockney! and angle in the New +River;—but, bold Englishman, come with us and try a salmon-cast in the +old Tay. Go, thou gentle Cockney! and course a suburban hare in the +purlieus of Blackheath;—but, bold Englishman, come with us and course +an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night an old +woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as you will with a +leash and a half of lightfoots, still returns at dark to the same form +in the turf-dyke of the garden of the mountain cottage. The children, +who love her as their own eyes—for she has been as a pet about the +family, summer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some +five years old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle—will +scarcely care to see her started—nay, one or two of the wickedest among +them will join in the halloo; for often, ere this, "has she cheated the +very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the lang dowgs walloping +ahint her, sair forfeuchen, up the benty brae—and it's no the day that +she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, or smooth Spring, or the red +Bick, or the hairy Lurcher—though a' fowre be let lowse on her at ance, +and ye surround her or she rise." What are your great big fat lazy +English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food +brought to their very mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with +five minutes' scamper among themselves—to the middle-sized, +hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel-legged, long-winded maukins of Scotland, +that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland +yardie that shelters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing +every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired as young eagles +ringing the sky for pastime, and before the dogs seem not so much +scouring for life as for pleasure—with such an air of freedom, liberty, +and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the +faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine—strong in +bone, and sound in bottom;—see, see how Tickler clears that +twenty-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird—tops that hedge +that would turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbray—and +then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his own +length, and close upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off within a +point of due south. A kennel! He never was and never will be in a kennel +all his free joyful days. He has walked and run—and leaped and swam +about—at his own will, ever since he was nine days old—and he would +have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets +for him—he takes his meals with the family, sitting at the right hand +of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he +chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church. +That is the education of a Scottish greyhound—and the consequence is, +that you may pardonably mistake him for a deer dog from Badenoch or +Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse +of the antlers on the weather-gleam,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To his hills that encircle the sea."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This may be called roughing +it—slovenly—coarse—rude—artless—unscientific. But we say no—it is +your only coursing. Gods! with what a bounding bosom the schoolboy +salutes the dawning of the cool—clear—crisp, yes, crisp October morn +(for there has been a slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows +are all glittering with rime); and, little time lost at dress or +breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch, and away to the +Trysting-hill Farmhouse, which he fears the gamekeeper and his grews +will have left ere he can run across the two long Scotch miles of moor +between him and his joy! With step elastic, he feels flying along the +sward as from a spring-board; like a roe, he clears the burns and bursts +his way through the brakes; panting, not from breathlessness but +anxiety, he lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole, and lo, the +green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat +before the door, and two or three tall raw-boned poachers—and there is +mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, +adventure, and desperation, in that word; while tall and graceful stand +the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen yet quiet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> +eyes, prophetic of their destined prey, and though motionless now as +stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like +lightning at the loved halloo!</p> + +<p>Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, +with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no +trifle—for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, +is moreover in the family way, and surely this time there will be twins +at least—and pours out a canty caulker for each crowing crony, +beginning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and +her self; and better speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers +another with "hinny," by way of Athole brose; but it is put off till +evening, for coursing requires a clear head, and the same sobriety then +adorned our youth that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although +an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn +office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, +anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market; and donning +his broad blue bonnet, and the shortest-tailed auld coat he can find, +and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his orders for +a' things about the place, and sets off with the younkers for a holiday. +Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as +he may look; and 'twould be well for this wicked world if no elder in it +had a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's +wife used to call his "awfu' fondness for the Grews!"</p> + +<p>And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed +it merely be some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had time and could +afford it, and lived in a tolerably open country, would not keep, at the +very least, three greyhounds? No better eating than a hare, though old +blockhead Burton—and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was +one in this world—in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. +Did he ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commencement, swallow a +tureen of hare-soup with half-a-peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he +did—and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no +occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he +never did—then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England—as +you love us and yourself—cultivate hare-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>soup, without for a moment +dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly +sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing +as melancholy meat—neither fish, flesh, nor fowl—provided only there +be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. +But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even daunering +about the home-farm seeking for a hare! It is quite an art or science. +You must consult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the +night before—and of every day and night back to last Sunday, when +probably you were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares +shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they +love the fallow field—that, the stubble; this, you will see them, +almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland +lea—that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, +detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or +the bracken; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet +or wind—that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; now you may depend +on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a +bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his +fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the +airts;—in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even +if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be +called an ignorant man—is probably a better-informed man in the long +run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the +Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the +lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old +courser (him of the Sporting Annals included), who was not a man both of +abilities and virtues. But where were we?—at the Trysting-hill +Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-them-Out.</p> + +<p>Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills—for +we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the +rose—fleet of foot almost as the very antelope—Oh! now, alas! dim and +withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms—slow +as the sloth along the ground—spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered +pantaloon!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O heaven! that from our bright and shining years<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Age would but take the things youth heeded not!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent to the +hills—and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, +intimates that she is in her old form behind the dyke—and the noble +dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that +her hour is come. Plash, plash, through the marsh, and then on the dry +furze beyond, you see her large dark-brown eyes—Soho, soho, +soho—Halloo, halloo, halloo—for a moment the seemingly horned creature +appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on +her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts—away fly hare +and hounds towards the mountain.</p> + +<p>Stand all still for a minute—for not a bush the height of our knee to +break our view—and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beautiful +exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in admiration the beatings of the +rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights—none more, none so +much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed +at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of +the falcon's wing! Instinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one +flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and +twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong passions! Now +they are all three upon her—and she dies! No! glancing aside, like a +bullet from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight +course—and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting +headlong one over the other, all three, with erected tails, suddenly +bring themselves up—like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one +after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and +again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind—and in a close line, +head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet—again, all +opened-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the +cliff.</p> + +<p>We are all on foot—and pray what horse could gallop through among all +these quagmires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the +water-cressy and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither +side, even to the two-legged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> leaper's ankle or knee—up that hill on +the perpendicular strewn with flint-shivers—down these loose-hanging +cliffs—through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as +iron—over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds—and— +finally—up—up—up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the +cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a +patch of snow?</p> + +<p>The thing is impossible—so we are all on foot—and the fleetest keeper +that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give +us sixty yards. "Ha! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"—we +exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But +see—see—they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount—glancing +aside, she throws them all three out—yes, all three, and few enow too, +though fair play be a jewel—and ere they can recover, she is ahead a +hundred yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and +bottom! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; +but she steals away from them inch by inch—beating them all blind—and, +suddenly disappearing—Heaven knows how—leaves them all in the lurch. +With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping +tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, +and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in +defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third +time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland—nor can there any +longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most +sceptical, that she is—what all the country-side have long known her to +be—a Witch.</p> + +<p>From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy +in the order of nature—and so is it from coursing to Fox-Hunting—by +means, however, of a small intermediate step—the Harriers. Musical is a +pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring changes +in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country we +have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule +without an exception; and, as we shall see by-and-by, there is one too +here), and commend us even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the +pastoral or sylvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a +heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will +ride, then let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> it be on a nimble galloway of some fourteen hands, that +can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on +bridle-paths, or upon the pathless braes—and by judicious horsemanship, +you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far +out at the death. But the schoolboy—and the shepherd—and the +whipper-in—as each hopes for favour from his own Diana—let them all be +on foot—and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that +can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old +fox—but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless +young hare. What deceit in every double! What calculation in every +squat! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Labyrinth is the +creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre! +a-listening the baffled roar! Now into the pool she plunges, to free +herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent +course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, +fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely +beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping +of stone walls she crawls and scrambles—and now ventures from the wood +along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so +that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty +little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if +to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. +Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The +terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the +churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among +the number—and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of +the house of worship—and now, in momentary contrition,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and we bethink ourselves—alas! all in vain, for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret</i>"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"One lesson, reader, let us two divide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Taught by what nature shows and what conceals,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never to blend our pleasure and our pride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice—so let us +conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime +is the very strongest that can possess the heart—nor, of all the heroes +of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. +His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two +words—Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the +sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate—that would +have been cutting his own throat—but to thin man-devouring wild +beasts—the Pards—with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, +where not even a wolf has existed for centuries—nor a wild boar—the +same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw +of the Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as +never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the +sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat—and gathers them together in +gallant array on the edge of the cover,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the golden hills."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes and flaming +nostrils—betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will +revel in the chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut, sorrel, grey—of +all shades and hues—and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar +character of shape and form—yet all blending harmoniously as they crown +the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as +they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights +or deepening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy +sky.</p> + +<p>You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping +in the desert—and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of +the Saracenic chivalry; but take our word for it, great part of all such +descriptions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should +dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed? And how can that +full speed be anything more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, +the Barbs being up to the belly at every stroke? They are always, it is +said, in high condition—but we, who know something about horse-flesh, +give that assertion the lie. They have seldom anything either to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> eat or +drink; are lean as church-mice; and covered with, clammy sweat before +they have ambled a league from the tent. And then such a set of absurd +riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to +Brentford, <i>viâ</i> the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and +such saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and ridden, accoutrements and +all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh +to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! +Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in to the death of all +the fine strong animal spirits—but blood intermingled and interfused by +twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her +power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gives the world assurance of a horse!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of +each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but +for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the Hussars of +England—confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers!—let the trumpet sound +a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be +opposed with spear and scimitar—and through their snow-ranks will the +Three Hundred go like thaw—splitting them into dissolution with the +noise of thunder.</p> + +<p>The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it; and where, we ask, were +the British cavalry ever overthrown? And how could the great +north-country horse-coupers perform their contracts, but for the +triumphs of the Turf? Blood—blood there must be, either for strength, +or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry—the Life Guards and +the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without +racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one +of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them 'twould be +palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his +rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war campaign? Thus he +becomes demi-corpsed with the noble animal; and what easy, equable +motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with +nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The hills +and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her +gentlemen—her gentlemen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> who have not lived at home at ease—but, with +Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, +have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued +among the sylvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross +swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and still have they been in the +shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at +Saldanha—the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo!</p> + +<p>"Well, do you know, that, after all you have said, Mr North, I cannot +understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me +both cruel and dangerous."</p> + +<p>Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and +delivering them up to the transport of their high condition—for every +throbbing vein is visible—at the first full burst of that maddening +cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! +What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those +of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all +your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on +a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a +smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and +passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first +Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon—once, perhaps, +in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea +that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine +music—worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band +of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African +sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one +man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and +away—while wood and welkin rings—and nothing is felt—nothing is +imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dykes, +ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the +impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, +art, and science, in an enclosed, cultivated, civilised, and Christian +country. There they go—prince and peer, baronet and squire—the +nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each +on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son—for +could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>ander +would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his +way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. +Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, +halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go +wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged +steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud +as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the +country are dispersed the scarlet runners—and a hundred villages pour +forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, +or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the +perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five-barred +gate—away over the ears flies the ex-roughrider in a surprising +somerset—after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on +knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow—Friendship is a fine +thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed—but +Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly +leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a +"hark forward, tantivy!" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure—and +ere the fallen has risen and shaken himself, is round the corner of the +white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the +heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the +Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the +devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? +since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed +with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman +in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with +his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility +of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly +stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; +let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain +yield to fore-feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with +briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to +cliffs unscalable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go +sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high; yet "without +stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> the +music grows fiercer and more savage—lo! all that remains together of +the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of +their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now +make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the +other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed +faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general +growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cosy, as he was an +hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the +cover—he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he +not, pray, well off for sepulture?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET.</h2> +<h3>FYTTE SECOND.</h3> + + +<p>We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear +egotistical—for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must +naturally be anxious to know something of our early history—and their +anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed +some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding +field-sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every +Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it +is necessary that we enter into some interesting details.</p> + +<p>There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a +duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old +tradition, had been out both in the Fifteen and Forty-five. There were +ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy +retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season +continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and +workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven +Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely +rather have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for +kicking when she received her discharge; so much so, indeed, that it was +reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the +recoil. She had a very wide mouth—and was thought by us "an awfu' +scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest +merit. She carried anything we chose to put into her—there still being +of all her performances a loud and favourable report—balls, buttons, +chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults—she had got +addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and +to another of hanging fire; habits of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> it was impossible, for us +at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new +series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the +affection and admiration of us all, that faults like these did not in +the least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did +absolutely and positively and <i>bonâ fide</i> "go off," was in proportion to +the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire—why, +we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the +level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth +clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right +shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, +took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the +blowing up of a rock.</p> + +<p>The "Lang Gun," again, was of a much gentler disposition, and, instead +of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, inclining +forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this +apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it +difficult for us to hold her horizontally—and hence the muzzle being +attracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of +the Shooter. That such is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to be +proved by this—that when the "Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid +across the shoulders of two boys standing about a yard the one before +the other, she kicked every bit as well as the blunderbuss. Her lock was +of a very peculiar construction. It was so contrived that, when on full +cock, the dog-head, as we used to call it, stood back at least seven +inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pulling the +trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in +general remained <i>in statu quo</i>—and there was perfect silence. She had +a worm-eaten stock, into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself +fairly inserted; and even with the aid of circumvoluting twine, 'twas +always coggly. Thus too, the vizy (<i>Anglice</i> sight) generally inclined +unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us everyday +hitting and hurting objects of whose existence even we were not aware, +till alarmed by the lowing or the galloping of cattle on the hills; and +we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who +shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> down the +furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was +murdered. The "Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit—and, with slugs +or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. +Bob Howie at that distance arrested the career of a mad dog—a single +slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one +or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive—or, like many +other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a +silent prey to the rust of oblivion.</p> + +<p>Not a boy in the school had a game certificate—or, as it was called in +the parish—"a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit +necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not +that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually—on the +contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one—a fellow of infinite +fancy—with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But their +numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of +boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes +settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse +garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it +happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, +charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them +from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let +drive into the whirr—a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming +in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the +mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and +the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never +was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into +any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every +cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no +use in rainy weather—for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At +each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have +thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish. Seldom a +Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training +season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes, +all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates. +On every stercoraceous deposit on coach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> cart, or bridle road, they +were busy on grain and pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions +embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million +families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable +multitude would have laughed at the Plague.</p> + +<p>The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from +our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. +Perhaps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, we spared the lyrists +of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the +other beneath the rosy cloud—while there was ever a sevenfold red +shield before Robin's breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, +or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn +or byre. Now and then the large bunting, conspicuous on a top-twig, and +proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom—or the cunning +stone-chat, glancing about the old dykes, usually shot at in vain—or +yellow-hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop +of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that +cruel creed—or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song—or +shilfa, the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his white-plumed wings in +shade and sunshine, in joy the most rapturous, in grief the most +despairing of all the creatures of the air—or redpole, balanced on the +down of the thistle or flower of the bunweed on the old clovery lea—or, +haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and +gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only +slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy +Land.</p> + +<p>But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old—and then woe to the rookery +on the elm-tree grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens, +rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under +that umbrage formed firm floor for Titania's feet—while others kept +dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all +the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted +parents, now dipping down in despair almost within shot, and now, as if +sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and +disappearing to return no more—till sunset should bring silence, and +the night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated +bowers; and then indeed would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> they come all flying back upon their +strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the +depth of far-off fir-woods, where they had lain quaking at the ceaseless +cannonade, some from the furrows of the new-brairded fields aloof on the +uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of +the moorish wilderness.</p> + +<p>Happiest of all human homes, beautiful Craig-Hall! For so even now dost +thou appear to be—in the rich, deep, mellow, green light of imagination +trembling on tower and tree—art thou yet undilapidated and undecayed, +in thy old manorial solemnity almost majestical, though even then thou +hadst long been tenanted but by a humble farmer's family—people of low +degree. The evening-festival of the First Day of the Books—nay, scoff +not at such an anniversary—was still held in thy ample kitchen—of old +the bower of brave lords and ladies bright—while the harper, as he sung +his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the +dais. The days of chivalry were gone—and the days had come of curds and +cream, and, preferred by some people though not by us, of cream-cheese. +Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and +chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more +lifelike seem the living! Middle-aged men and middle-aged women, +husbands and wives, those sedate, with hair combed straight on their +foreheads, sunburnt faces, and horny hands established on their +knees—these serene, with countenances many of them not unlovely—comely +all—and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms—as +they sat in their holiday dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had +hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, for a blink +restored! Boys and virgins—those bold even in their bashfulness—these +blushing whenever eyes met eyes,—nor would they—nor could they—have +spoken in the hush to save their souls; yet ere the evening star arose, +many a pretty maiden had, down-looking and playing with the hem of her +garment, sung linnet-like her ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many +a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Burns was +but a youth—walking mute among the wildflowers on the moor—nor aware +of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart!</p> + +<p>Of all the year's holidays, not even excepting the First of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> May, this +was the most delightful. The First of May, longed for so passionately +from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist +and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a +sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashed—the roomy +hay-waggon remained in its shed—the preparations made for us in the +distant moorland farmhouse were vain—the fishing-rods hung useless on +the nails—and disconsolate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, +ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month +of June" be frequently showery, it is almost always sunny too. Every +half-hour there is such a radiant blink that the young heart sings aloud +for joy; summer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are of little or no +use towards the Longest Day; there is something cheerful even in +thunder, if it be not rather too near; the lark has not yet ceased +altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled +beneath the sablest cloud; the green earth repels from her refulgent +bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in +the fulness and brightness of her contentment; through the heaviest +flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an +impatient smile, and all the rivers and burns, with the multitude of +their various voices, sing praises unto Heaven.</p> + +<p>Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we went bounding over the flowery +fields and broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. During the long +noisy day, we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was +to be; and during the long and almost as noisy evening, we forgot all +the pastime of the day. Weeks before, had each of us engaged his partner +for the first country dance, by right his own when supper came, and to +sit close to him with her tender side, with waist at first stealthily +arm-encircled, and at last boldly and almost with proud display. In the +churchyard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whispered into the +ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity +failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burnside cottage, +and with the contents of his basket leave a tender request, and from +behind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile, a kiss, and a waving +farewell.</p> + +<p>Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen made beautiful +with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> of taste and genius +decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting +a still nobler guest. But oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was +then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of +hawthorn, in the chimney—itself almost a tree, so thick—so deep—so +rich its load of blossoms—so like its fragrance to something breathed +from heaven—and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as she +approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's +breath—in an hour all melted quite away! No broom that nowadays grows +on the brae, so yellow as the broom—the golden broom—the broom that +seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself +had sunk—the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest—and of +its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark +hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her +merriment—dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose +bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses—conservatories— +orangeries—are exquisitely balmy still—and, in presence of these +strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some +rich foreign clime. But now we carry the burden of our years along with +us—and that consciousness bedims the blossoms, and makes mournful the +balm, as from flowers in some fair burial-place, breathing of the tomb. +But oh! that Craig-Hall hawthorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they +send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that +all the weary worn-out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment, +and even now—the flight of that swallow seems more aerial—more alive +with bliss his clay-built nest—the ancient long-ago blue of the sky +returns to heaven—not for many a many a long year have we seen so +fair—so frail—so transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! The +very viol speaks—the very dance responds in Craig-Hall: this—this is +the very Festival of the First Day of the Rooks—Mary Mather, the pride +of the parish—the county—the land—the earth—is our partner—and long +mayest thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud—when the parting kiss is +given—and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into her +bosom!</p> + +<p>But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search +for it, even like a spinster of old, in the dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> arranged spindle of one +of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, +hushed by machinery clink-clanking with power-looms in every town and +city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves—alone—or +with one chosen comrade; for even then we began to have our sympathies +and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, +but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, +and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a +perfect love—we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred—alone +or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and +stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whaup! At first +sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart +beating quick time in the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body +being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether—and we grew sick +with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, +like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample +wings—and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by +our ineffectual hail, seen falling far short of the deceptive distance, +while his mate that had lain couched—perhaps in her nest of eggs or +young, exposed yet hidden—within killing range, half-running, +half-flying, flapped herself into flight, simulating lame leg and +wounded wing; and the two disappearing together behind the hills, left +us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, to resume with live hopes +rising out of the ashes of the dead, our daily disappointed quest over +the houseless mosses. Yet now and then to our steady aim the bill of the +whaup disgorged blood—and as we felt the feathers in our hand, and from +tip to tip eyed the outstretched wings, Fortune, we felt, had no better +boon to bestow, earth no greater triumph.</p> + +<p>Hush—stoop—kneel—crawl—for by all our hopes of mercy—a heron—a +heron! An eel dangling across his bill! And now the water-serpent has +disappeared! From morning dawn hath the fowl been fishing here—perhaps +on that very stone—for it is one of those days when eels are a-roaming +in the shallows, and the heron knows that they are as likely to pass by +that stone as any other—from morning dawn—and 'tis now past meridian, +half-past two! Be propitious, oh ye Fates! and never—never—shall he +again fold his wings on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees that +overtop the only tower left of the old castle. Another eel! and we too +can crawl silent as the sinuous serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes +dead—no, not dead—but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as +head-over-heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the serene unsettling +of himself from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, and his craw +filled with fish for his far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk +into the air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away like a +wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the current of air homewards +flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy course—laggard and lazy no +more—leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your motion in +watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible among the woods!</p> + +<p>The disgorged eels are returned—some of them alive—to their native +element—the mud. And the dead heron floats away before small winds and +waves into the middle of the tarn. Where is he—the matchless +Newfoundlander—<i>nomine gaudens</i> <span class="smcap">Fro</span>, because white as the froth of the +sea? Off with a collie. So—stript with the first intention, we plunge +from a rock, and,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Though in the scowl of heaven, the tarn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grows dark as we are swimming,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with the heron floating +before us, return to the heather-fringed shore, and give three cheers +that startle the echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the +Grey-Linn Cairn.</p> + +<p>Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock-and-river scene, beautiful +and bewildering as the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself brought +who knows where to seek the heron in all its solitary haunts. For often +when the moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be baffled by the +waves of tarn and loch, he sails away from his swinging-tree, and +through some open glade dipping down to the secluded stream, alights +within the calm chasm, and folds his wings in the breezeless air. The +clouds are driving fast aloft in a carry from the sea—but they are all +reflected in that pellucid pool—so perfect the cliff-guarded repose. A +better day—a better hour—a better minute for fishing could not have +been chosen by Mr Heron, who is already swallowing a par.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> Another—and +another—but something falls from the rock into the water; and +suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses himself to a short +flight up the channel—round that tower-like cliff standing strangely by +itself, with a crest of self-sown flowering shrubs; and lo! another +vista, if possible, just a degree more silent—more secluded—more +solitary—beneath the mid-day night of woods! To shoot thee there—would +be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of +an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortunate for thee—folded up there, as +thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone—that at this moment we +have no firearms—for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that very +pool, and this—O Heron—is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to +be in utter solitude—no sportsman but thyself in the chasm—for the +otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with +bitten shoulder seldom lies here—that epicure's tasted prey. Yet within +ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon +thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy +watchful sense—for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or +fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that there is not +only humanity—but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and +possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious, solemn, +and sacred light—and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and +ancient in thy look—and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the +very elements admire and reverence—the waters wetting them not—nor the +winds ruffling—and moreover we love thee—Heron—for the sake of that +old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A +Ruin nameless, traditionless—sole, undisputed property of Oblivion!</p> + +<p>Hurra!—Heron—hurra! why, that was an awkward tumble—and very nearly +had we hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie? +A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy +life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits—but thy nerves must be +sorely shaken—and what an account of this adventure will certainly be +shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs! Not, even +wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit +this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb +creatures—and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than +seek for fish in this man-monster-haunted pool. Farewell! farewell!</p> + +<p>Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly +known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the +garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander, +and nine goslings—about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not +sickened and died of Nostalgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of +their native Tweed—and a brace of perch, now nothing but prickle. But +the lochs—the hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's eye and our +mind's ear,—heaven and earth! the bogs are black with duck, teal, and +widgeon—up there "comes for food or play" to the holla of the winds, a +wedge of wild geese, piercing the marbled heavens with clamour—and lo! +in the very centre of the mediterranean, the Royal Family of the Swans! +Up springs the silver sea-trout in the sunshine—see Sir Humphrey!—a +salmon—a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea!</p> + +<p>For how many admirable articles are there themes in the above short +paragraph! Duck, teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans! And first, duck, +teal, and widgeon. There they are, all collected together, without +regard to party politics, in their very best attire, as thick as the +citizens of Edinburgh, their wives, sweethearts, and children, on the +Calton Hill, on the first day of the King's visit to Scotland. As thick, +but not so steady—for what swimming about in circles—what ducking and +diving is there!—all the while accompanied with a sort of low, thick, +gurgling, not unsweet, nor unmusical quackery, the expression of the +intense joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh! Muckle-mou'd Meg! neither +thou nor the "Lang Gun" are of any avail here—for that old drake, who, +together with his shadow, on which he seems to be sitting, is almost as +big as a boat in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, near as he +seems to be in the deception of the clear frosty air, is yet better than +three hundred yards from the shore—and, at safe distance, cocks his eye +at the fowler. There is no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how +tempting in its unapproachable reeds and rushes, and hut-crested +knoll—a hut built perhaps by some fowler, in the olden time—yon +central Isle! But be still as a shadow—for lo! a batch of +Whig-seceders, paddling all by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> themselves towards that creek—and as +surely as our name is Christopher, in another quarter of an hour they +will consist of killed, wounded, and missing. On our belly—with +unhatted head just peering over the knowe—and Muckle mou'd Meg slowly +and softly stretched out on the rest, so as not to rustle a +windle-strae, we lie motionless as a maukin, till the coterie collects +together for simultaneous dive down to the aquatic plants and insects of +the fast-shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the turn with their +tails, a single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs +about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden disturbance, is +afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood.</p> + +<p>Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro—who +with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever +and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged +by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, +and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down +the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his +tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily +disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back +and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, +to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if +she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards +heaven—then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more +gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back +delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky +lines—precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling +art—next—nobly done, glorious Fro—that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, +with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest +waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the +indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings—and now, if +we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name—finally, that +exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately +pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to +a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means +and appliances to boot, carved finely—most finely—by razor-like knife, +in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide—tasted by a tongue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning +rose—swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its +intense delight—and received into a stomach yawning with greed and +gratitude,—Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the +apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this +feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short +quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!</p> + +<p>How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy head +above the foam, his gathered prey seized—all four—by their limber +necks, and brightening, like a bunch of flowers, as they glitter towards +the shore! With one bold body-shake, felt to the point, of each +particular hair, he scatters the water from his coat like mist, +reminding one of that glorious line in Shakespeare,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>advancing with sinewy legs seemingly lengthened by the drenching flood, +and dripping tail stretched out in all its broad longitude, with hair +almost like white hanging plumes—magnificent as tail of the Desert-Born +at the head of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Half-way his master +meets his beloved Fro on the slope; and first proudly and haughtily +pausing to mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemeth one whom nature, +in his boldest and brightest bearing, hath yet made a slave—he lays the +offering at our feet, and having felt on his capacious forehead the +approving pressure of our hand,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"While, like the murmur of a dream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He hears us breathe his name,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel of transport, and in many +a widening circle pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with +whirlwind speed; till, as if utterly joy-exhausted, he brings his +snow-white bulk into dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment +illuminated by a burst of sunshine!</p> + +<p>Not now—as fades upon our pen the solemn light of the dying day—shall +we dare to decide, whether or not Nature—O most matchless creature of +thy kind!—gave thee, or gave thee not, the gift of an immortal +soul!—Better such creed—fond and foolish though it may be—yet +scarcely unscriptural, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> in each word of Scripture there are many +meanings, even when each sacred syllable is darkest to be read,—better +such creed than that of the atheist or sceptic, distracted ever in his +seemingly sullen apathy, by the dim, dark doom of dust. Better that Fro +should live, than that Newton should die—for ever. What though the +benevolent Howard devoted his days to visit the dungeon's gloom, and by +intercession with princes, to set the prisoners free from the low +damp-dripping stone roof of the deep-dug cell beneath the foundation +rocks of the citadel, to the high dewdropping vault of heaven, too, too +dazzlingly illumined by the lamp of the insufferable sun! There reason +triumphed—those were the works of glorified humanity. But thou—a +creature of mere instinct—according to Descartes, a machine, an +automaton—hadst yet a constant light of thought and of affection in +thine eyes; nor wert thou without some glimmering and mysterious +notions—and what more have we ourselves?—of life and of death! Why +fear to say that thou wert divinely commissioned and inspired—on that +most dismal and shrieking hour, when little Harry Seymour, that bright +English boy, "whom all that looked on loved," entangled among the cruel +chains of those fair water-lilies, all so innocently yet so murderously +floating round him, was, by all standing or running about there with +clenched hands, or kneeling on the sod—given up to inextricable death? +We were not present to save the dear boy, who had been delivered to our +care as to that of an elder brother, by the noble lady who, in her deep +widow's weeds, kissed her sole darling's sunny head, and disappeared. We +were not present—or by all that is holiest in heaven or on earth—our +arms had been soon around thy neck, when thou wert seemingly about to +perish!</p> + +<p>But a poor dumb despised dog—nothing, as some say, but animated +dust—was there,—and without shout or signal—for all the Christian +creatures were alike helpless in their despair—shot swift as a sunbeam +over the deep, and by those golden tresses, sinking and brightening +through the wave, brought the noble child ashore, and stood over him, as +if in joy and sorrow, lying too like death on the sand! And when little +Harry opened his glazed eyes, and looked bewildered on all the faces +around—and then fainted—and revived and fainted again—till at last he +came to dim recollection of this world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> on the bosom of the physician +brought thither with incomprehensible speed from his dwelling afar +off—thou didst lick his cold white hands and blue face, with a whine +that struck awful pity into all hearts, and thou didst follow him—one +of the group—as he was borne along—and frisking and gambolling no more +all that day, gently didst thou lay thyself down at the feet of his +little bed, and watch there unsleeping all night long! For the boy knew +that God had employed one of his lowly creatures to save him—and +beseeched that he might lie there to be looked at by the light of the +taper, till he himself, as the pains went away, might fall asleep! And +we, the watchers by his bedside, heard him in his dreams mentioning the +creature's name in his prayers.</p> + +<p>Yet at times—O Fro—thou wert a sad dog indeed—neither to bind nor to +hold—for thy blood was soon set aboil, and thou—like Julius Cæsar—and +Demetrius Poliorcetes—and Alexander the Great—and many other ancient +and modern kings and heroes—thou wert the slave of thy passions. No +Scipio wert thou with a Spanish captive. Often—in spite of threatening +eye and uplifted thong—uplifted only, for thou went'st unflogged to thy +grave—didst thou disappear for days at a time—as if lost or dead. +Rumours of thee were brought to the kirk by shepherds from the remotest +hills in the parish—most confused and contradictory—but, when +collected and compared, all agreeing in this—that thou wert living, and +lifelike, and life-imparting, and after a season from thy travels to +return; and return thou still didst—wearied often and woe-begone—purpled +thy snow-white curling—and thy broad breast torn, not disfigured, by +honourable wounds. For never yet saw we a fighter like thee. Up on thy +hind-legs in a moment, like a growling Polar monster, with thy fore-paws +round thy foeman's neck, bull-dog, collie, mastiff, or greyhound, and +down with him in a moment, with as much ease as Cass, in the wrestling +ring at Carlisle, would throw a Bagman, and then woe to the throat of +the downfallen, for thy jaws were shark-like as they opened and shut +with their terrific tusks, grinding through skin and sinew to the spine.</p> + +<p>Once, and once only—bullied out of all endurance by a half-drunken +carrier—did we consent to let thee engage in a pitched battle with a +mastiff victorious in fifty fights—a famous shanker—and a throttler +beyond all compare. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> indeed a bloody business—now growling along +the glaur of the road—a hairy hurricane—now snorting in the +suffocating ditch—now fair play on the clean and clear crown of the +causey—now rolling over and over through a chance-open white little +gate, into a cottage-garden—now separated by choking them both with a +cord—now brought out again with savage and fiery eyes to the scratch on +a green plat round the signboard-swinging tree in the middle of the +village—auld women in their mutches crying out, "Shame! whare's the +minister?"—young women, with combs in their pretty heads, blinking with +pale and almost weeping faces from low-lintelled doors—children +crowding for sight and safety on the louping-on-stane—and loud cries +ever and anon at each turn and eddy of the fight, of "Well done, Fro! +well done, Fro!—see how he worries his windpipe—well done, Fro!" for +Fro was the delight and glory of the whole parish, and the honour of all +its inhabitants, male and female, was felt to be staked on the +issue—while at intervals was heard the harsh hoarse voice of the +carrier and his compeers, cursing and swearing in triumph in a +many-oathed language peculiar to the race that drive the broad-wheeled +waggons with the high canvass roofs, as the might of Teeger prevailed, +and the indomitable Fro seemed to be on his last legs beneath a grip of +the jugular, and then stretched motionless and passive—in defeat or +death. A mere <i>ruse</i> to recover wind. Like unshorn Sampson starting from +his sleep, and snapping like fired flax the vain bands of the +Philistines, Fro whammled Teeger off, and twisting round his head in +spite of the grip on the jugular, the skin stretching and giving way in +a ghastly but unfelt wound, he suddenly seized with all his tusks his +antagonist's eye, and bit it clean out of the socket. A yowl of +unendurable pain—spouting of blood—sickness—swooning—tumbling +over—and death. His last fight is over! His remaining eye glazed—his +protruded tongue bitten in anguish by his own grinding teeth—his massy +hind-legs stretched out with a kick like a horse—his short tail +stiffens—he is laid out a grim corpse—flung into a cart tied behind +the waggon—and off to the tanyard.</p> + +<p>No shouts of victory—but stern, sullen, half-ashamed silence—as of +guilty things after the perpetration of a misdeed. Still glaring +savagely, ere yet the wrath of fight has subsided in his heart, and +going and returning to the bloody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> place, uncertain whether or not his +enemy were about to return, Fro finally lies down at some distance, and +with bloody flews keeps licking his bloody legs, and with long darting +tongue cleansing the mire from his neck, breast, side, and back—a +sanguinary spectacle! He seems almost insensible to our caresses, and +there is something almost like upbraiding in his victorious eyes. Now +that his veins are cooling, he begins to feel the pain of his +wounds—many on, and close to vital parts. Most agonising of all—all +his four shanks are tusk-pierced, and, in less than ten minutes, he +limps away to his kennel, lame as if riddled by shot—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Heu quantum mutatus ab illo<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hectore!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>gore-besmeared and dirt-draggled—an hour ago serenely bright as the +lily in June, or the April snow. The huge waggon moves away out of the +clachan without its master, who, ferocious from the death of the other +brute he loved, dares the whole school to combat. Off fly a dozen +jackets—and a devil's dozen of striplings from twelve past to going +sixteen—firmly wedged together like the Macedonian Phalanx—are yelling +for the fray. There is such another shrieking of women as at the taking +of Troy. But</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The Prince of Mearns stept forth before the crowd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, Carter, challenged you to single fight!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Bob Howie, who never yet feared the face of clay, and had too great a +heart to suffer mere children to combat the strongest and most unhappy +man in the whole country—stripped to the buff; and there he stands, +with</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>shoulders like Atlas—breast like Hercules—and arms like Vulcan. The +heart of Benjamin the waggoner dies within him—he accepts the challenge +for a future day—and retreating backwards to his clothes, receives a +right-hander as from a sledge-hammer on the temple, that fells him like +an ox. The other carters all close in, but are sent spinning in all +directions as from the sails of a windmill. Ever as each successive lout +seeks the earth, we savage schoolboys rush in upon him in twos, and +threes, and fours, basting and battering him as he bawls; at this very +crisis—so fate ordained—are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> seen hurrying down the hill from the +south, leaving their wives, sweethearts, and asses in the rear, with +coal-black hair and sparkling eyes, brown brany legs, and clenched iron +fists at the end of long arms, swinging flail-like at all times, and +never more than now, ready for the fray, a gang of Gypsies! +while—beautiful coincidence!—up the hill from the north came on, at +double-quick time, an awkward squad of as grim Milesians as ever buried +a pike in a Protestant. Nor question nor reply; but in a moment a +general mêlée. Men at work in the hay-fields, who would not leave their +work for a dog-fight, fling down scythe and rake, and over the hedges +into the high-road, a stalwart reinforcement. Weavers leap from their +treddles—doff their blue aprons, and out into the air. The red-cowled +tailor pops his head through a skylight, and next moment is in the +street. The butcher strips his long light-blue linen coat, to engage a +Paddy; and the smith, ready for action—for the huge arms of Burniwind +are always bare—with a hand-ower-hip delivery, makes the head of the +king of the gypsies ring like an anvil. There has been no marshalling of +forces—yet lo! as if formed in two regular lines by the Adjutant +himself after the first tuilzie, stand the carters, the gypsies, and the +Irishmen, opposed to Bob Howie, the butcher, the smith, the tailor, the +weaver, the haymakers, and the boys from the manse—the latter drawn up +cautiously, but not cowardly, in the rear. What a twinkling of fists and +shillelas! what bashed and bloody noses! cut blubber lips—cheekbones +out of all proportion to the rest of the face, and, through sudden black +and blue tumefactions, men's changed into pigs' eyes! And now there is +also rugging of caps and mutches and hair, "femineo ululatu," for the +Egyptian Amazons bear down like furies on the glee'd widow that keeps +the change-house, half-witted Shoosy that sells yellow sand, and Davie +Donald's dun daughter, commonly called Spunkie. What shrieking and +tossing of arms, round the whole length and breadth of the village! +Where is Simon Andrew the constable? Where is auld Robert Maxwell the +ruling elder? What can have become of Laird Warnock, whose word is law? +And what can the Minister be about, can anybody tell, that he does not +come flying from the manse to save the lives of his parishioners from +cannibals, and gypsies, and Eerish, murdering their way to the gallows?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> + +<p>How—why—or when—that bloody battle ceased to be, was never distinctly +known either then or since; but, like everything else, it had an +end—and even now we have a confused dream of the spot at its +termination—naked men lying on their backs in the mire, all drenched in +blood—with women, some old and ugly, with shrivelled witch-like hag +breasts, others young, and darkly, swarthily, blackly beautiful, with +budding or new-blown bosoms unkerchiefed in the collyshangie—perilous +to see—leaning over them: and these were the Egyptians! Men in brown +shirts, gore-spotted, with green bandages round their broken heads, +laughing, and joking, and jeering, and singing, and shouting, though +desperately mauled and mangled—while Scottish wives, and widows, and +maids, could not help crying out in sympathy, "Oh! but they're bonny +men—what a pity they should aye be sae fond o' fechting, and a' manner +o' mischief!"—and these were the Irishmen! Retired and apart, hangs the +weaver, with his head over a wall, dog-sick, and bocking in strong +convulsions; some haymakers are washing their cut faces in the well; the +butcher, bloody as a bit of his own beef, walks silent into the +shambles; the smith, whose grimy face hides its pummelling, goes off +grinning a ghastly smile in the hands of his scolding, yet not unloving +wife; the tailor, gay as a flea, and hot as his own goose, to show how +much more he has given than received, offers to leap any man on the +ground, hop-step-and-jump, for a mutchkin—while Bob Howie walks about, +without a visible wound, except the mark of bloody knuckles on his +brawny breast, with arms a-kimbo, seaman-fashion—for Bob had been at +sea—and as soon as the whisky comes, hands it about at his own expense, +caulker after caulker, to the vanquished—for Bob was as generous as +brave; had no spite at the gypsies; and as for Irishmen, why they were +ranting, roving, red-hot, dare-devil boys, just like himself; and after +the fight, he would have gone with them to Purgatory, or a few steps +further down the hill. All the battle through, we manse-boys had fought, +it may be said, behind the shadow of him our hero; and in warding off +mischief from us, he received not a few heavy body-blows from King +Carew, a descendant of Bamfylde Moore, and some crown-cracks from the +shillelas of the Connaught Rangers.</p> + +<p>Down comes a sudden thunder-plump, making the road a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> river—and to the +whiff o' lightning, all in the shape of man, woman, and child, are under +roof-cover. The afternoon soon clears up, and the haymakers leave the +clanking empty gill or half-mutchkin stoup for the field, to see what +the rain has done—the forge begins again to roar—the sound of the +flying shuttle tells that the weaver is again on his treddles; the +tailor hoists up his little window in the thatch, in that close +confinement, to enjoy the cauler air—the tinklers go to encamp on the +common—"the air is balm"—insects, drooping from eave and tree, "show +to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold"—though the season of +bird-singing be over and gone, there is a pleasant chirping hereabouts, +thereabouts, everywhere; the old blind beggar, dog-led, goes from door +to door, unconscious that such a stramash has ever been—and dancing +round our champion, away we schoolboys all fly with him to swim in the +Brother Loch, taking our fishing-rods with us, for one clap of thunder +will not frighten the trouts; and about the middle or end of July, we +have known great labbers, twenty inches long, play wallop between our +very feet, in the warm shallow water, within a yard of the edge, to the +yellow-bodied, tinsey-tailed, black half-heckle, with brown mallard +wing, a mere midge, but once fixed in lip or tongue, "inextricable as +the gored lion's bite."</p> + +<p>But ever after that Passage in the life of Fro, his were, on the whole, +years of peace. Every season seemed to strengthen his sagacity, and to +unfold his wonderful instincts. Most assuredly he knew all the simpler +parts of speech—all the household words in the Scottish language. He +was, in all our pastimes, as much one of ourselves, as if, instead of +being a Pagan with four feet, he had been a Christian with two. As for +temper, we trace the sweetness of our own to his; an angry word from one +he loved, he forgot in half a minute, offering his lion-like paw; yet +there were particular people he could not abide, nor from their hands +would he have accepted a roast potato out of the dripping-pan, and in +this he resembled his master. He knew the Sabbath-day as well as the +sexton—and never was known to bark till the Monday morning when the +cock crew; and then he would give a long musical yowl, as if his breast +were relieved from silence. If ever, in this cold, changeful, inconstant +world, there was a friendship that might be called sincere, it was that +which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> half a century ago and upwards, subsisted between Christopher +North and John Fro. We never had a quarrel in all our lives—and within +these two months we made a pilgrimage to his grave. He was buried—not +by our hands, but by the hands of one whose tender and manly heart loved +the old, blind, deaf, staggering creature to the very last—for such in +his fourteenth year he truly was—a sad and sorry sight to see, to them +who remembered 'the glory of his stately and majestic years. One day he +crawled with a moan-like whine to our brother's feet, and expired. +Reader, young, bright, and beautiful though thou be—remember all flesh +is dust!</p> + +<p>This is an episode—a tale, in itself complete, yet growing out of, and +appertaining to, the main plot of Epic or Article. You will recollect we +were speaking of ducks, teals, and widgeons; and we come now to the next +clause of the verse—wild geese and swans.</p> + +<p>Some people's geese are all swans; but so far from that being the case +with ours—sad and sorry are we to say it—now all our swans are geese. +But in our buoyant boyhood, all God's creatures were to our eyes just as +God made them; and there was ever—especially birds—a tinge of beauty +over them all. What an inconceivable difference—distance—to the +imagination, between the nature of a tame and a wild goose! Aloft in +heaven, themselves in night invisible, the gabble of a cloud of wild +geese is sublime. Whence comes it—whither goes it—for what end, and by +what power impelled? Reason sees not into the darkness of instinct—and +therefore the awestruck heart of the night-wandering boy beats to hear +the league-long gabble that probably has winged its wedge-like way from +the lakes, and marshes, and dreary morasses of Siberia, from Lapland, or +Iceland, or the unfrequented and unknown northern regions of +America—regions set apart, quoth Bewick we believe, for summer +residences and breeding-places, and where they are amply provided with a +variety of food, a large portion of which must consist of the larvæ of +gnats, and myriads of insects, there fostered by the unsetting sun! Now +they are gabbling good Gaelic over a Highland night-moor. Perhaps in +another hour the descending cloud will be covering the wide waters at +the head of the wild Loch Maree—or, silent and asleep, the whole host +be riding at anchor around Lomond's Isles!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<p>But 'tis now mid-day—and lo! in that mediterranean—a flock of wild +Swans! Have they dropt down from the ether into the water almost as pure +as ether, without having once folded their wings, since they rose aloft +to shun the insupportable northern snows hundreds of leagues beyond the +storm-swept Orcades? To look at the quiet creatures, you might think +that they had never left the circle of that little loch. There they hang +on their shadows, even as if asleep in the sunshine; and now stretching +out their long wings—how apt for flight from clime to clime!—joyously +they beat the liquid radiance, till to the loud flapping high rises the +mist, and wide spreads the foam, almost sufficient for a rainbow. Safe +are they from all birds of prey. The Osprey dashes down on the teal, or +sea-trout, swimming within or below their shadow. The great Erne, or +Sea-eagle, pounces on the mallard, as he mounts from the bulrushes +before the wild swans sailing, with all wings hoisted, like a fleet—but +osprey nor eagle dares to try his talons on that stately bird—for he is +bold in his beauty, and formidable as he is fair; the pinions that swim +and soar can also smite; and though the one be a lover of war, the other +of peace, yet of them it may be said,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The eagle he is lord above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The swan is lord below!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To have shot such a creature—so large—so white—so high-soaring—and +on the winds of midnight wafted from so far—a creature that seemed not +merely a stranger in that loch, but belonging to some mysterious land in +another hemisphere, whose coast ships with frozen rigging have been +known to visit, driving under bare poles through a month's +snow-storms—to have shot such a creature was an era in our imagination, +from which, had nature been more prodigal, we might have sprung up a +poet. Once, and but once, we were involved in the glory of that event. +The creature had been in a dream of some river or lake in +Kamtschatka—or ideally listening,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Across the waves' tumultuous roar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wolf's long howl from Oonalashka's shore,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>when, guided by our good genius and our brightest star, we suddenly saw +him sitting asleep in all his state, within gunshot, in a bay of the +moonlight Loch! We had nearly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> fainted—died on the very spot—and why +were we not entitled to have died as well as any other passionate +spirit, whom joy ever divorced from life? We blew his black bill into +pieces—not a feather on his head but was touched; and like a little +white-sailed pleasure-boat caught in a whirlwind, the wild swan spun +round, and then lay motionless on the water, as if all her masts had +gone by the board. We were all alone that night—not even Fro was with +us; we had reasons for being alone, for we wished not that there should +be any footfall but our own round that mountain-hut. Could we swim? Ay, +like the wild swan himself, through surge or breaker. But now the loch +was still as the sky, and twenty strokes carried us close to the +glorious creature, which, grasped by both hands, and supporting us as it +was trailed beneath our breast, while we floated rather than swam +ashore, we felt to be in verity our—Prey! We trembled with a sort of +fear, to behold him lying indeed dead on the sward. The moon—the many +stars, here and there one wondrously large and lustrous—the hushed +glittering loch—the hills, though somewhat dimmed, green all winter +through, with here and there a patch of snow on their summits in the +blue sky, on which lay a few fleecy clouds—the mighty foreign bird, +whose plumage we had never hoped to touch but in a dream, lying like the +ghost of something that ought not to have been destroyed—the scene was +altogether such as made our wild young heart quake, and almost repent of +having killed a creature so surpassingly beautiful. But that was a +fleeting fancy—and over the wide moors we went, like an American Indian +laden with game, journeying to his wigwam over the wilderness. As we +whitened towards the village in the light of morning, the earlier +labourers held up their hands in wonder what and who we might be; and +Fro, who had missed his master, and was lying awake for him on the +mount, came bounding along, nor could refrain the bark of delighted +passion as his nose nuzzled in the soft down of the bosom of the +creature whom he remembered to have sometimes seen floating too far off +in the lake, or far above our reach cleaving the firmament.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET</h2> +<h3>FYTTE THIRD.</h3> + + +<p>O Muckle-mou'd Meg! and can it be that thou art numbered among forgotten +things—unexistences!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With rocks, and stones, and trees!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What would we not now give for a sight—a kiss—of thy dear lips! Lips +which we remember once to have put to our own, even when thy beloved +barrel was double-loaded! Now we sigh to think on what then made us +shudder! Oh! that thy butt were but now resting on our shoulder! Alas! +for ever discharged! Burst and rent asunder, art thou now lying buried +in a peat-moss? Did some vulgar villain of a village Vulcan convert +thee, name and nature, into nails? Some dark-visaged Douglas of a +henroost-robbing Egyptian, solder thee into a pan? Oh! that our passion +could dig down unto thee in the bowels of the earth—and with loud +lamenting elegies, and louder hymns of gratulation, restore thee, +buttless, lockless, vizyless, burst, rent, torn, and twisted though thou +be'st, to the light of day, and of the world-rejoicing Sun! Then would +we adorn thee with evergreen wreaths of the laurel and the ivy—and hang +thee up, in memory and in monument of all the bright, dim, still, stormy +days of our boyhood—when gloom itself was glory—and when—But</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Be hush'd my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the faint and the feeble deplore."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Cassandra—Corinna—Sappho—Lucretia—Cleopatra—Tighe—De Staël—in +their beauty or in their genius, are, with millions on millions of the +fair-faced or bright-souled, nothing but dust and ashes; and as they +are, so shall Baillie, and Grant, and Hemans, and Landon be—and why +vainly yearn "with love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> and longings infinite," to save from doom of +perishable nature—of all created things, but one alone—Muckle-mou'd +Meg!</p> + +<p>After a storm comes a calm; and we hasten to give the sporting world the +concluding account of our education. In the moorland parish—God bless +it—in which we had the inestimable advantage of passing our +boyhood—there' were a good many falcons—of course the kite or +glead—the buzzard—the sparrowhawk—the marsh harrier—that imp the +merlin—and, rare bird and beautiful! there, on a cliff which, alas! a +crutched man must climb no more, did the Peregrine build her nest. You +must not wonder at this, for the parish was an extensive one even for +Scotland—half Highland half Lowland—and had not only "muirs and mosses +many o," but numerous hills, not a few mountains, some most +extraordinary cliffs, considerable store of woods, and one, indeed, that +might well be called the Forest.</p> + +<p>Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead through thy own sweet stormy skies, +Auld Scotland! and as sternly and grimly thou look'st far over the +hushed or howling seas, remember thee—till all thy moors and mosses +quake at thy heart, as if swallowing up an invading army—a fate that +oft befell thy foes of yore—remember thee, in mist-shrouded dream, and +cloud-born vision, of the long line of kings, and heroes, and sages, and +bards, whose hallowed bones sleep in pine-darkened tombs among the +mountain heather, by the side of rivers, and lochs, and arms of +ocean—their spirits yet seen in lofty superstition, sailing or sitting +on the swift or settled tempest. Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead, Auld +Scotland! and sing aloud to all the nations of the earth, with thy voice +of cliffs, and caves, and caverns,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wha daur meddle wi' me?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What! some small, puny, piteous windpipes are heard cheeping against +thee from the Cockneys—like ragged chickens agape in the pip. How the +feeble and fearful creatures would crawl on their hands and knees, faint +and giddy, and shrieking out for help to the heather stalks, if forced +to face one of thy cliffs, and foot its flinty bosom! How would the +depths of their long ears, cotton-stuffed in vain, ache to the +spray-thunder of thy cataracts! Sick, sick would be their stomachs, +storm-swept in a six-oared cutter into the jaws of Staffa!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> That sight +is sufficient to set the most saturnine on the guffaw—the Barry +Cornwall himself, crossing a chasm a hundred yards deep,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"On the uncertain footing of a spar,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>on a tree felled where it stood, centuries ago, by steel or storm, into +a ledgeless bridge, oft sounding and shaking to the hunter's feet in +chase of the red-deer! The Cockneys do not like us Scotchmen—because of +our high cheek-bones. They are sometimes very high indeed, very coarse, +and very ugly, and give a Scotchman a grim and gaunt look, assuredly not +to be sneezed at, with any hope of impunity, on a dark day and in a +lonesome place, by the most heroic chief of the most heroic clan in all +the level land of Lud, travelling all by himself in a horse and gig, and +with a black boy in a cockaded glazed hat, through the Heelands o' +Scotland, passing of course, at the very least, for a captain of +Hussars! Then Scotchmen canna keep their backs straught, it seems, and +are always booin' and booin' afore a great man. Cannot they, indeed? Do +they, indeed? Ascend with that Scottish shepherd yon mountain's +breast—swim with him that mountain loch—a bottle of Glenlivet, who +first stands in shallow water, on the Oak Isle—and whose back will be +straughtest, that of the Caledonian or the Cockney? The little Luddite +will be puking among the heather, about some five hundred feet above the +level of the sea—higher for the first time in his life than St Paul's, +and nearer than he ever will again be, either in the spirit or the +flesh, to heaven. The little Luddite will be puking in the hitherto +unpolluted loch, after some seven strokes or so, with a strong Scottish +weed twisted like an eel round its thigh, and shrieking out for the +nearest resuscitating machine in a country, where, alas! there is no +Humane Society. The back of the shepherd—even in presence of that +"great man"—will be as straught as—do not tremble, Cockney—this +Crutch. Conspicuous from afar like a cairn, from the inn-door at +Arrochar, in an hour he will be turning up his little finger so—on the +Cobler's head; or, in twenty minutes, gliding like a swan, or shooting +like a salmon, his back being still straught—leaving Luss, he will be +shaking the dewdrops from his brawny body on the silver sand of Inch +Morren.</p> + +<p>And happy were we, Christopher North, happy were we in the parish in +which Fate delivered us up to Nature, that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> under her tuition our +destinies might be fulfilled. A parish! Why it was in itself a +kingdom—a world. Thirty miles long by twenty at the broadest, and five +at the narrowest; and is not that a kingdom—is not that a world worthy +of any monarch that ever wore a crown? Was it level? Yes, league-long +levels were in it of greensward, hard as the sand of the sea-shore, yet +springy and elastic, fit training-ground for Childers, or Eclipse, or +Hambletonian, or Smolensko, or for a charge of cavalry in some great +pitched battle, while artillery might keep playing against artillery +from innumerous affronting hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs were +there, which extorted a panegyric from the roving Irishman in his +richest brogue—bogs in which forests had of old been buried, and armies +with all their banners. Was it hilly? Ay, there the white sheep nibbled, +and the black cattle grazed; there they baa'd and they lowed upon a +thousand hills—a crowd of cones, all green as emerald. Was it +mountainous? Give answer from afar, ye mist-shrouded summits, and ye +clouds cloven by the eagle's wing! But whether ye be indeed mountains, +or whether ye be clouds, who can tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that +long-lingering sunset, that drenches heaven and earth in one +indistinguishable glory, setting the West on fire, as if the final +conflagration were begun! Was it woody? Hush, hush, and you will hear a +pine-cone drop in the central silence of a forest—a silent and solitary +wilderness—in which you may wander a whole day long, unaccompanied but +by the cushat, the corby, the falcon, the roe, and they are all shy of +human feet, and, like thoughts, pass away in a moment; so if you long +for less fleeting farewells from the native dwellers in the wood, lo! +the bright brown queen of the butterflies, gay and gaudy in her +glancings through the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring bird-like over +the pools in the glade; and if your ear desire music, the robin and the +wren may haply trill you a few notes among the briery rocks, or the bold +blackbird open wide his yellow bill in his holly-tree, and set the +squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his ringing roundelay. Any +rivers? one—to whom a thousand torrents are tributary—as he himself is +tributary to the sea. Any lochs? how many we know not—for we never +counted them twice alike—omitting perhaps some forgotten tarns, or +counting twice over some one of our more darling waters,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> worthy to dash +their waves against the sides of ships—alone wanting to the +magnificence of those inland seas! Yes, it was as level, as boggy, as +hilly, as mountainous, as woody, as lochy, and as rivery a parish, as +ever laughed to scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical Survey.</p> + +<p>Was not that a noble parish for apprenticeship in sports and pastimes of +a great master? No need of any teacher. On the wings of joy we were +borne over the bosom of nature, and learnt all things worthy and needful +to be learned, by instinct first, and afterwards by reason. To look at a +wild creature—winged with feathers, or mere feet—and not desire to +destroy or capture it—is impossible to passion—to imagination—to +fancy. Thus had we longed to feel and handle the glossy plumage of the +beaked birds—the wide-winged Birds of Prey—before our finger had ever +touched a trigger. Their various flight, in various weather, we had +watched and noted with something even of the eye of a naturalist—the +wonder of a poet; for among the brood of boys there are hundreds and +thousands of poets who never see manhood—the poetry dying away—the boy +growing up into mere prose;—yet to some even of the paragraphs of these +Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few sparks of the sacred light are yet +alive within us; and sad to our old ears would be the sound of "Put out +the light, and then—put out the light!" Thus were we impelled, even +when a mere child, far away from the manse, for miles, into the moors +and woods. Once it was feared that poor wee Kit was lost; for having set +off all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line from the distant +Black Loch, and look at a trap set for a glead, a mist overtook him on +the moor on his homeward way, with an eel as long as himself hanging +over his shoulder, and held him prisoner for many hours within its +shifting walls, frail indeed, and opposing no resistance to the hand, +yet impenetrable to the feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. If +the mist had remained, that would have been nothing; only a still cold +wet seat on a stone; but as "a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of +curb and rein," so a Scotch mist becomes a shower—and a shower a +flood—and a flood a storm—and a storm a tempest—and a tempest thunder +and lightning—and thunder and lightning heavenquake and +earthquake—till the heart of poor wee Kit quaked, and almost died +within him in the desert. In this age of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Confessions, need we be +ashamed to own, in the face of the whole world, that we sat us down and +cried! The small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped out of +his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeped comfort. With crest just a +thought lowered by the rain, the green-backed, white-breasted peaseweep, +walked close by us in the mist; and sight of wonder, that made even in +that quandary by the quagmire our heart beat with joy—lo! never seen +before, and seldom since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days old, +little bigger than shrew-mice, all covered with blackish down, +interspersed with long white hair, running after their mother! But the +large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, restless even in the most utter +solitude, soon spied us glowering at her, and her young ones, through +our tears; and not for a moment doubting—Heaven forgive her for the +shrewd but cruel suspicion!—that we were Lord Eglinton's +gamekeeper—with a sudden shrill cry that thrilled to the marrow in our +cold backbone—flapped and fluttered herself away into the mist, while +the little black bits of down disappeared, like devils, into the moss. +The croaking of the frogs grew terrible. And worse and worse, close at +hand, seeking his lost cows through the mist, the bellow of the +notorious red bull! We began saying our prayers; and just then the sun +forced himself out into the open day, and, like the sudden opening of +the shutters of a room, the whole world was filled with light. The frogs +seemed to sink among the powheads—as for the red bull who had tossed +the tinker, he was cantering away, with his tail towards us, to a lot of +cows on the hill; and hark—a long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo! Rab +Roger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest lass, from the manse, in +search of our dead body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Leezy kisses us +from the one to the other—wrings the rain out of our long yellow +hair—(a pretty contrast to the small grey sprig now on the crown of our +pericranium, and the thin tail acock behind)—and by-and-by stepping +into Hazel-Deanhead for a drap and a "chitterin' piece," by the time we +reach the manse we are as dry as a whistle—take our scold and our +pawmies from the minister—and, by way of punishment and penance, after +a little hot whisky-toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of bun, are +bundled off to bed in the daytime!</p> + +<p>Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded gun was in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> hand—and often +guided the city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the plover, the +moorfowl, and the falcon. The falcon! yes—in the higher region of +clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a stripling—and how fast +had we so shot up you may know, by taking notice of the schoolboy on the +play-green, and two years afterwards, discovering, perhaps, that he is +that fine tall ensign carrying the colours among the light-bobs of the +regiment, to the sound of clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum, +marching into the city a thousand strong.</p> + +<p>We used in early boyhood, deceived by some uncertainty in size, not to +distinguish between a kite and a buzzard, which was very stupid, and +unlike us—more like Poietes in Salmonia. The flight of the buzzard, as +may be seen in Selby, is slow—and except during the season of +incubation, when it often soars to a considerable height, it seldom +remains long on the wing. It is indeed a heavy, inactive bird, both in +disposition and appearance, and is generally seen perched upon some old +and decayed tree, such being its favourite haunt. Him we soon thought +little or nothing about—and the last one we shot, it was, we remember, +just as he was coming out of the deserted nest of a crow, which he had +taken possession of out of pure laziness; and we killed him for not +building a house of his own in a country where there was no want of +sticks. But the kite or glead, as the same distinguished ornithologist +rightly says, is proverbial for the ease and gracefulness of its flight, +which generally consists of large and sweeping circles, performed with a +motionless wing, or at least with a slight and almost imperceptible +stroke of its pinions, and at very distant intervals. In this manner, +and directing its course by its tail, which acts as a rudder, whose +slightest motion produces effect, it frequently soars to such a height +as to become almost invisible to the human eye. Him we loved to slay, as +a bird worthy of our barrel. Him and her have we watched for days, like +a lynx, till we were led, almost as if by an instinct, to their nest in +the heart of the forest—a nest lined with wool, hair, and other soft +materials, in the fork of some large tree. They will not, of course, +utterly forsake their nest, when they have young, fire at them as you +will, though they become more wary, and seem as if they heard a leaf +fall, so suddenly will they start and soar to heaven. We remember, from +an ambuscade in a briery dell in the forest, shooting one flying +overhead to its nest; and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> on going up to him as he lay on his back, +with clenched talons and fierce eyes, absolutely shrieking and yelling +with fear, and rage, and pain, we intended to spare his life, and only +take him prisoner, when we beheld beside him on the sod, a chicken from +the brood of famous ginger piles, then, all but his small self, +following the feet of their clucking mother at the manse! With visage +all inflamed, we gave him the butt on his double organ of +destructiveness, then only known to us by the popular name of "back o' +the head," exclaiming</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Immolat"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Quivered every feather, from beak to tail and talon, in his last +convulsion,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the season of love what combats have we been witness +to—Umpire—between birds of prey! The Female Falcon, she sat aloof like +a sultana, in her soft, sleek, glossy plumes, the iris in her eye of +wilder, more piercing, fiery, cruel, fascinating, and maddening lustre, +than ever lit the face of the haughtiest human queen, adored by princes +on her throne of diamonds. And now her whole plumage shivers—and is +ruffled—for her own Gentle Peregrine appears, and they two will enjoy +their dalliance on the edge of the cliff-chasm—and the Bride shall +become a wife in that stormy sunshine on the loftiest precipice of all +these our Alps. But a sudden sugh sweeps down from heaven, and a rival +Hawk comes rushing in his rage from his widowed eyry, and will win and +wear this his second selected bride—for her sake, tearing, or to be +torn, to pieces. Both struck down from heaven, fall a hundred fathom to +the heather, talon-locked, in the mutual gripe of death. Fair play, +gentlemen, and attend to the Umpire. It is, we understand, to be an +up-and-down fight. Allow us to disentangle you—and without giving +advantage to either—elbow-room to both. Neither of you ever saw a human +face so near before—nor ever were captive in a human hand. Both fasten +their momentarily frightened eyes on us, and, holding back their heads, +emit a wild ringing cry. But now they catch sight of each other, and in +an instant are one bunch of torn, bloody plumes. Perhaps their wings are +broken, and they can soar no more—so up we fling them both into the +air—and wheeling each within a short circle, clash again go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> both birds +together, and the talons keep tearing throats till they die. Let them +die, then, for both are for ever disabled to enjoy their lady-love. She, +like some peerless flower in the days of chivalry at a fatal tournament, +seeing her rival lovers dying for her sake, nor ever to wear her glove +or scarf in the front of battle, rising to leave her canopy in tears of +grief and pride—even like such Angelica, the Falcon unfolds her wings, +and flies slowly away from her dying ravishers, to bewail her virginity +on the mountains. "O, Frailty! thy name is woman!" A third Lover is +already on the wing, more fortunate than his preceding peers—and +Angelica is won, wooed, and sitting, about to lay an egg in an old eyry, +soon repaired and furbished up for the honey-week, with a number of +small birds lying on the edge of the hymeneal couch, with which, when +wearied with love, and yawp with hunger, Angelica may cram her maw till +she be ready to burst, by her bridegroom's breast.</p> + +<p>Forgotten all human dwellings, and all the thoughts and feelings that +abide by firesides, and doorways, and rooms, and roofs—delightful was +it, during the long long midsummer holiday, to lie all alone, on the +greensward of some moor-surrounded mount, not far from the foot of some +range of cliffs, and with our face up to the sky, wait, unwearying, till +a speck was seen to cross the blue cloudless lift, and steadying itself +after a minute's quivering into motionless rest, as if hung suspended +there by the counteracting attraction of heaven and earth, known to be a +Falcon! Balanced far above its prey, and, soon as the right moment came, +ready to pounce down, and fly away with the treasure in its talons to +its crying eyry! If no such speck were for hours visible in the ether, +doubtless dream upon dream, rising unbidden, and all of their own wild +accord, congenial with the wilderness, did, like phantasmagoria, pass to +and fro, backwards and forwards, along the darkened curtain of our +imagination, all the lights of reason being extinguished or removed! In +that trance, not unheard, although scarcely noticed, was the cry of the +curlew, the murmur of the little moorland burn, or the din, almost like +dashing, of the far-off loch. 'Twas thus that the senses, in their most +languid state, ministered to the fancy, and fed her for a future day, +when all the imagery then received so imperfectly, and in broken +fragments, into her mysterious keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>ing, was to arise in orderly array, +and to form a world more lovely and more romantic even than the reality, +which then lay hushed or whispering, glittering or gloomy, in the +outward air. For the senses hear and see all things in their seeming +slumbers, from all the impulses that come to them in solitude gaining +more, far more, than they have lost! When we are awake, or half awake, +or almost sunk into a sleep, they are ceaselessly gathering materials +for the thinking and feeling soul—and it is hers, in a deep delight +formed of memory and imagination, to put them together by a divine +plastic power, in which she is almost, as it were, a very creator, till +she exult to look on beauty and on grandeur such as this earth and these +heavens never saw, products of her own immortal and immaterial energies, +and <span class="smcap">being</span> once, to <span class="smcap">be</span> for ever, when the universe, with all its suns and +systems, is no more!</p> + +<p>But oftener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the +cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, +ever hungry except when asleep. Left to themselves, when the old birds +are hunting, an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear +the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be, +fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down +tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects, +who likewise all live upon prey; for example. Ants of Carrion. Get you +behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide +scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost +a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against +the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from the frost-riven breast +of the precipice. Wait there, though it should be for hours—but it will +not be for hours; for both the old hawks are circling the sky, one over +the marsh and one over the wood. She comes—she comes—the female +Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her mate; and while he is plain in his +dress, as a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and gaudy as a Demirep +dressed for the pit of the Opera—deep and broad her bosom, with an air +of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a serpent's. But now she is a +mother, and plays a mother's part—greedier, even than for herself, for +her greedy young. The lightning flashes from the cave-mouth, and she +comes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through the dwarf bushes on +the cliff-face, perpendicular and plum-down, within three yards of her +murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest this day—no—nor all +night long: for a father's is not as a mother's love. Your only chance +of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed circuit round about all the +moors within half a league; and possibly you may see him sitting on some +cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid to fly either hither or thither, +perplexed by the sudden death he saw appearing among the unaccountable +smoke, scenting it yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of +your approach. Hazard a long shot—for you are right behind him—and a +slug may hit him on the head, and, following the feathers, split his +skull-cap and scatter his brains. 'Tis done—and the eyry is orphan'd. +Let the small brown moorland birds twitter Io Pæan, as they hang +balanced on the bulrushes—let the stone-chat glance less fearfully +within shelter of the old grey cairn—let the cushat coo his joyous +gratitude in the wood—and the lark soar up to heaven, afraid no more of +a demon descending from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, let them +die of rage and hunger—for there must always be pain in the world; and +'tis well when its endurance by the savage is the cause of pleasure to +the sweet—when the gore-yearning cry of the cruel is drowned in the +song of the kind at feed or play—and the tribes of the peace-loving +rejoice in the despair and death of the robbers and shedders of blood!</p> + +<p>Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all his days shot an Eagle. That +royal race seems nearly extinct in Scotland. Gaze as you will over the +wide circumference of a Highland heaven, calm as the bride's dream of +love, or disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision of a storm, and +all spring and summer long you may not chance to see the shadow of an +Eagle in the sun. The old kings of the air are sometimes yet seen by the +shepherds on cliff or beneath cloud; but their offspring are rarely +allowed to get full-fledged in spite of the rifle always lying loaded in +the shieling. But in the days of our boyhood there were many glorious +things on earth and air that now no more seem to exist, and among these +were the Eagles. One pair had from time immemorial built on the +Echo-cliff, and you could see with a telescope the eyry, with the rim of +its circumference, six feet in diameter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> strewn with partridges, +moorfowl, and leverets—their feathers and their skeletons. But the +Echo-cliff was inaccessible.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And mists that spread the flying shroud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sunbeams, and the flying blast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That if it could, would hurry past,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But that enormous barrier binds it fast."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand feet of the lower +earth; yet how often must they have stooped down on lamb and leveret, +and struck the cushat in her very yew-tree in the centre of the wood! +Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the waning moon—at +mid-day, in the night of sun-hiding tempests—or afar off, in even more +solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, +they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or vast inland glens, where not a summer shieling smiles beneath the +region of eternal snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in flesh, +and bone, and blood, just like the veriest poultry that die of croup and +consumption on the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness blinds the +eye that God framed to pierce the seas, and weakens the wing that +dallies with the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain is the doctrine +of the divine right of kings. He is hawked at by the mousing owl, whose +instinct instructs him that these talons have lost their grasp and these +pinions their deathblow. The eagle lies for weeks famished in his eyry, +and, hunger-driven over the ledge, leaves it to ascend no more. He is +dethroned, and wasted to mere bones—a bunch of feathers—his flight is +now slower than that of the buzzard—he floats himself along now with +difficulty from knoll to knoll, pursued by the shrieking magpies, +buffeted by the corby, and lying on his back, like a recreant, before +the beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was terrified to hop round the +carcass till the king of the air was satiated, and gave his permission +to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he himself had scorned. Yet he +is a noble aim to the fowler still; you break a wing and a leg, but fear +to touch him with your hand; Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons +constricted in the death-pang; and holding him up, you wonder that such +an anatomy—for his weight is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> more than three pounds—could drive +his claws through that shaggy hide till blood sprung to the +blow—inextricable but to yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to +heal, for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying bird of prey.</p> + +<p>Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where each stone in the desert was +sublime, unassociated though it was with dreams of memory, in its own +simple native power over the human heart! Each sudden breath of wind +passed by us like the voice of a spirit. There were strange meanings in +the clouds—often so like human forms and faces threatening us off, or +beckoning us on, with long black arms, back into the long-withdrawing +wilderness of heaven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, that we had +not been all alone in the desert—that there had been another heart, +whose beatings might have kept time with our own, that we might have +gathered courage in the silent and sullen gloom from the light in a +brother's eye—the smile on a brother's countenance. And often had we +such a Friend in these our far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, +by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage of the old pine-woods. A +Friend from whom "we had received his heart, and given him back our +own,"—such a friendship as the most fortunate and the most happy—and +at that time we were both—are sometimes permitted by Providence, with +all the passionate devotion of young and untamed imagination, to enjoy, +during a bright dreamy world of which that friendship is as the Polar +star. Emilius Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy when we were but +a child—when we were but a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the shadow +of his arm—happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He +was the protector—the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we +bounded with wilder glee—at our studies we sat with intenser +earnestness, by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those +glorious sunsets, and imbued our young spirit with the love and worship +of nature. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was +no idle ceremony to be hastily gone through—that we might lay down our +head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep, but a command of God, +which a response from nature summoned the humble heart to obey. He it +was who for ever had at command wit for the sportive, wisdom for the +serious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> music of his +lips—they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes; and then, all at +once, when the one changed its measures, and the other gathered, as it +were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, +and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit felt to be +indeed divine! It seemed as if we knew but the words of language—that +he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read +together were, every page, and every sentence of every page, all covered +over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, +unintelligible or with imperfect meanings. Whether we perused with him a +volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and the +sky, or the volume revealed from heaven, next day we always knew and +felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we +grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and +religious air, with all our finer affections towards other human beings, +all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, +or with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent fancy to embrace +the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of +pleasure or pain—of joy or grief—of fear or hope—had our heart to +withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within +our bosom, with all its imperfections—may we venture to say, with all +its virtues. A repented folly—a confessed fault—a sin for which we +were truly contrite—a vice flung from us with loathing and with +shame—in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and +his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in +the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school +were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a +flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal +land. In spite of that difference in our years—or oh! say rather +because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and +the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and +younger brother, in the sunlight and moonlight solitudes! Woods—into +whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his +company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and +there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts—in whose +lonesome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by +ourselves have faced the spray—in his presence, dinn'd with a merry +music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling +up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily +overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as +we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm +of both blue depths—how magnificent the white-crested waves tumbling +beneath the black thunder-cloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed +on it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of some sudden +storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, that +seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods to our ear, +because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at +midnight, when not one star was in the sky. With him we first followed +the Falcon in her flight—he showed us on the Echo-cliff the Eagle's +eyry. To the thicket he led us where lay couched the lovely-spotted Doe, +or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two +fawns at her side. But for him we should not then have seen the antlers +of the red-deer, for the Forest was indeed a most savage place, and +haunted—such was the superstition at which they who scorned it +trembled—haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had +murdered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little mountain well that +ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all +those still shadowy solitudes! Into what depths of human nature did he +teach our wondering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to become of us, we +sometimes thought in sadness that all at once made our spirits +sink—like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by the fear of some +unwonted shadow from above—what was to become of us when the mandate +should arrive for him to leave the Manse for ever, and sail away in a +ship to India never more to return! Ever as that dreaded day drew +nearer, more frequent was the haze in our eyes; and in our blindness, we +knew not that such tears ought to have been far more rueful still, for +that he then lay under orders for a longer and more lamentable voyage—a +voyage over a narrow strait to the Eternal shore. All—all at once he +drooped; on one fatal morning the dread decay began; with no +forewarning, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> springs on which his being had so lightly—so +proudly—so grandly moved—gave way. Between one Sabbath and another his +bright eyes darkened—and while all the people were assembled at the +sacrament, the soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. It was +indeed a dreadful death, serene and sainted though it were; and not a +hall—not a house—not a hut—not a shieling within all the circle of +those wide mountains, that did not on that night mourn as if it had lost +a son. All the vast parish attended his funeral—Lowlanders and +Highlanders in their own garb of grief. And have time and tempest now +blackened the white marble of that monument—is that inscription now +hard to be read—the name of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration—nor +haply one surviving who ever saw the light of the countenance of him +there interred! Forgotten as if he had never been! for few were that +glorious orphan's kindred—and they lived in a foreign land—forgotten +but by one heart, faithful through all the chances and changes of this +restless world! And therein enshrined among all its holiest +remembrances, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it too, like +his, shall be but dust and ashes!</p> + +<p>Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting one another—in absence or in +death. Yet forgetting is not just the very word; call it rather a +reconcilement to doom and destiny—in thus obeying a benign law of +nature that soon streams sunshine over the shadows of the grave. Not +otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent +spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight; and thoughts +delightful still, thoughts of the faces and the voices of the dead, +perish not, lying sometimes in slumber—sometimes in sleep. It belongs +not to the blessed season and genius of youth, to hug to its heart +useless and unavailing griefs. Images of the well-beloved, when they +themselves are in the mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, +through the meditative hush of solitude. But our main business—our +prime joys and our prime sorrows—ought to be, must be, with the living. +Duty demands it; and Love, who would pine to death over the bones of the +dead, soon fastens upon other objects with eyes and voices to smile and +whisper an answer to all his vows. So was it with us. Ere the midsummer +sun had withered the flowers that spring had sprinkled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> over our +Godfrey's grave, youth vindicated its own right to happiness; and we +felt that we did wrong to visit too often that corner in the kirkyard. +No fears had we of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams we saw +him—most often all alive as ever—sometimes a phantom away from that +grave! If the morning light was frequently hard to be endured, bursting +suddenly upon us along with the feeling that he was dead, it more +frequently cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth +a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we +found ourselves angling down the river, or along the loch—once more +following the flight of the Falcon along the woods—eying the Eagle on +the Echo-cliff. Days passed by, without so much as one thought of +Emilius Godfrey—pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our +books intently—just as if he had never been! But often and often, too, +we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards +us—his very figure—we could not be deceived; but the love-raised ghost +disappeared on a sudden—the grief-woven spectre melted into the mist. +The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to +grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature +became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and +fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from +the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their +way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God.</p> + +<p>Then this was to be our last year in the parish—now dear to us as our +birthplace; nay, itself our very birthplace—for in it from the darkness +of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of +cloud and mountain, we felt that most probably never more should we +return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did +ourselves, had chalked out a future life for young Christopher North—a +life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name. +Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of +passion, to make the most—the best—of the few months that remained to +us, of that our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled +by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the world, all +alike—young and old—must obey. Our books were flung<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> aside—nor did +our old master and minister frown—for he grudged not to the boy he +loved the remnant of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's +rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye—not with our voice—one long +holiday, throughout that our last autumn, on to the pale farewell +blossoms of the Christmas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the loch +or river; but we had not known thoroughly our own soul—for now we +angled less passionately—less perseveringly than was our wont of +yore—sitting in a pensive, a melancholy, a miserable dream, by the +dashing waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our gun we plunged earlier +in the morning into the forest, and we returned later at eve—but less +earnest—less eager were we to hear the cushat's moan from his +yew-tree—to see the hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft on the +sky. A thousand dead thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the +woods—and we sometimes did wring our hands in an agony of grief, to +know that our eyes should not behold the birch-tree brightening there +with another spring.</p> + +<p>Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling was felt to be a +farewell; there was something mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces +of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to +whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil guile; we +regarded the solemn toil-and-care-worn countenances of the old with a +profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our +more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the +woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting +now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from +the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle +with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom +failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. +They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the +insolences of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had +been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had +shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had +been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young +we might sometimes have been, for boyhood is soon heated, and boils +before a defying eye; but in one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> thing at least we were Spartans, we +revered the head of old age.</p> + +<p>And many at last were the kind—some the sad farewells, ere long +whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for ever +silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard—its +blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to +Thee—O palest Phantom—clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost +risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from +the skies to bless—unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist +of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot +choose but weep, with the self-same vision that often glided before us +long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound of our voice would pause +for a little while, and then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, +floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its +plumes on a knoll far up an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched +that face, pale though it be—lifelike is the waving of those gentle +hands—and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure +from lips hushed by the burial mould! Restored by the power of love, she +stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her +golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under +which the child had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a +moment the blue light in her dewy eyes was dimmed—and never again did +she behold either flower or star. Yet all the images of all the things +she had loved remained in her memory, clear and distinct as the things +themselves before unextinguished eyes; and ere three summers had flown +over her head—which, like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in +heaven's gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness +higher and higher in the light—she could trip her singing way through +the wild wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor +erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses +peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to +give themselves into her fingers; and 'twas thought they hung longer +unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink +the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though +her garment touched the broom-stalk on which they sang. The cushat,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> as +she thrid her way through the wood, continued to croon in her darksome +tree—and the lark, although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by +her presence into a new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as +if it were his first matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth and air +manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Wilderness—and as for human +beings, she was named, in their pity, their wonder, and their delight, +the Blind Beauty of the Moor!</p> + +<p>She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And +now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten +the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden—and he was poor. Of +all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is—Charity. No +manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven—for the mouths of the +hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among +the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each +neighbour's house—neighbour though miles afar—as the sacred duty came +round—and the unrepining poor sent the grateful child away with their +prayers.</p> + +<p>One evening, returning to the hut with her usual song, she danced up to +her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she +shrieked—if she fainted—there was but one Ear that heard, one Eye that +saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud +unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, +but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she +came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound of our +voice, fell down with clasped hands at our feet—"My father's dead!" Had +the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of mortality? For +people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little while there was +a group round us, and we bore her back again to her dwelling in our +arms. As for us, we had been on our way to bid the fair creature and her +father farewell. How could she have lived—an utter orphan—in such a +world! The holy power that is in Innocence would for ever have remained +with her; but Innocence longs to be away, when her sister Joy has +departed; and 'tis sorrowful to see the one on earth, when the other has +gone to Heaven! This sorrow none of us had long to see; for though a +flower, when withered at the root, and doomed ere eve to perish, may yet +look to the careless eye the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> same as when it blossomed in its +pride—yet its leaves, still green, are not as once they were—its +bloom, though fair, is faded—and at set of sun, the dews shall find it +in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere Sabbath came, the orphan +child was dead. Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her birth had +been the humblest of the humble; and though all in life had loved her, +it was thought best that none should be asked to the funeral of her and +her father, but two or three friends; the old clergyman himself walked +at the head of the father's coffin—we at the head of the +daughter's—for this was granted unto our exceeding love;—and thus +passed away for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor!</p> + +<p>Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us +over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our +pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic. +Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen—let +us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-cliff, and with our +rifle—'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey—let us stalk the +red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick, as now they +lie on the Atholl Braes; they were still a rare sight—and often and +often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single +glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true +angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has +reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea—so we, +a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as +the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the +possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and +strongest is self-fed passion springing in spite of circumstance. When +blows the warm showery south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow +sides at every dropping of the fly on the curling water—and the angler +is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once—twice—thrice—during a +long blustering day—the sullen plunge of a salmon is sufficient for +that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever +on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is +never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in the Great +Glen. A loud, wild, wrathful, and savage cry from some huge animal made +our heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our forehead in sweat. We looked +up—and a red-deer—a stag of ten—the king of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> the forest—stood with +all his antlers, snuffing the wind, but yet blind to our figure +overshadowed by a rock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart—and leaping up +far higher than our head, he tumbled in terrific death, and lay +stone-still before our starting eyes amid the rustling of the +strong-bented heather! There we stood surveying him for a long +triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes—and ghastlier his long +bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of +his antlers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in +death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the +north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again, +with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a +distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-waggon forced its way through the +bogs and over the braes—and on our return into the inhabited country, +we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing +over the Prey; for not for many years—never since the funeral of the +old lord—had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along +the heather.</p> + +<p>Fifty years and more—and oh! my weary soul! half a century took a long +time to die away in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms +through which were afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged +raptures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed +halcyons to rest—though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but +a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs, +the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and +the clouds! Fifty years and more are gone—and this is the Twelfth of +August Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all the Highland mountains +have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's +joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our +feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully these +fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast! +intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now +all a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up among the +rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition it is +to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty +cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan now in their variegated summer-dress, seen +even among the unmelted snows. The scene shifts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>and high up on the heath +above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braemar, the Thane—God bless +him—has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unerring +rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's Oak. Never shall Eld deaden +our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men any more than with +their highest raptures, their profoundest griefs. Blessings on the head +of every true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor shall we take +it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he +may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a +rainy day, to the peat-reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, +by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid +conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a +haunch of the red-deer.</p> + +<p>Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle—or a female, fair as +the Falcon—a male, stern as an old Stag—or a female, soft as a young +Doe—we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article—and to +look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now +come to the close of his Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen—out of +one into another—and from which he has now been revived by the +application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think +that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking +common in sleep, there has been no method in our madness, no <i>lucidus +ordo</i> in our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit—our +thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to +the most approved principles of association—and a fine proportion has +been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble +tree, which—although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown +its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further +gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the +umbrage—is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature +working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an +old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Woe and shame to the +sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let +the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find +shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>TALE OF EXPIATION.</h2> + + +<p>Margaret Burnside was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest +people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child; and as they +had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about +the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left +friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom +wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling +among hard-working folk, towards objects out of the narrow circle of +their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong +excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the +lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian +benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost +destitution—and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate +with the tears shed over their parents' graves. They are taken by the +hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection, +and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers +and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of +comfort falls upon them during the gloom of grief, and attends them all +their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of +affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretchedness with +which all have become familiar, no one very tenderly pities; and thus +the orphan, reconciling herself to the extreme hardships of her +condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both +happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant pressure +of her lot, becomes poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates +like an almost worthless weed that is carelessly trodden on by every +foot, or if by nature born a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all +her days leads the life not so much of a servant as of a slave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> + +<p>Such, till she was twelve years old, had been the fate of Margaret +Burnside. Of a slender form and weak constitution, she had never been +able for much work; and thus from one discontented and harsh master and +mistress to another, she had been transferred from house to +house—always the poorest—till she came to be looked on as an +encumbrance rather than a help in any family, and thought hardly worth +her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes herding the kine. It was +supposed that she was in a consumption—and as the shadow of death +seemed to lie on the neglected creature's face, a feeling something like +love was awakened towards her in the heart of pity, for which she showed +her gratitude by still attending to all household tasks with an alacrity +beyond her strength. Few doubted that she was dying—and it was plain +that she thought so herself; for the Bible, which, in her +friendlessness, she had always read more than other children, who were +too happy to reflect often on the Word of that Being from whom their +happiness flowed, was now, when leisure permitted, seldom or never out +of her hands; and in lonely places, where there was no human ear to +hearken, did the dying girl often support her heart, when quaking in +natural fears of the grave, by singing to herself hymns and psalms. But +her hour was not yet come—though by the inscrutable decrees of +Providence doomed to be hideous with almost inexpiable guilt. As for +herself—she was innocent as the linnet that sang beside her in the +broom, and innocent was she to be up to the last throbbings of her +religious heart. When the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the +orphan seemed to see in the holy words, brightening through the +radiance, assurances of forgiveness of all her sins—small sins +indeed—yet to her humble and contrite heart exceeding great—and to be +pardoned only by the intercession of Him who died for us on the tree. +Often, when clouds were in the sky, and blackness covered the Book, hope +died away from the discoloured page—and the lonely creature wept and +sobbed over the doom denounced on all who sin, and repent not—whether +in deed or in thought. And thus religion became within her an awful +thing—till, in her resignation, she feared to die. But look on that +flower by the hill-side path, withered, as it seems, beyond the power of +sun and air and dew and rain to restore it to life. Next day, you happen +to return to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> the place, its leaves are of a dazzling green, its +blossoms of a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. Nature, as +if kindling towards her in sudden love, not only restored her in a few +weeks to life—but to perfect health; and ere long she, whom few had +looked at, and for whom still fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the +fairest girl in all the parish—while she continued to sit, as she had +always done from very childhood, on the <i>poor's form</i> in the lobby of +the kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a manner, in one so +poorly attired and so meanly placed, attracted the eyes of the young +Ladies in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside was taken under their +especial protection—sent for two years to a superior school, where she +was taught all things useful for persons in humble life—and while yet +scarcely fifteen, returning to her native parish, was appointed teacher +of a small school of her own, to which were sent all the girls who could +be spared from home, from those of parents poor as her own had been, up +to those of the farmers and small proprietors, who knew the blessings of +a good education—and that without it, the minister may preach in vain. +And thus Margaret Burnside grew and blossomed like the lily of the +field—and every eye blessed her—and she drew her breath in gratitude, +piety, and peace.</p> + +<p>Thus a few happy and useful years passed by—and it was forgotten by +all—but herself—that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. But to be +without one near and dear blood-relative in all the world, must often, +even to the happy heart of youthful innocence, be more than a pensive—a +painful thought; and therefore, though Margaret Burnside was always +cheerful among her little scholars, yet in the retirement of her own +room (a pretty parlour, with a window looking into a flower-garden), and +on her walks among the braes, her mien was somewhat melancholy, and her +eyes wore that touching expression, which seems doubtfully to +denote—neither joy nor sadness—but a habit of soul which, in its +tranquillity, still partakes of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often +on past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to indulge in dreams of +future repose. That profound orphan-feeling imbued her whole character; +and sometimes when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon +her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber—and wept.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p> + +<p>Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at +Moorside, the highest hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father +had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was grey, +his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were +dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower—indeed his wife had never +been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his +youth and prime of manhood; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he +had been looked at with no very friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his +character had preceded his arrival there—and in that peaceful pastoral +parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any +good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and +religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the +best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions +faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of +dislike, or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity +which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at +first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously +exhibited themselves in fiery outbreaks, advancing age had gradually +subdued; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and industrious man; +affected, if he followed it not in sincerity, even an austerely +religious life; and as he possessed more than common sagacity and +intelligence, he had acquired, at last, if not won, a certain ascendancy +in the parish, even over many whose hearts never opened nor warmed +towards him—so that he was now an elder of the kirk—and, as the most +unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, a just steward to the poor. His +grey hairs were not honoured, but it would not be too much to say that +they were respected. Many who had doubted him before came to think they +had done him injustice, and sought to wipe away their fault by regarding +him with esteem, and showing themselves willing to interchange all +neighbourly kindnesses and services with all the family at Moorside. His +son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and too much addicted to the +fascinating pastimes of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons of +labour, and rarely long pursued against the law without vitiating the +whole character, was a favourite with all the parish. Singularly +handsome, and with manners above his birth, Ludovic was welcome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> +wherever he went, both with young and old. No merry-making could deserve +the name without him; and at all meetings for the display of feats of +strength and agility, far and wide through more counties than one he was +the champion. Nor had he received a mean education. All that the parish +schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having been the darling companion +of all the gentlemen's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his mind had +kept pace with theirs, and from them he had caught unconsciously that +demeanour so far superior to what could have been expected from one in +his humble condition, but which, at the same time, seemed so congenial +with his happy nature as to be readily acknowledged to be one of its +original gifts. Of his sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she +was the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and that all who saw their +friendship felt that it was just. The small parentless granddaughter was +also dear to Margaret—more than perhaps her heart knew, because that, +like herself, she was an orphan. But the creature was also a merry and a +madcap child, and her freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, as +she tossed her head in untamable glee, and went dancing and singing, +like a bird on the boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange +sympathy entirely won the heart of her who, throughout all her own +childhood, had been familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of tears. +And thus did Margaret love her, it might be said, even with a very +mother's love. She generally passed her free Saturday afternoons at +Moorside, and often slept there all night with little Ann in her bosom. +At such times Ludovic was never from home, and many a Sabbath he walked +with her to the kirk—all the family together—and <i>once</i> by themselves +for miles along the moor—a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which returned +upon him in his agony on his dying day.</p> + +<p>No one said, no one thought that Ludovic and Margaret were lovers—nor +were they, though well worthy indeed of each other's love; for the +orphan's whole heart was filled and satisfied with a sense of duty, and +all its affections were centred in her school, where all eyes blessed +her, and where she had been placed for the good of all those gladsome +creatures, by them who had rescued her from the penury that kills the +soul, and whose gracious bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In her +prayers she beseeched God to bless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> them rather than the wretch on her +knees—their images, their names, were ever before her eyes and on her +ear; and next to that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, and +comes from the footstool of God into the humble, lowly, and contrite +heart, was to that orphan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the bliss +of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to her was a brother, and no more; a +name sacred as that of sister, by which she always called her Alice, and +was so called in return. But to Ludovic, who had a soul of fire, +Margaret was dearer far than ever sister was to the brother whom, at the +sacrifice of her own life, she might have rescued from death. Go where +he might, a phantom was at his side—a pale fair face for ever fixed its +melancholy eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal even when they +faintly smiled; and once he awoke at midnight, when all the house were +asleep, crying, with shrieks, "O God of mercy! Margaret is murdered!" +Mysterious passion of Love! that darkens its own dreams of delight with +unimaginable horrors! Shall we call such dire bewilderment the +superstition of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the prophetic +soul!</p> + +<p>From what seemingly insignificant sources—and by means of what humble +instruments—may this life's best happiness be diffused over the +households of industrious men! Here was the orphan daughter of forgotten +paupers, both dead ere she could speak; herself, during all her +melancholy childhood, a pauper even more enslaved than ever they had +been—one of the most neglected and unvalued of all God's +creatures—who, had she then died, would have been buried in some +nettled nook of the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost by one +single tear—suddenly brought out from the cold and cruel shade in which +she had been withering away, by the interposition of human but angelic +hands, into the heaven's most gracious sunshine, where all at once her +beauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for so many years had been even +begrudgingly fed on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury ungrateful +for all her weak but zealous efforts to please by doing her best, in +sickness and sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and in all +weathers, however rough and severe—was now raised to the rank of a +moral, intellectual, and religious being, and presided over, tended, and +instructed many little ones, far far happier in their childhood than it +had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> been her lot to be, and all growing up beneath her now untroubled +eyes, in innocence, love, and joy inspired into their hearts by her, +their young and happy benefactress. Not a human dwelling in all the +parish, that had not reason to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She +taught them to be pleasant in their manners, neat in their persons, +rational in their minds, pure in their hearts, and industrious in all +their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, all angry fits, and all +idle dispositions—the besetting vices and sins of the children of the +poor, whose home-education is often so miserably, and almost necessarily +neglected—did this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of meekness +never ruffled, and tenderness never troubled, in a few months subdue and +overcome—till her school-room, every day in the week, was, in its +cheerfulness, sacred as a Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve with +the hum of perpetual happiness. The effects were soon felt in every +house. All floors were tidier, and order and regularity enlivened every +hearth. It was the pride of her scholars to get their own little gardens +behind their parents' huts to bloom like that of the Brae—and, in +imitation of that flowery porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the +wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every Sabbath forenoon waited for +her at the gate—and walked, with her at their head, into the House of +God—a beautiful procession to all their parents' eyes—one by one +dropping away into their own seats, as the band moved along the little +lobby, and the minister, sitting in the pulpit all the while, looked +solemnly down upon the fair flock—the shepherd of their souls!</p> + +<p>It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was not in the kirk. The +congregation had risen to join in prayer, when the great door was thrown +open, and a woman, apparelled as for the house of worship, but wild and +ghastly in her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil spirits, burst +in upon the service, and, with uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God +to forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the foulest and most +unnatural murder had been done, and that her own eyes had seen the +corpse of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a pool of blood! The +congregation gave one groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the +kirk had been toppling over their heads. All cheeks waxed white, women +fainted, and the firmest heart quaked with terror and pity, as once and +again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> the affrighted witness, in the same words, described the horrid +spectacle, and then rushed out into the open air, followed by hundreds, +who for some minutes had been palsy-stricken; and now the kirkyard was +all in a tumult round the body of her who lay in a swoon. In the midst +of that dreadful ferment, there were voices crying aloud that the poor +woman was mad, and that such horror could not be beneath the sun; for +such a perpetration on the Sabbath-day, and first heard of just as the +prayers of His people were about to ascend to the Father of all mercies, +shocked belief, and doubt struggled with despair as in the helpless +shudderings of some dream of blood. The crowd were at last prevailed on +by their pastor to disperse, and sit down on the tombstones, and water +being sprinkled over the face of her who still lay in that mortal swoon, +and the air suffered to circulate freely round her, she again opened her +glassy eyes, and raising herself on her elbow, stared on the multitude, +all gathered there so wan and silent, and shrieked out, "The Day of +Judgment!—the Day of Judgment!"</p> + +<p>The aged minister raised her on her feet, and led her to a grave, on +which she sat down, and hid her face on his knees. "O that I should have +lived to see the day—but dreadful are the decrees of the Most High—and +she whom we all loved has been cruelly murdered! Carry me with you, +people, and I will show you where lies her corpse."</p> + +<p>"Where—where is Ludovic Adamson?" cried a hoarse voice which none there +had ever heard before; and all eyes were turned in one direction; but +none knew who had spoken, and all again was hush. Then all at once a +hundred voices repeated the same words, "Where—where is Ludovic +Adamson?" and there was no reply. Then, indeed, was the kirkyard in an +angry and a wrathful ferment, and men looked far into each other's eyes +for confirmation of their suspicions. And there was whispering about +things, that, though in themselves light as air, seemed now charged with +hideous import; and then arose sacred appeals to Heaven's eternal +justice, horridly mingled with oaths and curses; and all the crowd, +springing to their feet, pronounced, "that no other but he could be the +murderer."</p> + +<p>It was remembered now, that for months past Margaret Burnside had often +looked melancholy—that her visits had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> been less frequent to Moorside; +and one person in the crowd said, that a few weeks ago she had come upon +them suddenly in a retired place, when Margaret was weeping bitterly, +and Ludovic tossing his arms, seemingly in wrath and distraction. All +agreed that of late he had led a disturbed and reckless life—and that +something dark and suspicious had hung about him, wherever he went, as +if he were haunted by an evil conscience. But did not strange men +sometimes pass through the Moor—squalid mendicants, robber-like, from +the far-off city—one by one, yet seemingly belonging to the same +gang—with bludgeons in their hands—half-naked, and often drunken in +their hunger, as at the doors of lonesome houses they demanded alms; or +more like footpads than beggars, with stern gestures, rising up from the +ditches on the wayside, stopped the frightened women and children going +upon errands, and thanklessly received pence from the poor? One of them +must have been the murderer! But then, again, the whole tide of +suspicion would set in upon Ludovic—her lover; for the darker and more +dreadful the guilt, the more welcome is it to the fears of the +imagination when its waking dreams are floating in blood.</p> + +<p>A tall figure came forward from the porch, and all was silence when the +congregation beheld the Father of the suspected criminal. He stood still +as a tree in a calm day—trunk, limbs, moved not—and his grey head was +uncovered. He then stretched out his arm, not in an imploring, but in a +commanding attitude, and essayed to speak; but his white lips quivered, +and his tongue refused its office. At last, almost fiercely, he uttered, +"Who dares denounce my son?" and like the growling thunder the crowd +cried, "All—all—he is the murderer!" Some said that the old man +smiled; but it could have been but a convulsion of the features—outraged +nature's wrung-out and writhing expression of disdain, to show how a +father's love brooks the cruelty of foolish falsehood and injustice.</p> + +<p>Men, women, and children—all whom grief and horror had not made +helpless—moved away towards the Moor—the woman who had seen the sight +leading the way; for now her whole strength had returned to her, and she +was drawn and driven by an irresistible passion to look again at what +had almost destroyed her judgment. Now they were miles from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the kirk, +and over some brushwood, at the edge of a morass some distance from the +common footpath, crows were seen diving and careering in the air, and a +raven, flapping suddenly out of the covert, sailed away with a savage +croak along a range of cliffs. The whole multitude stood stock-still at +that carrion-sound. The guide said shudderingly, in a low hurried voice, +"See, see—that is her mantle"—and there indeed Margaret lay, all in a +heap, maimed, mangled, murdered, with a hundred gashes. The corpse +seemed as if it had been baked in frost, and was imbedded in coagulated +blood. Shreds and patches of her dress, torn away from her bosom, +bestrewed the bushes—for many yards round about, there had been the +trampling of feet, and a long lock of hair that had been torn from her +temples, with the dews yet unmelted on it, was lying upon a plant of +broom, a little way from the corpse. The first to lift the body from the +horrid bed was Gilbert Adamson. He had been long familiar with death in +all its ghastliness, and all had now looked to him—forgetting for the +moment that he was the father of the murderer—to perform the task from +which they recoiled in horror. Resting on one knee, he placed the corpse +on the other—and who could have believed, that even the most violent +and cruel death could have wrought such a change on a face once so +beautiful! All was distortion—and terrible it was to see the dim glazed +eyes, fixedly open, and the orbs insensible to the strong sun that smote +her face white as snow among the streaks as if left by bloody fingers! +Her throat was all discoloured—and a silk handkerchief twisted into a +cord, that had manifestly been used in the murder, was of a redder hue +than when it had veiled her breast. No one knows what horror his eyes +are able to look on, till they are tried. A circle of stupefied gazers +was drawn by a horrid fascination closer and closer round the +corpse—and women stood there holding children by the hands, and fainted +not, but observed the sight, and shuddered without shrieking, and stood +there all dumb as ghosts. But the body was now borne along by many +hands—at first none knew in what direction, till many voices muttered, +"To Moorside—to Moorside"—and in an hour it was laid on the bed in +which Margaret Burnside had so often slept with her beloved little Ann +in her bosom.</p> + +<p>The hand of some one had thrown a cloth over the corpse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> The room was +filled with people—but all their power and capacity of horror had been +exhausted—and the silence was now almost like that which attends a +natural death, when all the neighbours are assembled for the funeral. +Alice, with little Ann beside her, kneeled at the bed, nor feared to lay +her head close to the covered corpse—sobbing out syllables that showed +how passionately she prayed—and that she and her little niece—and, oh! +for that unhappy father—were delivering themselves up into the hands of +God. That father knelt not—neither did he sit down—nor move—nor +groan—but stood at the foot of the bed, with arms folded almost +sternly—and with his eyes fixed on the sheet, in which there seemed to +be neither ruth nor dread—but only an austere composure, which, were it +indeed but resignation to that dismal decree of Providence, had been +most sublime—but who can see into the heart of a man either righteous +or wicked, and know what may be passing there, breathed from the gates +of heaven or of hell!</p> + +<p>Soon as the body had been found, shepherds and herdsmen, fleet of foot +as the deer, had set off to scour the country far and wide, hill and +glen, mountain and morass, moor and wood, for the murderer. If he be on +the face of the earth, and not self-plunged in despairing suicide into +some quagmire, he will be found—for all the population of many +districts are now afoot, and precipices are clomb till now brushed but +by the falcons. A figure, like that of a man, is seen by some of the +hunters from a hill-top, lying among the stones by the side of a +solitary loch. They separate, and descend upon him, and then, gathering +in, they behold the man whom they seek—Ludovic Adamson, the murderer.</p> + +<p>His face is pale and haggard, yet flushed as if by a fever centred in +his heart. That is no dress for the Sabbath-day—soiled and +savage-looking, and giving to the eyes that search an assurance of +guilt. He starts to his feet, as they think, like some wild beast +surprised in his lair, and gathering itself up to fight or fly. +But—strange enormity—a Bible is in his hand! And the shepherd who +first seized him, taking the book out of his grasp, looks into the page, +and reads, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." +On a leaf is written, in her own well-known hand, "The gift of Margaret +Burnside!" Not a word is said by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> his captors—they offer no needless +violence—no indignities—but answer all inquiries of surprise and +astonishment (O! can one so young be so hardened in wickedness!) by a +stern silence and upbraiding eyes, that like daggers must stab his +heart. At last he walks doggedly and sullenly along, and refuses to +speak; yet his tread is firm—there is no want of composure in his face, +now that the first passion of fear or anger has left it; and now that +they have the murderer in their clutch, some begin almost to pity him, +and others to believe, or at least to hope, that he may be innocent. As +yet they have said not a word of the crime of which they accuse him; but +let him try to master the expression of his voice and his eyes as he +may, guilt is in those stealthy glances—guilt is in those reckless +tones. And why does he seek to hide his right hand in his bosom? And +whatever he may affect to say—they ask him not—most certainly that +stain on his shirt-collar is blood. But now they are at Moorside.</p> + +<p>There is still a great crowd all round about the house—in the +garden—and at the door—and a troubled cry announces that the criminal +has been taken, and is close at hand. His father meets him at the gate; +and, kneeling down, holds up his clasped hands, and says, "My son, if +thou art guilty, confess, and die." The criminal angrily waves his +father aside, and walks towards the door. "Fools! fools! what mean ye by +this? What crime has been committed? And how dare ye to think me the +criminal? Am I like a murderer?"—"We never spoke to him of the +murder—we never spoke to him of the murder!" cried one of the men who +now held him by the arm; and all assembled then exclaimed, "Guilty, +guilty—that one word will hang him! O, pity, pity, for his father and +poor sister—this will break their hearts!" Appalled, yet firm of foot, +the prisoner forced his way into the house; and turning, in his +confusion, into the chamber on the left, there he beheld the corpse of +the murdered on the bed—for the sheet had been removed—as yet not laid +out, and disfigured and deformed just as she had been found on the moor, +in the same misshapen heap of death! One long insane glare—one shriek, +as if all his heartstrings at once had burst—and then down fell the +strong man on the floor like lead. One trial was past which no human +hardihood could endure—another, and yet another, awaits him; but them +he will bear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> as the guilty brave have often borne them, and the most +searching eye shall not see him quail at the bar or on the scaffold.</p> + +<p>They lifted the stricken wretch from the floor, placed him in a chair, +and held him upright, till he should revive from the fit. And he soon +did revive; for health flowed in all his veins, and he had the strength +of a giant. But when his senses returned, there was none to pity him; +for the shock had given an expression of guilty horror to all his looks, +and, like a man walking in his sleep under the temptation of some +dreadful dream, he moved with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at +the corpse, gabbled in hideous laughter, and then wept and tore his hair +like a distracted woman or a child. Then he stooped down as he would +kiss the face, but staggered back, and, covering his eyes with his +hands, uttered such a groan as is sometimes heard rending the sinner's +breast when the avenging Furies are upon him in his dreams. All who +heard it felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce cry through the +room of, "Make him touch the body, and if he be the murderer, it will +bleed!"—"Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," said his father; +"bleed afresh it will not, for thou art innocent; and savage though now +they be who once were proud to be thy friends, even they will believe +thee guiltless when the corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, and +not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But his son spake not a word, nor +did he seem to know that his father had spoken; but he suffered himself +to be led passively towards the bed. One of the bystanders took his hand +and placed it on the naked breast, when out of the corners of the +teeth-clenched mouth, and out of the swollen nostrils, two or three +blood-drops visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout declared the +sacred faith of all the crowd in the dreadful ordeal. "What body is +this? 'tis all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with an idiot +vacancy on the faces that surrounded him. But now the sheriff of the +county entered the room, along with some officers of justice, and he was +spared any further shocks from that old saving superstition. His wrists +soon after were manacled. These were all the words he had uttered since +he recovered from the fit; and he seemed now in a state of stupor.</p> + +<p>Ludovic Adamson, after examination of witnesses who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> crowded against him +from many unexpected quarters, was committed that very Sabbath night to +prison on a charge of murder. On the Tuesday following, the remains of +Margaret Burnside were interred. All the parish were at the funeral. In +Scotland it is not customary for females to join in the last simple +ceremonies of death. But in this case they did; and all her scholars, in +the same white dresses in which they used to walk with her at their head +into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed the bier. Alice and little Ann were +there, nearest the coffin, and the father of him who had wrought all +this woe was one of its supporters. The head of the murdered girl +rested, it might be said, on his shoulder—but none can know the +strength which God gives to his servants—and all present felt for him, +as he walked steadily under that dismal burden, a pity, and even an +affection, which they had been unable to yield to him ere he had been so +sorely tried. The Ladies from the Castle were among the other mourners, +and stood by the open grave. A sunnier day had never shone from heaven, +and that very grave itself partook of the brightness, as the +coffin—with the gilt letters, "Margaret Burnside, Aged 18"—was let +down, and in the darkness below disappeared. No flowers were sprinkled +there, nor afterwards planted on the turf—vain offerings, of unavailing +sorrow! But in that nook—beside the bodies of her poor parents—she was +left for the grass to grow over her, as over the other humble dead; and +nothing but the very simplest headstone was placed there, with a +sentence from Scripture below the name. There was less weeping, less +sobbing, than at many other funerals; for as sure as Mercy ruled the +skies, all believed that she was there—all knew it, just as if the +gates of heaven had opened and showed her a white-robed spirit at the +right hand of the throne. And why should any rueful lamentation have +been wailed over the senseless dust? But on the way home over the hills, +and in the hush of evening beside their hearths, and in the stillness of +night on their beds—all—young and old—all did nothing but weep.</p> + +<p>For weeks—such was the pity, grief, and awe inspired by this portentous +crime and lamentable calamity, that all the domestic ongoings in all the +houses far and wide, were melancholy and mournful, as if the country had +been fearing a visitation of the plague. Sin, it was felt, had brought +not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> only sorrow on the parish, but shame that ages would not wipe away; +and strangers, as they travelled through the moor, would point the place +where the foulest murder had been committed in all the annals of crime. +As for the family at Moorside, the daughter had their boundless +compassion, though no eye had seen her since the funeral; but people, in +speaking of the father, would still shake their heads, and put their +fingers to their lips, and say to one another in whispers, that Gilbert +Adamson had once been a bold, bad man—that his religion, in spite of +all his repulsive austerity, wore not the aspect of truth—and that, had +he held a stricter and a stronger hand on the errors of his misguided +son, this foul deed had not been perpetrated, nor that wretched sinner's +soul given to perdition. Yet others had gentler and humaner thoughts. +They remembered him walking along God-supported beneath the bier—and at +the mouth of the grave—and feared to look on that head—formerly +grizzled, but now quite grey—when on the very first Sabbath after the +murder he took his place in the elders' seat, and was able to stand up, +along with the rest of the congregation, when the minister prayed for +peace to his soul, and hoped for the deliverance out of jeopardy of him +now lying in bonds. A low Amen went all round the kirk at these words; +for the most hopeless called to mind that maxim of law, equity, and +justice—that every man under accusation of crime should be held +innocent till he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribunal might +condemn him, and yet might he stand acquitted before the tribunal of +God.</p> + +<p>There were various accounts of the behaviour of the prisoner. Some said +that he was desperately hardened—others, sunk in sullen apathy and +indifference—and one or two persons belonging to the parish who had +seen him declared that he seemed to care not for himself, but to be +plunged in profound melancholy for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose +name he involuntarily mentioned, and then bowed his head on his knees +and wept. His guilt he neither admitted at that interview, nor denied; +but he confessed that some circumstances bore hard against him, and that +he was prepared for the event of his trial—condemnation and death. "But +if you are not guilty, Ludovic, <i>who can be the murderer</i>? Not the +slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> person—and did +not, alas! the body bleed when"—The unhappy wretch sprang up from the +bed, it was said, at these words, and hurried like a madman back and +forward along the stone floor of his cell. "Yea—yea!" at last he cried, +"the mouth and nostrils of my Margaret did indeed bleed when they +pressed down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's truth!" "God's +truth?"—"Yes—God's truth, I saw first one drop, and then another, +trickle towards me—and I prayed to our Saviour to wipe them off before +other eyes might behold the dreadful witnesses against me; but at that +hour Heaven was most unmerciful—for those two small drops—as all of +you saw—soon became a very stream—and all her face, neck, and +breast—you saw it as well as I miserable—were at last drenched in +blood. Then I may have confessed that I was guilty—did I, or did I not, +confess it? Tell me—for I remember nothing distinctly;—but if I +did—the judgment of offended Heaven, then punishing me for my sins, had +made me worse than mad—and so had all your abhorrent eyes; and men, if +I did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove me to it—and your +cruelty—which was great; for no pity had any one for me that day, +though Margaret Burnside lay before me a murdered corpse—and a hoarse +whisper came to my ear urging me to confess—I well believe from no +human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who, at that hour, was suffered +to leave the pit to ensnare my soul." Such was said to have been the +main sense of what he uttered in the presence of two or three who had +formerly been among his most intimate friends, and who knew not, on +leaving his cell and coming into the open air, whether to think him +innocent or guilty. As long as they thought they saw his eyes regarding +them, and that they heard his voice speaking, they believed him +innocent; but when the expression of the tone of his voice, and of the +look of his eyes—which they had felt belonged to innocence—died away +from their memory—then arose against him the strong, strange, +circumstantial evidence, which, wisely or unwisely, lawyers and judges +have said <i>cannot lie</i>—and then, in their hearts, one and all of them +pronounced him guilty.</p> + +<p>But had not his father often visited the prisoner's cell? Once—and once +only; for in obedience to his son's passionate prayer, beseeching +him—if there were any mercy left either<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> on earth or in heaven—never +more to enter that dungeon, the miserable parent had not again entered +the prison; but he had been seen one morning at dawn, by one who knew +his person, walking round and round the walls, staring up at the black +building in distraction, especially at one small grated window in the +north tower—and it is most probable that he had been pacing his rounds +there during all the night. Nobody could conjecture, however dimly, what +was the meaning of his banishment from his son's cell. Gilbert Adamson, +so stern to others, even to his own only daughter, had been always but +too indulgent to his Ludovic—and had that lost wretch's guilt, so +exceeding great, changed his heart into stone, and made the sight of his +old father's grey hairs hateful to his eyes? But then the jailor, who +had heard him imploring—beseeching—commanding his father to remain, +till after the trial, at Moorside, said, that all the while the prisoner +sobbed and wept like a child; and that when he unlocked the door of the +cell, to let the old man out, it was a hard thing to tear away the arms +and hands of Ludovic from his knees, while the father sat like a stone +image on the bed, and kept his tearless eyes fixed sternly upon the +wall, as if not a soul had been present, and he himself had been a +criminal condemned next day to die.</p> + +<p>The father had obeyed, <i>religiously</i>, that miserable injunction, and +from religion it seemed he had found comfort. For Sabbath after Sabbath +he was at the kirk—he stood, as he had been wont to do for years, at +the poor's plate, and returned grave salutations to those who dropt +their mite into the small sacred treasury—his eyes calmly, and even +critically, regarded the pastor during prayer and sermon—and his deep +bass voice was heard, as usual, through all the house of God, in the +Psalms. On week-days he was seen by passers-by to drive his flocks +afield, and to overlook his sheep on the hill-pastures, or in the +pen-fold; and as it was still spring, and seed-time had been late this +season, he was observed holding the plough, as of yore; nor had his +skill deserted him—for the furrows were as straight as if drawn by a +rule on paper—and soon bright and beautiful was the braird on all the +low lands of his farm. The Comforter was with him, and, sorely as he had +been tried, his heart was not yet wholly broken; and it was believed +that, for years, he might outlive the blow that at first had seemed more +than a mortal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> man might bear and be! Yet that his woe, though hidden, +was dismal, all ere long knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his +face—cheeks shrunk and fallen; brow not so much furrowed as scarred; +eyes quenched; hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had torn +it away in handfuls during the solitude of midnight—and now absolutely +as white as snow; and over the whole man an indescribable ancientness +far beyond his years—though they were many, and most of them had been +passed in torrid climes—all showed how grief has its agonies as +destructive as those of guilt, and those the most wasting when they work +in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved by the shedding of one single +tear—when the very soul turns dry as dust, and life is imprisoned, +rather than mingled, in the decaying—the mouldering body!</p> + +<p>The Day of Trial came, and all labour was suspended in the parish, as if +it had been a mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this remote +district poured into the circuit-town, and besieged the court-house. +Horsemen were in readiness, soon as the verdict should be returned, to +carry the intelligence—of life or death—to all those glens. A few +words will suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the evidence, and +its issue. The prisoner, who stood at the bar in black, appeared—though +miserably changed from a man of great muscular power and activity, a +magnificent man, into a tall thin shadow—perfectly unappalled; but in a +face so white, and wasted, and woe-begone, the most profound +physiognomist could read not one faintest symptom either of hope or +fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. He hardly seemed to belong +to this world, and stood fearfully and ghastlily conspicuous between the +officers of justice, above all the crowd that devoured him with their +eyes, all leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound of his voice, +when to the indictment he should plead "Not Guilty." These words he did +utter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, and then was suffered +to sit down, which he did in a manner destitute of all emotion. During +all the many long hours of his trial, he never moved head, limbs, or +body, except once, when he drank some water, which he had not asked for, +but which was given to him by a friend. The evidence was entirely +circumstantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, and of many of the +very slightest sort, which, taken singly, seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> to mean nothing, but +which, when considered all together, seemed to mean something against +him—how much or how little, there were among the agitated audience many +differing opinions. But slight as they were, either singly or together, +they told fearfully against the prisoner, when connected with the fatal +few which no ingenuity could ever explain away; and though ingenuity did +all it could do, when wielded by eloquence of the highest order—and as +the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a rustle and a buzz through +the court, and a communication of looks and whispers, that seemed to +denote that there were hopes of his acquittal—yet, if such hopes there +were, they were deadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, logical +address to the jury by the counsel for the crown, and destroyed by the +judge's charge, which amounted almost to a demonstration of guilt, and +concluded with a confession due to his oath and conscience, that he saw +not how the jury could do their duty to their Creator and their +fellow-creatures, but by returning <i>one</i> verdict. They retired to +consider it; and, during a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on a +deathlike Image.</p> + +<p>It had appeared in evidence, that the murder had been committed, at +least all the gashes inflicted—for there were also finger-marks of +strangulation—with a bill-hook, such as foresters use in lopping trees; +and several witnesses swore that the bill-hook which was shown them, +stained with blood, and with hair sticking on the haft, belonged to +Ludovic Adamson. It was also given in evidence—though some doubts +rested on the nature of the precise words—that on that day, in the room +with the corpse, he had given a wild and incoherent denial to the +question then put to him in the din, "What he had done with the +bill-hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession since the spring +before; but it had been found, after several weeks' search, in a hag in +the moss, in the direction that he would have most probably taken—had +he been the murderer—when flying from the spot to the loch where he was +seized. The shoes which he had on when taken, fitted the footmarks on +the ground, not far from the place of the murder, but not so perfectly +as another pair which were found in the house. But that other pair, it +was proved, belonged to the old man; and therefore the correspondence +between the footmarks and the prisoner's shoes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> though not perfect, was +a circumstance of much suspicion. But a far stronger fact, in this part +of the evidence, was sworn to against the prisoner. Though there was no +blood on his shoes, when apprehended his legs were bare—though that +circumstance, strange as it may seem, had never been noticed till he was +on the way to prison! His stockings had been next day found lying on the +sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly after having been washed, +and laid out to dry in the sun. At mention of this circumstance a cold +shudder ran through the court; but neither that, nor indeed any other +circumstance in the evidence—not even the account of the appearance +which the murdered body exhibited when found on the moor, or when +afterwards laid on the bed—extorted from the prisoner one groan—one +sigh—or touched the imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. It +was proved, that when searched—in prison, and not before (for the +agitation that reigned over all assembled in the room at Moorside that +dreadful day, had confounded even those accustomed to deal with +suspected criminals)—there were found in his pocket a small French gold +watch, and also a gold brooch, which the Ladies of the Castle had given +to Margaret Burnside. On these being taken from him, he had said +nothing, but looked aghast. A piece of torn and bloody paper, which had +been picked up near the body, was sworn to be in his handwriting; and +though the meaning of the words—yet legible—was obscure, they seemed +to express a request that Margaret would meet him on the moor on that +Saturday afternoon she was murdered. The words "Saturday"—"meet +me"—"last time"—were not indistinct, and the paper was of the same +quality and colour with some found in a drawer in his bedroom at +Moorside. It was proved that he had been drinking with some dissolute +persons—poachers and the like—in a public-house in a neighbouring +parish all Saturday, till well on in the afternoon, when he left them in +a state of intoxication—and was then seen running along the hill-side +in the direction of the moor. Where he passed the night between the +Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give no account, except once when +unasked, and as if speaking to himself, he was overheard by the jailor +to mutter, "Oh! that fatal night—that fatal night!" And then, when +suddenly interrogated, "Where were you?" he answered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> "Asleep on the +hill;" and immediately relapsed into a state of mental abstraction. +These were the chief circumstances against him, which his counsel had +striven to explain away. That most eloquent person dwelt with affecting +earnestness on the wickedness of putting any evil construction on the +distracted behaviour of the wretched man when brought without warning +upon the sudden sight of the mangled corpse of the beautiful girl, whom +all allowed he had most passionately and tenderly loved; and he strove +to prove—as he did prove to the conviction of many—that such behaviour +was incompatible with such guilt, and almost of itself established his +innocence. All that was sworn to <i>against</i> him, as having passed in that +dreadful room, was in truth <i>for</i> him—unless all our knowledge of the +best and of the worst of human nature were not, as folly, to be given to +the winds. He beseeched the jury, therefore, to look at all the other +circumstances that did indeed seem to bear hard upon the prisoner, in +the light of his innocence, and not of his guilt, and that they would +all fade into nothing. What mattered his possession of the watch and +other trinkets? Lovers as they were, might not the unhappy girl have +given them to him for temporary keepsakes? Or might he not have taken +them from her in some playful mood, or received them—(and the brooch +was cracked, and the mainspring of the watch broken, though the glass +was whole)—to get them repaired in the town, which he often visited, +and she never? Could human credulity for one moment believe, that such a +man as the prisoner at the bar had been sworn to be by a host of +witnesses—and especially by that witness, who, with such overwhelming +solemnity, had declared he loved him as his own son, and would have been +proud if Heaven had given him such a son—he who had baptised him, and +known him well ever since a child—that such a man could <i>rob</i> the body +of her whom he had violated and murdered? If, under the instigation of +the devil, he had violated and murdered her, and for a moment were made +the hideous supposition, did vast hell hold that demon whose voice would +have tempted the violator and murderer—suppose him both—yea, that man +at the bar—sworn to by all the parish, if need were, as a man of +tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded—in the lust of lucre, +consequent on the satiating of another lust—to rob his victim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> of a few +trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination into the realms of wildest +wickedness, and yet they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for a +moment the union of such appalling and such paltry guilt, <i>in that man</i> +who now trembled not before them, but who seemed cut off from all the +sensibilities of this life by the scythe of Misery that had shorn him +down! But why try to recount, however feebly, the line of defence taken +by the speaker, who on that day seemed all but inspired? The sea may +overturn rocks, or fire consume them till they split in pieces; but a +crisis there sometimes is in man's destiny, which all the powers ever +lodged in the lips of man, were they touched with a coal from heaven, +cannot avert, and when even he who strives to save, feels and knows that +he is striving all in vain—ay, vain as a worm—to arrest the tread of +Fate about to trample down its victim into the dust. All hoped—many +almost believed—that the prisoner would be acquitted—that a verdict of +"Not Proven," at least, if not of "Not Guilty," would be returned; but +<i>they</i> had not been sworn to do justice before man and before God—and, +if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their +hearts—flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that +bar presented—a man already seeming to belong unto the dead!</p> + +<p>In about a quarter of an hour the jury returned to the box—and the +verdict, having been sealed with black wax, was handed up to the Judge, +who read, "We unanimously find the prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to +receive sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in the court during the +Judge's solemn and affecting address to the criminal—except those of +the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the doom. "Your body will be hung +in chains on the moor—on a gibbet erected on the spot where you +murdered the victim of your unhallowed lust, and there will your bones +bleach in the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the insects and the +birds of the air have devoured your flesh; and in all future times, the +spot on which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you perpetrated that +double crime, at which all humanity shudders, will be looked on from +afar by the traveller passing through that lonesome wild with a sacred +horror!" Here the voice of the Judge faltered, and he covered his face +with his hands; but the prisoner stood unmoved in figure, and in face +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>untroubled and when all was closed, was removed from the bar, the same +ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seemingly unconscious of what had +passed, or even of his own existence.</p> + +<p>Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell! "Once +more only—only once more let me see him before I die!" were his words +to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when +a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom +now all the world had forsaken. As free from sin himself as might be +mortal and fallen man—mortal because fallen—he knew from Scripture and +from nature, that in "the lowest deep there is still a lower deep" in +wickedness, into which all of woman born may fall, unless held back by +the arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must serve steadfastly in +holiness and truth. He knew, too, from the same source, that man cannot +sin beyond the reach of God's mercy—if the worst of all imaginable +sinners seek, in a Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through the +Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily—and nightly—he visited that cell; nor +did he fear to touch the hand, now wasted to the bone, which, at the +temptation of the Prince of the Air—who is mysteriously suffered to +enter in at the gates of every human heart that is guarded not by the +flaming sword of God's own Seraphim—was lately drenched in the blood of +the most innocent creature that ever looked on the day. Yet a sore trial +it was to his Christianity to find the criminal so obdurate. He would +make no confession. Yet said that it was fit—that it was far best he +should die—that he deserved death! But ever when the deed without a +name was alluded to, his tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an +impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen to conscience and +confess—he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear +bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease—cease to torment me, or you +will drive me to deny my God!"</p> + +<p>No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been +missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning—(where he had been all +night never was known, though it was afterwards rumoured that one like +him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of +the murder)—wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round +and round about, like a man stricken with blind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>ness, and vainly seeking +to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and +he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some +disjointed syllables, which he did continually, without one moment's +cessation, one unintelligible and most rueful moan! The figure of his +daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes—blind and dumb he sat +where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his +shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs—though +stone-blind at least to all real things—beneath them flashing fire. He +had borne up bravely—almost to the last—but had some tongue syllabled +his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten +him?</p> + +<p>Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none; for the +old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most +confident trust of his son's acquittal. Nothing had ever served to shake +his conviction of his innocence—though he had always forborne speaking +about the circumstances of the murder—and had communicated to nobody +any of the grounds on which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless; +and though a trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lips, when he +used to say to the silent neighbours, "We shall soon see him back at +Moorside." Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and his trust in +God that that innocence would be established and set free, been so +sacred, that the blow, when it did come, struck him like a hammer, and +felled him to the ground, from which he had risen with a riven brain? In +whatever way the shock had been given, it had been terrible; for old +Gilbert Adamson was now a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in +Moorside—not keepers from a mad-house, for his daughter could not +afford such tendence—but two of her brother's friends, who sat up with +him alternately, night and day, while the arms of the old man, in his +distraction, had to be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an +end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; +and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the +neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it, and an asylum for +them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties; +and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away +by violence, she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> suffered to remain with him who knew her not, but +who often—it was said—stared distractedly upon her, as if she had been +some fiend sent in upon his insanity from the place of punishment. Weeks +passed on, and still she was there—hiding herself at times from those +terrifying eyes; and from her watching corner, waiting from morn till +night, and from night till morn—for she seldom lay down to sleep, and +had never undressed herself since that fatal sentence—for some moment +of exhausted horror, when she might steal out, and carry some slight +gleam of comfort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or the gloom in +which the brain of her father swam through a dream of blood. But there +were no lucid intervals; and ever as she moved towards him, like a +pitying angel, did he furiously rage against her, as if she had been a +fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, had lived to see the +murdered corpse of her dearest friend—murdered by her own only brother, +whom, in secret, that murdered maiden had most tenderly loved—that +murderous brother loaded with prison-chains, and condemned to the gibbet +for inexpiable and unpardonable crimes—her father raving like a demon, +self-murderous were his hands but free, nor visited by one glimpse of +mercy from Him who rules the skies—after having borne more than, as she +meekly said, had ever poor girl borne, she took to her bed quite +heart-broken, and, the night before the day of execution, died. As for +poor little Ann, she had been wiled away some weeks before; and in the +blessed thoughtlessness of childhood, was not without hours of happiness +among her playmates on the braes.</p> + +<p>The Morning of that Day arose, and the Moor was all blackened with +people round the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, with its horrid +arms, out of the ground during the night. No sound of axes or hammers +had been heard clinking during the dark hours—nothing had been seen +passing along the road; for the windows of all the houses from which +anything could have been seen, had been shut fast against all horrid +sights—and the horses' hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled that +had brought that hideous Framework to the Moor. But there it now +stood—a dreadful Tree! The sun moved higher and higher up the sky, and +all the eyes of that congregation were at once turned towards the east, +for a dull sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> feet, seemed +shaking the Moor in that direction; and lo! surrounded with armed men on +horseback, and environed with halberds, came on a cart, in which three +persons seemed to be sitting, he in the middle all dressed in white—the +death-clothes of the murderer—the unpitying shedder of most innocent +blood.</p> + +<p>There was no bell to toll there—but at the very moment he was ascending +the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hundreds of people +all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his +eyes, and said, "O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou his blessed Son, who +died to save sinners! accept this sacrifice!"</p> + +<p>Not one in all that immense crowd could have known that that white +apparition was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been almost +jet-black, was now white as his face—as his figure, dressed, as it +seemed, for the grave. Are they going to execute the murderer in his +shroud? Stone-blind, and stone-deaf, there he stood—yet had he, without +help, walked up the steps of the scaffold. A hymn of several voices +arose—the man of God close beside the criminal, with the Bible in his +uplifted hands; but those bloodless lips had no motion—with him this +world was not, though yet he was in life—in life, and no more! And was +this the man who, a few months ago, flinging the fear of death from him, +as a flash of sunshine flings aside the shades, had descended into that +pit which an hour before had been bellowing, as the foul vapours +exploded like cannons, and brought up the bodies of them who had +perished in the womb of the earth? Was this he who once leapt into the +devouring fire, and reappeared, after all had given over for lost the +glorious boy, with an infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to +eddy back, that they might scathe not the head of the deliverer, and a +shower of blessings fell upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, +and made the heart of the widow to sing for joy? It is he. And now the +executioner pulls down the cord from the beam, and fastens it round the +criminal's neck. His face is already covered, and that fatal +handkerchief is in his hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, and one +multitudinous sob convulses the air;—when wild outcries, and shrieks, +and yells, are at that moment heard from the distant gloom of the glen +that opens up to Moorside, and three figures, one far in advance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +others, come flying, as on the wings of the wind, towards the gibbet. +Hundreds started to their feet, and "'Tis the maniac—'tis the lunatic!" +was the cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hill-side, that seemed +hardly accessible but to the goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few +desperate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected he would have been +dashed in pieces, alighted unstunned upon the level greensward; and now, +far ahead of his keepers, with incredible swiftness neared the +scaffold—and, the dense crowd making a lane for him in their fear and +astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the horrid platform, and, +grasping his son in his arms, howled dreadfully over him; and then with +a loud voice cried, "Saved—saved—saved!"</p> + +<p>So sudden had been that wild rush, that all the officers of justice—the +very executioner—stood aghast; and now the prisoner's neck is free from +that accursed cord—his face is once more visible without that hideous +shroud—and he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. "Seize him—seize +him!" and he was seized—but no maniac, no lunatic, was the father now; +for during the night, and during the dawn, and during the morn, and on +to mid-day—on to the <span class="smcap">Hour of One</span>—when all rueful preparations were to +be completed—had Providence been clearing and calming the tumult in +that troubled brain; and as the cottage clock struck <span class="smcap">one</span>, memory +brightened at the chime into a perfect knowledge of the past, and +prophetic imagination saw the future lowering upon the dismal present. +All night long, with the cunning of a madman—for all night long he had +still been mad—the miserable old man had been disengaging his hands +from the manacles, and that done, springing like a wild beast from his +cage, he flew out of the open door, nor could a horse's speed on that +fearful road have overtaken him before he reached the scaffold.</p> + +<p>No need was there to hold the miserable man. He who had been so furious +in his manacles at Moorside, seemed now, to the people at a distance, +calm as when he used to sit in the elders' seat beneath the pulpit in +that small kirk. But they who were on or near the scaffold saw something +horrid in the fixedness of his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, ye +fools!" he muttered to some of the mean wretches of the law, who still +had him in their clutch—and tossing his hands on high, cried with a +loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> and hear, O Earth! I am the +Violator—I am the Murderer!"</p> + +<p>The moor groaned as in earthquake—and then all that congregation bowed +their heads with a rustling noise, like a wood smitten by the wind. Had +they heard aright the unimaginable confession? His head had long been +grey—he had reached the term allotted to man's mortal life here +below—threescore and ten. Morning and evening, never had the Bible been +out of his hands at the hour set apart for family worship. And who so +eloquent as he in expounding its most dreadful mysteries? The +unregenerate heart of man, he had ever said—in scriptural phrase—was +"desperately wicked." Desperately wicked indeed! And now again he tossed +his arms wrathfully—so the wild motion looked—in the wrathful skies. +"I ravished—I murdered her—ye know it, ye evil spirits in the depths +of hell!" Consternation now fell on the minds of all—and the truth was +clear as light—and all eyes knew at once that now indeed they looked on +the murderer. The dreadful delusion under which all their understandings +had been brought by the power of circumstances, was by that voice +destroyed—the obduracy of him who had been about to die was now seen to +have been the most heroic virtue—the self-sacrifice of a son, to save a +father from ignominy and death.</p> + +<p>"O monster, beyond the reach of redemption! and the very day after the +murder, while the corpse was lying in blood on the Moor, he was with us +in the House of God! Tear him in pieces—rend him limb from limb—tear +him into a thousand pieces!"—"The Evil One had power given him to +prevail against me, and I fell under the temptation. It was so written +in the Book of Predestination, and the deed lies at the door of +God!"—"Tear the blasphemer into pieces! Let the scaffold drink his +blood!"—"So let it be, if it be so written, good people! Satan never +left me since the murder till this day—he sat by my side in the +kirk—when I was ploughing in the field—there—ever as I came back from +the other end of the furrow—he stood on the head-rig in the shape of a +black shadow. But now I see him not—he has returned to his den in the +pit. I cannot imagine what I have been doing, or what has been done to +me, all the time between the day of trial and this of execution. Was I +mad? No matter. But you shall not hang Ludovic—he, poor boy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> is +innocent;—here, look at him—here—I tell you again—is the Violator +and the Murderer!"</p> + +<p>But shall the men in authority dare to stay the execution at a maniac's +words? If they dare not—that multitude will, now all rising together +like the waves of the sea. "Cut the cords asunder that bind our +Ludovic's arms"—a thousand voices cried; and the murderer, unclasping a +knife, that, all unknown to his keepers, he had worn in his breast when +a maniac, sheared them asunder as the sickle shears the corn. But his +son stirred not—and on being lifted <i>up</i> by his father, gave not so +much as a groan. His heart had burst—and he was dead. No one touched +the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down—not to pray, but to look into +his son's eyes—and to examine his lips—and to feel his left +breast—and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to +assure himself—and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field +after hush of the noise of battle—that this was death. He rose; and +standing forward on the edge of the scaffold, said, with a voice that +shook not, deep, strong, hollow, and hoarse—"Good people! I am +<i>likewise</i> now the murderer of my daughter and of my son! and of +myself!" Next moment, the knife was in his heart—and he fell down a +corpse on the corpse of his Ludovic. All round the sultry horizon the +black clouds had for hours been gathering—and now came the thunder and +the lightning—and the storm. Again the whole multitude prostrated +themselves on the moor—and the Pastor, bending over the dead bodies, +said,</p> + +<div class="center"> +"<span class="smcap">This is Expiation!</span>" +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>MORNING MONOLOGUE.</h2> + + +<p>"Knowledge is Power." So is Talent—so is Genius—so is Virtue. Which is +the greatest? It might seem hard to tell; but united they go forth +conquering and to conquer. Nor is that union rare. Kindred in nature, +they love to dwell together in the same "palace of the soul." Remember +Milton. But too often they are disunited; and then, though still Powers, +they are but feeble, and their defeats are frequent as their triumphs. +What! is it so even with Virtue? It is, and it is not. Virtue may reign +without the support of Talent and Genius; but her counsellor is +Conscience, and what is Conscience but Reason rich by birthright in +knowledge directly derived from the heaven of heavens beyond all the +stars?</p> + +<p>And may Genius and Talent indeed be, conceive, and execute, without the +support of Virtue? You will find that question answered in the following +lines by Charles Grant, which deserve the name of philosophical +poetry:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Talents, 'tis true, quick, various, bright, has God<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Virtue oft denied, on Vice bestow'd;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just as fond Nature lovelier colours brings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To deck the insect's than the eagle's wings.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But then of man the high-born nobler part,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ethereal energies that touch the heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Creative Fancy, labouring Thought intense,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Imagination's wild magnificence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all the dread sublimities of Song—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These, Virtue! these, to thee alone belong."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Such is the natural constitution of humanity; and in the happiest state +of social life, all its noblest Faculties would bear legitimate sway, +each in its own province, within the spirit's ample domains. There, +Genius would be honoured; and Poetry another name for religion. But to +such a state<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> there can, under the most favouring skies, be no more than +an approximation; and the time never was when Virtue suffered no +persecution, Honour no shame, Genius no neglect, nor fetters were not +imposed by tyrannous power on the feet of the free. The age of Homer, +the age of Solon, the age of Pericles, the age of Numa, the age of +Augustus, the age of Alfred, the age of Leo, the age of Elizabeth, the +age of Anne, the age of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron, have they not been +all bright and great ages? Yet had they been faithfully chronicled, over +the misery and madness of how many despairing spirits fraught with +heavenly fire, might we not have been called to pour forth our +unavailing indignations and griefs!</p> + +<p>Under despotic governments, again, such as have sunk deep their roots +into Oriental soils, and beneath Oriental skies prosperously expanded +their long-enduring umbrage, where might is right, and submission +virtue, noble-minded men—for sake of that peace which is ever dearest +to the human heart, and if it descend not a glad and gracious gift from +Heaven, will yet not ungratefully be accepted when breathed somewhat +sadly from the quieted bosom of earth by tyranny saved from +trouble—have submitted, almost without mourning, to sing "many a lovely +lay," that perished like the flowers around them, in praise of the Power +at whose footstool they "stooped their anointed heads as low as death." +Even then has Genius been honoured, because though it ceased to be +august, still it was beautiful; it seemed to change fetters of iron into +bands of roses, and to halo with a glory the brows of slaves. The +wine-cup mantled in its light; and Love forgot in the bower Poetry built +for bliss, that the bride might be torn from the bridegroom's bosom on +her bridal night by a tyrant's lust. Even there Genius was happy, and +diffused happiness; at its bidding was heard pipe, tabor, and dulcimer; +and to its lips "warbling melody" life floated by, in the midst of all +oppression, a not undelightful dream!</p> + +<p>But how has it been with us in our Green Island of the West? Some people +are afraid of revolutions. Heaven pity them! we have had a hundred since +the Roman bridged our rivers, and led his highways over our mountains. +And what the worse have we been of being thus revolved? We are no +radicals; but we dearly love a revolution—like that of the stars. No +two nights are the heavens the same—all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> luminaries are revolving +to the music of their own spheres. Look, we beseech you, on that +new-risen star. He is elected by universal suffrage—a glorious +representative of a million lesser lights; and on dissolution of <i>that</i> +Parliament—how silent but how eloquent!—he is sure of his return. Why, +we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen below—it is no +longer called Reform—were it to fling up to free light from fettered +darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole +world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. But +we look abroad and see strutting to and fro the sons of little men blown +up with vanity, in a land where tradition not yet old tells of a race of +giants. We are ashamed of ourselves to think we feared the throes of the +times, seeing not portentous but pitiable births. Brush these away; and +let us think of the great dead—let us look on the great living—and, +strong in memory and hope, be confident in the cause of Freedom. "Great +men <i>have been</i> among us—better none;" and can it be said that <i>now</i> +there is "a want of books and men," or that those we have are mere +dwarfs and duodecimos? Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and +enterprise, no passion in the character of our country? Has not wide +over earth</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"England sent her men, of men the chief,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the Queen, kindled America into +life, and raised up in the New World a power to balance the Old, star +steadying star in their unconflicting courses? You can scarce see her +shores for ships; her inland groves are crested with towers and temples; +and mists brooding at intervals over her far-extended plains, tell of +towns and cities, their hum unheard by the gazer from her glorious +hills. Of such a land it would need a gifted eye to look into all that +is passing within the mighty heart; but it needs no gifted eye, no +gifted ear, to see and hear there the glare and the groaning of great +anguish, as of lurid breakers tumbling in and out of the caves of the +sea. But is it or is it not a land where all the faculties of the soul +are free as they ever were since the Fall? Grant that there are +tremendous abuses in all departments of public and private life; that +rulers and legislators have often been as deaf to the "still small +voice"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> as to the cry of the million; that they whom they have ruled, +and for whom they have legislated often so unwisely or wickedly, have +been as often untrue to themselves, and in self-imposed idolatry</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"Have bow'd their knees<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To despicable gods."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet base, blind, and deaf (and better dumb) must be he who would deny, +that here Genius has had, and now has, her noblest triumphs; that Poetry +has here kindled purer fires on loftier altars than ever sent up their +incense to Grecian skies; that Philosophy has sounded depths in which +her torch was not extinguished, but, though bright, could pierce not the +"heart of the mystery" into which it sent some strong illuminations; +that Virtue here has had chosen champions victorious in their martyrdom; +and Religion her ministers and her servants not unworthy of her whose +title is from heaven.</p> + +<p>Causes there have been, are, and ever will be, why often, even here, the +very highest faculties "rot in cold obstruction." But in all the +ordinary affairs of life, have not the best the best chance to win the +day? Who, in general, achieve competence, wealth, splendour, +magnificence, in their condition as citizens? The feeble, the ignorant, +and the base, or the strong, the instructed, and the bold? Would you, at +the offstart, back mediocrity with alien influence, against high talent +with none but its own—the native "might that slumbers in a peasant's +arm," or, nobler far, that which neither sleeps nor slumbers in a +peasant's heart? There is something abhorrent from every sentiment in +man's breast to see, as we too often do, imbecility advanced to high +places by the mere accident of high birth. But how our hearts warm +within us to behold the base born, if in Britain we may use the word, by +virtue of their own irresistible energies, taking precedence, rightful +and gladly-granted, of the blood of kings! Yet we have heard it +whispered, insinuated, surmised, spoken, vociferated, howled, and roared +in a voice of small-beer-souring thunder, that Church and State, Army +and Navy, are all officered by the influence of the Back-stairs—that +few or none but blockheads, by means of brass only, mount from the Bar +which they have disturbed to that Bench which they disgrace; and that +mankind intrust the cure of all diseases their flesh is heir to, to the +exclusive care of every here and there a handful of old women.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p> + +<p>Whether overstocked or not, 'twould be hard to say, but all professions +are full—from that of Peer to that of Beggar. To live is the most many +of us can do. Why then complain? Men should not complain when it is +their duty as men to work. Silence need not be sullen—but better +sullenness than all this outrageous outcry, as if words the winds +scatter, were to drop into the soil and grow up grain. Processions! is +this a time for full-grown men in holiday shows to play the part of +children? If they desire advancement, let them, like their betters, turn +to and work. All men worth mentioning in this country belong to the +working classes. What seated Thurlow, and Wedderburne, and Scott, and +Erskine, and Copley, and Brougham on the woolsack? Work. What made +Wellington? For seven years war all over Spain, and finally at +Waterloo—work—bloody and glorious work.</p> + +<p>Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. Let the few sluggards that +possess but cannot enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures and +sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such creatures disturb the +equanimity of the magnanimous working-classes of England? True to +themselves in life's great relations, they need not grudge, for a little +while longer, the paupers a few paltry pence out of their earnings; for +they know a sure and silent deathblow has been struck against that order +of things by the sense of the land, and that all who receive wages must +henceforth give work. All along that has been the rule—these are the +exceptions; or say, that has been the law—these are its revolutions. +Let there be high rewards, and none grudge them—in honour and gold—for +high work. And men of high talents—never extinct—will reach up their +hands and seize them, amidst the acclamations of a people who have ever +taken pride in a great ambition. If the competition is to be in future +more open than ever, to know it is so will rejoice the souls of all who +are not slaves. But clear the course! Let not the crowd rush in—for by +doing so, they will bring down the racers, and be themselves trampled to +death.</p> + +<p>Now we say that the race is—if not always—ninety-nine times in a +hundred—to the swift, and the battle to the strong. We may have been +fortunate in our naval and military friends; but we cannot charge our +memory with a single consummate ass holding a distinguished rank in +either service. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> such consummate asses are in both, we have been +credibly informed, and believe it; and we have sometimes almost imagined +that we heard their bray at no great distance, and the flapping of their +ears. Poor creatures enough do rise by seniority or purchase, or if +anybody know how else, we do not; and such will be the case to the end +of the chapter of human accidents. But merit not only makes the man, but +the officer on shore and at sea. They are as noble and discontented a +set of fellows all, as ever boarded or stormed; and they will continue +so, not till some change in the Admiralty, or at the Horse-guards, for +Sir James Graham does his duty, and so does Lord Hill; but till a change +in humanity, for 'tis no more than Adam did, and we attribute whatever +may be amiss or awry, chiefly to the Fall. Let the Radicals set poor +human nature on her legs again, and what would become of <i>them</i>? In the +French service there is no rising at all, it seems, but by merit; but +there is also much running away; not in a disgraceful style, for our +natural enemies and artificial friends are a brave race, but in mere +indignation and disgust to see troops so shamefully ill-officered as +ours, which it would be a disgrace to look in the face on the field, +either in column or line. Therefore they never stand a charge, but are +off in legions of honour, eagles and all, before troops that have been +so uniformly flogged from time immemorial, as to have no other name but +raw lobsters, led on by officers all shivering or benumbed under the +"cold shade of aristocracy," like Picton and Pack.</p> + +<p>We once thought of going ourselves to the English Bar, but were +dissuaded from doing so by some judicious friends, who assured us we +should only be throwing away our great talents and unexampled eloquence; +for that success depended solely on interest, and we had none we knew +of, either in high places or in low, and had then never seen an +attorney. We wept for the fate of many dear friends in wigs, and made a +pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On our return from Palestine and other foreign +parts, behold them all bending under briefs, bound by retaining fees, +or, like game-hawks, wheeling in airy circuits over the rural provinces, +and pouncing down on their prey, away to their eyries with talonfuls, +which they devoured at their luxurious leisure, untroubled by any callow +young! They now compose the Bench.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p> + +<p>Ere we set off for Salem, we had thoughts of entering the Church, and of +becoming Bishops. But it was necessary, we were told, first to be tutor +to a lord. That, in our pride, we could not stomach; but if ours had not +been the sin by which Satan fell, where now had been the excellent +Howley? All our habits in youth led us to associate much with intending +divines. A few of them are still curates; but 'twere vain to try to +count the vicars, rectors, canons, deans, archdeacons, and bishops, with +whom, when we were all undergraduates together at Oxford, we used to do +nothing but read Greek all day, and Latin all night. Yet you hear +nothing but abuse of such a Church! and are told to look at the +Dissenters. We do look at them, and an uglier set we never saw; not one +in a hundred, in his grimness, a gentleman. Not a single scholar have +they got to show; and now that Hall is mute, not one orator. Their +divinity is of the dust—and their discourses dry bones. Down with the +old Universities—up with new. The old are not yet down, but the new are +up; and how dazzling the contrast, even to the purblind! You may hew +down trees, but not towers; and Granta and Rhedicyna will show their +temples to the sun, ages after such structures shall have become +hospitals. They enlighten the land. Beloved are they by all the +gentlemen of England. Even the plucked think of them with tears of +filial reverence, and having renewed their plumage, clap their wings, +and crow defiance to all their foes. A man, you say, can get there no +education to fit him for life. Bah! Tell that to the marines. Now and +then one meets a man eminent in a liberal profession, who has not been +at any place that could easily be called a College. But the great +streams of talent in England keep perpetually flowing from the gates of +her glorious Universities—and he who would deny it in any mixed company +of leading men in London, would only have to open his eyes in the hush +that rebuked his folly, to see that he was a Cockney, clever enough, +perhaps, in his own small way, and the author of some sonnets, but even +to his own feelings painfully out of place among men who had not studied +at the Surrey.</p> + +<p>We cannot say that we have any fears, this fine clear September morning, +for the Church of England in England. In Ireland, deserted and betrayed, +it has received a dilapidating shock. Fain would seven millions of "the +finest people on the earth,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> and likewise the most infatuated, who are +so proud of the verdure of their isle that they love to make "the green +one red," see the entire edifice overthrown, not one stone left upon +another, and its very name smothered in a smoky cloud of ascending dust. +They have told us so in yells, over which has still been heard "the +wolf's long howl," the savage cry of the O'Connell. And Ministers who +pretend to be Protestants, and in reform have not yet declared against +the Reformation, have tamely yielded, recreants from the truth, to +brawlers who would pull down her holiest altars, and given up "pure +religion, breathing household laws," a sacrifice to superstition. But +there is a power enshrined in England which no Government dare seek to +desecrate—in the hearts of the good and wise, grateful to an +establishment that has guarded Christianity from corruption, and is +venerated by all the most enlightened spirits who conscientiously +worship without its pale, and know that in the peaceful shadow of its +strength repose their own humbler and untroubled altars.</p> + +<p>We have been taking a cheerful—a hopeful view of our surrounding world, +as it is enclosed within these our seas, whose ideal murmur seemed a +while to breathe in unison with our Monologue. We have been believing +that in this our native land, the road of merit is the road to +success—say happiness. And is not the law the same in the world of +Literature and the Fine Arts? Give a great genius anything like fair +play, and he will gain glory—nay, bread. True, he may be before his +age, and may have to create his worshippers. But how few such! And is it +a disgrace to an age to produce a genius whose grandeur it cannot all at +once comprehend? The works of genius are surely not often +incomprehensible to the highest contemporary minds, and if they win +their admiration, pity not the poor Poet. But pray syllable the living +Poet's name who has had reason to complain of having fallen on evil +days, or who is with "darkness and with danger compassed round." From +humblest birthplaces in the obscurest nooks frequently have we seen</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">"The fulgent head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Star-bright appear;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>from unsuspected rest among the water-lilies of the mountain mere, the +snow-white swan in full plumage soar into the sky.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Hush! no nonsense +about Wordsworth. "Far-off his coming shone;" and what if for a while +men knew not whether 'twas some mirage-glimmer, or the dawning of a new +"orb of song!"</p> + +<p>We have heard rather too much even from that great poet about the +deafness and blindness of the present time. No Time but the future, he +avers, has ears or eyes for divine music and light. Was Homer in his own +day obscure, or Shakespeare? But Heaven forbid we should force the bard +into an argument; we allow him to sit undisturbed by us in the bower +nature delighted to build for him, with small help from his own hands, +at the dim end of that alley green, among lake-murmur and +mountain-shadow, for ever haunted by ennobling visions. But we love and +respect Present Time—partly, we confess, because he has shown some +little kindly feeling for ourselves, whereas we fear Future Time may +forget us among many others of his worthy father's friends, and the name +of Christopher North</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Die on his ears a faint unheeded sound."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Present Time has not been unjust to William Wordsworth. Some small +temporalities were so; imps running about the feet of Present Time, and +sometimes making him stumble: but on raising his eyes from the ground, +he saw something shining like an Apparition on the mountain-top, and he +hailed, and with a friendly voice, the advent of another true Poet of +nature and of man.</p> + +<p>We must know how to read that prophet, before we preach from any text in +his book of revelations.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"We poets in our youth begin in gladness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Why spoke he thus? Because a deep darkness had fallen upon him all alone +in a mountain-cave, and he quaked before the mystery of man's troubled +life.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of him who walk'd in glory and in joy,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Following his plough upon the mountain-side!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and if they died miserably, "How may I perish!" But they wanted wisdom. +Therefore the marvellous boy drank one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> bowl drugged with sudden, and +the glorious ploughman many bowls drugged with lingering death. If we +must weep over the woes of Genius, let us know for whom we may rightly +shed our tears. With one drop of ink you may write the names of all</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The mighty Poets in their misery dead."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Wordsworth wrote those lines, as we said, in the inspiration of a +profound but not permanent melancholy; and they must not be profaned by +being used as a quotation in defence of accusations against human +society, which, in some lips, become accusations against Providence. The +mighty Poets have been not only wiser but happier than they knew; and +what glory from heaven and earth was poured over their inward life, up +to the very moment it darkened away into the gloom of the grave!</p> + +<p>Many a sad and serious hour have we read d'Israeli, and many a lesson +may all lovers of literature learn from his well-instructed books. But +from the unhappy stories therein so feelingly and eloquently narrated, +has many "a famous ape" drawn conclusions the very reverse of those +which he himself leaves to be drawn by all minds possessed of any +philosophy. Melancholy the moral of these moving tales; but we must look +for it, not into the society that surrounds us, though on it too we must +keep a watchful, and, in spite of all its sins, a not irreverent eye, +but into our own hearts. There lies the source of evil which some evil +power perhaps without us stirs up till it wells over in misery. Then +fiercely turns the wretch first against "the world and the world's law," +both sometimes iniquitous, and last of all against the rebellious spirit +in his own breast, but for whose own innate corruption his moral being +would have been victorious against all outward assaults, violent or +insidious, "and to the end persisting safe arrived."</p> + +<p>Many men of genius have died without their fame, and for their fate we +may surely mourn without calumniating our kind. It was their lot to die. +Such was the will of God. Many such have come and gone, ere they knew +themselves what they were; their brothers and sisters and friends knew +it not; knew it not their fathers and their mothers; nor the village +maidens on whose bosoms they laid their dying heads.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Many, conscious of +the divine flame, and visited by mysterious stirrings that would not let +them rest, have like vernal wildflowers withered, or been cut down like +young trees in the season of leaf and blossom. Of this our mortal life +what are these but beautiful evanishings! Such was our young Scottish +Poet, Michael Bruce—a fine scholar, who taught a little wayside school, +and died, a mere lad, of consumption. Loch Leven Castle, where Mary +Stuart was imprisoned, looks not more melancholy among the dim waters +for her than for its own Poet's sake! The linnet, in its joy among the +yellow broom, sings not more sweetly than did he in his sadness, sitting +beside his unopened grave, "one song that will not die," though the +dirge but draw now and then a tear from some simple heart.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now spring returns—but not to me returns<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The vernal joy my better years have known;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And all the joys of life with health are flown."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To young Genius to die is often a great gain. The green leaf was almost +hidden in blossoms, and the tree put forth beautiful promise. Cold winds +blew, and clouds intercepted the sunshine; but it felt the dews of +heaven, and kept flourishing fair even in the moonlight, deriving sweet +sustenance from the stars. But would all those blossoms have been fruit? +Many would have formed, but more perhaps dropt in unperceived decay, and +the tree which "all eyes that looked on loved," might not have been the +pride of the garden. Death could not permit the chance of such +disappointment, stepped kindly in, and left the spring-dream "sweet but +mournful to the soul," among its half-fancied memories. Such was the +fate, perhaps, of Henry Kirke White. His fine moral and intellectual +being was not left to pine away neglected; and if, in gratitude and +ambition, twin-births in that noble heart, he laid down his life for +sake of the lore he loved, let us lament the dead with no passionate +ejaculations over injustice by none committed, console ourselves with +the thought, in noways unkind to his merits, that he died in a mild +bright spring that might have been succeeded by no very glorious summer; +and that, fading away as he did among the tears of the good and great, +his memory has been embalmed, not only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> in his own gentle inspirations, +but in the immortal eulogy of Southey. But, alas! many thus endowed by +nature "have waged with fortune an unequal war;" and pining away in +poverty and disappointment, have died broken-hearted—and been +buried—some in unhonoured, some even in unwept graves! And how many +have had a far more dismal lot, because their life was not so innocent! +The children of misfortune, but of error too—of frailty, vice, and sin. +Once gone astray, with much to tempt them on, and no voice, no hand, to +draw them back, theirs has been at first a flowery descent to death, but +soon sorely beset with thorns, lacerating the friendless wretches, till, +with shame and remorse their sole attendants, they have tottered into +uncoffined holes and found peace.</p> + +<p>With sorrows and sufferings like these, it would be hardly fair to blame +society at large for having little or no sympathy; for they are, in the +most affecting cases, borne in silence, and are unknown even to the +generous and humane in their own neighbourhood, who might have done +something or much to afford encouragement or relief. Nor has Charity +always neglected those who so well deserved her open hand, and in their +virtuous poverty might, without abatement of honourable pride in +themselves, have accepted silent succour to silent distress. Pity that +her blessings should be so often intercepted by worthless applicants, on +their way, it may be said, to the magnanimous who have not applied at +all, but spoken to her heart in a silent language, which was not meant +even to express the penury it betrayed. But we shall never believe that +dew twice blessed seldom descends, in such a land as ours, on the noble +young head that else had sunk like a chance flower in some dank shade, +left to wither among weeds. We almost venture to say, that much of such +unpitied, because often unsuspected suffering, cannot cease to be +without a change in the moral government of the world.</p> + +<p>Nor has Genius a right to claim from Conscience what is due but to +Virtue. None who love humanity can wish to speak harshly of its mere +frailties or errors—but none who revere morality can allow privilege to +its sins. All who sin suffer, with or without genius; and we are nowhere +taught in the New Testament, that remorse in its agony, and penitence in +its sorrow, visit men's imaginations only; but whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> way they enter, +their rueful dwelling is in the heart. Poets shed no bitterer tears than +ordinary men; and Fonblanque finely showed us, in one of his late little +essays, clear as wells and deep as tarns, that so far from there being +anything in the constitution of genius naturally kindred either to vice +or misery, it is framed of light and love and happiness, and that its +sins and sufferings come not from the spirit but from the flesh. Yet is +its flesh as firm as, and perhaps somewhat finer than, that of the +common clay; but still it is clay—for all men are dust.</p> + +<p>But what if they who, on the ground of genius, claim exemption from our +blame, and inclusion within our sympathies, even when seen suffering +from their own sins, have no genius at all, but are mere ordinary men, +and but for the fumes of some physical excitement, which they mistake +for the airs of inspiration, are absolutely stupider than people +generally go, and even without any tolerable abilities for alphabetical +education? Many such run versifying about, and will not try to settle +down into any easy sedentary trade, till, getting thirsty through +perpetual perspiration, they take to drinking, come to you with +subscription-papers for poetry, with a cock in their eye that tells of +low tippling-houses, and, accepting your half-crown, slander you when +melting it in the purling purlieus of their own donkey-browsed +Parnassus.</p> + +<p>Can this age be fairly charged—we speak of England and Scotland—with a +shameful indifference—or worse—a cruel scorn—or worse still—a +barbarous persecution of young persons of humble birth, in whom there +may appear a promise of talent, or of genius? Many are the scholars in +whom their early benefactors have had reason to be proud of themselves, +while they have been happy to send their sons to be instructed in the +noblest lore, by men whose boyhood they had rescued from the darkness of +despair, and clothed it with the warmth and light of hope. And were we +to speak of endowments in schools and colleges, in which so many fine +scholars have been brought up from among the humbler classes, who but +for them had been bred to some mean handicraft, we should show better +reason still for believing that moral and intellectual worth is not +overlooked, or left to pine neglected in obscure places, as it is too +much the fashion with a certain set of discontented declaimers to give +out; but that in no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> other country has such provision been made for the +meritorious children of the enlightened poor as in England. But we fear +that the talent and the genius which, according to them, have been so +often left or sent to beggary, to the great reproach even of our +national character, have not been of a kind which a thoughtful humanity +would in its benefactions have recognised; for it looks not with very +hopeful eyes on mere irregular sallies of fancy, least of all when +spurning prudence and propriety, and symptomatic of a mental +constitution easily excited, but averse to labour, and insensible to the +delight labour brings with it, when the faculties are all devoted in +steadfastness of purpose to the acquisition of knowledge and the +attainment of truth.</p> + +<p>'Tis not easy to know, seeing it is so difficult to define it, whether +this or that youth who thinks he has genius, has it or not: the only +proof he may have given of it is perhaps a few copies of verses, which +breathe the animal gladness of young life, and are tinged with tints of +the beautiful, which joy itself, more imaginative than it ever again +will be, steals from the sunset; but sound sense, and judgment, and +taste which is sense and judgment of all finest feelings and thoughts, +and the love of light dawning on the intellect, and ability to gather +into knowledge facts near and from afar, till the mind sees systems, and +in them understands the phenomena which, when looked at singly, +perplexed the pleasure of the sight—these, and aptitudes and capacities +and powers such as these, are indeed of promise, and more than promise; +they are already performance, and justify in minds thus gifted, and in +those who watch their workings, hopes of a wiser and happier future when +the boy shall be a man.</p> + +<p>Perhaps too much honour, rather than too little, has been shown by this +age to mediocre poetry and other works of fiction. A few gleams of +genius have given some writers of little worth a considerable +reputation; and great waxed the pride of poetasters. But true poetry +burst in beauty over the land, and we became intolerant of "false +glitter." Fresh sprang its flowers from the "dædal earth," or seemed, +they were so surpassingly beautiful, as if spring had indeed descended +from heaven, "veiled in a shower of shadowing roses," and no longer +could we suffer young gentlemen and ladies, treading among the +profusion, to gather the glorious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> scatterings, and weaving them into +fantastic or even tasteful garlands, to present them to us, as if they +had been raised from the seed of their own genius, and entitled +therefore "to bear their name in the wild woods." This flower-gathering, +pretty pastime though it be, and altogether innocent, fell into +disrepute; and then all such florists began to complain of being +neglected, or despised, or persecuted, and their friends to lament over +their fate, the fate of all genius, "in amorous ditties all a summer's +day."</p> + +<p>Besides the living poets of highest rank, are there not many whose +claims to join the sacred band have been allowed, because their lips, +too, have sometimes been touched with a fire from heaven? Second-rate +indeed! Ay, well for those who are third, fourth, or fifth rate—knowing +where sit Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Round about Parnassus run +<i>many</i> parallel roads, with forests of "cedar and branching palm" +between, overshadowing the sunshine on each magnificent level with a +sense of something more sublime still nearer the forked summit; and each +band, so that they be not ambitious overmuch, in their own region may +wander or repose in grateful bliss. Thousands look up with envy from +"the low-lying fields of the beautiful land" immediately without the +line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain, +separating it from the common earth. What clamour and what din from the +excluded crowd! Many are heard there to whom nature has been kind, but +they have not yet learned "to know themselves," or they would retire, +but not afar off, and in silence adore. And so they do ere long, and are +happy in the sight of "the beauty still more beauteous" revealed to +their fine perceptions, though to them was not given the faculty that by +combining in spiritual passion creates. But what has thither brought the +self-deceived, who will not be convinced of their delusion, even were +Homer or Milton's very self to frown on them with eyes no longer dim, +but angry in their brightness like lowering stars?</p> + +<p>But we must beware—perhaps too late—of growing unintelligible, and ask +you, in plainer terms, if you do not think that by far the greatest +number of all those who raise an outcry against the injustice of the +world to men of genius, are persons of the meanest abilities, who have +all their lives been foolishly fighting with their stars? Their demons +have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> not whispered to them "have a taste," but "you have genius," and +the world gives the demons the lie. Thence anger, spite, rancour, and +envy eat their hearts, and they "rail against the Lord's anointed." They +set up idols of clay, and fall down and worship them—or idols of brass, +more worthless than clay; or they perversely, and in hatred, not in +love, pretend reverence for the Fair and Good, because, forsooth, placed +by man's ingratitude too far in the shade, whereas man's pity has, in +deep compassion, removed the objects of their love, because of their +imperfections not blameless, back in among that veiling shade, that +their beauty might still be visible while their deformities were hidden +in "a dim religious light."</p> + +<p>Let none of the sons or daughters of genius hearken to such outcry but +with contempt—and at all times with suspicion, when they find +themselves the objects of such lamentations. The world is not—at least +does not wish to be an unkind, ungenerous, and unjust world. Many who +think themselves neglected, are far more thought of than they suppose; +just as many who imagine the world ringing with their name, are in the +world's ears nearly anonymous. Only one edition or two of your poems +have sold—but is it not pretty well that five hundred or a thousand +copies have been read, or glanced over, or looked at, or skimmed, or +skipped, or fondled, or petted, or tossed aside "between malice and true +love," by ten times that number of your fellow-creatures, not one of +whom ever saw your face; while many millions of men, nearly your equals, +and not a few millions your superiors far, have contentedly dropt into +the grave, at the close of a long life, without having once "invoked the +Muse," and who would have laughed in your face had you talked to them, +even in their greatest glee, about their genius?</p> + +<p>There is a glen in the Highlands (dearly beloved Southrons, call on us, +on your way through Edinburgh, and we shall delight to instruct you how +to walk our mountains) called Glencro—very unlike Glenco. A good road +winds up the steep ascent, and at the summit there is a stone seat on +which you read "<i>Rest and be thankful</i>." You do so—and are not a little +proud—if pedestrians—of your achievement. Looking up, you see cliffs +high above your head (not the Cobbler), and in the clear sky, as far +above them, a balanced bird. You envy him his seemingly motionless +wings, and wonder at his air-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>supporters. Down he darts, or aside he +shoots, or right up he soars, and you wish you were an Eagle. You have +reached Rest-and-be-thankful, yet rest you will not, and thankful you +will not be, and you scorn the mean inscription, which many a worthier +wayfarer has blessed, while sitting on that stone he has said, "give us +this day our daily bread," eat his crust, and then walked away contented +down to Cairndow. Just so has it been with you sitting at your appointed +place—pretty high up—on the road to the summit of the Biforked Hill. +You look up and see Byron—there "sitting where you may not soar,"—and +wish you were a great Poet. But you are no more a great Poet than an +Eagle eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip—and will not +rest-and-be-thankful that you are a man and a Christian. Nay, you are +more, an author of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed to be +excellent, better far than the best paragraph in this our Morning +Monologue. But you are sick of walking, and nothing will satisfy you but +to fly. Be contented, as we are, with feet, and weep not for wings; and +let us take comfort together from a cheering quotation from the +philosophic Gray—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For they that creep and they that fly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just end where they began!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE FIELD OF FLOWERS.</h2> + + +<p>A May-morning on Ulswater and the banks of Ulswater—commingled earth +and heaven! Spring is many-coloured as Autumn; but now Joy scatters the +hues daily brightening into greener life, then Melancholy dropt them +daily dimming into yellower death. The fear of Winter then—but now the +hope of Summer; and Nature rings with hymns hailing the visible advent +of the perfect year. If for a moment the woods are silent, it is but to +burst forth anew into louder song. The rain is over and gone—but the +showery sky speaks in the streams on a hundred hills; and the wide +mountain gloom opens its heart to the sunshine that on many a dripping +precipice burns like fire. Nothing seems inanimate. The very clouds and +their shadows look alive—the trees, never dead, are wide-awakened from +their sleep—families of flowers are frequenting all the dewy +places—old walls are splendid with the light of lichens—and +birch-crowned cliffs up among the coves send down their fine fragrance +to the Lake on every bolder breath that whitens with breaking wavelets +the blue of its breezy bosom. Nor mute the voice of man. The shepherd is +whooping on the hill—the ploughman calling to his team somewhere among +the furrows in some small late field, won from the woods; and you hear +the laughter, and the echoes of the laughter—one sound—of children +busied in half-work half-play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the +occupation of young rustic life? 'Tis no Arcadia—no golden age. But a +lovelier scene—in the midst of all its grandeur—is not in merry and +majestic England; nor did the hills of this earth ever circumscribe a +pleasanter dwelling for a nobler peasantry, than these Cumbrian ranges +of rocks and pastures, where the raven croaks in his own region, +unregarded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How beautiful the Church +Tower!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> + +<p>On a knoll not far from the shore, and not high above the water, yet by +an especial felicity of place gently commanding all that reach of the +Lake with all its ranges of mountains—every single tree, every grove, +and all the woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene at the bidding +of the Spirit of Beauty—reclined two Figures—the one almost rustic, +but venerable in the simplicity of old age—the other no longer young, +but still in the prime of life—and though plainly apparelled, with form +and bearing such as are pointed out in cities, because belonging to +distinguished men. The old man behaved towards him with deference, but +not humility; and between them two—in many things unlike—it was clear +even from their silence that there was friendship.</p> + +<p>A little way off, and sometimes almost running, now up and now down the +slopes and hollows, was a girl about eight years old—whether beautiful +or not you could not know, for her face was either half-hidden in golden +hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her brow, it was so bright in +the sunshine that you saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now she was +chasing the butterflies, not to hurt them, but to get a nearer sight of +their delicate gauze wings—the first that had come—she wondered +whence—to waver and wanton for a little while in the spring sunshine, +and then, she felt, as wondrously, one and all, as by consent, to +vanish. And now she stooped as if to pull some little wildflower, her +hand for a moment withheld by a loving sense of its loveliness, but ever +and anon adding some new colour to the blended bloom intended to gladden +her father's eyes—though the happy child knew full well, and sometimes +wept to know, that she herself had his entire heart. Yet gliding, or +tripping, or dancing along, she touched not with fairy foot one white +clover-flower on which she saw working the silent bee. Her father looked +too often sad, and she feared—though what it was, she imagined not even +in dreams—that some great misery must have befallen him before they +came to live in the glen. And such, too, she had heard from a chance +whisper, was the belief of their neighbours. But momentary the shadows +on the light of childhood! Nor was she insensible to her own beauty, +that with the innocence it enshrined combined to make her happy; and +first met her own eyes every morning, when most beautiful, awakening +from the hushed awe of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> prayers. She was clad in russet like a +cottager's child; but her air spoke of finer breeding than may be met +with among those mountains—though natural grace accompanies there many +a maiden going with her pitcher to the well—and gentle blood and old +flows there in the veins of now humble men—who, but for the decay of +families once high, might have lived in halls, now dilapidated, and +scarcely distinguished through masses of ivy from the circumjacent +rocks!</p> + +<p>The child stole close behind her father, and kissing his cheek, said, +"Were there ever such lovely flowers seen in Ulswater before, father? I +do not believe that they will ever die." And she put them in his breast. +Not a smile came to his countenance—no look of love—no faint +recognition—no gratitude for the gift which at other times might haply +have drawn a tear. She stood abashed in the sternness of his eyes, +which, though fixed on her, seemed to see her not; and feeling that her +glee was mistimed—for with such gloom she was not unfamiliar—the child +felt as if her own happiness had been sin, and, retiring into a glade +among the broom, sat down and wept.</p> + +<p>"Poor wretch, better far that she never had been born."</p> + +<p>The old man looked on his friend with compassion, but with no surprise; +and only said, "God will dry up her tears."</p> + +<p>These few simple words, uttered in a solemn voice, but without one tone +of reproach, seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, who first +looking towards the spot where his child was sobbing to herself, though +he heard it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejaculated for her sake +a broken prayer. He then would have fain called her to him; but he was +ashamed that even she should see him in such a passion of grief—and the +old man went to her of his own accord, and bade her, as from her father, +again to take her pastime among the flowers. Soon was she dancing in her +happiness as before; and, that her father might hear she was obeying +him, singing a song.</p> + +<p>"For five years every Sabbath have I attended divine service in your +chapel—yet dare I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed for +faith—nor, wretch that I am, am I an unbeliever. But I fear to fling +myself at the foot of the cross. God be merciful to me a sinner!"</p> + +<p>The old man opened not his lips; for he felt that there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> about to be +made some confession. Yet he doubted not that the sufferer had been more +sinned against than sinning; for the goodness of the stranger—so called +still after five years' residence among the mountains—was known in many +a vale—and the Pastor knew that charity covereth a multitude of +sins—and even as a moral virtue prepares the heart for heaven. So +sacred a thing is solace in this woeful world.</p> + +<p>"We have walked together, many hundred times, for great part of a day, +by ourselves two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, and yet never +once from my lips escaped one word about my fates or fortunes—so frozen +was the secret in my heart. Often have I heard the sound of your voice, +as if it were that of the idle wind; and often the words I did hear +seemed, in the confusion, to have no relation to us, to be strange +syllablings in the wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil spirit +instigating me to self-destruction."</p> + +<p>"I saw that your life was oppressed by some perpetual burden; but God +darkened not your mind while your heart was disturbed so grievously; and +well pleased were we all to think, that in caring so kindly for the +griefs of others, you might come at last to forget your own; or if that +were impossible, to feel, that with the alleviations of time, and +sympathy, and religion, yours was no more than the common lot of +sorrow."</p> + +<p>They rose—and continued to walk in silence—but not apart—up and down +that small sylvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her +father's distraction—no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as +mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time—and pretended +to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears.</p> + +<p>"That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not—perhaps +in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a +lovelier child was never seen than that wretch—God bless her—how +beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness singing over her +flowers! Just such another must her mother have been at her age. She is +now an outcast—and an adulteress."</p> + +<p>The Pastor turned away his face, for in the silence he heard groans, and +the hollow voice again spoke.—</p> + +<p>"Through many dismal days and nights have I striven to forgive her, but +never for many hours together have I been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> enabled to repent my curse. +For on my knees I implored God to curse her—her head—her eyes—her +breast—her body—mind, heart, and soul—and that she might go down a +loathsome leper to the grave."</p> + +<p>"Remember what He said to the woman—'Go, and sin no more!'"</p> + +<p>"The words have haunted me all up and down the hills—His words and +mine; but mine have always sounded liker justice at last—for my nature +was created human—and human are all the passions that pronounced that +holy or unholy curse!"</p> + +<p>"Yet you would not curse her now—were she lying here at your feet—or +if you were standing by her deathbed?"</p> + +<p>"Lying here at my feet! Even here—on this very spot—not blasted, but +green through all the year—within the shelter of these two rocks—she +did lie at my feet in her beauty—and as I thought her innocence—my own +happy bride! Hither I brought her to be blest—and blest I was even up +to the measure of my misery. This world is hell to me now—but then it +was heaven!"</p> + +<p>"These awful names are of the mysteries beyond the grave."</p> + +<p>"Hear me and judge. She was an orphan; all her father's and mother's +relations were dead, but a few who were very poor. I married her, and +secured her life against this heartless and wicked world. That child was +born—and while it grew like a flower—she left it—and its father—me +who loved her beyond light and life, and would have given up both for +her sake."</p> + +<p>"And have not yet found heart to forgive her—miserable as she needs +must be—seeing she has been a great sinner!"</p> + +<p>"Who forgives? The father his profligate son, or disobedient daughter? +No; he disinherits his firstborn, and suffers him to perish, perhaps by +an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days +in penury—a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent; +he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on +the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have +taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But +she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overflow with heaven. Had +God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> with her +own hand which I had clasped at the altar—and with our Lucy at her +knees—she gave me that loathsome draught of shame and sorrow:—I drank +it to the dregs—and it is burning all through my being—now—as if it +had been hell-fire from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel. +In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see +the verse—and then shall I know that Christianity is an imposture; for +the voice of God within me—the conscience which is His still small +voice—commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse—never +to forgive her, and her wickedness—not even if we should see each +other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment."</p> + +<p>His countenance grew ghastly—and staggering to a stone, he sat down and +eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about +in his sleep. His face was like ashes—and he gasped like one about to +fall into a fit. "Bring me water"—and the old man motioned on the +child, who, giving ear to him for a moment, flew away to the Lakeside +with an urn she had brought with her for flowers; and held it to her +father's lips. His eyes saw it not;—there was her sweet pale face all +wet with tears, almost touching his own—her innocent mouth breathing +that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the +bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom—and kissed her dewy +eyes—and begged her to cease her sobbing—to smile—to laugh—to +sing—to dance away into the sunshine—<i>to be happy!</i> And Lucy afraid, +not of her father, but of his kindness—for the simple creature was not +able to understand his wild utterance of blessings—returned to the +glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern, +kept her eyes on her father, and left her flowers to fade unheeded +beside her empty urn.</p> + +<p>"Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! That child was just three years +old the very day it was forsaken—she abandoned it and me on its +birthday! Twice had that day been observed by us—as the sweetest—the +most sacred of holidays; and now that it had again come round—but I not +present—for I was on foreign service—thus did she observe it—and +disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into +action—and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent +prayers; for love made me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> religious—and for their sakes I feared +though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the +field of battle—and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but +I saw them as distinctly as in a dream—the mother lying with her child +in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that vision mockery enough to drive +me mad? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herself—and I kissed +it and pressed it to my heart; for no black seal was there—and I knew +that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the +words—and then they began to blacken into ghastly characters—till at +last I gathered from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and +shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollution.</p> + +<p>"A friend was with me, and I gave it to him to read—for in my anguish +at first I felt no shame—and I watched his face as he read it, that I +might see corroboration of the incredible truth, which continued to look +like falsehood, even while it pierced my heart with agonising pangs. 'It +may be a forgery,' was all he could utter—after long agitation; but the +shape of each letter was too familiar to my eyes—the way in which the +paper was folded—and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have passed, +for the room grew dark—and I asked him to leave me for the night. He +kissed my forehead—for we had been as brothers. I saw him next +morning—dead—cut nearly in two—yet had he left a paper for me, +written an hour before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that +oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and +blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave!</p> + +<p>"And has the time indeed come that I can thus speak calmly of all that +horror? The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all +night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long +friendship—and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse. +Momentary starts of affection seized me—but I cared little or nothing +for the death of him, the tender and the true, the gentle and the brave, +the pious and the noble-hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel +and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion dead—dead to all the +sanctities of nature—for her, and for her alone, I suffered all +ghastliest agonies—nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the +conviction that she was worthless;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> for desperately wicked as she had +shown herself to be—oh! crowding came back upon me all our hours of +happiness—all her sweet smiles—all her loving looks—all her +affectionate words—all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses; and the +loss of all that bliss—the change of it all into strange, sudden, +shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was +delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with +phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of +sleep!</p> + +<p>"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak +from great loss of blood—and the blow so stunned me that I had not +strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages—for +nobody watched me—and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of +life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to +recover, another passion took possession of me—and I vowed that there +should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was +known through the whole army. Not a tent—not a hut—in which my name +was not bandied about—a jest in the mouths of profligate +poltroons—pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had +commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I +looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion +or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces +arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my +way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music +as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle—as they had +often done with me at their head—all sternly silent before an +approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me, +smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour +had been the idol I worshipped—alas! too, too passionately far—and now +I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes—and heard as if a +legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a +confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called +me—me, despicable in my own esteem—scorned, insulted, forsaken—me, +who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it—a +wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left +her to her own thoughts than she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> felt that she had never loved me, and, +opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without +remorse—nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband—not even +for sake of that child whom I knew she loved—for no hypocrite was she +there; and oh! lost creature though she was—even now I wonder over that +unaccountable desertion—and much she must have suffered from the image +of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly +happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her +hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I +frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will +come to hate me—oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, +gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her—nor +she with sorrow. Yet—even her how often have I made weep! All the +unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but +leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that +always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there—only +brighter—all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my +unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to +think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of +mercy! what if she were to die!"</p> + +<p>"She will not die—she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many +happy years—my son—are yet in store even for you—sorely as you have +been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure +for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You +prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life—and has He +not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not +then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it +produce there resignation—if need be, contrition—and, above all, +forgiveness."</p> + +<p>"Yes! I had a hope to live for—mangled as I was in body, and racked in +mind—a hope that was a faith—and bittersweet it was in imagined +foretaste of fruition—the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he +would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his +blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or +flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed +my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> Not that his +blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let +it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed—and +hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon +woman's breast—let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his +heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution +dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of +the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered +over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;—there he was +before me—in all that beauty by women so beloved—graceful as Apollo; +and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his +name, he saluted me—<i>her husband</i>—on the field,—and let the wind play +with his raven tresses—his curled love-locks—and then presented +himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot +him through the heart."</p> + +<p>The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder—yet they had +come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had +gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an +avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted +demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His +eyes retained their savage glare—his teeth were clenched—and he +feasted on his crime.</p> + +<p>"Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged +friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable +conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed +great—but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son! +you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven."</p> + +<p>"Who dares to condemn the deed? He deserved death—and whence was doom +to come but from me the Avenger? I took his life—but once I saved it. I +bore him from the battlements of a fort stormed in vain—after we had +all been blown up by the springing of a mine; and from bayonets that had +drunk my blood as well as his—and his widowed mother blessed me as the +saviour of her son. I told my wife to receive him as a brother—and for +my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. Who shall speak of +temptation—or frailty—or infatuation to me? Let the fools hold their +peace. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> wounds became dearer to her abandoned heart than mine had +ever been; yet had her cheek lain many a night on the scars that seamed +this breast—for I was not backward in battle, and our place was in the +van. I was no coward, that she who loved heroism in him should have +dishonoured her husband. True, he was younger by some years than me—and +God had given him pernicious beauty—and she was young, too—oh! the +brightest of all mortal creatures the day she became my bride—nor less +bright with that baby at her bosom—a matron in girlhood's resplendent +spring! Is youth a plea for wickedness? And was I old? I, who, in spite +of all I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling as to a +furnace; but cut off for ever by her crime from fame and glory—and from +a soldier in his proud career, covered with honour in the eyes of all my +countrymen, changed in an hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. My +name has been borne by a race of heroes—the blood in my veins has +flowed down a long line of illustrious ancestors—and here am I now—a +hidden disguised hypocrite—dwelling among peasants—and afraid—ay, +afraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely from the ground even +among the solitudes of the mountains, lest some wandering stranger +should recognise me, and see the brand of ignominy her hand and +his—accursed both—burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this bosom—but +tell me if it was in disgust with these my scars?"</p> + +<p>And as he bared it, distractedly, that noble chest was seen indeed +disfigured with many a gash—on which a wife might well have rested her +head with gratitude not less devout because of a lofty pride mingling +with life-deep affection. But the burst of passion was gone by—and, +covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child.</p> + +<p>"Oh! cruel—cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to +her—for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory—not +an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains, +her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with +curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes—beautiful as on our +marriage-day—all in purest white—adorned with flowers—it wreathes its +arms around my neck—and offers its mouth to my kisses—and then all at +once is changed into a leering wretch, retaining a likeness of my +bride—then into a corpse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> And perhaps she is dead—dead of cold and +hunger: she whom I cherished in all luxury—whose delicate frame seemed +to bring round itself all the purest air and sweetest sunshine—she may +have expired in the very mire—and her body been huddled into some hole +called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen to her! +Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who +support hated and hateful life by prostitution? Black was her crime; yet +hardly did she deserve to be one of that howling crew—she whose voice +was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent—for up to +the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been +hers;—then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where +she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness +be lightened—let me see into its heart—and know but the meaning of her +guilt—and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and +night, it has troubled and confounded me—and from blind and baffled +wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through +which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find—and nothing is left +me but to tear my hair out by handfuls—as, like a madman, I have +done—to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon +her the curse of God. O wicked—most wicked! Yet He who judges the +hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand +times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the +moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back—I know not +whether of a good or evil spirit—and bade me leave her to her fate. But +she must be dead—and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too +sternly—from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly +expressed to you but parts of my miserable being—and if I could lay it +all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn—for my +worst passions only have now found utterance—all my better feelings +will not return nor abide for words—even I myself have forgotten them; +but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the +Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on +his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man +encouraged him not to despair—it needed but a motion of his hand to +bring the child from her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her +father's heart. The forgiveness was felt to be holy in that embrace.</p> + +<p>The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were +sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed +something like a rainbow—and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and +in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock, +and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat +suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a +promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a +crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind +coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly along, when a +sudden squall struck the sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and +went down. No shrieks were heard—and the boatman swam ashore; but a +figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared—and starting from +his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after +desperate exertions brought the drowned creature to the side—a female +meanly attired—seemingly a stranger—and so attenuated that it was +plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus +perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was grey—but +the face, though withered, was not old—and as she lay on the +greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine.</p> + +<p>He stood over her awhile—as if struck motionless—and then kneeling +beside the body, kissed its lips and eyes—and said only, "It is Lucy!"</p> + +<p>The old man was close by—and so was that child. They too knelt—and the +passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of +death—ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is +forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom—wasted to the bone—in the +idle thought that she might yet breathe—and a paper dropt out into his +hand, which he read aloud to himself—unconscious that any one was near. +"I am fast dying—and desire to die at your feet. Perhaps you will spurn +me—it is right you should; but you will see how sorrow has killed the +wicked wretch who was once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude +for five years, and have suffered great hardships. I think I am a +penitent—and have been told by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> religious persons that I may hope for +pardon from Heaven! Oh! that you would forgive me too! and let me have +one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers—perhaps +you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where +we passed a summer day the week of our marriage."</p> + +<p>"Not thus could I have kissed thy lips—Lucy—had they been red with +life. White are they—and white must they long have been! No pollution +on them—nor on that poor bosom now. Contrite tears had long since +washed out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines—and in them a +humble heart said nothing but God's truth. Child—behold your mother. +Art thou afraid to touch the dead?"</p> + +<p>"No—father—I am not afraid to kiss her lips—as you did now. +Sometimes, when you thought me asleep, I have heard you praying for my +mother."</p> + +<p>"Oh! child! cease—cease—or my heart will burst."</p> + +<p>People began to gather about the body—but awe kept them aloof; and as +for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would +have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So +the groups remained for a while at a distance—even the old pastor went +a good many paces apart; and under the shadow of that tree the father +and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit +beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep.</p> + +<p>That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived +long among them—had adopted many of their customs—and was even as one +of themselves—so it seemed—in the familiar intercourse of man with +man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was +entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that +then there needed to be neither concealment nor avowal of the truth. So +in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers; a bier had +been prepared: and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the +Father of little Lucy holding her hand, silently directed the procession +towards his own house—out of the <span class="smcap">Field of Flowers</span>.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>COTTAGES.</h2> + + +<p>Have you any intention, dear reader, of building a house in the country? +If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage. +We presume that you are obliged to live, one half of the year at least, +in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and +your establishment? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house +in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Abercromby Place, or Queen Street. The +said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might +expect in the City of Palaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold +some ten score of modern Athenians—your dining-room might feast one +half of the contributors to <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>—your "placens uxor" +has her boudoir—your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her +music-room—your boys their own studio—the governess her retreat—and +the tutor his den—the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her +own sanctum—the butler bargains for his dim apartment—and the four +maids must have their front area-window. In short, from cellarage to +garret all is complete, and Number Forty-two is really a splendid +mansion.</p> + +<p>Now, dear reader, far be it from us to question the propriety or +prudence of such an establishment. Your house was not built for +nothing—it was no easy thing to get the painters out—the furnishing +thereof was no trifle—the feu-duty is really unreasonable—and taxes +are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles of free trade, and the +universal prosperity of the country. Servants are wasteful, and their +wages absurd—and the whole style of living, with long-necked bottles, +most extravagant. But still we do not object to your establishment—far +from it, we admire it much; nor is there a single house in town where we +make ourselves more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> agreeable to a late hour, or that we leave with a +greater quantity of wine of a good quality under our girdle. Few things +would give us more temporary uneasiness, than to hear of any +embarrassment in your money concerns. We are not people to forget good +fare, we assure you; and long and far may all shapes of sorrow keep +aloof from the hospitable board, whether illuminated by gas, oil, or +mutton.</p> + +<p>But what we were going to say is this—that the head of such a house +ought not to live, when ruralising, in a Cottage. He ought to be +consistent. Nothing so beautiful as consistency. What then is so absurd +as to cram yourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, and your scarcely +less numerous menials, into a concern called a Cottage? The ordinary +heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees above that of a brown study, +during the month of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage. Then the +smell of the kitchen! How it aggravates the sultry closeness! A strange, +compounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. +It is at the worst during the latter part of the forenoon, when +everything has been got into preparation for cookery. There is then +nothing savoury about the smell—it is dull, dead—almost catacombish. A +small back-kitchen has it in its power to destroy the sweetness of any +Cottage. Add a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of the eternal +clashing of pots, pans, plates, trenchers, and general crockery, we now +say nothing; indeed, the sound somewhat relieves the smell, and the ear +comes occasionally in to the aid of the nose. Such noises are windfalls; +but not so the scolding of cook and butler—at first low and tetchy, +with pauses—then sharp, but still interrupted—by-and-by, loud and +ready in reply—finally a discordant gabble of vulgar fury, like maniacs +quarrelling in Bedlam. Hear it you must—you and all the strangers. To +explain it away is impossible; and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone, +or Megæra, will come flying into the parlour with a bloody cleaver, +dripping with the butler's brains. During the time of the quarrel the +spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the five-year-old +black-face burnt on one side to a cinder.—"To dinner with what appetite +you may."</p> + +<p>It would be quite unpardonable to forget one especial smell which +irretrievably ruined our happiness during a whole sum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>mer—the smell of +a dead rat. The accursed vermin died somewhere in the Cottage; but +whether beneath a floor, within lath and plaster, or in roof, baffled +the conjectures of the most sagacious. The whole family used to walk +about the Cottage for hours every day, snuffing on a travel of +discovery; and we distinctly remember the face of one elderly +maiden-lady at the moment she thought she had traced the source of the +fumée to the wall behind a window-shutter. But even at the very same +instant we ourselves had proclaimed it with open nostril from a press in +an opposite corner. Terriers were procured—but the dog Billy himself +would have been at fault. To pull down the whole Cottage would have been +difficult—at least to build it up again would have been so; so we had +to submit. Custom, they say, is second nature, but not when a dead rat +is in the house. No, none can ever become accustomed to that; yet good +springs out of evil—for the live rats could not endure it, and +emigrated to a friend's house, about a mile off, who has never had a +sound night's rest from that day. We have not revisited our Cottage for +several years; but time does wonders, and we were lately told by a +person of some veracity that the smell was then nearly gone; but our +informant is a gentleman of blunted olfactory nerves, having been +engaged from seventeen to seventy in a soap-work.</p> + +<p>Smoke too. More especially that mysterious and infernal sort, called +back-smoke! The old proverb, "No smoke without fire," is a base lie. We +have seen smoke without fire in every room in a most delightful Cottage +we inhabited during the dog-days. The moment you rushed for refuge even +into a closet, you were blinded and stifled; nor shall we ever forget +our horror on being within an ace of smotheration in the cellar. At +last, we groped our way into the kitchen. Neither cook nor jack was +visible. We heard, indeed, a whirring and revolving noise—and then +suddenly Girzie swearing through the mist. Yet all this while people +were admiring our Cottage from a distance, and especially this self-same +accursed back-smoke, some portions of which had made an excursion up the +chimneys, and was wavering away in a spiral form to the sky, in a style +captivating to Mr Price on the Picturesque.</p> + +<p>No doubt, there are many things very romantic about a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Cottage. +Creepers, for example. Why, sir, these creepers are the most mischievous +nuisance that can afflict a family. There is no occasion for mentioning +names, but—devil take all parasites. Some of the rogues will actually +grow a couple of inches upon you in one day's time; and when all other +honest plants are asleep, the creepers are hard at it all night long, +stretching out their toes and their fingers, and catching an +inextricable hold of every wall they can reach, till, finally, you see +them thrusting their impudent heads through the very slates. Then, like +other low-bred creatures, they are covered with vermin. All manner of +moths—the most grievous grubs—slimy slugs—spiders spinning toils to +ensnare the caterpillar—earwigs and slaters, that would raise the gorge +of a country curate—wood-lice—the slaver of gowk's-spittle—midges— +jocks-with-the-many-legs; in short, the whole plague of insects infest +that—Virgin's bower. Open the lattice for half an hour, and you find +yourself in an entomological museum. Then there are no pins fixing down +the specimens. All these beetles are alive, more especially the enormous +blackguard crawling behind your ear. A moth plumps into your tumbler of +cold negus, and goes whirling round in meal, till he makes absolute +porritch. As you open your mouth in amazement, the large blue-bottle +fly, having made his escape from the spiders, and seeing that not a +moment is to be lost, precipitates himself head-foremost down your +throat, and is felt, after a few ineffectual struggles, settling in +despair at the very bottom of your stomach. Still, no person will be so +unreasonable as to deny that creepers on a Cottage are most beautiful. +For the sake of their beauty, some little sacrifice must be made of +one's comforts, especially as it is only for one half of the year, and +last really was a most delightful summer.</p> + +<p>How truly romantic is a thatch roof! The eaves how commodious for +sparrows! What a paradise for rats and mice! What a comfortable colony +of vermin! They all bore their own tunnels in every direction, and the +whole interior becomes a Cretan labyrinth. Frush, frush becomes the +whole cover in a few seasons; and not a bird can open his wing, not a +rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw like chaff. Eternal +repairs! Look when you will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on +the rigging; of all operatives the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> most inoperative. Then there is +always one of the number descending the ladder for a horn of ale. +Without warning, the straw is all used up; and no more fit for the +purpose can be got within twenty miles. They hint heather—and you sigh +for slate—the beautiful sky-blue, sea-green, Ballachulish slate! But +the summer is nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting back to the +city; so you let the job stand over to spring, and the soaking rains and +snows of a long winter search the Cottage to its heart's-core, and every +floor is ere long laden with a crop of fungi—the bed-posts are +ornamented curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the walls with their +various and inimitable lustre.</p> + +<p>Everything is romantic that is pastoral—and what more pastoral than +sheep? Accordingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own mutton. Great +lubberly Leicesters or Southdowns are not worth the mastication, so you +keep the small black-face. Stone walls are ugly things, you think, near +a Cottage, so you have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the small +black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing through or over all impediments, +after an adventurous leader, and, despising the daisied turf, keep +nibbling away at all your rare flowering shrubs, till your avenue is a +desolation. Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is a rare +time for the nest-makers. You purchase a collie, but he compromises the +affair with the fleecy nation, and contents himself with barking all +night long at the moon, if there happen to be one—if not, at the +firmament of his kennel. You are too humane to hang or drown Luath, so +you give him to a friend. But Luath is in love with the cook, and pays +her nightly visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he step into the +kennel, he takes up his station, after supper, on a knoll within +ear-range, and pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music of the +spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. The gardener at last gets +orders to shoot him—and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts and blows +off his left hand—so that Andrew Fairservice retires on a pension.</p> + +<p>Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the Alderney. They are slim, +delicate, wild-deer-looking creatures, that give an air to a Cottage. +But they are most capricious milkers. Of course you make your own +butter; that is to say, with the addition of a dozen purchased pounds +weekly, you are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> very often out of that commodity. Then, once or +twice in a summer, they suddenly lose their temper, and chase the +governess and your daughters over the edge of a gravel-pit. Nothing they +like so much as the tender sprouts of cauliflower, nor do they abhor +green pease. The garden-hedge is of privet—a pretty fence, and fast +growing, but not formidable to a four-year-old. On going to eat a few +gooseberries by sunrise, you start a covey of cows, that in their alarm +plunge into the hot-bed with a smash, as if all the glass in the island +had been broken—and rushing out at the gate at the critical instant +little Tommy is tottering in, they leave the heir-apparent, scarcely +deserving that name, half hidden in the border. There is no sale for +such outlandish animals in the home-market, and it is not Martinmas, so +you must make a present of them to the president or five silver-cupman +of an agricultural society, and you receive in return a sorry red round, +desperately saltpetred, at Christmas.</p> + +<p>What is a Cottage in the country, unless "your banks are all furnished +with bees, whose murmurs invite one to sleep?" There the hives stand, +like four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row. Not a more harmless insect +in all this world than a bee. Wasps are devils incarnate, but bees are +fleshly sprites, as amiable as industrious. You are strolling along in +delightful mental vacuity, looking at a poem of Barry Cornwall's, when +smack comes an infuriated honey-maker against your eyelid, and plunges +into you the fortieth part of an inch of sting saturated in venom. The +wretch clings to your lid like a burr, and it feels as if he had a +million claws to hold him on while he is darting his weapon into your +eyeball. Your banks are indeed well furnished with bees, but their +murmurs do not invite you to sleep; on the contrary, away you fly like a +madman, bolt into your wife's room, and roar out for the recipe. The +whole of one side of your face is most absurdly swollen, while the other +is <i>in statu quo</i>. One eye is dwindled away to almost nothing, and is +peering forth from its rainbow-coloured envelope, while the other is +open as day to melting charity, and shining over a cheek of the purest +crimson. Infatuated man! Why could you not purchase your honey? Jemmy +Thomson, the poet, would have let you have it, from Habbie's Howe, the +true Pentland elixir, for five shillings the pint; for during this +season both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> the heather and the clover were prolific of the honey-dew, +and the Skeps rejoiced over all Scotland on a thousand hills.</p> + +<p>We could tell many stories about bees, but that would be leading us away +from the main argument. We remember reading in an American newspaper, +some years ago, that the United States lost one of their most upright +and erudite judges by bees, which stung him to death in a wood while he +was going the circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in the same +newspaper, "We are afraid we have lost another judge by bees;" and then +followed a somewhat frightful description of the assassination of +another American Blackstone by the same insects. We could not fail to +sympathise with both sufferers; for in the summer of the famous comet we +ourselves had nearly shared the same fate. Our Newfoundlander upset a +hive in his vagaries—and the whole swarm unjustly attacked us. The buzz +was an absolute roar—and for the first time in our lives we were under +a cloud. Such buzzing in our hair! and of what avail were +fifty-times-washed nankeen breeches against the Polish Lancers? With our +trusty crutch we made thousands bite the dust—but the wounded and dying +crawled up our legs, and stung us cruelly over the lower regions. At +last we took to flight, and found shelter in the ice-house. But it +seemed as if a new hive had been disturbed in that cool grotto. Again we +sallied out, stripping off garment after garment, till, <i>in puris +naturalibus</i>, we leaped into a window, which happened to be that of the +drawing-room, where a large party of ladies and gentlemen were awaiting +the dinner-bell—but fancy must dream the rest.</p> + +<p>We now offer a set of <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> to any scientific character +who will answer this seemingly simple question—what is Damp? +Quicksilver is a joke to it, for getting into or out of any place. +Capricious as damp is, it is faithful in its affection to all Cottages +ornées. What more pleasant than a bow-window? You had better, however, +not sit with your back against the wall, for it is as blue and ropy as +that of a charnel-house. Probably the wall is tastily papered—a +vine-leaf pattern perhaps—or something spriggy—or in the aviary +line—or, mayhap, haymakers, or shepherds piping in the dale. But all +distinctions are levelled in the mould—Phyllis has a black patch over +her eye, and Strephon seems to be playing on a pair of bellows. Damp +delights to descend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> chimneys, and is one of smoke's most powerful +auxiliaries. It is a thousand pities you hung up—just in that unlucky +spot—Grecian Williams's Thebes—for now one of the finest water-colour +paintings in the world is not worth six-and-eightpence. There is no +living in the country without a library. Take down, with all due +caution, that enormous tome, the <i>Excursion</i>, and let us hear something +of the Pedlar. There is an end to the invention of printing. Lo and +behold, blank verse indeed! You cannot help turning over twenty leaves +at once, for they are all amalgamated in must and mouldiness. Lord Byron +himself is no better than an Egyptian mummy; and the Great Unknown +addresses you in hieroglyphics.</p> + +<p>We have heard different opinions maintained on the subject of damp +sheets. For our own part, we always wish to feel the difference between +sheets and cerements. We hate everything clammy. It is awkward, on +leaping out of bed to admire the moon, to drag along with you, glued +round your body and members, the whole paraphernalia of the couch. It +can never be good for rheumatism—problematical even for fever. Now, be +candid—did you ever sleep in perfectly dry sheets in a Cottage ornée? +You would not like to say "No, never," in the morning—privately, to +host or hostess. But confess publicly, and trace your approaching +retirement from all the troubles of this life, to the dimity-curtained +cubiculum on Tweedside.</p> + +<p>We know of few events so restorative as the arrival of a coachful of +one's friends, if the house be roomy. But if everything there be on a +small scale, how tremendous a sudden importation of live cattle! The +children are all trundled away out of the Cottage, and their room given +up to the young ladies, with all its enigmatical and emblematical +wall-tracery. The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a shake-down. +My lady's maid must positively pass the night in the butler's pantry, +and the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. Where the old +gentleman and his spouse have been disposed of, remains as controversial +a point as the authorship of Junius; but next morning at the +breakfast-table, it appears that all have survived the night, and the +hospitable hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, that small as +the Cottage appears, it has wonderful accommodation, and could have +easily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> admitted half-a-dozen more patients. The visitors politely +request to be favoured with a plan of so very commodious a Cottage, but +silently swear never again to sleep in a house of one story, till life's +brief tale be told.</p> + +<p>But not one half the comforts of a Cottage have yet been enumerated—nor +shall they be by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to add, that the +strange coachman had been persuaded to put up his horses in the +outhouses, instead of taking them to an excellent inn about two miles +off. The old black long-tailed steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for +nearly twenty years, had been lodged in what was called the Stable, and +the horse behind had been introduced into the byre. As bad luck would +have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty was in his stall; and without +the slightest provocation, he had, during the night-watches, so handled +his heels against Mr Fox, that he had not left the senior a leg to stand +upon, while he had bit a lump out of the buttocks of Mr Pitt little less +than an orange. A cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an assault on +the roadster, and tore up his flank with her crooked horn as clean as if +it had been a ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with post-horses; +and although Mr Dick be at once one of the most skilful and most +moderate of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of autumn was +necessarily as long as that of a proctor. Mr Fox gave up the ghost—Mr +Pitt was put on the superannuated list—and Joseph Hume, the hack, was +sent to the dogs.</p> + +<p>To this condition, then, we must come at last, that if you build at all +in the country, it must be a mansion three stories high, at the +lowest—large airy rooms—roof of slates and lead—and walls of the +freestone or the Roman cement. No small black-faces, no Alderneys, no +beehives. Buy all your vivres, and live like a gentleman. Seldom or +never be without a houseful of company. If you manage your family +matters properly, you may have your time nearly as much at your own +disposal as if you were the greatest of hunkses, and never gave but +unavoidable dinners. Let the breakfast-gong sound at ten o'clock—quite +soon enough. The young people will have been romping about the parlours +or the purlieus for a couple of hours—and will all make their +appearance in the beauty of high health and high spirits. Chat away as +long as need be, after muffins and mutton-ham, in small groups on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> sofas +and settees, and then slip you away to your library, to add a chapter to +your novel, or your history, or to any other task that is to make you +immortal. Let gigs and curricles draw up in the circle, and the wooing +and betrothed wheel away across a few parishes. Let the pedestrians +saunter off into the woods or to the hill-side—the anglers be off to +loch or river. No great harm even in a game or two at billiards—if such +be of any the cue—sagacious spinsters of a certain age, staid dowagers, +and bachelors of sedentary habits, may have recourse, without blame, to +the chess or backgammon board. At two lunch—and at six the dinner-gong +will bring the whole flock together, all dressed—mind that—all +dressed, for slovenliness is an abomination. Let no elderly gentleman, +however bilious and rich, seek to monopolise a young lady—but study the +nature of things. Champagne, of course, and if not all the delicacies, +at least all the substantialities, of the season. Join the ladies in +about two hours—a little elevated or so—almost imperceptibly—but +still a little elevated or so; then music—whispering in corners—if +moonlight and stars, then an hour's out-of-door study of astronomy—no +very regular supper—but an appearance of plates and tumblers, and to +bed, to happy dreams and slumbers light, at the witching hour. Let no +gentleman or lady snore, if it can be avoided, lest they annoy the +crickets; and if you hear any extraordinary noise round and round about +the mansion, be not alarmed, for why should not the owls choose their +own hour of revelry?</p> + +<p>Fond as we are of the country, we would not, had we our option, live +there all the year round. We should just wish to linger into the winter +about as far as the middle of December—then to a city—say at once +Edinburgh. There is as good skating-ground, and as good curling-ground, +at Lochend and Duddingston, as anywhere in all Scotland—nor is there +anywhere else better beef and greens. There is no perfection anywhere, +but Edinburgh society is excellent. We are certainly agreeable citizens; +with just a sufficient spice of party spirit to season the feast of +reason and the flow of soul, and to prevent society from becoming +drowsily unanimous. Without the fillip of a little scandal, honest +people would fall asleep; and surely it is far preferable to that to +abuse one's friends with moderation. Even Literature and the Belles +Lettres are not entirely useless; and our Human Life would not be so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> +delightful as that of Mr Rogers, without a few occasional Noctes +Ambrosianæ.</p> + +<p>But the title of our article recalls our wandering thoughts, and our +talk must be of Cottages. Now, think not, beloved reader, that we care +not for Cottages, for that would indeed be a gross mistake. But our very +affections are philosophical; our sympathies have all their source in +reason; and our admiration is always built on the foundation of truth. +Taste, and feeling, and thought, and experience, and knowledge of this +life's concerns, are all indispensable to the true delights the +imagination experiences in beholding a beautiful <i>bonâ fide</i> Cottage. It +must be the dwelling of the poor; and it is that which gives it its +whole character. By the poor, we mean not paupers, beggars; but families +who, to eat, must work, and who, by working, may still be able to eat. +Plain, coarse, not scanty, but unsuperfluous fare is theirs from +year's-end to year's-end, excepting some decent and grateful change on +chance holidays of nature's own appointment—a wedding or a christening, +or a funeral. Yes, a funeral; for when this mortal coil is shuffled off, +why should the hundreds of people that come trooping over muirs and +mosses to see the body deposited, walk so many miles, and lose a whole +day's work, without a dinner? And if there be a dinner, should it not be +a good one? And if a good one, will the company not be social? But this +is a subject for a future paper, nor need such paper be of other than a +cheerful character. Poverty, then, is the builder and beautifier of all +huts and cottages. But the views of honest poverty are always hopeful +and prospective. Strength of muscle and strength of mind form a truly +Holy Alliance; and the future brightens before the steadfast eyes of +trust. Therefore, when a house is built in the valley, or on the +hill-side—be it that of the poorest cottar—there is some little room, +or nook, or spare place, which hope consecrates to the future. Better +times may come—a shilling or two may be added to the week's +wages—parsimony may accumulate a small capital in the Savings-bank +sufficient to purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of drawers for +the wife, a curtained bed for the lumber-place, which a little labour +will convert into a bedroom. It is not to be thought that the +pasture-fields become every year greener, and the cornfields every +harvest more yellow—that the hedgerows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> grow to thicker fragrance, and +the birch-tree waves its tresses higher in the air, and expands its +white-rinded stem almost to the bulk of a tree of the forest—and yet +that there shall be no visible progress from good to better in the +dwelling of those whose hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into +rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, so does each individual +dwelling. Every ten years, the observing eye sees a new expression on +the face of the silent earth; the law of labour is no melancholy lot; +for to industry the yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding great +reward.</p> + +<p>Therefore, it does our heart good to look on a Cottage. Here the +objections to straw-roofs have no application. A few sparrows chirping +and fluttering in the eaves can do no great harm, and they serve to +amuse the children. The very baby in the cradle, when all the family are +in the fields, mother and all, hears the cheerful twitter, and is +reconciled to solitude. The quantity of corn that a few sparrows can +eat—greedy creatures as they are—cannot be very deadly; and it is +chiefly in the winter-time that they attack the stacks, when there is +much excuse to be made on the plea of hunger. As to the destruction of a +little thatch, why, there is not a boy about the house, above ten years, +who is not a thatcher, and there is no expense in such repairs. Let the +honeysuckle, too, steal up the wall, and even blind unchecked a corner +of the kitchen-window. Its fragrance will often cheer unconsciously the +labourer's heart, as, in the mid-day hour of rest, he sits dandling his +child on his knee, or converses with the passing pedlar. Let the +moss-rose tree flourish, that its bright blush-balls may dazzle in the +kirk the eyes of the lover of fair Helen Irwin, as they rise and fall +with every movement of a bosom yet happy in its virgin innocence. Nature +does not spread in vain her flowers in flush and fragrance over every +obscure nook of earth. Simple and pure is the delight they inspire. Not +to the poet's eye alone is their language addressed. The beautiful +symbols are understood by lowliest minds; and while the philosophical +Wordsworth speaks of the meanest flower that blows giving a joy too deep +for tears, so do all mankind feel the exquisite truth of Burns's more +simple address to the mountain-daisy which his ploughshare had upturned. +The one touches sympathies too pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>found to be general—the other speaks +as a son of the soil affected by the fate of the most familiar flower +that springs from the bosom of our common dust.</p> + +<p>Generally speaking, there has been a spirit of improvement at work, +during these last twenty years, upon all the Cottages in Scotland. The +villages are certainly much neater and cleaner than formerly, and in +very few respects, if any, positively offensive. Perhaps none of them +have—nor ever will have—the exquisite trimness, the habitual and +hereditary rustic elegance, of the best villages of England. There, even +the idle and worthless have an instinctive love of what is decent, and +orderly, and pretty in their habitations. The very drunkard must have a +well-sanded floor, a clean-swept hearth, clear-polished furniture, and +uncobwebbed walls to the room in which he quaffs, guzzles, and smokes +himself into stupidity. His wife may be a scold, but seldom a +slattern—his children ill taught, but well apparelled. Much of this is +observable even among the worst of the class; and, no doubt, such things +must also have their effect in tempering and restraining excesses. +Whereas, on the other hand, the house of a well-behaved, well-doing +English villager is a perfect model of comfort and propriety. In +Scotland, the houses of the dissolute are always dens of dirt, and +disorder, and distraction. All ordinary goings-on are inextricably +confused—meals eaten in different nooks, and at no regular +hour—nothing in its right place or time—the whole abode as if on the +eve of a flitting; while, with few exceptions, even in the dwellings of +the best families in the village, one may detect occasional +forgetfulness of trifling matters, that, if remembered, would be found +greatly conducive to comfort—occasional insensibilities to what would +be graceful in their condition, and might be secured at little expense +and less trouble—occasional blindness to minute deformities that mar +the aspect of the household, and which an awakened eye would sweep away +as absolute nuisances. Perhaps the very depth of their affections—the +solemnity of their religious thoughts—and the reflective spirit in +which they carry on the warfare of life—hide from them the perception +of what, after all, is of such very inferior moment, and even create a +sort of austerity of character which makes them disregard, too much, +trifles that appear to have no influence or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> connection with the essence +of weal or woe. Yet if there be any truth in this, it affords, we +confess, an explanation rather than a justification.</p> + +<p>Our business at present, however, is rather with single Cottages than +with villages. We Scottish people have, for some years past, been doing +all we could to make ourselves ridiculous, by claiming for our capital +the name of Modern Athens, and talking all manner of nonsense about a +city which stands nobly on its own proper foundation; while we have kept +our mouths comparatively shut about the beauty of our hills and vales, +and the rational happiness that everywhere overflows our native land. +Our character is to be found in the country; and therefore, gentle +reader, behold along with us a specimen of Scottish scenery. It is not +above some four miles long—its breadth somewhere about a third of its +length; a fair oblong, sheltered and secluded by a line of varied +eminences, on some of which lies the power of cultivation, and over +others the vivid verdure peculiar to a pastoral region; while, telling +of disturbed times past for ever, stand yonder the ruins of an old +fortalice or keep, picturesque in its deserted decay. The plough has +stopped at the edge of the profitable and beautiful coppice-woods, and +encircled the tall elm-grove. The rocky pasturage, with its clovery and +daisied turf, is alive with sheep and cattle—its briery knolls with +birds—its broom and whins with bees—and its wimpling burn with trouts +and minnows glancing through the shallows, or leaping among the cloud of +injects that glitter over its pools. Here and there a cottage—not above +twenty in all—one low down in the holm, another on a cliff beside the +waterfall: that is the mill—another breaking the horizon in its more +ambitious station—and another far up at the hill-foot, where there is +not a single tree, only shrubs and brackens. On a bleak day, there is +but little beauty in such a glen; but when the sun is cloudless, and all +the light serene, it is a place where poet or painter may see visions +and dream dreams, of the very age of gold. At such seasons, there is a +home-felt feeling of humble reality, blending with the emotions of +imagination. In such places, the low-born high-souled poets of old +breathed forth their songs, and hymns, and elegies—the undying lyrical +poetry of the heart of Scotland.</p> + +<p>Take the remotest Cottage first in order, <span class="smcap">Hillfoot</span>, and hear who are its +inmates—the Schoolmaster and his spouse. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> schoolhouse stands on a +little unappropriated piece of ground—at least it seems to be so—quite +at the head of the glen; for there the hills sink down on each side, and +afford an easy access to the seat of learning from two neighbouring +vales, both in the same parish. Perhaps fifty scholars are there +taught—and with their small fees, and his small salary, Allan Easton is +contented. Allan was originally intended for the Church; but some +peccadilloes obstructed his progress with the Presbytery, and he never +was a preacher. That disappointment of all his hopes was for many years +grievously felt, and somewhat soured his mind with the world. It is +often impossible to recover one single false step in the slippery road +of life—and Allan Easton, year after year, saw himself falling farther +and farther into the rear of almost all his contemporaries. One became a +minister, and got a manse, with a stipend of twenty chalders; another +grew into an East India Nabob; one married the laird's widow, and kept a +pack of hounds—another expanded into a colonel—one cleared a plum by a +cotton-mill—another became the Crœsus of a bank—while Allan, who +had beat them all hollow at all the classes, wore second-hand clothes, +and lived on the same fare with the poorest hind in the parish. He had +married, rather too late, the partner of his frailties—and after many +trials, and, as he thought, not a few persecutions, he got settled at +last, when his head, not very old, was getting grey, and his face +somewhat wrinkled. His wife, during his worst poverty, had gone again +into service, the lot, indeed, to which she had been born; and Allan had +struggled and starved upon private teaching. His appointment to the +parish school had, therefore, been to them both a blessed elevation. The +office was respectable—and loftier ambition had long been dead. Now +they are old people—considerably upwards of sixty—and twenty years' +professional life have converted Allan Easton, once the wild and +eccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, and pedantic pedagogue. +All his scholars love him, for even in the discharge of such very humble +duties, talents make themselves felt and respected; and the kindness of +an affectionate and once sorely wounded, but now healed heart, is never +lost upon the susceptible imaginations of the young. Allan has sometimes +sent out no contemptible scholars, as scholars go in Scotland, to the +universities; and his heart has warmed within him when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> has read +their names, in the newspaper from the manse, in the list of successful +competitors for prizes. During vacation-time, Allan and his spouse leave +their cottage locked up, and disappear, none know exactly whither, on +visits to an old friend or two, who have not altogether forgotten them +in their obscurity. During the rest of the year, his only out-of-doors +amusement is an afternoon's angling, an art in which it is universally +allowed he excels all mortal men, both in river and loch; and often, +during the long winter nights, when the shepherd is walking by his +dwelling, to visit his "ain lassie," down the burn, he hears Allan's +fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, some one of those Scottish +melodies, that we know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, but +soothing to every heart that has been at all acquainted with grief. +Rumour says too, but rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that the +Schoolmaster, when he meets with pleasant company, either at home or a +friend's house, is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then the +memories of other days crowd upon his brain, and loosen his tongue into +eloquence. Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon her husband on all +such occasions; but Allan braves its glances, and is forgiven.</p> + +<p>We see only the uncertain glimmer of their dwelling through the +low-lying mist; and therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were +clearly before our eyes. But should you ever chance to angle your way up +to <span class="smcap">Hillfoot</span>, admire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the jargonelle +pear-tree on the southern gable. The climate is somewhat high, but it is +not cold; and, except when the spring-frosts come late and sharp, there +do all blossoms and fruits abound, on every shrub and tree native to +Scotland. You will hardly know how to distinguish—or rather, to speak +in clerkly phrase, to analyse the sound prevalent over the fields and +air; for it is made up of that of the burn, of bees, of old Susan's +wheel, and the hum of the busy school. But now it is the play-hour, and +Allan Easton comes into his kitchen for his frugal dinner. Brush up your +Latin, and out with a few of the largest trouts in your pannier. Susan +fries them in fresh butter and oatmeal—the greyhaired pedagogue asks a +blessing—and a merrier man, within the limits of becoming mirth, you +never passed an hour's talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and Susan +his spouse.</p> + +<p>You look as if you wished to ask who inhabits the Cottage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>—on the left +hand yonder—that stares upon us with four front windows, and pricks up +its ears like a new-started hare? Why, sir, that was once a +Shooting-box. It was built about twenty years ago, by a sporting +gentleman of two excellent double-barrelled guns, and three stanch +pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of +August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among +the hills from sunrise to sunset. He has been long dead and buried; and +the Box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let +furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an +escutcheon. Picturesque people say it ruins the whole beauty of the +glen; but we must not think so, for it is not in the power of the +ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a +purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contrivance. The window-shutters +have been closed for several years, and the chimneys look as if they had +breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddy, and the ground +shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a barrel to +catch the rain-drippings from the slate-eaves. If it be indeed haunted, +pity the poor ghost! You may have it on a lease, short or long, for +merely paying the taxes. Every year it costs some pounds in +advertisements. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By name, +<span class="smcap">Windy-knowe</span>.</p> + +<p>Nay, let us not fear to sketch the character of its last inhabitant, for +we desire but to speak the truth. Drunkard, stand forward, that we may +have a look at you, and draw your picture. There he stands! The mouth of +the drunkard, you may observe, contracts a singularly sensitive +appearance—seemingly red and rawish; and he is perpetually licking or +smacking his lips, as if his palate were dry and adust. His is a thirst +that water will not quench. He might as well drink air. His whole being +burns for a dram. The whole world is contracted into a caulker. He would +sell his soul in such extremity, were the black bottle denied him, for a +gulp. Not to save his soul from eternal fire, would he, or rather could +he, if left alone with it, refrain from pulling out the plug, and +sucking away at destruction. What a snout he turns up to the morning +air, inflamed, pimpled, snubby, and snorty, and with a nob at the end +on't like one carved out of a stick by the knife of a schoolboy—rough +and hot to the very eye—a nose which, rather than pull, you would +submit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> even to be in some degree insulted. A perpetual cough harasses +and exhausts him, and a perpetual expectoration. How his hand trembles! +It is an effort even to sign his name: one of his sides is certainly not +by any means as sound as the other; there has been a touch of palsy +there; and the next hint will draw down his chin to his collar-bone, and +convert him, a month before dissolution, into a slavering idiot. There +is no occupation, small or great, insignificant or important, to which +he can turn, for any length of time, his hand, his heart, or his head. +He cannot angle—for his fingers refuse to tie a knot, much more to busk +a fly. The glimmer and the glow of the stream would make his brain +dizzy—to wet his feet now would, he fears, be death. Yet he thinks that +he will go out—during that sunny blink of a showery day—and try the +well-known pool in which he used to bathe in boyhood, with the long, +matted, green-trailing water-plants depending on the slippery rocks, and +the water-ousel gliding from beneath the arch that hides her "procreant +cradle," and then sinking like a stone suddenly in the limpid stream. He +sits down on the bank, and fumbling in his pouch for his pocket-book, +brings out, instead, a pocket-pistol. Turning his fiery face towards the +mild, blue, vernal sky, he pours the gurgling brandy down his +throat—first one dose, and then another—till, in an hour, stupefied +and dazed, he sees not the silvery crimson-spotted trouts, shooting, and +leaping, and tumbling, and plunging in deep and shallow; a day on which, +with one of Captain Colley's March-Browns, in an hour we could fill our +pannier. Or, if it be autumn or winter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice +at once gruff and feeble, an old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the +partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right and left, in +potato or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble—but now his sight is dim +and wavering, and his touch trembles on the trigger. The covey whirrs +off, unharmed in a single feather—and poor Ponto, remembering better +days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's heel, and +will range no more. Out, as usual, comes the brandy-bottle—he is still +a good shot when his mouth is the mark; and having emptied the fatal +flask, he staggers homewards, with the muzzles of his double-barrel +frequently pointed to his ear, both being on full cock, and his brains +not blown out only by a miracle. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> tries to read the newspaper—just +arrived—but cannot find his spectacles. Then, by way of variety, he +attempts a tune on the fiddle; but the bridge is broken, and her side +cracked, and the bass-string snapped—and she is restored to her peg +among the cobwebs. In comes a red-headed, stockingless lass, with her +carrots in papers, and lays the cloth for dinner—salt beef and greens. +But the Major's stomach scunners at the Skye-stot—his eyes roll eagerly +for the hot-water—and in a couple of hours he is dead-drunk in his +chair, or stoitering and staggering, in aimless dalliance with the +scullion, among the pots and pans of an ever-disorderly and dirty +kitchen. Mean people, in shabby sporting velveteen dresses, rise up, as +he enters, from the dresser, covered with cans, jugs, and quaichs, and +take off their rusty and greasy napless hats to the Major; and, to +conclude the day worthily and consistently, he squelches himself down +among the reprobate crew, takes his turn at smutty jest and smuttier +song, which drive even the jades out of the kitchen—falls back +insensible, exposed to gross and indecent practical jokes from the +vilest of the unhanged—and finally is carried to bed on a hand-barrow, +with hanging head and heels, like a calf across a butcher's cart, and, +with glazed eyes and lolling tongue, is tumbled upon the quilt—if ever +to awake it is extremely doubtful; but if awake he do, it is to the same +wretched round of brutal degradation—a career, of which the inevitable +close is an unfriended deathbed and a pauper's grave. O hero! six feet +high, and once with a brawn like Hercules—in the prime of life +too—well born and well bred—once bearing the king's commission—and on +that glorious morn, now forgotten or bitterly remembered, thanked on the +field of battle by Picton, though he of the fighting division was a hero +of few words—is that a death worthy of a man—a soldier—and a +Christian? A dram-drinker! Faugh! faugh! Look over—lean over that +stile, where a pig lies wallowing in mire—and a voice, faint and +feeble, and far off, as if it came from some dim and remote world within +your lost soul, will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly one, +agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring across the husk-trough, +is, as a physical, moral, and intellectual being, superior to you, late +Major in his Majesty's —— regiment of foot, now dram-drinker, +drunkard, and dotard, and self-doomed to a disgrace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>ful and disgusting +death ere you shall have completed your thirtieth year. What a changed +being from that day when you carried the colours, and were found, the +bravest of the brave, and the most beautiful of the beautiful, with the +glorious tatters wrapped round your body all drenched in blood, your +hand grasping the broken sabre, and two grim Frenchmen lying hacked and +hewed at your feet! Your father and your mother saw your name in the +"Great Lord's" Despatch; and it was as much as he could do to keep her +from falling on the floor, for "her joy was like a deep affright!" Both +are dead now; and better so, for the sight of that blotched face and +those glazed eyes, now and then glittering in fitful frenzy, would have +killed them both, nor, after such a spectacle, could their old bones +have rested in the grave.</p> + +<p>Alas, Scotland—ay, well-educated, moral, religious Scotland can show, +in the bosom of her bonny banks and braes, cases worse than this; at +which, if there be tears in heaven, the angels weep. Look at that +greyheaded man, of threescore and upwards, sitting by the wayside! He +was once an Elder of the Kirk, and a pious man he was, if ever piety +adorned the temples—"the lyart haffets, wearing thin and bare," of a +Scottish peasant. What eye beheld the many hundred steps, that one by +one, with imperceptible gradation, led him down—down—down to the +lowest depths of shame, suffering, and ruin! For years before it was +bruited abroad through the parish that Gabriel Mason was addicted to +drink, his wife used to sit weeping alone in the spence when her sons +and daughters were out at their work in the fields, and the infatuated +man, fierce in the excitement of raw ardent spirits, kept causelessly +raging and storming through every nook of that once so peaceful +tenement, which for many happy years had never been disturbed by the +loud voice of anger or reproach. His eyes were seldom turned on his +unhappy wife except with a sullen scowl, or fiery wrath; but when they +did look on her with kindness, there was also a rueful self-upbraiding +in their expression, on account of his cruelty; and at sight of such +transitory tenderness, her heart would overflow with forgiving +affection, and her sunk eyes with unendurable tears. But neither +domestic sin nor domestic sorrow will conceal from the eyes and the ears +of men; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> at last Gabriel Mason's name was a byword in the mouth of +the scoffer. One Sabbath he entered the kirk in a state of miserable +abandonment, and from that day he was no longer an elder. To regain his +character seemed to him, in his desperation, beyond the power of man, +and against the decree of God. So he delivered himself up, like a slave, +to that one appetite, and in a few years his whole household had gone to +destruction. His wife was a matron, almost in the prime of life, when +she died; but as she kept wearing away to the other world, her face told +that she felt her years had been too many in this. Her eldest son, +unable, in pride and shame, to lift up his eyes at kirk or market, went +away to the city, and enlisted into a regiment about to embark on +foreign service. His two sisters went to take farewell of him, but never +returned; one, it is said, having died of a fever in the Infirmary—just +as if she had been a pauper; and the other—for the sight of sin, and +sorrow, and shame, and suffering, is ruinous to the soul—gave herself +up, in her beauty, an easy prey to a destroyer, and doubtless has run +her course of agonies, and is now at peace. The rest of the family dropt +down, one by one, out of sight, into inferior situations in far-off +places; but there was a curse, it was thought, hanging over the family, +and of none of them did ever a favourable report come to their native +parish; while he, the infatuated sinner, whose vice seemed to have +worked all the woe, remained in the chains of his tyrannical passion, +nor seemed ever, for more than the short term of a day, to cease hugging +them to his heart. Semblance of all that is most venerable in the +character of Scotland's peasantry! Image of a perfect patriarch, walking +out to meditate at eventide! What a noble forehead! Features how high, +dignified, and composed! There, sitting in the shade of that old wayside +tree, he seems some religious Missionary, travelling to and fro over the +face of the earth, seeking out sin and sorrow, that he may tame them +under the word of God, and change their very being into piety and peace. +Call him not a hoary hypocrite, for he cannot help that noble—that +venerable—that apostolic aspect—that dignified figure, as if bent +gently by Time, loth to touch it with too heavy a hand—that holy +sprinkling over his furrowed temples of the silver-soft, and the +snow-white hair—these are the gifts of gracious Nature all—and Nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> +will not reclaim them, but in the tomb. That is Gabriel Mason—the +Drunkard! And in an hour you may, if your eyes can bear the sight, see +and hear him staggering up and down the village, cursing, swearing, +preaching, praying—stoned by blackguard boys and girls, who hound all +the dogs and curs at his heels, till, taking refuge in the smithy or the +pot-house, he becomes the sport of grown clowns, and, after much idiot +laughter, ruefully mingled with sighs, and groans, and tears, he is +suffered to mount upon a table, and urged, perhaps, by reckless folly to +give out a text from the Bible, which is nearly all engraven on his +memory—so much and so many other things effaced for ever—and there, +like a wild Itinerant, he stammers forth unintentional blasphemy, till +the liquor he has been allowed or instigated to swallow smites him +suddenly senseless, and, falling down, he is huddled off into a corner +of some lumber-room; and left to sleep—better far for such a wretch +were it to death.</p> + +<p>Let us descend, then, from that most inclement front, into the lown +boundaries of the <span class="smcap">Holm</span>. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the +peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With +its outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is +composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine +at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a +glorious dunghill (O, breathe not the name!) that will cover every field +with luxuriant harvests—twelve bolls of oats to the acre. There the +cattle—oxen yet "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," +will, in a few months, eat themselves up, on straw and turnip, into +obesity. There turkeys walk demure—there geese waddle, and there the +feathery-legged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly +aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, that squire of dames, crowing to +his partlets. There a cloud of pigeons often descends among the corny +chaff, and then whirrs off to the uplands. No chained mastiff looking +grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of cheerful and sagacious +collies are seen sitting on their hurdies, or "worrying ither in +diversion." A shaggy colt or two, and a brood mare, with a spice of +blood, and a foal at her heels, know their shed, and evidently are +favourites with the family. Out comes the master, a rosy-cheeked carle, +upwards of six feet high, broad-shouldered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> with a blue bonnet and +velveteen breeches—a man not to be jostled on the crown o' the causey, +and a match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, or gypsy from Yetholm. +But let us into the kitchen. There's the wife—a bit tidy body—and +pretty withal—more authoritative in her quiet demeanour than the most +tyrannical mere housekeeper that ever thumped a servant lass with the +beetle. These three are her daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest, +seemingly older than her mother—for she is somewhat hard-favoured, and +strong red hair dangling over a squint eye is apt to give an expression +of advanced years, even to a youthful virgin. Vaccination was not known +in Girzie's babyhood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned +creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. She is what is delicately +called a strapper, rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of an +Aurora about the ankles. She makes her way, in all household affairs, +through every impediment, and will obviously prove, whenever the +experiment is made, a most excellent wife. Mysie, the second daughter, +is more composed, more genteel, and sits sewing—with her a favourite +occupation, for she has very neat hands; and is, in fact, the milliner +and mantua-maker for all the house. She could no more lift that enormous +pan of boiling water off the fire than she could fly, which in the grasp +of Girzie is safely landed on the hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a +pensive look, as if in love—and we have heard that she is betrothed to +young Mr Rentoul, the divinity student, who lately made a speech before +the Anti-patronage Society, and therefore may reasonably expect very +soon to get a kirk. But look—there comes dancing in from the ewe-bughts +the bright-eyed Bessy, the flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl +in Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd of the Gentle Shepherd himself! O +that we were a poet, to sing the innocence of her budding breast! +But—heaven preserve us!—what is the angelic creature about? Making +rumbledethumps! Now she pounds the potatoes and cabbages as with pestle +and mortar! Ever and anon licking the butter off her fingers, and then +dashing in the salt! Methinks her laugh is out of all bounds loud—and, +unless my eyes deceived me, that stout lout whispered in her delicate +ear some coarse jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up into her not +undelighted countenance. Heavens and earth!—perhaps an assignation in +the barn, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> byre, or bush aboon Traquair. But the long dresser is set +out with dinner—the gudeman's bonnet is reverently laid aside—and if +any stomach assembled there be now empty, it is not likely, judging from +appearances, that it will be in that state again before next +Sabbath—and it is now but the middle of the week. Was it not my Lord +Byron who liked not to see women eat? Poo—poo—nonsense! We like to see +them not only eat—but devour. Not a set of teeth round that +kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too, in +spite of syboes, sweet as dawn-dew—the whole female frame full of +health, freshness, spirit, and animation! Away all delicate wooers, +thrice-high-fantastical! The diet is wholesome—and the sleep will be +sound; therefore eat away, Bessy—nor fear to laugh, although your +pretty mouth be full—for we are no poet to madden into misanthropy at +your mastication; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate, +to us these lips are roses still; "thy eyes are lode-stars, and thy +breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom! +No—no—no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood +unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the +sweet hour of prime. And then mayest thou plight thy troth—in all the +warmth of innocence—to some ardent yet thoughtful youth, who will carry +his bride exultingly to his own low-roofed home—toil for her and the +children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold—and sit +with her in the kirk, when long years have gone by, a comely matron, +attended by daughters acknowledged to be fair—but neither so fair, nor +so good, nor so pious, as their mother.</p> + +<p>What a contrast to the jocund Holm is the <span class="smcap">Rowan-Tree-Hut</span>—so still, and +seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low, +that you might pass it without observing its turf-roof. There live old +Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has +borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not much under +sixty. That poor creature is bed-ridden and helpless, and has to be fed +almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white +pony—well named Samson—that she drives three times a-week, all the +year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of +articles to nearly twenty different families, living miles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> apart. Every +other day in the week—for there is but one Sabbath either to herself or +Samson—she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the +roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red +petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is almost frightful, +with a formidable beard, and a rough voice—and violent gestures, +encouraging the overladen enemy of the Philistines. But as soon as she +enters her hut, she is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her +daughter's bedside. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, and she +hears, during the dead of the night, her daughter's slightest moan. Her +voice is not rough at all when the poor old creature is saying her +prayers; nor, we may be well assured, is its lowest whisper unheard in +heaven.</p> + +<p>Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern side of the vale, and they +have fixed themselves on the Cottage of the <span class="smcap">Seven Oaks</span>. The grove is a +noble one; and, indeed, those are the only timber-trees in the valley. +There is a tradition belonging to the grove, but we shall tell it some +other time; now, we have to do with that mean-looking Cottage, all +unworthy of such magnificent shelter. With its ragged thatch it has a +cold cheerless look—almost a look of indigence. The walls are sordid in +the streaked ochre-wash—a wisp of straw supplies the place of a broken +pane—the door seems as if it were inhospitable—and every object about +is in untended disorder. The green pool in front, with its floating +straws and feathers, and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and needless; +the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open at the roots; the few garments +spread upon them seem to have stiffened in the weather, forgotten by the +persons who placed them there; and half-starved young cattle are +straying about in what once was a garden. Wretched sight it is; for that +dwelling, although never beautiful, was once the tidiest and best-kept +in all the district. But what has misery to do with the comfort of its +habitation?</p> + +<p>The owner of that house was once a man well to do in the world; but he +minded this world's goods more than it was fitting to do, and made +Mammon his god. Abilities he possessed far beyond the common run of men, +and he applied them all, with all the energy of a strong mind, to the +accumulation of wealth. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate +end; and he despised a bargain unless he outwitted his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> neighbour. +Without any acts of downright knavery, he was not an honest man—hard to +the poor—and a tyrannical master. He sought to wring from the very soil +more than it could produce; his servants, among whom were his wife and +daughter, he kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to twilight; and +was a forestaller and a regrater—a character which, when Political +Economy was unknown, was of all the most odious in the judgment of +simple husbandmen. His spirits rose with the price of meal, and every +handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like a tax. What could the +Bible teach to such a man? What good could he derive from the calm air +of the house of worship? He sent his only son to the city, with +injunctions instilled into him to make the most of all transactions, at +every hazard but that of his money; and the consequence was, in a few +years, shame, ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, imprisoned, +dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a vulgar seducer; and being +driven from her father's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless misery, +to a life of prostitution. His wife, heartbroken by cruelty and +affliction, was never afterwards altogether in her right mind, and now +sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders off to distant places, lone +houses and villages, almost in the condition of an idiot—wild-eyed, +loose-haired, and dressed like a very beggar. Speculation after +speculation failed—with farmyard crowded with old stacks, he had to +curse three successive plentiful harvests—and his mailing was now +destitute. The unhappy man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity; +and, when his brain was inflamed with liquor, a dangerous madman. He is +now a sort of cattle-dealer—buys and sells miserable horses—and at +fairs associates with knaves and reprobates, knowing that no honest man +will deal with him except in pity or derision. He has more than once +attempted to commit suicide; but palsy has stricken him—and in a few +weeks he will totter into the grave.</p> + +<p>There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you see the smoke—even the +chimney-top, but you could not see the Cottage itself, unless you were +within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is it with knolls and small +green eminences, in a den of its own, a shoot or scion from the main +stem of the valley. It is called <span class="smcap">The Broom</span>, and there is something +singular, and not uninteresting, in the history of its owner. He married +very early in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> life, indeed when quite a boy, which is not, by the way, +very unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, prudent and calculating as +is their general character. David Drysdale, before he was thirty years +of age, had a family of seven children, and a pretty family they were as +might be seen in all the parish. His life was in theirs, and his mind +never wandered far from his fireside. His wife was of a consumptive +family, and that insidious and fatal disease never showed in her a +single symptom during ten years of marriage; but one cold evening awoke +it at her very heart, and in less than two months it hurried her into +the grave. Poor creature, such a spectre! When her husband used to carry +her, for the sake of a little temporary relief, from chair to couch, and +from her couch back again to her bed, twenty times in a day, he hardly +could help weeping, with all his consideration, to feel her frame as +light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man said, that in all his +practice he never had known soul and body keep together in such utter +attenuation. But her soul was as clear as ever while racking pain was in +her fleshless bones. Even he, her loving husband, was relieved from woe +when she expired; for no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the +misery of groans from one so patient and so resigned. Perhaps +consumption is infectious—so, at least, it seemed here; for first one +child began to droop, and then another—the elder ones first; and, +within the two following years, there were almost as many funerals from +this one house as from all the others in the parish. Yes—they all +died—of the whole family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were thought +to have pined away in a sort of fearful foreboding—and a fever took off +a third—but four certainly died of the same hereditary complaint with +the mother; and now not a voice was heard in the house. He did not +desert the Broom; and the farm-work was still carried on, nobody could +tell how. The servants, to be sure, knew their duty, and often performed +it without orders. Sometimes the master put his hand to the plough, but +oftener he led the life of a shepherd, and was by himself among the +hills. He never smiled—and at every meal he still sat like a man about +to be led out to die. But what will not retire away—recede—disappear +from the vision of the souls of us mortals! Tenacious as we are of our +griefs, even more than of our joys, both elude our grasp. We gaze after +them with longing or self-upbraiding aspirations for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> return; but +they are shadows, and like shadows vanish. Then human duties, lowly +though they may be, have their sanative and salutary influence on our +whole frame of being. Without their performance conscience cannot be +still; with it, conscience brings peace in extremity of evil. Then +occupation kills grief, and industry abates passion. No balm for sorrow +like the sweat of the brow poured into the furrows of the earth, in the +open air, and beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths were felt by +the childless widower, long before they were understood by him; and when +two years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost despairingly, by—he +began at times to feel something like happiness again when sitting among +his friends in the kirk, or at their firesides, or in the labours of the +field, or even on the market-day, among this world's concerns. Thus, +they who knew him and his sufferings were pleased to recognise what +might be called resignation and its grave tranquillity; while strangers +discerned in him nothing more than a staid and solemn demeanour, which +might be natural to many a man never severely tried, and offering no +interruption to the cheerfulness that pervaded their ordinary life.</p> + +<p>He had a cousin a few years younger than himself, who had also married +when a girl, and when little more than a girl had been left a widow. Her +parents were both dead, and she had lived for a good many years as an +upper servant, or rather companion and friend, in the house of a +relation. As cousins, they had all their lives been familiar and +affectionate, and Alice Gray had frequently lived for months at a time +at the Broom, taking care of the children, and in all respects one of +the family. Their conditions were now almost equally desolate, and a +deep sympathy made them now more firmly attached than they ever could +have been in better days. Still, nothing at all resembling love was in +either of their hearts, nor did the thought of marriage ever pass across +their imaginations. They found, however, increasing satisfaction in each +other's company; and looks and words of sad and sober endearment +gradually bound them together in affection stronger far than either +could have believed. Their friends saw and spoke of the attachment, and +of its probable result, long before they were aware of its full nature; +and nobody was surprised, but, on the contrary, all were well pleased, +when it was understood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> that they were to be man and wife. There was +something almost mournful in their marriage—no rejoicing—no +merry-making—but yet visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, and +peace. An air of cheerfulness was not long of investing the melancholy +Broom—the very swallows twittered more gladly from the window-corners, +and there was joy in the cooing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The +farm awoke through all its fields, and the farm-servants once more sang +and whistled at their work. The wandering beggar, who remembered the +charity of other years, looked with no cold expression on her who now +dealt out his dole; and as his old eyes were dimmed for the sake of +those who were gone, gave a fervent blessing on the new mistress of the +house, and prayed that she might long be spared. The neighbours, even +they who had best loved the dead, came in with cheerful countenances, +and acknowledged in their hearts, that since change is the law of life, +there was no one, far or near, whom they could have borne to see sitting +in that chair but Alice Gray. The husband knew their feelings from their +looks, and his fireside blazed once more with a cheerful lustre.</p> + +<p>O, gentle reader, young perhaps, and inexperienced of this world, wonder +not at this so great change! The heart is full, perhaps, of a pure and +holy affection, nor can it die, even for an hour of sleep. May it never +die but in the grave! Yet die it may, and leave thee blameless. The time +may come when that bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, with all its +heaving beauty, one single passionate or adoring sigh. Those eyes, that +now stream agitation and bliss into thy throbbing heart, may, on some +not very distant day, be cold to thy imagination as the distant and +unheeded stars. That voice, now thrilling through every nerve, may fall +on thy ear a disregarded sound. Other hopes, other fears, other +troubles, may possess thee wholly—and that more than angel of Heaven +seem to fade away into a shape of earth's most common clay. But here +there was no change—no forgetfulness—no oblivion—no faithlessness to +a holy trust. The melancholy man often saw his Hannah, and all his seven +sweet children—now fair in life—now pale in death. Sometimes, perhaps, +the sight, the sound—their smiles and their voices—disturbed him, till +his heart quaked within him, and he wished that he too was dead. But God +it was who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> removed them from our earth—and was it possible to +doubt that they were all in blessedness? Shed your tears over change +from virtue to vice, happiness to misery; but weep not for those still, +sad, mysterious processes by which gracious Nature alleviates the +afflictions of our mortal lot, and enables us to endure the life which +the Lord our God hath given us. Ere long husband and wife could bear to +speak of those who were now no more seen; when the phantoms rose before +them in the silence of the night, they all wore pleasant and approving +countenances, and the beautiful family often came from Heaven to visit +their father in his dreams. He did not wish, much less hope, in this +life, for such happiness as had once been his—nor did Alice Gray, even +for one hour, imagine that such happiness it was in her power to bestow. +They knew each other's hearts—what they had suffered and survived; and, +since the meridian of life and joy was gone, they were contented with +the pensive twilight.</p> + +<p>Look, there is a pretty Cottage—by name <span class="smcap">Leaside</span>—one that might almost +do for a painter—just sufficiently shaded by trees, and showing a new +aspect every step you take, and each new aspect beautiful. There is, it +is true, neither moss, nor lichens, nor weather-stains on the roof—but +all is smooth, neat, trim, deep thatch, from rigging to eaves, with a +picturesque elevated window covered with the same material, and all the +walls white as snow. The whole building is at all times as fresh as if +just washed by a vernal shower. Competence breathes from every lattice, +and that porch has been reared more for ornament than defence, although, +no doubt, it is useful both in March and November winds. Every field +about it is like a garden, and yet the garden is brightly conspicuous +amidst all the surrounding cultivation. The hedgerows are all clipped, +for they have grown there for many and many a year; and the shears were +necessary to keep them down from shutting out the vista of the lovely +vale. That is the dwelling of Adam Airlie the Elder. Happy old man! This +life has gone uniformly well with him and his; yet, had it been +otherwise, there is a power in his spirit that would have sustained the +severest inflictions of Providence. His gratitude to God is something +solemn and awful, and ever accompanied with a profound sense of his +utter unworthiness of all the long-continued mercies vouchsafed to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> +family. His own happiness, prolonged to a great age, has not closed +within his heart one source of pity or affection for his brethren of +mankind. In his own guiltless conscience, guiltless before man, he yet +feels incessantly the frailties of his nature, and is meek, humble, and +penitent as the greatest sinner. He, his wife, an old faithful +female-servant, and an occasional granddaughter, now form the whole +household. His three sons have all prospered in the world. The eldest +went abroad when a mere boy, and many fears went with him—a bold, +adventurous, and somewhat reckless creature. But consideration came to +him in a foreign climate, and tamed down his ardent mind to a +thoughtful, not a selfish prudence. Twenty years he lived in India—and +what a blessed day was the day of his return! Yet in the prime of life, +by disease unbroken, and with a heart full to overflowing with all its +old sacred affections, he came back to his father's lowly cottage, and +wept as he crossed the threshold. His parents needed not any of his +wealth; but they were blamelessly proud, nevertheless, of his honest +acquisitions—proud when he became a landholder in his native parish, +and employed the sons of his old companions, and some of his old +companions themselves, in the building of his unostentatious mansion, or +in cultivating the wild but not unlovely moor, which was dear to him for +the sake of the countless remembrances that clothed the bare banks of +its lochs, and murmured in the little stream that ran among the pastoral +braes. The new mansion is a couple of miles from his parental Cottage; +but not a week, indeed seldom half that time, elapses, without a visit +to that dear dwelling. They likewise not unfrequently visit him—for his +wife is dear to them as a daughter of their own; and the ancient couple +delight in the noise and laughter of his pretty flock. Yet the son +understands perfectly well that the aged people love best their own +roof—and that its familiar quiet is every day dearer to their +habituated affections. Therefore he makes no parade of filial +tenderness—forces nothing new upon them—is glad to see the +uninterrupted tenor of their humble happiness; and if they are proud of +him, which all the parish knows, so is there not a child within its +bounds that does not know that Mr Airlie, the rich gentleman from India, +loves his poor father and mother as tenderly as if he had never left +their roof; and is prouder of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> them, too, than if they were clothed in +fine raiment, and fared sumptuously every day. Mr Airlie of the Mount +has his own seat in the gallery of the Kirk—his father, as an Elder, +sits below the pulpit—but occasionally the pious and proud son joins +his mother in the pew, where he and his brothers sat long ago; and every +Sabbath one or other of his children takes its place beside the +venerated matron. The old man generally leaves the churchyard leaning on +his Gilbert's arm—and although the sight has long been so common as to +draw no attention, yet no doubt there is always an under and unconscious +pleasure in many a mind witnessing the sacredness of the bond of blood. +Now and then the old matron is prevailed upon, when the weather is bad +and roads miry, to take a seat home in the carriage—but the Elder +always prefers walking thither with his son, and he is stout and hale, +although upwards of threescore and ten years.</p> + +<p>Walter, the second son, is now a captain in the navy, having served for +years before the mast. His mind is in his profession, and he is +perpetually complaining of being unemployed—a ship—a ship, is still +the burden of his song. But when at home—which he often is for weeks +together—he attaches himself to all the ongoings of rural life, as +devotedly as if a plougher of the soil instead of the sea. His mother +wonders, with tears in her eyes, why, having a competency, he should +still wish to provoke the dangers of the deep; and beseeches him +sometimes to become a farmer in his native vale. And perhaps more +improbable things have happened; for the captain, it is said, has fallen +desperately in love with the daughter of the clergyman of a neighbouring +parish, and the doctor will not give his consent to the marriage, unless +he promise to live, if allowed, on shore. The political state of Europe +certainly seems at present favourable to the consummation of the wishes +of all parties.</p> + +<p>Of David, the third son, who has not heard, that has heard anything of +the pulpit eloquence of Scotland?—Should his life be spared, there can +be no doubt that he will one day or other be Moderator of the General +Assembly, perhaps Professor of Divinity in a College. Be that as it may, +a better Christian never expounded the truths of the gospel, although +some folks pretend to say that he is not evangelical. He is, however, +beloved by the poor—the orphan and the widow;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> and his ministrations, +powerful in the kirk to a devoutly listening congregation, are so too at +the sick-bed, when only two or three are gathered around it, and when +the dying man feels how a fellow-creature can, by scriptural aids, +strengthen his trust in the mercy of his Maker.</p> + +<p>Every year, on the birthday of each of their sons, the old people hold a +festival—in May, in August, and at Christmas. The sailor alone looks +disconsolate as a bachelor, but that reproach will be wiped away before +autumn; and should God grant the cottagers a few more years, some new +faces will yet smile upon the holidays; and there is in their unwithered +hearts warm love enough for all that may join the party. We too—yes, +gentle reader—we too shall be there—as we have often been during the +last ten years—and you yourself will judge, from all you know of us, +whether or no we have a heart to understand and enjoy such rare +felicity.</p> + +<p>But let us be off to the mountains, and endeavour to interest our +beloved reader in a Highland Cottage—in any one, taken at hap-hazard, +from a hundred. You have been roaming all day among the mountains, and +perhaps seen no house except at a dwindling distance. Probably you have +wished not to see any house, but a ruined shieling—a deserted hut—or +an unroofed and dilapidated shed for the outlying cattle of some remote +farm. But now the sun has inflamed all the western heaven, and darkness +will soon descend. There is now a muteness more stern and solemn than +during unfaded daylight. List—the faint, far-off, subterranean sound of +the bagpipe! Some old soldier, probably, playing a gathering or a +coronach. The narrow dell widens and widens into a great glen, in which +you just discern the blue gleam of a loch. The martial music is more +distinctly heard—loud, fitful, fierce, like the trampling of men in +battle. Where is the piper? In a cave, or within the Fairies' Knowe? At +the door of a hut. His eyes were extinguished by ophthalmia, and there +he sits, fronting the sunlight, stone-blind. Long silver hair flows down +his broad shoulders, and you perceive that, when he rises, he will rear +up a stately bulk. The music stops, and you hear the bleating of goats. +There they come, prancing down the rocks, and stare upon the stranger. +The old soldier turns himself towards the voice of the Sassenach, and, +with the bold courtesy of the camp, bids him enter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> the hut. One +minute's view has sufficed to imprint the scene for ever on the +memory—a hut whose turf walls and roof are incorporated with the living +mountain, and seem not the work of man's hand, but the casual +architecture of some convulsion—the tumbling down of fragments from the +mountain-side by raging torrents, or a partial earthquake; for all the +scenery about is torn to pieces—like the scattering of some wide ruin. +The imagination dreams of the earliest days of our race, when men +harboured, like the other creatures, in places provided by nature. But +even here, there are visible traces of cultivation working in the spirit +of a mountainous region—a few glades of the purest verdure opened out +among the tall brackens, with a birch-tree or two dropped just where the +eye of taste could have wished, had the painter planted the sapling, +instead of the winds of heaven having wafted thither the seed—a small +croft of barley, surrounded by a cairn-like wall made up of stones +cleared from the soil, and a patch of potato ground, neat almost as the +garden that shows in a nook its fruit-bushes and a few flowers. All the +blasts that ever blew must be unavailing against the briery rock that +shelters the hut from the airt of storms; and the smoke may rise under +its lee, unwavering on the windiest day. There is sweetness in all the +air, and the glen is noiseless, except with the uncertain murmur of the +now unswollen waterfalls. That is the croak of the raven sitting on his +cliff half-way up Ben-Oura; and hark, the last belling of the red-deer, +as the herd lies down in the mist among the last ridge of heather, +blending with the shrubless stones, rocks, and cliffs that girdle the +upper regions of the vast mountain.</p> + +<p>Within the dimness of the hut you hear greetings in the Gaelic tongue, +in a female voice; and when the eye has by-and-by become able to endure +the smoke, it discerns the household—the veteran's ancient dame—a +young man that may be his son, or rather his grandson, but whom you soon +know to be neither, with black matted locks, the keen eye, and the light +limbs of the hunter—a young woman, his wife, suckling a child, and yet +with a girlish look, as if but one year before her silken snood had been +untied—and a lassie of ten years, who had brought home the goats, and +now sits timidly in a nook eyeing the stranger. The low growl of the +huge brindled stag-hound had been hushed by a word on your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> first +entrance, and the noble animal watches his master's eye, which he obeys +in his freedom throughout all the forest-chase. A napkin is taken out of +an old worm-eaten chest, and spread over a strangely-carved table, that +seems to have belonged once to a place of pride; and the hungry and +thirsty stranger scarcely knows which most to admire, the broad bannocks +of barley-meal and the huge roll of butter, or the giant bottle, whose +mouth exhales the strong savour of conquering Glenlivet. The board is +spread—why not fall to and eat? First be thanks given to the Lord God +Almighty. The blind man holds up his hand and prays in a low chanting +voice, and then breaks bread for the lips of the stranger. On such an +occasion is felt the sanctity of the meal shared by human beings brought +accidentally together—the salt is sacred—and the hearth an altar.</p> + +<p>No great travellers are we, yet have we seen something of this habitable +globe. The Highlands of Scotland is but a small region, nor is its +interior by any means so remote as the interior of Africa. Yet 'tis +remote. The life of that very blind veteran might, in better hands than +ours, make an interesting history. In his youth he had been a +shepherd—a herdsman—a hunter—something even of a poet. For thirty +years he had been a soldier—in many climates and many conflicts. Since +first he bloodied his bayonet, how many of his comrades had been buried +in heaps! Flung into trenches dug on the field of battle! How many +famous captains had shone in the blaze of their fame—faded into the +light of common day—died in obscurity, and been utterly forgotten! What +fierce passions must have agitated the frame of that now calm old man! +On what dreadful scenes, when forts and towns were taken by storm, must +those eyes, now withered into nothing, have glared with all the fury of +man's most wrathful soul! Now peace is with him for evermore. Nothing to +speak of the din of battle, but his own pipes wailing or raging among +the hollow of the mountains. In relation to his campaigning career, his +present life is as the life of another state. The pageantry of war has +all rolled off and away for ever; all its actions but phantoms now of a +dimly-remembered dream. He thinks of his former self, as sergeant in the +Black Watch, and almost imagines he beholds another man. In his long, +long blindness, he has created another world to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> himself out of new +voices—the voices of new generations, and of torrents thundering all +year long round about his hut. Almost all the savage has been tamed +within him, and an awful religion falls deeper and deeper upon him, as +he knows how he is nearing the grave. Often his whole mind is dim, for +he is exceedingly old, and then he sees only fragments of his youthful +life—the last forty years are as if they had never been—and he hears +shouts and huzzas, that half a century ago rent the air with victory. He +can still chant, in a hoarse broken voice, battle-hymns and dirges; and +thus, strangely forgetful and strangely tenacious of the past, linked to +this life by ties that only the mountaineer can know, and yet feeling +himself on the brink of the next, Old Blind Donald Roy, the Giant of the +Hut of the Three Torrents, will not scruple to quaff the "strong +waters," till his mind is awakened—brightened—dimmed—darkened—and +seemingly extinguished—till the sunrise again smites him, as he lies in +a heap among the heather; and then he lifts up, unashamed and +remorseless, that head, which, with its long quiet hairs, a painter +might choose for the image of a saint about to become a martyr.</p> + +<p>We leave old Donald asleep, and go with his son-in-law, Lewis of the +light-foot, and Maida the stag-hound, surnamed the Throttler,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To his hills that encircle the sea."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We have been ascending mountain-range after mountain-range, before +sunrise; and lo! night is gone, and nature rejoices in the day through +all her solitudes. Still as death, yet as life cheerful—and unspeakable +grandeur in the sudden revelation. Where is the wild-deer herd?—where, +ask the keen eyes of Maida, is the forest of antlers!—Lewis of the +light-foot bounds before, with his long gun pointing towards the mists +now gathered up to the summits of Benevis.</p> + +<p>Nightfall—and we are once more at the Hut of the Three Torrents. Small +Amy is grown familiar now, and, almost without being asked, sings us the +choicest of her Gaelic airs—a few too of Lowland melody: all merry, yet +all sad—if in smiles begun, ending in a shower—or at least a tender +mist of tears. Heardst thou ever such a syren as this Celtic child? Did +we not always tell you that fairies were indeed realities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> of the +twilight or moonlight world? And she is their Queen. Hark! what thunders +of applause! The waterfall at the head of the great Corrie thunders +<i>encore</i> with a hundred echoes. But the songs are over, and the small +singer gone to her heather-bed. There is a Highland moon!—The shield of +an unfallen archangel. There are not many stars—but those two—ay, that +One, is sufficient to sustain the glory of the night. Be not alarmed at +that low, wide, solemn, and melancholy sound. Runlets, torrents, rivers, +lochs, and seas—reeds, heather, forests, caves, and cliffs, all are +sound, sounding together a choral anthem.</p> + +<p>Gracious heavens! what mistakes people have fallen into when writing +about Solitude! A man leaves a town for a few months, and goes with his +wife and family, and a travelling library, into some solitary glen. +Friends are perpetually visiting him from afar, or the neighbouring +gentry leaving their cards, while his servant-boy rides daily to the +post-village for his letters and newspapers. And call you that solitude? +The whole world is with you, morning, noon, and night. But go by +yourself, without book or friend, and live a month in this hut at the +head of Glenevis. Go at dawn among the cliffs of yonder pine-forest, and +wait there till night hangs her moon-lamp in heaven. Commune with your +own soul, and be still. Let the images of departed years rise, +phantom-like, of their own awful accord from the darkness of your +memory, and pass away into the wood-gloom or the mountain-mist. Will +conscience dread such spectres? Will you quake before them, and bow down +your head on the mossy root of some old oak, and sob in the stern +silence of the haunted place? Thoughts, feelings, passions, spectral +deeds, will come rushing around your lair, as with the sound of the +wings of innumerous birds—ay, many of them, like birds of prey, to gnaw +your very heart. How many duties undischarged! How many opportunities +neglected! How many pleasures devoured! How many sins hugged! How many +wickednesses perpetrated! The desert looks more grim—the heaven +lowers—and the sun, like God's own eye, stares in upon your conscience!</p> + +<p>But such is not the solitude of our beautiful young shepherd-girl of the +Hut of the Three Torrents. Her soul is as clear, as calm as the pool +pictured at times by the floating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> clouds that let fall their shadows +through among the overhanging birch-trees. What harm could she ever do? +What harm could she ever think? She may have wept—for there is sorrow +without sin; may have wept even at her prayers—for there is penitence +free from guilt, and innocence itself often kneels in contrition. Down +the long glen she accompanies the stream to the house of God—sings her +psalms—and returns wearied to her heather-bed. She is, indeed, a +solitary child; the eagle, and the raven, and the red-deer see that she +is so—and echo knows it when from her airy cliff she repeats the happy +creature's song. Her world is within this one glen. In this one glen she +may live all her days—be wooed, won, wedded, buried. Buried—said we? +Oh, why think of burial when gazing on that resplendent head? +Interminable tracts of the shining day await her, the lonely darling of +nature; nor dare Time ever eclipse the lustre of those wild-beaming +eyes! Her beauty shall be immortal, like that of her country's fairies. +So, Flower of the Wilderness, we wave towards thee a joyful—though an +everlasting farewell.</p> + +<p>Where are we now? There is not on this round green earth a lovelier Loch +than Achray. About a mile above Loch Vennachar, and as we approach the +Brigg of Turk, we arrive at the summit of an eminence, whence we descry +the sudden and wide prospect of the windings of the river that issues +from Loch Achray—and the Loch itself reposing—sleeping—dreaming on +its pastoral, its sylvan bed. Achray, being interpreted, signifies the +"Level Field," and gives its name to a delightful farm at the west end. +On "that happy, rural seat of various view," could we lie all day long; +and as all the beauty tends towards the west, each afternoon hour +deepens and also brightens it into mellower splendour. Not to keep +constantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed impossible—yet its still +waters soothe the soul, without holding it away from the woods and +cliffs, that, forming of themselves a perfect picture, are yet all +united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years +have elapsed—at our time of life ten are many—since we passed one +delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden +bridge over the Teith, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness +of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large +enough for a fairy's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of +Roes—nor need the angler try to penetrate the underwood; for every +shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the +living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the checkered waters. +Safe there are all the little singing-birds from hawk or gled—and it is +indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the +natural woods—and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in +beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his +own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings.</p> + +<p>But let us rise from the greensward, and before we pace along the sweet +shores of Loch Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more than a mile +off, turn away up from the Brigg of Turk into Glenfinlas. A strong +mountain-torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul of Salvator +Rosa, might find studies inexhaustible for years, tumbles on the left of +a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a +numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence, +freshening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual +spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as +you advance, and you come out of that sylvan prison into a plain of +meadows and cornfields, alive with the peaceful dwellings of industrious +men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are +without heather—a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of +brackens, and a little sheep-sheltering grove. Skeletons of old trees of +prodigious size lie covered with mosses and wildflowers, or stand with +their barkless trunks and white limbs unmoved when the tempest blows. +Glenfinlas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but +hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi.</p> + +<p>A more beautiful vale never inspired pastoral poet in Arcadia, nor did +Sicilian shepherds of old ever pipe to each other for prize of oaten +reed, in a lovelier nook than where yonder cottage stands, shaded, but +scarcely sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth not a +cottage—but a very <span class="smcap">Shieling</span>, part of the knoll adhering to the side of +the mountain. Not another dwelling—even as small as itself—within a +mile in any direction. Those goats, that seem to walk where there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> is no +footing along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to be milked at +evening to a house beyond the hill, without any barking dog to set them +home. There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, except one leading +through the coppice-wood to the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs +those shallows, and the heron has them to himself, watching often with +motionless neck all day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and has +been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it +for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a +little smoke hovers over it—very faint if it be smoke at all—and +nothing else tells that within is life.</p> + +<p>It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and +lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir +with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature, +without any extraordinary bereavements, she outlived all the household, +except one, on whom fell the saddest affliction that can befall a human +being—the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her +husband, and all her other children, this son was her support; and there +was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her +natural cheerfulness never forsook her; and although fallen back in the +world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had +known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the widow +and her son were in that shieling as happy as any family in the parish. +He worked at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinning from +morning to night within—a constant occupation, soothing to one before +whose mind past times might otherwise have come too often, and that +creates contentment by its undisturbed sameness and invisible +progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour +or two every night, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept, +too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains +were on—for then he found some ingenious employment within the +shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the +lively or plaintive music of his native hills. Sometimes, in her +gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many +other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in +upon her, her face gave a welcome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> that spoke more than resignation; nor +was she averse to partake the sociality of the other huts, and sat +sedate among youthful merriment, when summer or winter festival came +round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence.</p> + +<p>But her trials, great as they had been, were not yet over; for this her +only son was laid prostrate by fever—and, when it left his body, he +survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and +intelligent, were now fixed in idiocy, or rolled about unobservant of +all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if +suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of understanding, +in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces +from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech, +all but a moaning as of pain or woe, which none but a mother could bear +to hear without shuddering—but she heard it during night as well as +day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer +was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of; +but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would +enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the +shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so +decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of +which the poor object himself was insensible and unconscious. +Henceforth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard +the torrents roar. She went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath where +the paralytic lay—and there she sung the lonely psalm, and said the +lonely prayer, unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits would have +thought—but it was not so; for in two years there came a meaning to his +eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that +of "Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face +was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see +the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep! Day +after day, the darkness that covered his brain grew less and less +deep—to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son +now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly +and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered +only events and scenes long past and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> distant—and believed that his +father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon +them by their names to come and kiss him—on them, who had all long been +buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and +remembrance—and he at last said, "Mother! did some accident befall me +yesterday at my work down the glen?—I feel weak, and about to die!" The +shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of +what had happened—and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the +mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been +granted in that one boon—and, when the coffin was borne away from the +shieling, she remained in it with a friend, assured that in this world +there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, +now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she +wishes by her poor neighbours—for to the poor sorrow is a sacred +thing—who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and +cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be +laid down without one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a +Christian's faith.</p> + +<p>The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who +among all the Highland maidens that danced on the greenswards among the +blooming heather on the mountains of Glenetive—who so fair as Flora, +the only daughter of the King's Forester, and grandchild to the Bard +famous for his songs of Fairies in the Hill of Peace, and the +Mermaid-Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far down beneath the +foam-waves of the sea? And who, among all the Highland youth that went +abroad to the bloody wars from the base of Benevis, to compare with +Ranald of the Red-Cliff, whose sires had been soldiers for centuries, in +the days of the dagger and Lochaber axe—stately in his strength amid +the battle as the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the birch-tree, +that whispers with all its leaves to the slightest summer-breath? If +their love was great when often fed at the light of each other's eyes, +what was it when Ranald was far off among the sands of Egypt, and Flora +left an orphan to pine away in her native glen? Beneath the shadow of +the Pyramids he dreamt of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the +dwelling of his love—and she, as she stood by the murmurs of that +sea-loch,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> longed for the wings of the osprey, that she might flee away +to the war-tents beyond the ocean, and be at rest!</p> + +<p>But years—a few years—long and lingering as they might seem to loving +hearts separated by the roar of seas—yet all too too short when 'tis +thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave—brought +Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas! for the poor +soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed +the trickling tears. Like many another gallant youth, he had lost his +eyesight from the sharp burning sand—and was led to the shieling of his +love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did +his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affecting on the calm +countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak—and his sighs were +deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow +ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in remorse over +some secret crime?</p> + +<p>Happy—completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a +sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside +the bed of one whose hair was getting fast grey, long before its time. +Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to +other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no +hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been +betrothed almost from their childhood, and would she—if he desired +it—fear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever, +in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty +required that the words should come; nor could she sometimes help +wondering, in half-upbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great +affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure—yet not +so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her +native Highlands, were there not worthy families far poorer than they? +But weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald remained in a neighbouring hut, +shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he thought none +were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering +to himself lamentable words—and, blind as his eyes were to all the +objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he +saw visions of woeful events about to befall one whom he loved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> + +<p>One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his +sleep—but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake—to the +hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to +speak a few words with him ere he died. They sat down together among the +heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the +morning he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart died within her, +when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had +suffered, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by +in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die.</p> + +<p>And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the bravest of the brave, that thus +shuddered in the fear of death like a felon at the tolling of the great +prison-bell? Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly +superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body +with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and +night the same vision yawned before him—an open grave in the corner of +the hill burial-ground without any kirk.</p> + +<p>Flora knew that his days were indeed numbered; for when had he ever been +afraid of death—and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere +common dream? Soon was she to be all alone in this world; yet when +Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and +there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be +buried in one grave.</p> + +<p>Such were her words to the dying man; and all at once he took her in his +arms, and asked her "If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole +nature seemed to undergo a change under the calm voice of her reply; and +he said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom?" +"Blessed will they be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my +wife—for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in +heaven—thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was +a gentle and gracious summer night—so clear, that the shepherds on the +hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there at +earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among +the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to +heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY.</h2> + +<p>Ours is a poetical age; but has it produced one Great Poem? Not one.</p> + +<p>Just look at them for a moment. There is "The Pleasures of Memory"—an +elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does +one's eyes good to gaze on—one's ears good to listen to—one's very +fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove +paper. Never will "The Pleasures of Memory" be forgotten till the world +is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem? About as much so as an +ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple +with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection—in the +shape of a cone—and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a +sky-piercer. You take it at a hop—and pursue your journey. Yet it +endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs and the sunshine, love +the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and +delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature.</p> + +<p>Then there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If +so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most +skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with +the materials of human life—homespun indeed; but though often coarse, +always strong—and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently +exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay—hold up the product +of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers +like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems +to be but of the "hodden grey;" when sunbeam or shadow smites it, and +lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger +ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St Paul's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No +wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they possess the +sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of +melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys +that are past"—is the text we should choose were we about to preach on +his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit now +breathe over the still receding Past. But time-sanctified are all the +shows that arise before his pensive imagination; and the common light of +day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying +sunset or moonlight, or the new-born dawn. His human sensibilities are +so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so +delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have been dear to +poets—having in them "more than meets the ear"—spiritual breathings +that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, +too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the +"faculty divine," have yet the "vision"—that is, the power of seeing +and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, +bringing them from afar out of the dust and dimness of evanishment.</p> + +<p>Mr Bowles has been a poet for good fifty years; and if his genius do not +burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone—yet we do not say +there is any abatement even of its brightness: it shines with a mellower +and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too +pensive—too melancholy—too pathetic—too woe-begone—in too great +bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sang with a thorn at his +breast—from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by +perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather monotonous, his strains were most +musical as well as melancholy; feeling was often relieved by fancy; and +one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of +moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of +dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Romance." A fine +enthusiasm too was his—in those youthful years—inspired by the poetry +of Greece and Rome; and in some of his happiest inspirations there was a +delightful and original union—to be found nowhere else that we can +remember—of the spirit of that ancient song,—the pure classical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> +spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus, with that +of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the "clear well of +English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but +his was no affected or pedantic scholarship—intrusive most when least +required; but the growth of a consummate classical education, of which +the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a +pupil of the Wartons—Joe and Tom—God bless their souls!—and his name +may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs—and with Mason's, and +Gray's, and Collins'—academics all; the works of them all showing a +delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own +English nature. Bowles's muse is always loth to forget—wherever she +roam or linger—Winchester and Oxford—the Itchin and the Isis. None +educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, +who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, +and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons +are those alone who pursued their poetical studies—in translations. +They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire.</p> + +<p>But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If he has, publish it, and we shall +make him a Bishop.</p> + +<p>What shall we say of "The Pleasures of Hope?" That the harp from which +that music breathed, was an Æolian harp placed in the window of a high +hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might +be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a +magnificent aurora-borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic +march—now it swells into a holy hymn—and now it dies away +elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, +dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever +and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night—and +we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so?—In his youth Campbell +lived where "distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and +sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool—the sound as of the wheels +of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam +along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that +unaccountable county Argyllshire. The sea-roar cultivated his naturally +fine musi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>cal ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime +Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailors' sweethearts on +the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down +comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells beneath their +footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her +as if she were our own only daughter—filling our life with bliss, and +then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through +those giant woods! As for "Lochiel's Warning," there was heard the voice +of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the +Highland glooms—the Lament wails no more,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That man may not hide what God would reveal!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Navy owes much to "Ye Mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed +ships till that strain arose—but ever since in our imagination have +they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that +Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yes—in the face even of the +Metropolitan!</p> + +<p>It was said many long years ago in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, that none but +maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery +was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner—and Christopher North a +sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he +assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we +always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in +his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are +the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled—and these +qualities shine serenely in "The Pelican Island." In earnestness and +fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in +sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it +moulder—not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so +rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a +fair form laid asleep in immortality—its face wearing, day and night, +summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly—a celestial +smile. That is a true image; but is "The Pelican Island" a Great Poem? +We pause not for a reply.</p> + +<p>Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches—and one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> them, +"beautiful exceedingly" withbud, blossom, and fruit of balm and +brightness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, +hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is calm, and +ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the +sunshine, and glows wavingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the +loftiest region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, +perhaps foolish form of expression, employed at present to signify +Song-writing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever warbled, or +chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than +Thomas Moore. True that Robert Burns has indited many songs that slip +into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers +sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect +contentment. Or let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like +listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake, a laverock +in the sky. They sing in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches +them—and so did he; and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not +with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be +in Heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources +of Lyrical Poetry—when he was born a Scottish peasant. Now, Moore is an +Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and +translated—after a fashion—Anacreon. And Moore has lived much in towns +and cities—and in that society which will suffer none else to be called +good. Some advantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did—but then how +many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, +in the bondage of his poverty, was free! You see all that at a single +glance in their poetry. But all in humble life is not high—all in high +life is not low; and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in +hall—in "auld clay-bigging" as in marble palace. Burns sometimes wrote +like a mere boor—Moore has too often written like a mere man of +fashion. But take them both at their best—and both are inimitable. Both +are national poets—and who shall say, that if Moore had been born and +bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of +knowledge, and virtue, and religion as Scotland is—and surely, without +offence, we may say that it never was, and never will be—though we love +the Green Island well—that with his fine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> fancy, warm heart, and +exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as +Burns; while, take him as he is, who can deny that in richness, in +variety, in grace, and in the power of art, he is superior to the +ploughman. Of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Loves of the Angels," we defy you +to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is +easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a +Great Poem?</p> + +<p>Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here +is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his +profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the +Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. +Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, +moon, and stars, but</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To murmur by the living brooks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A music sweeter than their own."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What has been the result? Seven volumes (oh! why not seven more?) of +poetry, as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The +earth—the middle air—the sky—the heaven—the heart, mind, and soul of +man—are "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external +nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth—not even +Thomson; in imbuing her and making her pregnant with spiritualities, +till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she +had ever rejoiced in till such communion—he excels all the brotherhood. +Therein lies his especial glory, and therein the immortal evidences of +the might of his creative imagination. All men at times "muse on nature +with a poet's eye,"—but Wordsworth ever—and his soul has grown more +and more religious from such worship. Every rock is an altar—every +grove a shrine. We fear that there will be sectarians even in this +Natural Religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of +Nature—or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest +"in the metropolitan temple built in the heart of mighty poets." But has +he—even he—ever written a Great Poem? If he has—it is not "The +Excursion." Nay, "The Excursion" is not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, +all swimming in the light of poetry; some of them sweet and simple, some +elegant and graceful,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> some beautiful and most lovely, some of "strength +and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it +has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by +the numerals on the page; and the most, serious apprehensions have been +very generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and +Solitary breathe the vital air, may "The Excursion," stop where it will, +be renewed; and as in its present shape it comprehends but a Three Days' +Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion of three weeks, three months, +or three years, to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life of man is +not always limited to the term of threescore and ten years. What a +Journal might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land +overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, +not a Great Poem—nay, not a Poem at all—nor ever to be so esteemed, +till the principles on which Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are +exploded, and the very names of Art and Science smothered and lost in +the bosom of Nature from which they arose.</p> + +<p>Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and +hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and subjected +for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's +monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren +wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather +feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the +sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight +with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of +flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the +daytime—and people are often ignorant of his place in the firmament. +But he keeps shining away at his leisure, as you would know were he to +suffer eclipse. Perhaps he—the sun—is at no other time a more +delightful luminary than when he is pleased to dispense his influence +through a general haze, or mist—softening all the day till meridian is +almost like the afternoon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, bursts +into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too +become him well—whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all +round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of +temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> it reasonable to find +fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on +the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on +setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles +Coleridge. It is easy to talk—not very difficult to speechify—hard to +speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal +man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world +loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam +and Eve listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the Garden of +Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for a while, +than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stilly sound." +Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too +curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole +just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagination another—but there +cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most +cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a +divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as +one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honeymoon. Then +his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the +Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows +nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey +Davy—and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leibnitz and +Newton, though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. Besides, he +thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, +in a twinkling—and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows +you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, +till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of +fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the +faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their +functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may +dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent +enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but +think how unutterably dull are all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> the ordinary sayings and doings of +this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in +sweet delirium you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that +has fed since first it lisped on "honey-dew," and by lips that have +"breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic language, which, +all the while that it is English, is as grand as Greek and as soft as +Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is the alchymist that in his +crucible melts down hours to moments—and lo! diamonds sprinkled on a +plate of gold.</p> + +<p>What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like +Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything +else in a style of equal perfection! But pray, how does the man write +poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from +his inspired lips? Read "The Ancient Mariner," "The Nightingale," and +"Genevieve." In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the +sea—in the second, you thrill with the melodies of the woods—in the +third, earth is like heaven;—for you are made to feel that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whatever stirs this mortal frame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All are but ministers of Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And feed his sacred flame!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem? No; for besides the +Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to +which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But +why should he who loveth to take "the wings of a dove that he may flee +away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at +rest—why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above +this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder?</p> + +<p>Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the +Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into +one class himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that +not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he +elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the +Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest +compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not +to blame in taking him at his word,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> even if she had discerned no family +likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less +than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen +miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphilosophical though pensive +Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even +were there no other less patent and material than the Macadamised +turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our +living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of +them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the +different characters, customs, and manners of nations. "Joan of Arc" is +an English and French story—"Thalaba," Arabian—"Kehama," +Indian—"Madoc," Welsh and American—and "Roderick," Spanish and +Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was +a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr Southey has most +successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any +but the highest genius. In "Madoc," and especially in "Roderick," he has +relied on the truth of nature—as it is seen in the history of great +national transactions and events. In "Thalaba" and in "Kehama," though +in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he +follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of +wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power +in such different kinds of Poetry—in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a +Magician.</p> + +<p>It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge +gathered from books—and that we have but to look at the multifarious +accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are +not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there—often the raw +materials—seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into +beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own—and has +shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor +Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travellers. But had he not been a +Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How happily the years of Thalaba went by!"<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the +Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's +Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine +City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial +thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of +Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his Five +Chief Works—with the exception of "Joan of Arc," which was written in +very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthusiasm. +They are one and all National Poems—wonderfully true to the customs and +characters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the +scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises—and the Poet has +entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each +representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab—Madoc a true +Briton—King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a +personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter +confined himself in his poetry to Scotland—except in "Rokeby"—and his +might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and +romances he was at home when abroad—and nowhere else more gloriously +than with Saladin in the Desert. "Lalla Rookh" is full of brilliant +poetry; and one of the series—the "Fire-Worshippers"—is Moore's +highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental—and often in +pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the +East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one +of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is +more potent—and he was privileged to exclaim—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come, listen to a tale of times of old!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bloody altars of idolatry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And planted on its fanes triumphantly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> are original; +in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of +original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest +and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for +ever from oblivion, embalming them in the spirit of delight and of love. +Fairy Tales, or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the +holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but "Thalaba" and "Kehama" do +so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most +wonderful and wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and talismans +that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest are +ever felt to be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic +affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is +Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether +matron or maid, mother or daughter—in joy or sorrow—as they appear +before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope +and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their +path! We feel, in perusing such pictures—"Purity! thy name is woman!" +and are not these Great Poems? We are silent. But should you answer +"yes," from us in our present mood you shall receive no contradiction.</p> + +<p>The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as +delightful from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the poets of the day +have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national +characters, and events, and actions, and catastrophes. Southey has +heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his +power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal +triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel—and as +long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, +with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy +verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already +often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his +patriotism in his politics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten +her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed +again—it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the +brightest—and the past became the present. We know now the character of +our own people as it showed itself in war and peace—in palace, castle, +hall, hut,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> hovel, and shieling—through centuries of advancing +civilisation, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld +Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her +inhabitants to call her the Modern Athens. This he has effected by means +of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty +characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or +herself, but the representative—so we offer to prove if you be +sceptical—of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the +Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gypsy, from the Bruce to +the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennison. We shall never say +that Scott is Shakespeare: but we shall say that he has conceived and +created—you know the meaning of these words—as many characters—real +living flesh-and-blood human beings—naturally, truly, and consistently, +as Shakespeare; who, always transcendently great in pictures of the +passions—out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all +rational being—was—nay, do not threaten to murder us—not seldom an +imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir +Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he +had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life—he and Burns +together—and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the +Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while—and shared in the general +and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to +him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing—though more +for Scotland than any other of her poets, except the Ploughman—and that +it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. +Hence the Prose Tales—Novels—and Romances—fresh floods of light +pouring all over Scotland—and occasionally illumining England, France, +and Germany, and even Palestine—whatever land had been ennobled by +Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue.</p> + +<p>Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general, +indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing +centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, "'mang +muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that difficultly-distinguished +and very debatable district called the Borders. All at once he touched +their tombs with a divining-rod, and the turf streamed out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> ghosts—some +in woodmen's dresses—most in warrior's mail: green archers leaped forth +with yew-bow and quivers—and giants stalked shaking spears. The grey +chronicler smiled; and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the +annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The +nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors; +for those were not spectres—not they indeed—nor phantoms of the +brain—but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;—base-born +cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to +the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high-born +lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir Walter is, that he has +<i>harried</i> all Scotland. Never was there such a freebooter. He harries +all men's cattle—kills themselves off-hand, and makes bonfires of their +castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated all the land as with the +blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with their islands distinct by +midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow gloriously in the gloom; and by +the stormy splendour you even see ships, with all sails set, far at sea. +His favourite themes in prose or numerous verse are still "Knights and +Lords and mighty Earls," and their Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish—of +kings that fought for fame or freedom—of fatal Flodden and bright +Bannockburn—of the <span class="smcap">deliverer</span>. If that be not national to the teeth, +Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtæus not sprung from Sparta, and Christopher +North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, then, be cognomed by those that choose +it, the Ariosto of the North—we shall continue to call him plain Sir +Walter.</p> + +<p>Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question—has he ever +written a Great Poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not; +for he has done this—he has exhibited human life in a greater variety +of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose +name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we +tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest +genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr Faustus.</p> + +<p>"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes—beyond compare. Byron +had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as +they are, occasionally standing prominently and boldly out from the flat +surface of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> world; and in general, when his soul was up, he +described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external +world—of nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In +his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do +not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of "Childe +Harold" he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her +shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmness; but simply stating a fact. +He had something else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a +poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his +dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains. +Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a +cento—his model being Wordsworth. His merit, whatever it may be, is +limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is +not merely occasional or verbal; but all the descriptions are conceived +in the spirit of Wordsworth, coloured by it and shaped—from it they +live, and breathe, and have their being; and that so entirely, that had +"The Excursion" and "Lyrical Ballads" never been, neither had any +composition at all resembling, either in conception or execution, the +third canto of "Childe Harold." His soul, however, having been awakened +by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, +nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much fine description +pervades most of his subsequent works. He afterwards made much of what +he saw his own—and even described it after his own fashion; but a +greater in that domain was his instructor and guide—nor in his noblest +efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages, +which he had manifestly set as models before his imagination. With all +the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like +a poet of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of +them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that +burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canto, which is worth, ten +times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; +never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to +soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his +flight—that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently +cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of +perhaps a dozen stanzas,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> and these far from being of first-rate +excellence, they are found woefully wanting in the true fire. Many +passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in +thinking—at first—but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend, +not Mr Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True, +they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done +that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had +they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty +well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better +than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most +certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself +pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, +stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must +have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches +fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, +who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe +Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above +mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in +execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his +tales—the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of +Corinth," and so forth—they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate +performances—sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified—but +displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly +no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a +supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent—and in many of his +smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every +kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect.</p> + +<p>But there is another glory belonging to this age, and almost to this age +alone of our poetry—the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen +it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men; as if there +could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by sex, that they are +infinitely superior; not in understanding, thank Heaven, nor in +intellect, but in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify +and adorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this +delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worthless wretches, +that we wonder how women condescend to allow the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> world to be carried +on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of +maternal affection, which breathes as strongly in maid as in matron, and +may be beautifully seen in the child fondling its doll in its blissful +bosom. Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that interesting +speculation, suffice it for the present to say, that so far from having +no souls—a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies—women +are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they +alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception +and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetry. We—men we +mean—may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be +inspired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we sometimes—often—are truly so +inspired, and write like gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in +them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all +male rational creatures are, in the long run, vile, corrupt, and +polluted; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the +arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that +was ever iniquitously hanged for murdering what was called her poor +husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind +is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster—so is every +Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father +O'Leary to Dr Doyle. Confessions, indeed! Why, had Joseph himself +confessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's wife, she would +have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous +indignation, and so far from tearing off his garment, would not have +touched it for the whole world. But all women—till men by marriage, or +by something, if that be possible, worse even than marriage, try in vain +to reduce them nearly to their own level—are pure as dewdrops or +moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures +it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image +forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its +glory; and hence, when they write poetry, it is religious, sweet, soft, +solemn, and divine.</p> + +<p>Observe, however—to prevent all mistakes—that we speak but of British +women—and of British women of the present age. Of the German Fair Sex +we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouqué +is a worthy woman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any +allusion to Madame Genlis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French +school, who charitably adopted their own natural daughters, while other +less pious ladies, who had become mothers without being wives, sent +theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and +Matrons of this Island—and of this Age; and as it is of poetical genius +that we speak—we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia +Hemans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the +Lovely Norton; while we pronounce several other sweet-sounding Christian +surnames in whispering under-tones of affection, almost as inaudible as +the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening.</p> + +<p>Corinna and Sappho must have been women of transcendant genius so to +move Greece. For though the Greek character was most impressible and +combustible, it was so only to the finest finger and fire. In that +delightful land dunces were all dumb. Where genius alone spoke and sung +poetry, how hard to excel! Corinna and Sappho did excel—the one, it is +said, conquering Pindar—and the other all the world but Phaon.</p> + +<p>But our own Joanna has been visited with a still loftier inspiration. +She has created tragedies which Sophocles—or Euripides—nay, even +Æschylus himself, might have feared, in competition for the crown. She +is our Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and +Sir Walter truly said—let them who dare deny it—that he saw her Genius +in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna +loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the +tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, passed +among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of +the dark Strathaven Muirs.</p> + +<p>Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" said one philosophical writer. +"This will never do!" It has done—perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of +all tragedy? The Stagyrite has told us—to purify the passions by pity +and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul—till its atmosphere is +like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on +the Passions. And all that Joanna intended—and it was a great intention +greatly effected—was in her Series of Dramas to steady her purposes by +ever keeping one great end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> in view, of which the perpetual perception +could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic. +One passion was, therefore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each +glorious tragedy—sovereign sometimes by divine right—sometimes an +usurper—generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of +Hate. But in his sister—the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light +sometimes opposed in sublime contrast—and sometimes the light +swallowing up the darkness—or "smoothing its raven down till it +smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave—for the light, +unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count +Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different +the love Basil feels for Victoria from Antony's for Cleopatra! Pure, +deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to +shame, destruction, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up +to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of +glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by +many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, +sometimes a dreadful brotherhood?</p> + +<p>Do you wonder how one mind can have such vivid consciousness of the +feelings of another, while their characters are cast in such different +moulds? It is, indeed, wonderful—but the power is that of sympathy and +genius. The dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all living +things, and whose overflowing tenderness diffuses itself over the beauty +even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his creative hand the +steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood—the lust of crime in +a mind polluted with wickedness—the remorse of acts which could never +pass in thought through his imagination as his own. For, in the act of +imagination he can suppress in his mind its own peculiar feelings—its +good and gracious affections—call up from their hidden places those +elements of our being, of which the seeds were sown in him as in +all—give them unnatural magnitude and power—conceive the disorder of +passions, the perpetration of crimes, the tortures of remorse, or the +scorn of that human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and +blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into +an imaginary and momentary sympathy with the wicked, just as his mind +falls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose +character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and +workings of his mind in the spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he +knows and understands for himself what passes in the minds of others. +What is done in the highest degree by the highest genius, is done by all +of ourselves in lesser degree, and unconsciously, at every moment in our +intercourse with one another. To this kind of sympathy, so essential to +our knowledge of the human mind, and without which there can be neither +poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a largeness of heart which +willingly yields itself to conceive the feelings and states of others +whose character is utterly unlike its own, and freedom from any +inordinate overpowering passion which quenches in the mind the feelings +of nature it has already known, and places it in habitual enmity to the +affections and happiness of its kind. To paint bad passions is not to +praise them; they alone can paint them well who hate, fear, or pity +them; and therefore Baillie has done so—nay start not—better than +Byron.</p> + +<p>Well may our land be proud of such women. None such ever before adorned +her poetical annals. Glance over that most interesting volume, +"Specimens of British Poetesses," by that amiable, ingenious, and +erudite man, the Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence begins to +break towards the close of the eighteenth century! For ages on ages the +genius of English women had ever and anon been shining forth in song; +but faint though fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisoned in +clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those days bring tears to our eyes +by their simple pathos—for their poetry breathes of their own sorrows, +and shows that they were but too familiar with grief. But their strains +are mere melodies "sweetly played in tune." The deeper harmonies of +poetry seem to have been beyond their reach. The range of their power +was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchilsea—Catherine Phillips, known by +the name of Orinda—and Mrs Anne Killigrew, who, as Dryden says, was +made an angel, "in the last promotion to the skies"—showed, as they +sang on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in heaven. But what +were their hymns to those that are now warbled around us from many +sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but brighter far in their +genius, and more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> fortunate in its nurture? Poetry from female lips was +then half a wonder, and half a reproach. But now 'tis no longer +rare—not even the highest—yes, the highest—for Innocence and Purity +are of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts and feelings they +inspire, though breathed in words and tones, "gentle and low, an +excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as +the flowers beneath our feet.</p> + +<p>We have not forgotten an order of poets, peculiar, we believe, to our +own enlightened land—a high order of poets sprung from the lower orders +of the people—and not only sprung from them, but bred as well as born +in "the huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their condition by the +light of song. Such glory belongs—we believe—exclusively to this +country and to this age. Mr Southey, who in his own high genius and fame +is never insensible to the virtues of his fellow-men, however humble and +obscure the sphere in which they may move, has sent forth a volume—and +a most interesting one—on the uneducated poets; nor shall we presume to +gainsay one of his benevolent words. But this we do say, that all the +verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all the verse-writers of the +same sort of whom he does not treat, that ever existed on the face of +the earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled bundle of dry leaves or +sticks, compared with these Five—Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield, +and Clare. It must be a strong soil—the soil of this Britain—which +sends up such products; and we must not complain of the clime beneath +which they grow to such height, and bear such fruitage. The spirit of +domestic life must be sound—the natural knowledge of good and evil +high—the religion true—the laws just—and the government, on the +whole, good, methinks, that have all conspired to educate these children +of genius, whose souls Nature had framed of the finer clay.</p> + +<p>Such men seem to us more clearly and certainly men of genius, than many +who, under different circumstances, may have effected higher +achievements. For though they enjoyed in their condition ineffable +blessings to dilate their spirits, and touch them with all tenderest +thoughts, it is not easy to imagine, on the other hand, the deadening or +degrading influences to which by that condition they were inevitably +exposed, and which keep down the heaven-aspiring flame of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> genius, or +extinguish it wholly, or hold it smouldering under all sorts of rubbish. +Only look at the attempts in verse of the common run of clodhoppers. Buy +a few ballads from the wall or stall—and you groan to think that you +have been born—such is the mess of mire and filth which often, without +the slightest intention of offence, those rural, city, or suburban bards +of the lower orders prepare for boys, virgins, and matrons, who all +devour it greedily, without suspicion. Strange it is that even in that +mural minstrelsy, occasionally occurs a phrase or line, and even stanza, +sweet and simple, and to nature true; but consider it in the light of +poetry read, recited, and sung by the people, and you might well be +appalled by the revelation therein made of the tastes, feelings, and +thoughts of the lower orders. And yet in the midst of all the popularity +of such productions, the best of Burns's poems, his "Cottar's Saturday +Night," and most delicate of his songs, are still more popular, and read +by the same classes with a still greater eagerness of delight. Into this +mystery we shall not now inquire; but we mention it now merely to show +how divine a thing true genius is, which, burning within the bosoms of a +few favourite sons of nature, guards them from all such pollution, lifts +them up above it all, purifies their whole being, and without consuming +their family affections or friendships, or making them unhappy with +their lot, and disgusted with all about them, reveals to them all that +is fair and bright and beautiful in feeling and in imagination, makes +them very poets indeed, and should fortune favour, and chance and +accident, gains for them wide over the world the glory of a poet's name.</p> + +<p>From all such evil influences incident to their condition—and we are +now speaking but of the evil—the Five emerged; and first and +foremost—Burns. Our dearly beloved Thomas Carlyle is reported to have +said at a dinner given to Allan Cunningham in Dumfries, that Burns was +not only one of the greatest of poets, but likewise of philosophers. We +hope not. What he did may be told in one short sentence. His genius +purified and ennobled in his imagination and in his heart the character +and condition of the Scottish peasantry—and reflected them, ideally +true to nature, in the living waters of Song. That is what he did; but +to do that, did not require the highest powers of the poet and the +philosopher. Nay, had he marvellously possessed them, he never would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> +have written a single line of the poetry of the late Robert Burns. Thank +Heaven for not having made him such a man—but merely the Ayrshire +Ploughman. He was called into existence for a certain work, for the +fulness of time was come—but he was neither a Shakespeare, nor a Scott, +nor a Goethe; and therefore he rejoiced in writing the "Saturday Night," +and "The Twa Dogs," and "The Holy Fair," and "O' a' the Airts the Win' +can blaw," and eke "The Vision." But forbid it, all ye Gracious Powers! +that we should quarrel with Thomas Carlyle—and that, too, for calling +Robert Burns one of the greatest of poets and philosophers.</p> + +<p>Like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, we behold Burns in his golden +prime; and glory gleams from the Peasant's head, far and wide over +Scotland. See the shadow tottering to the tomb! frenzied with fears of a +prison—for some five-pound debt—existing, perhaps, but in his diseased +imagination—for, alas! sorely diseased it was, and he too, at last, +seemed somewhat insane. He escapes that disgrace in the grave. Buried +with his bones be all remembrances of his miseries! But the spirit of +song, which was his true spirit, unpolluted and unfallen, lives, and +breathes, and has its being, in the peasant-life of Scotland; his songs, +which are as household and sheepfold words, consecrated by the charm +that is in all the heart's purest affections, love and pity, and the joy +of grief, shall never decay, till among the people have decayed the +virtues which they celebrate, and by which they were inspired; and +should some dismal change in the skies ever overshadow the sunshine of +our national character, and savage storms end in sullen stillness, which +is moral death, in the poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands will +see how noble was once the degenerated race that may then be looking +down disconsolately on the dim grass of Scotland with the unuplifted +eyes of cowards and slaves.</p> + +<p>The truth ought always to be spoken; and therefore we say that in fancy +James Hogg—in spite of his name and his teeth—was not inferior to +Robert Burns—and why not? The Forest is a better schoolroom for Fancy +than ever Burns studied in; it overflowed with poetical traditions. But +comparisons are always odious; and the great glory of James is, that he +is as unlike Robert as ever one poet was unlike another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> + +<p>Among hills that once were a forest, and still bear that name, and by +the side of a river not unknown in song, lying in his plaid on a brae +among the "woolly people," behold that true son of genius—The Ettrick +Shepherd. We are never so happy as when praising James; but pastoral +poets are the most incomprehensible of God's creatures; and here is one +of the best of them all, who confesses the "Chaldee" and denies the +"Noctes!"</p> + +<p>"The Queen's Wake" is a garland of fair forest flowers, bound with a +band of rushes from the moor. It is not a poem—not it—nor was it +intended to be so; you might as well call a bright bouquet of flowers a +flower, which, by the by, we do in Scotland. Some of the ballads are +very beautiful; one or two even splendid; most of them spirited; and the +worst far better than the best that ever was written by any bard in +danger of being a blockhead. "Kilmeny" alone places our (ay, <i>our</i>) +Shepherd among the Undying Ones. London soon loses all memory of lions, +let them visit her in the shape of any animal they please. But the Heart +of the Forest never forgets. It knows no such word as absence. The Death +of a Poet there is but the beginning of a Life of Fame. His songs no +more perish than do flowers. There are no Annuals in the Forest. All are +perennial; or if they do indeed die, their fadings away are invisible in +the constant succession—the sweet unbroken series of everlasting bloom. +So will it be in his native haunts with the many songs of the Ettrick +Shepherd. The lochs may be drained—corn may grow where once the Yarrow +flowed—nor is such change much more unlikely than in the olden time +would have been thought the extirpation of all the vast oak-woods, where +the deer trembled to fall into the den of the wolf, and the wild boar +farrowed beneath the eagle's eyrie. All extinct now! But obsolete never +shall be the Shepherd's plaintive or pawky, his melancholy or merry, +lays. The ghost of "Mary Lee" will be seen in the moonlight coming down +the hills; the "Witch of Fife" on the clouds will still bestride her +besom; and the "Gude Grey Cat" will mew in imagination, were even the +last mouse on his last legs, and the feline species swept off by war, +pestilence, and famine, and heard to purr no more!</p> + +<p>It is here where Burns was weakest, that the Shepherd is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> strongest—the +world of shadows. The airy beings that to the impassioned soul of Burns +seemed cold, bloodless, unattractive, rise up lovely in their own silent +domains, before the dreaming fancy of the tender-hearted Shepherd. The +still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed all +his days, inspired him with ever-brooding visions of Fairy Land, till, +as he lay musing on the brae, the world of shadows seemed, in the clear +depths, a softened reflection of real life, like the hills and heavens +in the water of his native lake. When he speaks of Fairy Land, his +language becomes aerial as the very voice of the fairy people, serenest +images rise up with the music of the verse, and we almost believe in the +being of those unlocalised realms of peace, and of which he sings like a +native minstrel.</p> + +<p>Yes, James—thou wert but a poor shepherd to the last—poor in this +world's goods—though Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie—given +thee by the best of Dukes—with its few laigh sheep-braes—its somewhat +stony hayfield or two—its pasture where Crummie might unhungered +graze—nyuck for the potato's bloomy or ploomy shaws—and path-divided +from the porch the garden, among whose flowers "wee Jamie" played. But +nature had given thee, to console thy heart in all disappointments from +the "false smiling of fortune beguiling," a boon which thou didst hug to +thy heart with transport on the darkest day—the "gift o' genie," and +the power of immortal song.</p> + +<p>And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd been just—been generous—as +she was—or was not—to the Ayrshire peasant?—has she, in her conduct +to him, shown her contrition for her sin—whatever that may have +been—to Burns? It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the feathered +head—and gentility turns away her painted cheek from the Mountain Bard; +but when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever such votaries devoutly +worship? Cold, false, and hollow, ever has been their admiration of +genius—and different, indeed, from their evanescent ejaculations, has +ever been the enduring voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But +Scott, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Byron, and other great bards, +have all loved the Shepherd's lays—and Joanna the palm-crowned, and +Felicia the muse's darling, and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all +the other fair female spirits of song. And in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> his native land, all +hearts that love her streams, and her hills, and her cottages, and her +kirks, the bee-humming garden and the primrose-circled fold, the white +hawthorn and the green fairy-knowe, all delight in "Kilmeny" and "Mary +Lee," and in many another vision that visited the Shepherd in the +Forest.</p> + +<p>And what can surpass many of the Shepherd's songs? The most undefinable +of all undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are surely—Songs. They +seem to start up indeed from the dew-sprinkled soil of a poet's soul, +like flowers; the first stanza being root, the second leaf, the third +bud, and all the rest blossom, till the song is like a stalk laden with +its own beauty, and laying itself down in languid delight on the soft +bed of moss—song and flower alike having the same "dying fall!"</p> + +<p>A fragment! And the more piteous because a fragment. Go in search of the +pathetic, and you will find it tear-steeped, sigh-breathed, +moan-muttered, and groaned in fragments. The poet seems often struck +dumb by woe—his heart feels that suffering is at its acme—and that he +should break off and away from a sight too sad to be longer looked +on—haply too humiliating to be disclosed. So, too, it sometimes is with +the beautiful. The soul in its delight seeks to escape from the emotion +that oppresses it—is speechless—and the song falls mute. Such is +frequently the character—and the origin of that character—of our auld +Scottish Sangs. In their mournfulness are they not almost like the wail +of some bird distracted on the bush from which its nest has been +harried, and then suddenly flying away for ever into the woods? In their +joyfulness, are they not almost like the hymn of some bird, that +love-stricken suddenly darts from the tree-top down to the caresses that +flutter through the spring? And such, too, are often the airs to which +those dear auld sangs are sung. From excess of feeling—fragmentary; or +of one divine part to which genius may be defied to conceive another, +because but one hour in all time could have given it birth.</p> + +<p>You may call this pure nonsense—but 'tis so pure that you need not fear +to swallow it. All great song-writers, nevertheless, have been great +thieves. Those who had the blessed fate to flourish first—to be born +when "this auld cloak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> was new,"—the cloak we mean which nature +wears—scrupled not to creep upon her as she lay asleep beneath the +shadow of some single tree among</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The grace of forest woods decay'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pastoral melancholy,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and to steal the very pearls out of her hair—out of the silken snood +which enamoured Pan himself had not untied in the Golden Age. Or if she +ventured, as sometimes she did, to walk along the highways of the earth, +they robbed her in the face of day of her dew-wrought reticule—without +hurting, however, the hand from which they brushed that net of gossamer.</p> + +<p>Then came the Silver Age of Song, the age in which we now live—and the +song-singers were thieves still—stealing and robbing from them who had +stolen and robbed of old; yet, how account you for this phenomenon—all +parties remain richer than ever—and Nature, especially, after all this +thieving and robbery, and piracy and plunder, many million times richer +than the day on which she received her dowry,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The bridal of the earth and sky;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and with "golden store" sufficient in its scatterings to enable all the +sons of genius she will ever bear, to "set up for themselves" in poetry, +accumulating capital upon capital, till each is a Crœsus, rejoicing +to lend it out without any other interest than cent per cent, paid in +sighs, smiles, and tears, and without any other security than the +promise of a quiet eye,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That broods and sleeps on its own heart!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Amongst the most famous thieves in our time have been Rob, James, and +Allan. Burns never saw or heard a jewel or tune of a thought or a +feeling, but he immediately made it his own—that is, stole it. He was +too honest a man to refrain from such thefts. The thoughts and +feelings—to whom by divine right did they belong? To Nature. But Burns +beheld them "waif and stray," and in peril of being lost for ever. He +seized then on those "snatches of old songs," wavering away into the +same oblivion that lies on the graves of the nameless bards who first +gave them being; and now, spiritually interfused with his own lays, they +are secured against decay—and like them immortal. So hath the Shepherd +stolen many of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> the Flowers of the Forest—whose beauty had breathed +there ever since Flodden's fatal overthrow; but they had been long +fading and pining away in the solitary places, wherein so many of their +kindred had utterly disappeared, and beneath the restoring light of his +genius their bloom and their balm were for ever renewed. But the thief +of all thieves is the Nithsdale and Galloway thief—called by Sir +Walter, most characteristically, "Honest Allan!" Thief and forger as he +is—we often wonder why he is permitted to live. Many is the sweet +stanza he has stolen from Time—that silly old carle who kens not even +his own—many the lifelike line—and many the strange single word that +seems to possess the power of all the parts of speech. And, having +stolen them, to what use did he turn the treasures? Why, unable to give +back every man his own—for they were all dead, buried, and +forgotten—by a potent prayer he evoked from his Pool-Palace, +overshadowed by the Dalswinton woods, the Genius of the Nith, to +preserve the gathered flowers of song for ever unwithered, for that they +all had grown ages ago beneath and around the green shadows of Criffel, +and longed now to be embalmed in the purity of the purest river that +Scotland sees flowing in unsullied silver to the sea. But the Genius of +the Nith—frowning and smiling—as he looked upon his son alternately in +anger, love, and pride—refused the votive offering, and told him to be +gone; for that he—the Genius—was not a Cromek—and could distinguish +with half an eye what belonged to antiquity, from what had undergone, in +Allan's hands, change into "something rich and rare;" and above all, +from what had been blown to life that very year by the breath of Allan's +own genius, love-inspired by "his ain lassie," the "lass that he loe'd +best," springing from seeds itself had sown, and cherished by the dews +of the same gracious skies, that filled with motion and music the +transparency of the river-god's never-failing urn.</p> + +<p>We love Allan's "Maid of Elvar." It beats with a fine, free, bold, and +healthful spirit. Along with the growth of the mutual love of Eustace +and Sybil, he paints peasant-life with a pen that reminds us of the +pencil of Wilkie. He is as familiar with it all as Burns; and Burns +would have perused with tears many of these pictures, even the most +cheerful—for the flood-gates of Robin's heart often suddenly flung +them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>selves open to a touch, while a rushing gush—wondering gazers knew +not why—bedimmed the lustre of his large black eyes. Allan gives us +descriptions of Washings and Watchings o' claes, as Homer has done +before him in the Odyssey, and that other Allan in the Gentle +Shepherd—of Kirks, and Christenings, and Halloweens, and other +Festivals. Nor has he feared to string his lyre—why should he?—to such +themes as the Cottar's Saturday Night—and the simple ritual of our +faith, sung and said</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In some small kirk upon the sunny brae,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That stands all by itself on some sweet Sabbath-day."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ay, many are the merits of this "Rustic Tale." To appreciate them +properly, we must carry along with us, during the perusal of the poem, a +right understanding and feeling of that pleasant epithet—Rustic. +Rusticity and Urbanity are polar opposites—and there lie between many +million modes of Manners, which you know are Minor Morals. But not to +puzzle a subject in itself sufficiently simple, the same person may be +at once rustic and urbane, and that too, either in his character of man +or of poet, or in his twofold capacity of both; for observe that, though +you may be a man without being a poet, we defy you to be a poet without +being a man. A Rustic is a clodhopper; an Urbane is a paviour. But it is +obvious that the paviour in a field hops the clod; that the clodhopper +in a street paces the pavé. At the same time, it is equally obvious that +the paviour, in hopping the clod, performs the feat with a sort of city +smoke, which breathes of bricks; that the clodhopper, in pacing the +pavé, overcomes the difficulty with a kind of country air, that is +redolent of broom. Probably, too, Urbanus through a deep fallow is seen +ploughing his way in pumps; Rusticus along the shallow stones is heard +clattering on clogs. But to cease pursuing the subject through all its +variations, suffice it for the present (for we perceive that we must +resume the discussion another time), to say, that Allan Cunningham is a +living example and lively proof of the truth of our Philosophy—it being +universally allowed in the best circles of town and country, that he is +an <span class="smcap">Urbane Rustic</span>.</p> + +<p>Now, that is the man for our love and money, when the work to be done is +a Poem on Scottish Life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> + +<p>We can say of Allan what Allan says of Eustace,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Far from the pasture moor<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He comes; the fragrance of the dale and wood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is scenting all his garments, green and good."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The rural imagery is fresh and fair; not copied Cockney wise, from +pictures in oil or water-colours—from mezzotintoes or line-engravings— +but from the free open face of day, or the dim retiring face of eve, or +the face, "black but comely," of night—by sunlight or moonlight, ever +Nature. Sometimes he gives us—Studies. Small, sweet, sunny spots of +still or dancing day-stream-gleam—grove-glow—sky-glimpse—or cottage-roof, +in the deep dell sending up its smoke to the high heavens. But usually +Allan paints with a sweeping pencil. He lays down his landscapes, +stretching wide and far, and fills them with woods and rivers, hills and +mountains, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle; and of all sights in +life and nature, none so dear to his eyes as the golden grain, ebbing +like tide of sea before a close long line of glancing sickles; no sound +so sweet as—rising up into the pure harvest-air, frost-touched though +sunny—beneath the shade of hedgerow-tree, after their mid-day meal, the +song of the jolly reapers. But are not his pictures sometimes too +crowded? No. For there lies the power of the pen over the pencil. The +pencil can do much, the pen everything; the Painter is imprisoned within +a few feet of canvass, the Poet commands the horizon with an eye that +circumnavigates the globe; even that glorious pageant, a painted +Panorama, is circumscribed by bounds, over which imagination, feeling +them all too narrow, is uneasy till she soars; but the Poet's Panorama +is commensurate with the soul's desires, and may include the Universe.</p> + +<p>This Poem reads as if it had been written during the "dewy hour of +prime." Allan must be an early riser. But, if not so now, some forty +years ago he was up every morning with the lark,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Walking to labour by that cheerful song,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>away up the Nith, through the Dalswinton woods; or, for anything we know +to the contrary, intersecting with stone-walls, that wanted not their +scientific coping, the green pastures of Sanquhar. Now he is familiar +with Chantrey's form-full statues; then, with the shapeless cairn on the +moor, the rude headstone on the martyr's grave. And thus it is that the +present has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> given him power over the past—that a certain grace and +delicacy, inspired by the pursuits of his prime, blend with the creative +dreams that are peopled with the lights and shadows of his youth—that +the spirit of the old ballad breathes still in its strong simplicity +through the composition of his "New Poem"—and that art is seen +harmoniously blending there with nature.</p> + +<p>We have said already that we delight in the story; for it belongs to an +"order of <i>fables</i> grey," which has been ever dear to Poets. Poets have +ever loved to bring into the pleasant places and paths of lowly life, +persons (we eschew all manner of <i>personages</i> and <i>heroes</i> and +<i>heroines</i>, especially with the epithet "<i>our</i>" prefixed) whose native +lot lay in a higher sphere: for they felt that by such contrast, natural +though rare, a beautiful light was mutually reflected from each +condition, and that sacred revelations were thereby made of human +character, of which all that is pure and profound appertains equally to +all estates of this our mortal being, provided only that happiness knows +from whom it comes, and that misery and misfortune are alleviated by +religion. Thus Electra appears before us at her Father's Tomb, the +virgin-wife of the peasant Auturgus, who reverently abstains from the +intact body of the daughter of the king. Look into Shakespeare. Rosalind +was not so lovable at court as in the woods. Her beauty might have been +more brilliant, and her conversation too, among lords and ladies; but +more touching both, because true to tenderer nature, when we see and +hear her in dialogue with the neat-herdess—<span class="smcap">Rosalind</span> and <i>Audrey!</i> And +trickles not the tear down thy cheek, fair reader—burns not the heart +within thee, when thou thinkest of Florizel and Perdita on the Farm in +the Forest?</p> + +<p>Nor from those visions need we fear to turn to Sybil Lesley. We see her +in Elvar Tower, a high-born Lady—in Dalgonar Glen, a humble bondmaid. +The change might have been the reverse—as with the lassie beloved by +the Gentle Shepherd. Both are best. The bust that gloriously set off the +burnishing of the rounded silk, not less divinely shrouded its +enchantment beneath the swelling russet. Graceful in bower or hall were +those arms, and delicate those fingers when moving white along the rich +embroidery, or across the strings of the sculptured harp; nor less so +when before the cottage door they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> woke the homely music of the humming +wheel, or when on the brae beside the Pool, they playfully intertwined +their softness with the new-washed fleeces, or when among the laughing +lasses at the Linn, not loth were they to lay out the coarse linen in +the bleaching sunshine, conspicuous She the while among the rustic +beauties, as was Nausicaa of old among her nymphs at the Fountain.</p> + +<p>We are in love with Sybil Lesley. She is full of <i>spunk</i>. That is not a +vulgar word; or if it have been so heretofore, henceforth let it cease +to be so, and be held synonymous with spirit. She shows it in her +defiance of Sir Ralph on the shore of Solway—in her flight from the +Tower of Elvar; and the character she displays then and there, prepares +us for the part she plays in the peasant's cot in the glen of Dalgonar. +We are not surprised to see her take so kindly to the duties of a rustic +service; for we call to mind how she sat among the humble good-folks in +the hall, when Thrift and Waste figured in that rude but wise Morality, +and how the gracious lady showed she sympathised with the cares and +contentments of lowly life.</p> + +<p>England has singled out John Clare from among her humble sons (Ebenezer +Elliott belongs altogether to another order)—as the most conspicuous +for poetical genius, next to Robert Bloomfield. That is a proud +distinction—whatever critics may choose to say; and we cordially +sympathise with the beautiful expression of his gratitude to the Rural +Muse, when he says—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Like as the little lark from off its nest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beside the mossy hill, awakes in glee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To seek the morning's throne, a merry guest—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So do I seek thy shrine, if that may be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To win by new attempts another smile from thee."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now, England is out of all sight the most beautiful country in the whole +world—Scotland alone excepted—and, thank heaven, they two are one +kingdom—divided by no line, either real or imaginary—united by the +Tweed. We forget at this moment—if ever we knew it—the precise number +of her counties; but we remember that one and all of them—"alike, but +oh! how different"—are fit birthplaces and abodes for poets. Some of +them, we know well, are flat—and we in Scot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>land, with hills or +mountains for ever before our eyes, are sometimes disposed to find fault +with them on that ground—as if nature were not at liberty to find her +own level. Flat indeed! So is the sea. Wait till you have walked a few +miles in among the Fens—and you will be wafted along like a little +sail-boat, up and down undulations green and gladsome as waves. Think ye +there is no scenery there? Why, you are in the heart of a vast +metropolis!—yet have not the sense to see the silent city of mole-hills +sleeping in the sun. Call that pond a lake—and by a word how is it +transfigured? Now you discern flowers unfolding on its low banks and +braes—and the rustle of the rushes is like that of a tiny forest—how +appropriate to the wild! Gaze—and to your gaze what colouring grows! +Not in green only, or in russet brown, doth nature choose to be +apparelled in this her solitude—nor ever again will you call her dreary +here—for see how every one of those fifty flying showers lightens up +its own line of beauty along the plain—instantaneous as dreams—or +stationary as waking thought—till, ere you are aware that all was +changing, the variety has all melted away into one harmonious glow, +attempered by that rainbow.</p> + +<p>Let these few words suffice to show that we understand and feel the +flattest—dullest—tamest places, as they are most ignorantly +called—that have yet been discovered in England. Not in such did John +Clare abide—but many such he hath traversed; and his studies have been +from childhood upwards among scenes which to ordinary eyes might seem to +afford small scope and few materials for contemplation. But his are not +ordinary eyes—but gifted; and in every nook and corner of his own +county the Northamptonshire Peasant has, during some twoscore years and +more, every spring found without seeking either some lovelier aspect of +"the old familiar faces," or some new faces smiling upon him, as if +mutual recognition kindled joy and amity in their hearts.</p> + +<p>John Clare often reminds us of James Grahame. They are two of our most +artless poets. Their versification is mostly very sweet, though rather +flowing forth according to a certain fine natural sense of melody, than +constructed on any principles of music. So, too, with their imagery, +which seems seldom selected with much care; so that, while it is always +true to nature, and often possesses a charm from its appearing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> rise +up of itself, and with little or no effort on the poet's part to form a +picture, it is not unfrequently chargeable with repetition—sometimes, +perhaps, with a sameness which, but for the inherent interest in the +objects themselves, might be felt a little wearisome—there is so much +still life. They are both most affectionately disposed towards all +manner of birds. Grahame's "Birds of Scotland" is a delightful poem; yet +its best passages are not superior to some of Clare's about the same +charming creatures—and they are both ornithologists after Audubon's and +our own heart. Were all that has been well written in English verse +about birds to be gathered together, what a sweet set of volumes it +would make! And how many, think ye—three, six, twelve? That would be +indeed an aviary—the only one we can think of with pleasure—out of the +hedgerows and the woods. Tories as we are, we never see a wild bird on +the wing without inhaling in silence "the Cause of Liberty all over the +world!" We feel then that it is indeed "like the air we breathe—without +it we die." So do they. We have been reading lately, for a leisure hour +or two of an evening—a volume by a worthy German, Doctor Bechstein—on +Cage Birds. The slave-dealer never for a moment suspects the wickedness +of kidnapping young and old—crimping them for life—teaching them to +draw water—and, <i>oh nefas!</i> to sing! He seems to think that only in +confinement do they fulfil the ends of their existence—even the +skylark. Yet he sees them, one and all, subject to the most miserable +diseases—and rotting away within the wires. Why could not the Doctor +have taken a stroll into the country once or twice a-week, and in one +morning or evening hour laid in sufficient music to serve him during the +intervening time, without causing a single bosom to be ruffled for his +sake? Shoot them—spit them—pie them—pickle them—eat them—but +imprison them not; we speak as Conservatives—murder rather than immure +them—for more forgivable far it is to cut short their songs at the +height of glee, than to protract them in a rueful simulation of music, +in which you hear the same sweet notes, but if your heart thinks at all, +"a voice of weeping and of loud lament," all unlike, alas! to the +congratulation that from the free choirs is ringing so exultingly in +their native woods.</p> + +<p>How prettily Clare writes of the "insect youth."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And happy units of a numerous herd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where they fly for dinner no one knows—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dewdrops feed them not—they love the shine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of noon, whose sons may bring them golden wine.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All day they're playing in their Sunday dress—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When night repose, for they can do no less;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then to the heathbell's purple hood they fly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And like to princes in their slumbers lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In silken beds and roomy painted hall.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So merrily they spend their summer-day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now in the cornfields, now in the new-mown hay.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One almost fancies that such happy things,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With colour'd hoods and richly-burnish'd wings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are fairy folk in splendid masquerade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Time has been—nor yet very long ago—when such unpretending poetry as +this—humble indeed in every sense, but nevertheless the product of +genius which speaks for itself audibly and clearly in lowliest +strains—would not have passed by unheeded or unbeloved; nowadays it +may, to many who hold their heads high, seem of no more worth than an +old song. But as Wordsworth says,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Pleasures newly found are sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though they lie about our feet;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and if stately people would but stoop and look about their paths, which, +do not always run along the heights, they would often make discoveries +of what concerned them more than speculations among the stars.</p> + +<p>It is not to be thought, however, that the Northamptonshire Peasant does +not often treat earnestly of the common pleasures and pains, the cares +and occupations, of that condition of life in which he was born, and has +passed all his days. He knows them well, and has illustrated them well, +though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> seldomer in his later than in his earlier poems; and we cannot +help thinking that he might greatly extend his popularity, which in +England is considerable, by devoting his Rural Muse to subjects lying +within his ken, and of everlasting interest. Bloomfield's reputation +rests on his "Farmer's Boy"—on some exquisite passages in "News from +the Farm"—and on some of the tales and pictures in his "May-day with +the Muses." His smaller poems are very inferior to those of Clare—but +the Northamptonshire Peasant has written nothing in which all honest +English hearts must delight, at all comparable with those truly rural +compositions of the Suffolk shoemaker. It is in his power to do +so—would he but earnestly set himself to the work. He must be more +familiar with all the ongoings of rural life than his compeer could have +been; nor need he fear to tread again the same ground, for it is as new +as if it had never been touched, and will continue to be so till the end +of time. The soil in which the native virtues of the English character +grow, is unexhausted and inexhaustible; let him break it up on any spot +he chooses, and poetry will spring to light like clover from lime. Nor +need he fear being an imitator. His mind is an original one, his most +indifferent verses prove it; for though he must have read much poetry +since his earlier day—doubtless all our best modern poetry—he retains +his own style, which, though it be not marked by any very strong +characteristics, is yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it belongs to +himself, and is a natural gift. Pastorals—eclogues—and idyls—in a +hundred forms—remain to be written by such poets as he and his +brethren; and there can be no doubt at all that, if he will scheme +something of the kind, and begin upon it, without waiting to know fully +or clearly what he may be intending, before three winters, with their +long nights, are gone, he will find himself in possession of more than +mere materials for a volume of poems that will meet with general +acceptation, and give him a permanent place by the side of him he loves +so well—Robert Bloomfield.</p> + +<p>Ebenezer Elliott (of whom more another day)<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> claims with pride to be +the Poet of the Poor—and the poor might well be proud, did they know +it, that they have such a poet. Not a few of them know it now, and many +will know it in future; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>for a muse of fire like his will yet send its +illumination "into dark deep holds." May it consume all the noxious +vapours that infest such regions—and purify the atmosphere—till the +air breathed there be the breath of life. But the poor have other poets +besides him—Crabbe and Burns. We again mention their names—and no +more. Kindly spirits were they both; but Burns had experienced all his +poetry—and therefore his poetry is an embodiment of national character. +We say it not in disparagement or reproof of Ebenezer—conspicuous over +all—for let all men speak as they think or feel—but how gentle in all +his noblest inspirations was Robin! He did not shun sins or sorrows; but +he told the truth of the poor man's life, when he showed that it was, on +the whole, virtuous and happy—bear witness those immortal strains, "The +Twa Dogs," "The Vision," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the sangs voiced +all braid Scotland thorough by her boys and virgins, say rather her lads +and lasses—while the lark sings aloft and the linnet below, the mavis +in the golden broom accompanying the music in the golden cloud. We +desire—not in wilful delusion, but in earnest hope, in devout +trust—that poetry shall show that the paths of the peasant poor are +paths of pleasantness and peace. If they should seem in that light even +pleasanter and more peaceful than they ever now can be below the sun, +think not that any evil can arise "to mortal man who liveth here by +toil" from such representations—for imagination and reality are not two +different things—they blend in life; but there the darker shadows do +often, alas! prevail—and sometimes may be felt even by the hand; +whereas in poetry the lights are triumphant—and gazing on the glory +men's hearts burn within them—and they carry the joy in among their own +griefs, till despondency gives way to exultation, and the day's darg of +this worky world is lightened by a dawn of dreams.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Professor Wilson's Works</i>, vol. vi., page 224.</p></div> + +<p>This is the effect of all good poetry—according to its power—of the +poetry of Robert Bloomfield as of the poetry of Robert Burns. John +Clare, too, is well entitled to a portion of such praise; and therefore +his name deserves to become a household word in the dwellings of the +rural poor. Living in leisure among the scenes in which he once toiled, +may he once more contemplate them all without disturbance. Having lost +none of his sympathies, he has learnt to refine them all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> and see into +their source—and wiser in his simplicity than they who were formerly +his yoke-fellows are in theirs, he knows many things well which they +know imperfectly or not at all, and is privileged therein to be their +teacher. Surely in an age when the smallest contribution to science is +duly estimated, and useful knowledge not only held in honour but +diffused, poetry ought not to be despised, more especially when +emanating from them who belong to the very condition which they seek to +illustrate, and whose ambition it is to do justice to its natural +enjoyments and appropriate virtues. In spite of all they have suffered, +and still suffer, the peasantry of England are a race that may be +regarded with better feelings than pride. We look forward confidently to +the time when education—already in much good—and, if the plans of the +wisest counsellors prevail, about to become altogether good—will raise +at once their condition and their character. The Government has its +duties to discharge—clear as day. And what is not in the power of the +gentlemen of England? Let them exert that power to the utmost—and then +indeed they will deserve the noble name of "Aristocracy." We speak not +thus in reproach—for they better deserve that name than the same order +in any other country; but in no other country are such interests given +to that order in trust—and as they attend to that trust is the glory or +the shame, the blessing or the curse, of their high estate.</p> + +<p>But let us retrace our footsteps in moralising mood, not unmixed with +sadness—to the Mausoleum of Burns. Scotland is abused by England for +having starved Burns to death, or for having suffered him to drink +himself to death, out of a cup filled to the brim with bitter +disappointment and black despair. England lies. There is our gage-glove, +let her take it up, and then for mortal combat with sword and +spear—only not on horseback—for, for reasons on which it would be idle +to be more explicit, we always fight now on foot, and have sent our high +horse to graze all the rest of his life on the mountains of the moon. +Well then, Scotland met Burns, on his first sunburst, with one exulting +acclaim. Scotland bought and read his poetry, and Burns, for a poor man, +became rich—rich to his heart's desire—and reached the summit of his +ambition, in the way of this world's life, in a—Farm. Blithe Robin +would have scorned "an awmous" from any hands but from those of nature; +nor in those days needed he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> help from woman-born. True, that times +began by-and-by to go rather hard with him, and he with them; for his +mode of life was not</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and as we sow we must reap. His day of life began to darken ere +meridian—and the darkness doubtless had brought disturbance before it +had been perceived by any eyes but his own—for people are always +looking to themselves and their own lot; and how much mortal misery may +for years be daily depicted in the face, figure, or manners even of a +friend, without our seeing or suspecting it! Till all at once he makes a +confession, and we then know that he has been long numbered among the +most wretched of the wretched—the slave of his own sins and sorrows—or +thralled beneath those of another, to whom fate may have given sovereign +power over his whole life. Well, then—or rather ill, then—Burns +behaved as most men do in misery,—and the farm going to ruin—that is, +crop and stock to pay the rent—he desired to be, and was made—an +Exciseman. And for that—you ninny—you are whinnying scornfully at +Scotland! Many a better man than yourself—beg your pardon—has been, +and is now, an Exciseman. Nay, to be plain with you—we doubt if your +education has been sufficiently intellectual for an Exciseman. We never +heard it said of you,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And even the story ran that he could gauge."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Burns then was made what he desired to be—what he was fit for, though +you are not—and what was in itself respectable—an Exciseman. His +salary was not so large certainly as that of the Bishop of Durham—or +even of London—but it was certainly larger than that of many a curate +at that time doing perhaps double or treble duty in those dioceses, +without much audible complaint on their part, or outcry from Scotland +against blind and brutal English bishops, or against beggarly England, +for starving her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or erudition +adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, it is true, at the age of +thirty-seven; on the same day died an English curate we could name, a +surpassing scholar, and of stainless virtue, blind, palsied, "old and +miserably poor"—without as much money as would bury him; and no wonder, +for he never had the salary of a Scotch Exciseman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> + +<p>Two blacks—nay twenty—won't make a white. True—but one black is as +black as another—and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse +with impunity the Northern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us +knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield? He was +not in genius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns—but he was +beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen +produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker +that ever handled an awl. The "Farmer's Boy" is a wonderful poem—and +will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield +in comfort, and scatter flowers along the smooth and sunny path that led +him to the grave? No. He had given him by some minister or other, we +believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other—most +uncongenial with all his nature and all his habits—of which the shabby +salary was insufficient to purchase for his family even the bare +necessaries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a +sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be +made by narrowest circumstances—and all the while Englishmen were +scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that +at his own earnest desire made Burns an Exciseman. Nay, when Southey, +late in Bloomfield's life, and when it was drawing mournfully to a +close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five +pounds, how many purse-strings were untied? how much fine gold was +poured out for the indigent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles the +sum out of sight—for it was not sufficient to have bought the +manumission of an old negro slave.</p> + +<p>It was no easy matter to deal rightly with such a man as Burns. In those +disturbed and distracted times, still more difficult was it to carry +into execution any designs for his good—and much was there even to +excuse his countrymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil +eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, +indeed, would it have been to make him happy—but he was as much +forgotten as if he had been dead; and when he died—did England mourn +over him—or, after having denied him bread, give him so much as a +stone? No. He dropt into the grave with no other lament we ever heard of +but a few copies of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> poorish verses in some of the Annuals, and seldom +or never now does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie! well may the +white rose blush red—and the red rose turn pale. Let England then leave +Scotland to her shame about Burns; and, thinking of her own treatment of +Bloomfield, cover her own face with both her hands, and confess that it +was pitiful. At least, if she will not hang down her head in humiliation +for her own neglect of her own "poetic child," let her not hold it high +over Scotland for the neglect of hers—palliated as that neglect was by +many things—and since, in some measure, expiated by a whole nation's +tears shed over her great poet's grave.</p> + +<p>What! not a word for Allan Ramsay? Theocritus was a pleasant Pastoral, +and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls together +are not equal in worth to the "Gentle Shepherd." Habbie's Howe is a +hallowed place now among the green airy Pentlands. Sacred for ever the +solitary murmur of that waterfa'!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A flowerie howm, between twa verdant braes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where lassies use to wash and bleach their claes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A trotting burnie, wimpling through the ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its channel pebbles, shining, smooth, and round:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Twill please your eye, then gratify your ear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While Jenny what she wishes discommends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Meg, with better sense, true love defends!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"About them and siclike" is the whole poem. Yet "faithful love shall +memorise the song." Without any scenery but that of rafters, which +overhead fancy may suppose a grove, 'tis even yet sometimes acted by +rustics in the barn, though nothing on this earth will ever persuade a +low-born Scottish lass to take a part in a play; while delightful is +felt, even by the lords and ladies of the land, the simple Drama of +humble life; and we ourselves have seen a high-born maiden look +"beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the +kirtle of a Shepherdess.</p> + +<p>We have been gradually growing national overmuch, and are about to grow +even more so, therefore ask you to what era, pray, did Thomson belong? +To none. Thomson had no precursor—and till Cowper no follower. He +effulged all at once sunlike—like Scotland's storm-loving, +mist-enamoured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> sun, which till you have seen on a day of thunder, you +cannot be said ever to have seen the sun. Cowper followed Thomson merely +in time. We should have had "The Task," even had we never had "The +Seasons." These two were "heralds of a mighty train ensuing;" add them, +then, to the worthies of our own age, and they belong to it—and all the +rest of the poetry of the modern world—to which add that of the +ancient—if multiplied by ten in quantity—and by twenty in +quality—would not so variously, so vigorously, and so truly image the +form and pressure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all—Nature. +Are then "The Seasons" and "The Task" Great Poems? Yes.—Why? What! Do +you need to be told that that Poem must be great, which was the first to +paint the rolling mystery of the year, and to show that all its Seasons +are but the varied God? The idea was original and sublime; and the +fulfilment thereof so complete, that some six thousand years having +elapsed between the creation of the world and of that poem, some sixty +thousand, we prophesy, will elapse between the appearance of that poem +and the publication of another equally great, on a subject external to +the mind, equally magnificent. We further presume, that you hold sacred +the "hearth." Now, in "The Task," the "hearth" is the heart of the poem, +just as it is of a happy house. No other poem is so full of domestic +happiness—humble and high; none is so breathed over by the spirit of +the Christian religion.</p> + +<p>Poetry, which, though not dead, had long been sleeping in Scotland, was +restored to waking life by <span class="smcap">Thomson</span>. His genius was national; and so, +too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his +genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and +passionate, and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its +power lay in the heart. "The Castle of Indolence" is distinguished by +purer taste and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that +poem is but the vision of a dream. "The Seasons" are glorious realities; +and the charm of the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its truth. +But what mean we by saying that "The Seasons" are a national +subject?—do we assert that they are solely Scottish? That would be too +bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made +them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> to +the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set in Scottish heavens; his +"deep-fermenting tempests are brewed in grim evening" Scottish skies; +Scottish is his thunder of cloud and cataract; his "vapours, and snows, +and storms" are Scottish; and, strange as the assertion would have +sounded in the ears of Samuel Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their +sugh, and their roar; nor less their stillness, more awful amidst the +vast multitude of steady stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are +swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of his native land was in his +heart when he cried in the solitude—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hail, kindred glooms! congenial horrors, hail!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The genius of <span class="smcap">Home</span> was national—and so, too, was the subject of his +justly famous Tragedy of "Douglas." He had studied the old Ballads; +their simplicities were sweet to him as wallflowers on ruins. On the +story of Gill Morice, who was an Earl's son, he founded the Tragedy, +which surely no Scottish eyes ever witnessed without tears. Are not +these most Scottish lines?—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Accords with my soul's sadness!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And these even more so,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Red came the river down, and loud and oft<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The angry Spirit of the water shriek'd!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Scottish Tragedian in an evil hour crossed the Tweed, riding on +horseback all the way to London. His genius got Anglified, took a +consumption, and perished in the prime of life. But nearly half a +century afterwards, on seeing the Siddons in <i>Lady Randolph</i>, and +hearing her low, deep, wild, woe-begone voice exclaim, "My beautiful! my +brave!" "the aged harper's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again +lighted up for a moment with the fires of genius—say rather for a +moment bedewed with the tears of sensibility re-awakened from decay and +dotage.</p> + +<p>The genius of Beattie was national, and so was the subject of his +charming song—"The Minstrel." For what is its design? He tells us, to +trace the progress of a poetical genius born in a rude age, from the +first dawning of reason and fancy, till that period at which he may be +supposed capable of appearing in the world as a Scottish Minstrel; that +is, as an itinerant poet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> and musician—a character which, according to +the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A shepherd swain, a man of low degree;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose sires perchance in Fairyland might dwell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A nation famed for song and beauty's charms;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Patient of toil, serene amid alarms;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">An honest heart was almost all his stock;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His drink the living waters from the rock;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The milky dams supplied his board, and lent<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they went."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Did patriotism ever inspire genius with sentiment more Scottish than +<i>that</i>? Did imagination ever create scenery more Scottish, Manners, +Morals, Life?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo! where the stripling rapt in wonder roves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sees, on high, amidst th' encircling groves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And echo swells the chorus to the skies!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Beattie chants there like a man who had been at the Linn of Dee. He wore +a wig, it is true; but at times, when the fit was on him, he wrote like +the unshorn Apollo.</p> + +<p>The genius of Grahame was national, and so too was the subject of his +first and best poem—"The Sabbath."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How still the morning of the hallow'd day!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is a line that could have been uttered only by a holy Scottish heart. +For we alone know what is indeed Sabbath silence—an earnest of +everlasting rest. To our hearts, the very birds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> of Scotland sing holily +on that day. A sacred smile is on the dewy flowers. The lilies look +whiter in their loveliness; the blush-rose reddens in the sun with a +diviner dye; and with a more celestial scent the hoary hawthorn sweetens +the wilderness. Sorely disturbed of yore, over the glens and hills of +Scotland, was the Day of Peace!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O, the great goodness of the <i>Saints of Old</i>!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the Covenanters. Listen to the Sabbath bard,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"With them each day was holy; but that morn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On which the angel said, 'See where the Lord<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was laid,' joyous arose; to die that day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was bliss. Long ere the dawn by devious ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The upland muirs, where rivers, there but brooks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dispart to different seas. Fast by such brooks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little glen is sometimes scoop'd, a plat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid the heathery wild, that all around<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foil'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There, leaning on his spear (one of the array<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On England's banner, and had powerless struck<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The infatuate monarch, and his wavering host!)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lyart veteran heard the word of God<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By Cameron thunder'd, or by Renwick pour'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In gentle stream; then rose the song, the loud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Acclaim of praise. The wheeling plover ceased<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her plaint; the solitary place was glad;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on the distant cairn the watcher's ear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But years more gloomy follow'd; and no more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The assembled people dared, in face of day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To worship God, or even at the dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thunder-peals compell'd the men of blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The scatter'd few would meet, in some deep dell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By rocks o'ercanopied, to hear the voice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their faithful pastor's voice. He by the gleam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book,<br /></span> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> +</div> +<span class="i0">And words of comfort spake; over their souls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His accents soothing came, as to her young<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of eve,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They cherish'd cower amid the purple bloom."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Not a few other sweet singers or strong, native to this nook of our +isle, might we now in these humble pages lovingly commemorate; and "four +shall we mention, dearer than the rest," for sake of that virtue, among +many virtues, which we have been lauding all along, their +nationality;—These are <span class="smcap">Aird</span> and <span class="smcap">Motherwell</span> (of whom another hour), <span class="smcap">Moir</span> +and <span class="smcap">Pollok</span>.</p> + +<p>Of Moir, our own "delightful Delta," as we love to call him—and the +epithet now by right appertains to his name—we shall now say simply +this, that he has produced many original pieces which will possess a +permanent place in the poetry of Scotland. Delicacy and grace +characterise his happiest compositions; some of them are beautiful in a +cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy; and others +breathe the simplest and purest pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast +or inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times his pen drops touches +of light on minute objects, that till then had slumbered in the shade, +but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, as component and +characteristic parts of our lowland landscapes. Let others labour away +at long poems, and for their pains get neglect or oblivion; Moir is seen +as he is in many short ones, which the Scottish Muses may "not willingly +let die." And that must be a pleasant thought when it touches the heart +of the mildest and most modest of men, as he sits by his family-fire, +beside those most dear to him, after a day past in smoothing, by his +skill, the bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness to health, in +alleviating sufferings that cannot be cured, or in mitigating the pangs +of death.</p> + +<p>Pollok had great original genius strong in a sacred sense of religion. +Such of his short compositions as we have seen, written in early youth, +were but mere copies of verses, and gave little or no promise of power. +But his soul was working in the green moorland solitudes round about his +father's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> house, in the wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and +Mearns, separated by thee, O Yearn! sweetest of pastoral streams that +murmur through the west, asunder those broomy and birken banks and +trees, where the grey-linties sing, is formed the clear junction of the +rills, issuing, the one from the hill-spring above the Black-waterfall, +and the other from the Brother-loch. The poet in prime of youth (he died +in his twenty-seventh year) embarked on a high and adventurous emprise, +and voyaged the illimitable Deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in +a holy pride felt them to be broad, as they hovered over the dark abyss. +"The Course of Time," for so young a man, was a vast achievement. The +book he loved best was the Bible, and his style is often Scriptural. Of +our poets, he had studied, we believe, but Milton, Young, and Byron. He +had much to learn in composition; and, had he lived, he would have +looked almost with humiliation on much that is at present eulogised by +his devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is there, though often +dimly developed, and many passages there are, and long ones too, that +heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine enthusiasm.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"His ears he closed, to listen to the strains<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That Sion's bards did consecrate of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Let us fly again to England, and leaving for another hour Shelley and +Hunt and Keats, and Croly and Milman and Heber, and Sterling and Milnes +and Tennyson, with some younger aspirants of our own day; and Gray, +Collins, and Goldsmith, and lesser stars of that constellation, let us +alight on the verge of that famous era when the throne was occupied by +Dryden, and then by Pope—searching still for a Great Poem. Did either +of them ever write one? No—never. Sir Walter says finely of glorious +John,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And Dryden in immortal strain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had raised the Table Round again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But that a ribald King and Court,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bade him play on to make them sport,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world defrauded of the high design,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line."<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>But why, we ask, did Dryden suffer a ribald king and court to debase and +degrade him, and strangle his immortal strain? Because he was poor! But +could he not have died of cold, thirst, and hunger—of starvation? Have +not millions of men and women done so, rather than sacrifice their +conscience? And shall we grant to a great poet that indulgence which +many a humble hind would have flung with scorn in our teeth, and rather +than have availed himself of it, faced the fagot, or the halter, or the +stake set within the sea-flood? But it is satisfactory to know that +Dryden, though still glorious John, was not a Great Poet. He was seldom +visited by the pathetic or the sublime—else had his genius held fast +its integrity—been ribald to no ribald—and indignantly kicked to the +devil both court and king. But what a master of reasoning in verse! And +of verse what a volume of fire! "The long-resounding march and energy +divine." Pope, again, with the common frailties of humanity, was an +ethereal creature—and played on his own harp with finest taste, and +wonderful execution. We doubt, indeed, if such a finished style has ever +been heard since from any one of the King Apollo's musicians. His +versification may be monotonous, but without a sweet and potent charm +only to ears of leather. That his poetry has no passion is the creed of +critics "of Cambyses' vein;" "Heloïse" and "The Unfortunate Lady" have +made the world's heart to throb. As for Imagination, we shall continue +till such time as that Faculty has been distinguished from Fancy, to see +it shining in "The Rape of the Lock," with a lambent lustre; if high +intellect be not dominant in his "Epistles" and his "Essay on Man," you +will look for it in vain in the nineteenth century; all other Satires +seem complimentary to their victims when read after "The Dunciad"—and +could a man, whose heart was not heroic, have given us another Iliad, +which, all unlike as it is to the Greek, may be read with transport, +even after Homer's?</p> + +<p>We have not yet, it would seem, found the object of our search—a Great +Poem. Let us extend our quest into the Elizabethan age. We are at once +sucked into the theatre. With the whole drama of that age we are +conversant and familiar; but whether we understand it or not, is another +question. It aspires to give representations of Human Life in all its +infinite varieties, and inconsistencies, and conflicts, and turmoils +produced by the Passions. Time and space are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> not suffered to interpose +their unities between the Poet and his vast design, who, provided he can +satisfy the spectators by the pageant of their own passions moving +across the stage, may exhibit there whatever he wills from life, death, +or the grave. 'Tis a sublime conception—and sometimes has given rise to +sublime performance; but has been crowned with full success in no hands +but those of Shakespeare. Great as was the genius of many of the +dramatists of that age, not one of them has produced a Great Tragedy. A +Great Tragedy indeed! What! without harmony or proportion in the +plan—with all puzzling perplexities and inextricable entanglements in +the plot—and with disgust and horror in the catastrophe? As for the +characters, male and female—saw ye ever such a set of swaggerers and +rantipoles as they often are in one act—Methodist preachers and demure +young women at a love-feast in another—absolute heroes and heroines of +high calibre in a third—and so on, changing and shifting name and +nature, according to the laws of the Romantic Drama forsooth—but in +hideous violation of the laws of nature—till the curtain falls over a +heap of bodies huddled together, without regard to age or sex, as if +they had been overtaken in liquor. We admit that there is gross +exaggeration in the picture; but there is always truth in a tolerable +caricature—and this is one of a tragedy of Webster, Ford, or Massinger.</p> + +<p>It is satisfactory to know that the good sense, and good feeling, and +good taste of the people of England, will not submit to be belaboured by +editors and critics into unqualified admiration of such enormities. The +Old English Drama lies buried in the dust with all its tragedies. Never +more will they move across the stage. Scholars read them, and often with +delight, admiration, and wonder; for genius is a strange spirit, and has +begotten strange children on the body of the Tragic Muse. In the closet +it is pleasant to peruse the countenances, at once divine, human, and +brutal, of the incomprehensible monsters—to scan their forms, powerful +though misshapen—to watch their movements, vigorous though +distorted—and to hold up one's hands in amazement on hearing them not +seldom discourse most excellent music. But we should shudder to see them +on the stage enacting the parts of men and women—and call for the +manager. All has been done for the least deformed of the tragedies of +the Old English Drama that humanity could do, enlightened by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +Christian religion; but nature has risen up to vindicate herself against +such misrepresentations as they afford; and sometimes finds it all she +can do to stomach Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>But the monstrosities we have mentioned are not the worst to be found in +the Old English Drama. Others there are that, till civilised Christendom +fall back into barbarous Heathendom, must for ever be unendurable to +human ears, whether long or short—we mean the obscenities. That sin is +banished for ever from our literature. The poet who might dare to commit +it, would be immediately hooted out of society, and sent to roost in +barns among the owls. But the Old English Drama is stuffed with +ineffable pollutions; and full of passages that the street-walker would +be ashamed to read in the stews. We have not seen that volume of the +Family Dramatists which contains Massinger. But if made fit for female +reading, his plays must be mutilated and mangled out of all likeness to +the original wholes. To free them even from the grossest impurities, +without destroying their very life, is impossible; and it would be far +better to make a selection of fine passages, after the manner of Lamb's +Specimens—but with a severer eye—than to attempt in vain to preserve +their character as plays, and at the same time to expunge all that is +too disgusting, perhaps, to be dangerous to boys and virgins. Full-grown +men may read what they choose—perhaps without suffering from it; but +the modesty of the young clear eye must not be profaned—and we cannot, +for our own part, imagine a <i>Family</i> Old English Dramatist.</p> + +<p>And here again bursts upon us the glory of the Greek Drama. The +Athenians were as wicked, as licentious, as polluted, and much more so, +we hope, than ever were the English; but they debased not with their +gross vices their glorious tragedies. Nature in her higher moods alone, +and most majestic aspects, trod their stage. Buffoons, and ribalds, and +zanies, and "rude indecent clowns," were confined to comedies; and even +there they too were idealised, and resembled not the obscene samples +that so often sicken us in the midst of "the acting of a dreadful thing" +in our old theatre. They knew that "with other ministrations, thou, O +Nature!" teachest thy handmaid Art to soothe the souls of thy +congregated children—congregated to behold her noble goings-on, and to +rise up and depart elevated by the transcendent pageant. The Tragic muse +was in those days a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> Priestess—tragedies were religious ceremonies; for +all the ancestral stories they celebrated were under consecration—the +spirit of the ages of heroes and demigods descended over the vast +amphitheatre; and thus were Æschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, the +guardians of the national character, which, we all know, was, in spite +of all it suffered under, for ever passionately enamoured of all the +forms of greatness.</p> + +<p>Forgive us—spirit of Shakespeare! that seem'st to animate that +high-brow'd bust—if indeed we have offered any show of irreverence to +thy name and nature; for now, in the noiselessness of midnight, to our +awed but loving hearts do both appear divine! Forgive us—we beseech +thee—that on going to bed—which we are just about to do—we may be +able to compose ourselves to sleep—and dream of Miranda and Imogen, and +Desdemona and Cordelia. Father revered of that holy family! by the +strong light in the eyes of Innocence we beseech thee to forgive +us!—Ha! what old ghost art thou—clothed in the weeds of more than +mortal misery—mad, mad, mad—come and gone—was it Lear?</p> + +<p>We have found then, it seems—at last—the object of our search—a Great +Poem—ay—four Great Poems—"Lear"—"Hamlet"—"Othello"—"Macbeth." And +was the revealer of those high mysteries in his youth a deer-stealer in +the parks of Warwickshire, a linkboy in London streets? And died he +before his grand climacteric in a dimmish sort of a middle-sized +tenement in Stratford-on-Avon, of a surfeit from an overdose of +home-brewed humming ale? Such is the tradition.</p> + +<p>Had we a daughter—an only daughter—we should wish her to be like</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In that one line has Wordsworth done an unappreciable service to +Spenser. He has improved upon a picture in "The Fairy Queen"—making +"the beauty still more beauteous," by a single touch of a pencil dipped +in moonlight, or in sunlight tender as Luna's smiles. Through Spenser's +many nine-lined stanzas the lovely lady glides along her own world—and +our eyes follow in delight the sinless wanderer. In Wordsworth's one +single celestial line we behold her neither in time nor space—an +immortal omnipresent idea at one gaze occupying the soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p> + +<p>And is not "The Fairy Queen" a Great Poem? Like "The Excursion," it is +at all events a long one—"slow to begin, and never ending." That fire +was a fortunate one in which so many books of it were burnt. If no such +fortunate fire ever took place, then let us trust that the moths +drillingly devoured the manuscript—and that 'tis all safe. Purgatorial +pains—unless indeed they should prove eternal—are insufficient +punishment for the impious man who invented Allegory. If you have got +anything to say, sir, out with it—in one or other of the many forms of +speech employed naturally by creatures to whom God has given the gift of +"discourse of reason." But beware of misspending your life in perversely +attempting to make shadow substance, and substance shadow. Wonderful +analogies there are among all created things, material and +immaterial—and millions so fine that Poets alone discern them—and +sometimes succeed in showing them in words. Most spiritual region of +poetry—and to be visited at rare times and seasons—nor all life long +ought bard there to abide. For a while let the veil of Allegory be drawn +before the face of Truth, that the light of its beauty may shine through +it with a softened charm—dim and drear—like the moon gradually +obscuring in its own halo on a dewy night. Such air-woven veil of +Allegory is no human invention. The soul brought it with her when</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Trailing clouds of glory she did come<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From heaven, which is her home."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Sometimes, now and then, in moods strange and high—obey the bidding of +the soul—and allegorise; but live not all life-long in an +Allegory—even as Spenser did—Spenser the divine; for with all his +heavenly genius—and brighter visions never met mortal eyes than +his—what is he but a "dreamer among men," and what may save that +wondrous poem from the doom of oblivion?</p> + +<p>To this conclusion must we come at last—that in the English language +there is but one Great Poem. What! Not "Lear," Hamlet, "Othello," +"Macbeth?"—"<span class="smcap">Paradise Lost</span>."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>INCH-CRUIN.</h2> + + +<p>Oh! for the plumes and pinions of the poised Eagle, that we might now +hang over Loch Lomond and all her isles! From what point of the compass +would we come on our rushing vans? Up from Leven-banks, or down from +Glenfalloch, or over the hill of Luss, or down to Rowardennan; and then +up and away, as the chance currents in the sky might lead, with the +Glory of Scotland, blue, bright, and breaking into foam, thousands on +thousands of feet below, with every Island distinct in the peculiar +beauty of its own youthful or ancient woods? For remember, that with the +eagle's wing we must also have the eagle's eye; and all the while our +own soul to look with such lens and such iris, and with its own endless +visions to invest the pinnacles of all the far-down ruins of church or +castle, encompassed with the umbrage of undying oaks.</p> + +<p>We should as soon think of penning a critique on "Milton's Paradise +Lost" as on Loch Lomond. People there are in the world, doubtless, who +think them both too long; but to our minds, neither the one nor the +other exceeds the due measure by a leaf or a league. Toil may, if it so +pleaseth you, think it, in a mist, a Mediterranean Sea. For then you +behold many miles of tumbling waves, with no land beyond; and were a +ship to rise up in full sail, she would seem voyaging on to some distant +shore. Or you may look on it as a great arm only of the ocean, stretched +out into the mountainous mainland. Or say, rather, some river of the +first order, that shows to the sun Islands never ceasing to adorn his +course for a thousand leagues, in another day, about to be lost in the +dominion of the sea. Or rather look on it as it is, as Loch Lomond, the +Loch of a hundred Isles—of shores laden with all kinds of beauty, +throughout the infinite suc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>cession of bays and harbours—huts and +houses sprinkled over the sides of its green hills, that ever and anon +send up a wider smoke from villages clustering round the church-tower +beneath the wooded rocks—halls half-hidden in groves, for centuries the +residence of families proud of their Gaelic blood—forest that, however +wide be the fall beneath the axe when their hour is come, yet, far as +the eye can reach, go circling round the mountain's base, inhabited by +the roe and the red-deer;—but we have got into a sentence that +threatens to be without end—a dim, dreary, sentence, in the middle of +which the very writer himself gets afraid of ghosts, and fervently prays +for the period when he shall be again chatting with the reader on a +shady seat, under his own paragraph and his own pear-tree.</p> + +<p>Oh! for our admirable friend Mr Smith of Jordanhill's matchless cutter, +to glide through among the glittering archipelago! But we must be +contented with a somewhat clumsy four-oared barge, wide and deep enough +for a cattle ferry-boat. This morning's sunrise found us at the mouth of +the Goblin's Cave on Loch Katrine, and among Lomond's lovely isles shall +sunset leave us among the last glimmer of the softened gold. To which of +all those lovely isles shall we drift before the wind on the small +heaving and breaking waves? To Inch-Murrin, where the fallow-deer +repose—or to the yew-shaded Inch-Caillach, the cemetery of +Clan-Alpin—the Holy Isle of Nuns? One hushing afternoon hour may yet be +ours on the waters—another of the slowly-walking twilight—that time +which the gazing spirit is too wrapt to measure, while "sinks the +Day-star in the ocean's bed"—and so on to midnight, the reign of +silence and shadow, the resplendent Diana with her hair-halo, and all +her star-nymphs, rejoicing round their Queen. Let the names of all +objects be forgotten—and imagination roam over the works of nature, as +if they lay in their primeval majesty, without one trace of man's +dominion. Slow-sailing Heron, that cloudlike seekest thy nest on yonder +lofty mass of pines—to us thy flight seems the very symbol of a long +lone life of peace. As thou foldest thy wide wings on the topmost bough, +beneath thee tower the unguarded Ruins, where many generations sleep. +Onwards thou floatest like a dream, nor changest thy gradually +descending course for the Eagle, that, far above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> thy line of travel, +comes rushing unwearied from his prey in distant Isles of the sea. The +Osprey! off—off—to Inch-Loning—or the dark cliffs of Glenfalloch, +many leagues away, which he will reach almost like a thought! Close your +eyes but for a moment—and when you look again, where is the +Cloud-Cleaver now? Gone in the sunshine, and haply seated in his eyrie +on Ben Lomond's head.</p> + +<p>But amidst all this splendour and magnificence, our eyes are drawn +against our will, and by a sort of sad fascination which we cannot +resist, along the glittering and dancing waves, towards the melancholy +shores of Inch-Cruin, the Island of the Afflicted. Beautiful is it by +nature, with its bays, and fields, and woods, as any isle that sees its +shadow in the deeps; but human sorrows have steeped it in eternal gloom, +and terribly is it haunted to our imagination. Here no woodman's hut +peeps from the glade—here are not seen the branching antlers of the +deer moving among the boughs that stir not—no place of peace is this +where the world-wearied hermit sits penitent in his cell, and prepares +his soul for Heaven. Its inhabitants are a woeful people, and all its +various charms are hidden from their eyes, or seen in ghastly +transfiguration; for here, beneath the yew-tree's shade, sit moping, or +roam about with rueful lamentation, the soul-distracted and the insane! +Ay—these sweet and pleasant murmurs break round a Lunatic Asylum! And +the shadows that are now and then seen among the umbrage are laughing or +weeping in the eclipse of reason, and may never know again aught of the +real character of this world, to which, exiled as they are from it, they +are yet bound by the ties of a common nature that, though sorely +deranged, are not wholly broken, and still separate them by an awful +depth of darkness from the beasts that perish.</p> + +<p>Thither love, yielding reluctantly at last to despair, has consented +that the object on which all its wise solicitudes had for years been +unavailably bestowed both night and day, should be rowed over, perhaps +at midnight, and when asleep, and left there with beings like itself, +all dimly conscious of their doom. To many such the change may often +bring little or no heed—for outward things may have ceased to impress, +and they may be living in their own rueful world, different from all +that we hear or behold. To some it may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> seem that they have been +spirited away to another state of existence—beautiful, indeed, and fair +to see, with all those lovely trees and shadows of trees; but still a +miserable, a most miserable place, without one face they ever saw +before, and haunted by glaring eyes that shoot forth fear, suspicion, +and hatred. Others, again, there are, who know well the misty head of +Ben Lomond, which, with joyful pleasure-parties set free from the city, +they had in other years exultingly scaled, and looked down, perhaps, in +a solemn pause of their youthful ecstasy, on the far-off and melancholy +Inch-Cruin! Thankful are they for such a haven at last—for they are +remote from the disturbance of the incomprehensible life that bewildered +them, and from the pity of familiar faces that was more than could be +borne.</p> + +<p>So let us float upon our oars behind the shadow of this rock, nor +approach nearer the sacred retreat of misery. Let us not gaze too +intently into the glades, for we might see some figure there who wished +to be seen nevermore, and recognise in the hurrying shadow the living +remains of a friend. How profound the hush! No sigh—no groan—no +shriek—no voice—no tossing of arms—no restless chafing of feet! God +in mercy has for a while calmed the congregation of the afflicted, and +the Isle is overspread with a sweet Sabbath-silence. What medicine for +them like the breath of heaven—the dew—the sunshine—and the murmur of +the wave! Nature herself is their kind physician, and sometimes not +unfrequently brings them by her holy skill back to the world of clear +intelligence and serene affection. They listen calmly to the blessed +sound of the oar that brings a visit of friends—to sojourn with them +for a day—or to take them away to another retirement, where they, in +restored reason, may sit around the board, nor fear to meditate during +the midnight watches on the dream, which, although dispelled, may in all +its ghastliness return. There was a glorious burst of sunshine! And of +all the Lomond Isles, what one rises up in the sudden illumination so +bright as Inch-Cruin?</p> + +<p>Methinks we see sitting in his narrow and low-roofed cell, careless of +food, dress, sleep, or shelter alike, him who in the opulent mart of +commerce was one of the most opulent, and devoted heart and soul to show +and magnificence. His house was like a palace with its pictured and +mirrored walls, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> the nights wore away to dance, revelry, and song. +Fortune poured riches at his feet, which he had only to gather up; and +every enterprise in which he took part prospered beyond the reach of +imagination. But all at once—as if lightning had struck the dome of his +prosperity, and earthquake let down its foundations, it sank, crackled, +and disappeared—and the man of a million was a houseless, infamous, and +bankrupt beggar. In one day his proud face changed into the ghastly +smiling of an idiot—he dragged his limbs in paralysis—and slavered out +unmeaning words foreign to all the pursuits in which his active +intellect had for many years been plunged. All his relations—to whom it +was known he had never shown kindness—were persons in humble condition. +Ruined creditors we do not expect to be very pitiful, and people asked +what was to become of him till he died. A poor creature, whom he had +seduced and abandoned to want, but who had succeeded to a small property +on the death of a distant relation, remembered her first, her only love, +when all the rest of the world were willing to forget him; and she it +was who had him conveyed thither, herself sitting in the boat with her +arm round the unconscious idiot, who now vegetates on the charity of her +whom he betrayed. For fifteen years he has continued to exist in the +same state, and you may pronounce his name on the busy Exchange of the +city where he flourished and fell, and haply the person you speak to +shall have entirely forgotten it.</p> + +<p>The evils genius sometimes brings to its possessor have often been said +and sung, perhaps with exaggerations, but not always without truth. It +is found frequently apart from prudence and principle; and in a world +constituted like ours, how can it fail to reap a harvest of misery or +death? A fine genius, and even a high, had been bestowed on One who is +now an inmate of that cottage-cell, peering between these two rocks. At +College he outstripped all his compeers by powers equally versatile and +profound—the first both in intellect and in imagination. He was a poor +man's son—the only son of a working carpenter—and his father intended +him for the church. But the youth soon felt that to him the trammels of +a strict faith would be unbearable, and he lived on from year to year, +uncertain what profession to choose. Meanwhile his friends, all inferior +to him in talents and acquire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>ments, followed the plain, open, and +beaten path, that leads sooner or later to respectability and +independence. He was left alone in his genius, useless, although +admired—while those who had looked in high hopes on his early career, +began to have their fears that they might never be realised. His first +attempts to attract the notice of the public, although not absolute +failures—for some of his compositions, both in prose and verse, were +indeed beautiful—were not triumphantly successful, and he began to +taste the bitterness of disappointed ambition. His wit and colloquial +talents carried him into the society of the dissipated and the +licentious; and, before he was aware of the fact, he had got the +character of all others the most humiliating—that of a man who knew not +how to estimate his own worth, nor to preserve it from pollution. He +found himself silently and gradually excluded from the higher circle +which he had once adorned, and sunk inextricably into a lower grade of +social life. His whole habits became loose and irregular; his studies +were pursued but by fits and starts; his knowledge, instead of keeping +pace with that of the times, became clouded and obscure, and even +diminished; his dress was meaner; his manners hurried, and reckless, and +wild, and ere long he became a slave to drunkenness, and then to every +low and degrading vice.</p> + +<p>His father died, it was said, of a broken heart—for to him his son had +been all in all, and the unhappy youth felt that the death lay at his +door. At last, shunned by most—tolerated but by a few for the sake of +other times—domiciled in the haunts of infamy—loaded with a heap of +paltry debts, and pursued by the hounds of the law, the fear of a prison +drove him mad, and his whole mind was utterly and hopelessly overthrown. +A few of the friends of his boyhood raised a subscription in his +behoof—and within the gloom of these woods he has been shrouded for +many years, but not unvisited once or twice a summer by some one, who +knew, loved, and admired him in the morning of that genius that long +before its meridian brightness had been so fatally eclipsed.</p> + +<p>And can it be in cold and unimpassioned words like these that we thus +speak of Thee and thy doom, thou Soul of fire, and once the brightest of +the free, privileged by nature to walk along the mountain-ranges, and +mix their spirits with the stars! Can it be that all thy glorious +aspirations, by thy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>self forgotten, have no dwelling-place in the memory +of one who loved thee so well, and had his deepest affection so +profoundly returned! Thine was a heart once tremblingly alive to all the +noblest and finest sympathies of our nature, and the humblest human +sensibilities became beautiful when tinged by the light of thy +imagination. Thy genius invested the most ordinary objects with a charm +not their own; and the vision it created thy lips were eloquent to +disclose. What although thy poor old father died, because by thy hand +all his hopes were shivered, and for thy sake poverty stripped even the +coverlet from his dying-bed—yet we feel as if some dreadful destiny, +rather than thy own crime, blinded thee to his fast decay, and closed +thine ears in deafness to his beseeching prayer. Oh! charge not to +creatures such as we all the fearful consequences of our misconduct and +evil ways! We break hearts we would die to heal—and hurry on towards +the grave those whom to save we would leap into the devouring fire. Many +wondered in their anger that thou couldst be so callous to the old man's +grief—and couldst walk tearless at his coffin. The very night of the +day he was buried thou wert among thy wild companions, in a house of +infamy, close to the wall of the churchyard. Was not that enough to tell +us all that disease was in thy brain, and that reason, struggling with +insanity, had changed sorrow to despair. But perfect forgiveness— +forgiveness made tender by profoundest pity—was finally extended to +thee by all thy friends—frail and erring like thyself in many things, +although not so fatally misled and lost, because in the mystery of +Providence not so irresistibly tried. It seemed as if thou hadst +offended the Guardian Genius, who, according to the old philosophy which +thou knewest so well, is given to every human being at his birth; and +that then the angel left thy side, and Satan strove to drag thee to +perdition. And hath any peace come to thee—a youth no more—but in what +might have been the prime of manhood, bent down, they say, to the +ground, with a head all floating with silver hairs—hath any peace come +to thy distracted soul in these woods, over which there now seems again +to brood a holy horror? Yes—thy fine dark eyes are not wholly without +intelligence as they look on the sun, moon, and stars; although all +their courses seem now confused to thy imagination, once regular and +ordered in their magnificence before that intellect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> which science +claimed as her own. The harmonies of nature are not all lost on thy ear, +poured forth throughout all seasons, over the world of sound and sight. +Glimpses of beauty startle thee as thou wanderest along the shores of +thy prison-isle; and that fine poetical genius, not yet extinguished +altogether, although faint and flickering, gives vent to something like +snatches of songs, and broken elegies, that seem to wail over the ruins +of thy own soul! Such peace as ever visits them afflicted as thou art, +be with thee in cell or on shore; nor lost to Heaven will be the wild +moanings of—to us—thy unintelligible prayers!</p> + +<p>But hark to the spirit-stirring voice of the bugle scaling the sky, and +leaping up and down in echoes among the distant mountains! Such a strain +animates the voltigeur, skirmishing in front of the line of battle, or +sending flashes of sudden death from the woods. Alas for him who now +deludes his yet high heart with a few notes of the music that so often +was accompanied by his sword waving on to glory! Unappalled was he ever +in the whizzing and hissing fire—nor did his bold broad breast ever +shrink from the bayonet, that with the finished fencer's art he has +often turned aside when red with death. In many of the pitched battles +of the Spanish campaigns his plume was conspicuous over the dark green +lines, that, breaking asunder in fragments like those of the flowing +sea, only to re-advance over the bloody fields, cleared the ground that +was to be debated between the great armaments. Yet in all such desperate +service he never received one single wound. But on a mid-day march, as +he was gaily singing a love-song, the sun smote him to the very brain, +and from that moment his right hand grasped the sword no more.</p> + +<p>Not on the face of all the earth—or of all the sea—is there a spot of +profounder peace than that isle that has long been his abode. But to him +all the scene is alive with the pomp of war. Every far-off precipice is +a fort, that has its own Spanish name—and the cloud above seems to his +eyes the tricolor, or the flag of his own victorious country. War, that +dread game that nations play at, is now to the poor insane soldier a +mere child's pastime, from which sometimes he himself will turn with a +sigh or a smile. For sense assails him in his delirium, for a moment and +no more; and he feels that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> he is far away, and for ever, from all his +companions in glory, in an asylum that must be left but for the grave! +Perhaps in such moments he may have remembered the night, when at +Badajos he led the forlorn hope; but even forlorn hope now hath he none, +and he sinks away back into his delusions, at which even his brother +sufferers smile—so foolish does the restless campaigner seem to these +men of peace!</p> + +<p>Lo! a white ghost-like figure, slowly issuing from the trees, and +sitting herself down on a stone, with face fixed on the waters! Now she +is so perfectly still, that had we not seen her motion thither, she and +the rock would have seemed but one! Somewhat fantastically dressed, even +in her apparent despair. Were we close to her, we should see a face yet +beautiful, beneath hair white as snow. Her voice too, but seldom heard, +is still sweet and low; and sometimes, when all are asleep, or at least +silent, she begins at midnight to sing! She yet touches the guitar—an +instrument in fashion in Scotland when she led the fashion—with +infinite grace and delicacy—and the songs she loves best are those in a +foreign tongue. For more than thirty years hath the unfortunate lady +come to the water's edge daily, and hour after hour continue to sit +motionless on that self-same stone, looking down into the loch. Her +story is now almost like a dim tradition from other ages, and the +history of those who come here often fades away into nothing. Everywhere +else they are forgotten—here there are none who can remember. Who once +so beautiful as the "Fair Portuguese?" It was said at that time that she +was a Nun—but the sacred veil was drawn aside by the hand of love, and +she came to Scotland with her deliverer! Yes, her deliverer! He +delivered her from the gloom—often the peaceful gloom that hovers round +the altar of Superstition—and after a few years of love and life and +joy—she sat where you now see her sitting, and the world she had +adorned moved on in brightness and in music as before! Since there has +to her been so much suffering—was there on her part no sin? No—all +believed her to be guiltless, except one, whose jealousy would have seen +falsehood lurking in an angel's eyes; but she was utterly deserted; and +being in a strange country, worse than an orphan, her mind gave way; for +say not—oh say not—that innocence can always stand against shame and +despair! The hymns she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> sings at midnight are hymns to the Virgin; but +all her songs are songs about love, and chivalry, and knights that went +crusading to the Holy Land. He who brought her from another sanctuary +into the one now before us, has been dead many years. He perished in +shipwreck—and 'tis thought that she sits there gazing down into the +loch, as on the place where he sank or was buried; for when told that he +was drowned, she shrieked, and made the sign of the cross—and since +that long-ago day that stone has in all weathers been her constant seat.</p> + +<p>Away we go westwards—like fire-worshippers devoutly gazing on the +setting sun. And another isle seems to shoot across our path, separated +suddenly, as if by magic, from the mainland. How beautiful, with its +many crescents, the low-lying shores, carrying here and there a single +tree quite into the water, and with verdant shallows guarding the lonely +seclusion even from the keel of canoe! Round and round we row, but not a +single landing-place. Shall we take each of us a fair burthen in his +arms, and bear it to that knoll, whispering and quivering through the +twilight with a few birches whose stems glitter like silver pillars in +the shade? No—let us not disturb the silent people, now donning their +green array for nightly revelries. It is the "Isle of Fairies," and on +that knoll hath the fishermen often seen their Queen sitting on a +throne, surrounded by myriads of creatures no taller than harebells; one +splash of the oar—and all is vanished. There, it is said, lives among +the Folk of Peace, the fair child, who, many years ago, disappeared from +her parents' shieling at Inversnayde, and whom they vainly wept over as +dead. One evening she had floated away by herself in a small boat—while +her parents heard, without fear, the clank—duller and duller—of the +oars, no longer visible in the distant moonshine. In an hour the +returning vessel touched the beech—but no child was to be seen—and +they listened in vain for the music of the happy creature's songs. For +weeks the loch rolled and roared like the sea—nor was the body found +anywhere lying on the shore. Long, long afterwards, some little white +bones were interred in Christian burial, for the parents believed them +to be the remains of their child—all that had been left by the bill of +the raven. But not so thought many dwellers along the mountain-shores<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>—for +had not her very voice been often heard by the shepherds, when the +unseen flight of Fairies sailed singing along up the solitary +Glenfalloch, away over the moors of Tynedrum, and down to the sweet +Dalmally, where the shadow of Cruachan darkens the old ruins of +melancholy Kilchurn. The lost child's parents died in their old age—but +she, 'tis said, is unchanged in shape and features—the same fair thing +she was the evening that she disappeared, only a shade of sadness is on +her pale face, as if she were pining for the sound of human voices, and +the gleam of the peat-fire of the shieling. Ever, when the Fairy-court +is seen for a moment beneath the glimpses of the moon, she is sitting by +the side of the gracious Queen. Words of might there are, that if +whispered at right season, would yet recall her from the shadowy world, +to which she has been spirited away; but small sentinels stand at their +stations all round the isle, and at nearing of human breath, a shrill +warning is given from sedge and water-lily, and like dewdrops melt away +the phantoms, while, mixed with peals of little laughter, overhead is +heard the winnowing of wings. For the hollow of the earth, and the +hollow of the air, is their Invisible Kingdom; and when they touch the +herbage or flowers of this earth of ours, whose lonely places they love, +then only are they revealed to human eyes—at all times else to our +senses unexistent as dreams!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>A DAY AT WINDERMERE.</h2> + + +<p>Old and gouty, we are confined to our chair; and occasionally, during an +hour of rainless sunshine, are wheeled by female hands along the +gravel-walks of our Policy, an unrepining and philosophical +valetudinarian. Even the Crutch is laid up in ordinary, and is encircled +with cobwebs. A monstrous spider has there set up his rest; and our +still study ever and anon hearkens to the shrill buzz of some poor fly +expiring between those formidable forceps—just as so many human +ephemerals have breathed their last beneath the bite of his indulgent +master. 'Tis pleasure to look at Domitian—so we love to call +him—sallying from the centre against a wearied wasp, lying, like a +silkworm, circumvoluted in the inextricable toils, and then seizing the +sinner by the nape of the neck, like Christopher with a Cockney, to see +the emperor haul him away into the charnel-house. But we have often less +savage recreations—such as watching our bee-hives when about to send +forth colonies—feeding our pigeons, a purple people that dazzle the +daylight—gathering roses as they choke our small chariot-wheels with +their golden orbs—eating grapes out of vine-leaf-draperied baskets, +beautifying beneath the gentle fingers of the Gentle into fairy network +graceful as the gossamer—drinking elder-flower frontignac from +invisible glasses, so transparent in its yellowness seems the liquid +radiance—at one moment eyeing a page of "Paradise Lost," and at another +of "Paradise Regained;" for what else is the face of her who often +visiteth our Eden, and whose coming and whose going is ever like a +heavenly dream? Then laying back our head upon the cushion of our +triumphal car, and with half-shut eyes, subsiding slowly into haunted +sleep or slumber, with our fine features up to heaven, a saint-like +image, such as Raphael loved to paint, or Flaxman to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> imbue with the +soul of stillness in the life-hushed marble. Such, dearest reader, are +some of our pastimes—and so do we contrive to close our ears to the +sound of the scythe of Saturn, ceaselessly sweeping over the earth, and +leaving, at every stride of the mower, a swathe more rueful than ever +after a night of shipwreck did strew with ghastliness a lee sea-shore!</p> + +<p>Thus do we make a virtue of necessity—and thus contentment wreathes +with silk and velvet the prisoner's chains. Once were we—long, long +ago—restless as a sunbeam on the restless wave—rapid as a river that +seems enraged with all impediments, but all the while in passionate love</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Doth make sweet music with th' enamell'd stones"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>strong as a steed let loose from Arab's tent in the oasis to slake his +thirst at the desert well—fierce in our harmless joy as a red-deer +belling on the hills—tameless as the eagle sporting in the storm—gay +as the "dolphin on a tropic sea"—"mad as young bulls"—and wild as a +whole wilderness of adolescent lions. But now—alas! and alack-a-day! +the sunbeam is but a patch of sober verdure—the river is changed into a +canal—the "desert-born" is foundered—the red-deer is slow as an old +ram—the eagle has forsook his cliff and his clouds, and hops among the +gooseberry bushes—the dolphin has degenerated into a land +tortoise—without danger now might a very child take the bull by the +horns—and though something of a lion still, our roar is, like that of +the nightingale, "most musical, most melancholy"—and, as we attempt to +shake our mane, your grandmother—fair peruser—cannot choose but weep.</p> + +<p>It speaks folios in favour of our philanthropy, to know that, in our own +imprisonment, we love to see all life free as air. Would that by a word +of ours we could clothe all human shoulders with wings! Would that by a +word of ours we could plume all human spirits with thoughts strong as +the eagle's pinions, that they might winnow their way into the empyrean! +Tories! Yes! we are Tories. Our faith is in the Divine right of +kings—but easy, my boys, easy—all free men are kings, and they hold +their empire from heaven. That is our political—philosophical—moral— +religious creed. In its spirit we have lived—and in its spirit we hope +to die—not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> on the scaffold like Sidney—no—no—no—not by any manner +of means like Sidney on the scaffold—but like ourselves, on a +hair-mattress above a feather-bed, our head decently sunk in three +pillows and one bolster, and our frame stretched out unagitatedly +beneath a white counterpane. But meanwhile—though almost as +unlocomotive as the dead in body—there is perpetual motion in our +minds. Sleep is one thing, and stagnation is another—as is well known +to all eyes that have ever seen, by moonlight and midnight, the face of +Christopher North, or of Windermere.</p> + +<p>Windermere! Why, at this blessed moment we behold the beauty of all its +intermingling isles. There they are—all gazing down on their own +reflected loveliness in the magic mirror of the airlike water, just as +many a holy time we have seen them all agaze, when, with suspended oar +and suspended breath—no sound but a ripple on the Naiad's bow, and a +beating at our own heart—motionless in our own motionless bark—we +seemed to float midway down that beautiful abyss between the heaven +above and the heaven below, on some strange terrestrial scene composed +of trees and the shadows of trees, by the imagination made +indistinguishable to the eye, and as delight deepened into dreams, all +lost at last, clouds, groves, water, air, sky, in their various and +profound confusion of supernatural peace. But a sea-born breeze is on +Bowness Bay; all at once the lake is blue as the sky: and that +evanescent world is felt to have been but a vision. Like swans that had +been asleep in the airless sunshine, lo! where from every shady nook +appear the white-sailed pinnaces; for on merry Windermere—you must +know—every breezy hour has its own Regatta.</p> + +<p>But intending to be useful, we are becoming ornamental; of us it must +not be said, that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Pure description holds the place of sense"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>therefore, let us be simple but not silly, as plain as is possible +without being prosy, as instructive as is consistent with being +entertaining, a cheerful companion and a trusty guide.</p> + +<p>We shall suppose that you have left Kendal, and are on your way to +Bowness. Forget, as much as may be, all worldly cares and anxieties, and +let your hearts be open and free to all genial impulses about to be +breathed into them from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> the beautiful and sublime in nature. There is +no need of that foolish state of feeling called enthusiasm. You have but +to be happy; and by-and-by your happiness will grow into delight. The +blue mountains already set your imaginations at work; among those clouds +and mists you fancy many a magnificent precipice—and in the valleys +that sleep below, you image to yourselves the scenery of rivers and +lakes. The landscape immediately around gradually grows more and more +picturesque and romantic; and you feel that you are on the very borders +of Fairyland. The first smile of Windermere salutes your impatient eyes, +and sinks silently into your heart. You know not how beautiful it may +be—nor yet in what the beauty consists; but your finest sensibilities +to nature are touched—and a tinge of poetry, as from a rainbow, +overspreads that cluster of islands that seems to woo you to their still +retreats. And now</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wooded Winandermere, the river-lake,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>with all its bays and promontories, lies in the morning light serene as +a Sabbath, and cheerful as a Holiday; and you feel that there is +loveliness on this earth more exquisite and perfect than ever visited +your slumbers even in the glimpses of a dream. The first sight of such a +scene will be unforgotten to your dying day—for such passive +impressions are deeper than we can explain—our whole spiritual being is +suddenly awakened to receive them—and associations, swift as light, are +gathered into one Emotion of Beauty which shall be imperishable, and +which, often as memory recalls that moment, grows into genius, and vents +itself in appropriate expressions, each in itself a picture. Thus may +one moment minister to years; and the life-wearied heart of old age by +one delightful remembrance be restored to primal joy—the glory of the +past brought beamingly upon the faded present—and the world that is +obscurely passing away from our eyes re-illumined with the visions of +its early morn. The shows of nature are indeed evanescent, but their +spiritual influences are immortal; and from that grove now glowing in +the sunlight may your heart derive a delight that shall utterly perish +but in the grave.</p> + +<p>But now you are in the White Lion, and our advice to you—perhaps +unnecessary—is immediately to order breakfast. There are many +parlours—some with a charming prospect,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> and some without any prospect +at all; but remember that there are other people in the world besides +yourselves—and therefore, into whatever parlour you may be shown by a +pretty maid, be contented, and lose no time in addressing yourselves to +your repast. That over, be in no hurry to get on the Lake. Perhaps all +the boats are engaged—and Billy Balmer is at the Waterhead. So stroll +into the churchyard, and take a glance over the graves. Close to the +oriel-window of the church is one tomb over which one might meditate +half an autumnal day. Enter the church, and you will feel the beauty of +these fine lines in "The Excursion"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not raised in nice proportions was the pile,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But large and massy; for duration built;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By naked rafters intricately cross'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like leafless underboughs, 'mid some thick grove,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All wither'd by the depth of shade above!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Go down to the low terrace-walk along the Bay. The Bay is in itself a +Lake, at all times cheerful with its scattered fleet, at anchor or under +weigh—its villas and cottages, each rejoicing in its garden or +orchard—its meadows mellowing to the reedy margin of the pellucid +water—its heath-covered boathouses—its own portion of the Isle called +Beautiful—and beyond that sylvan haunt, the sweet Furness Fells, with +gentle outline undulating in the sky, and among its spiral larches +showing, here and there, groves and copses of the old unviolated woods. +Yes, Bowness Bay is in itself a Lake; but how finely does it blend away, +through its screens of oak and sycamore trees, into a larger +Lake—another, yet the same—on whose blue bosom you see bearing down to +windward—for the morning breeze is born—many a tiny sail. It has the +appearance of a race. Yes—it is a race; and the Liverpoolian, as of +yore, is eating them all out of the wind, and without another tack will +make her anchorage. But hark—Music! 'Tis the Bowness Band playing "See +the conquering Hero comes!"—and our old friend has carried away the +gold cup from all competitors.</p> + +<p>Now turn your faces up the hill above the village school. That green +mount is what is called a—Station. The villagers are admiring a grove +of parasols, while you—the party—are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> admiring the village—with its +irregular roofs—white, blue, grey, green, brown, and black +walls—fruit-laden trees so yellow—its central church-tower—and +environing groves variously burnished by autumn. Saw ye ever banks and +braes and knolls so beautifully bedropt with human dwellings? There is +no solitude about Windermere. Shame on human nature were Paradise +uninhabited! Here, in amicable neighbourhood, are halls and huts—here +rises through groves the dome of the rich man's mansion—and there the +low roof of the poor man's cottage beneath its one single sycamore! Here +are hundreds of small properties hereditary in the same families for +hundreds of years—and never, never, O Westmoreland! may thy race of +<i>statesmen</i> be extinct—nor the virtues that ennoble their humble +households! See, suddenly brought forth by sunshine from among the old +woods—and then sinking away into her usual unobtrusive serenity—the +lake-loving Rayrig, almost level, so it seems, with the water, yet +smiling over her own quiet bay from the grove-shelter of her pastoral +mound. Within her walls may peace ever dwell with piety—and the light +of science long blend with the lustre of the domestic hearth! Thence to +Calgarth is all one forest—yet glade-broken, and enlivened by open +uplands; so that the roamer, while he expects a night of umbrage, often +finds himself in the open day, beneath the bright blue bow of heaven +haply without a cloud. The eye travels delighted over the multitudinous +tree-tops—often dense as one single tree—till it rests, in sublime +satisfaction, on the far-off mountains, that lose not a woody character +till the tree-sprinkled pastures roughen into rocks—and rocks tower +into precipices where the falcons breed. But the lake will not suffer +the eye long to wander among the distant glooms. She wins us wholly to +herself—and restlessly and passionately for a while, but calmly and +affectionately at last, the heart embraces all her beauty, and wishes +that the vision might endure for ever, and that here our tents were +pitched—to be struck no more during our earthly pilgrimage. Imagination +lapses into a thousand moods. O for a fairy pinnace to glide and float +for aye over those golden waves! A hermit-cell on sweet Lady-Holm! A +sylvan shieling on Loughrig side! A nest in that nameless dell, which +sees but one small slip of heaven, and longs at night for the +reascending visit of its few loving stars! A dwelling open<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> to all the +skyey influence on the mountain-brow, the darling of the rising or the +setting sun, and often seen by eyes in the lower world glittering +through the rainbow!</p> + +<p>All this seems a very imperfect picture indeed, or panorama of +Windermere, from the hill behind the school-house in the village of +Bowness. So, to put a stop to such nonsense, let us descend to the White +Lion—and inquire about Billy Balmer. Honest Billy has arrived from +Waterhead—seems tolerably steady—Mr Ullock's boats may be trusted—so +let us take a voyage of discovery on the lake. Let those who have reason +to think that they have been born to die a different death from +drowning, hoist a sail. We to-day shall feather an oar. Billy takes the +stroke—Mr William Garnet's at the helm—and "row, vassals, row, for the +pride of the Lowlands," is the choral song that accompanies the Naiad +out of the bay, and round the north end of the Isle called Beautiful, +under the wave-darkening umbrage of that ancient oak. And now we are in +the lovely straits between that Island and the mainland of Furness +Fells. The village has disappeared, but not melted away; for hark! the +Church-tower tolls ten—and see the sun is high in heaven. High, but not +hot—for the first September frosts chilled the rosy fingers of the morn +as she bathed them in the dews, and the air is cool as a cucumber. Cool +but bland—and as clear and transparent as a fine eye lighted up by a +good conscience. There were breezes in Bowness Bay—but here there are +none—or, if there be, they but whisper aloft in the tree-tops, and +ruffle not the water, which is calm as Louisa's breast. The small isles +here are but few in number—yet the best arithmetician of the party +cannot count them—in confusion so rich and rare do they blend their +shadows with those of the groves on the Isle called Beautiful, and on +the Furness Fells. A tide imperceptible to the eye drifts us on among +and above those beautiful reflections—that downward world of hanging +dreams! and ever and anon we beckon unto Billy gently to dip his oar, +that we may see a world destroyed and recreated in one moment of time. +Yes, Billy! thou art a poet—and canst work more wonders with thine oar +than could he with his pen who painted "heavenly Una with her milk-white +lamb," wandering by herself in Fairyland. How is it, pray, that our +souls are satiated with such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> beauty as this? Is it because 'tis +unsubstantial all—senseless, though fair—and in its evanescence +unsuited to the sympathies that yearn for the permanencies of breathing +life? Dreams are delightful only as delusions within the delusion of +this our mortal waking existence—one touch of what we call reality +dissolves them all; blissful though they may have been, we care not when +the bubble bursts—nay, we are glad again to return to our own natural +world, care-haunted though in its happiest moods it be—glad as if we +had escaped from glamoury; and, oh! beyond expression sweet it is once +more to drink the light of living eyes—the music of living lips—after +that preternatural hush that steeps the shadowy realms of the +imagination, whether stretching along a sunset-heaven or the mystical +imagery of earth and sky floating in the lustre of lake or sea.</p> + +<p>Therefore "row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Lowlands;" and as +rowing is a thirsty exercise, let us land at the Ferry, and each man +refresh himself with a horn of ale.</p> + +<p>There is not a prettier place on all Windermere than the Ferry-House, or +one better adapted for a honey-moon. You can hand your bride into a boat +almost out of the parlour window, and be off among the islands in a +moment, or into nook or bay where no prying eye, even through telescope +(a most unwarrantable instrument), can overlook your happiness; or you +can secrete yourselves, like buck and doe, among the lady-fern on +Furness Fells, where not a sunbeam can intrude on your sacred privacy, +and where you may melt down hours to moments, in chaste connubial bliss, +brightening futurity with plans of domestic enjoyment, like long lines +of lustre streaming across the lake. But at present, let us visit the +fort-looking building among the cliffs called The Station, and see how +Windermere looks as we front the east. Why, you would not know it to be +the same lake. The Isle called Beautiful, which heretofore had scarcely +seemed an isle, appearing to belong to one or other shore of the +mainland, from this point of view is an isle indeed, loading the lake +with a weight of beauty, and giving it an ineffable character of +richness which nowhere else does it possess; while the other lesser +isles, dropt "in nature's careless haste" between it and the Furness +Fells, connect it still with those lovely shores<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> from which it floats a +short way apart, without being disunited—one spirit blending the whole +together within the compass of a fledgling's flight. Beyond these</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sister isles, that smile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Together like a happy family<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of beauty and of love,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the eye meets the Rayrig woods, with but a gleam of water between, only +visible in sunshine, and is gently conducted by them up the hills of +Applethwaite, diversified with cultivated enclosures, "all green as +emerald" to their very summits, with all their pastoral and arable +grounds besprinkled with stately single trees, copses, or groves. On the +nearer side of these hills is seen, stretching far off to other lofty +regions—Hill-bell and High-street conspicuous over the rest—the long +vale of Troutbeck, with its picturesque cottages, in "numbers without +number numberless," and all its sable pines and sycamores—on the +further side, that most sylvan of all sylvan mountains, where lately the +Hemans warbled her native wood-notes wild in her poetic bower, fitly +called Dove-nest, and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and Rydal Head, +magnificent giants looking westward to the Langdale Pikes (here unseen),</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The last that parley with the setting sun."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Immediately in front, the hills are low and lovely, sloping with gentle +undulations down to the lake, here grove-girdled along all its shores. +The elm-grove that overshadows the Parsonage is especially +conspicuous—stately and solemn in a green old age—and though now +silent, in spring and early summer clamorous with rooks in love or +alarm, an ancient family, and not to be expelled from their hereditary +seats. Following the line of shore to the right, and turning your eyes +unwillingly away from the bright and breezy Belfield, they fall on the +elegant architecture of Storr's Hall, gleaming from a glade in the thick +woods, and still looking southward they see a serene series of the same +forest scenery, along the heights of Gillhead and Gummer's-How, till +Windermere is lost, apparently narrowed into a river, beyond Townhead +and Fellfoot, where the prospect is closed by a beaconed eminence +clothed with shadowy trees to the very base of the Tower. The points and +promontories jutting into the lake from these and the opposite +shores—which are of a humbler, though not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> tame character—are all +placed most felicitously; and as the lights and shadows keep shifting on +the water, assume endless varieties of relative position to the eye, so +that often during one short hour you might think you had been gazing on +Windermere with a kaleidoscopical eye, that had seemed to create the +beauty which in good truth is floating there for ever on the bosom of +nature.</p> + +<p>That description, perhaps, is not so very much amiss; but should you +think otherwise, be so good as give us a better: meanwhile let us +descend from The Station—and its stained windows—stained into setting +sunlight—frost and snow—the purpling autumn—and the first faint +vernal green—and re-embark at the Ferry-House pier. Berkshire Island is +fair—but we have always looked at it with an evil eye since unable to +weather it in our old schooner, one day when the Victory, on the same +tack, shot by us to windward like a salmon. But now we are half-way +between Storr's Point and Rawlinson's Nab—so, my dear Garnet, down with +the helm and let us put about (who is that catching crabs?) for a fine +front view of the Grecian edifice. It does honour to the genius of +Gandy—and say what people choose of a classic clime, the light of a +Westmoreland sky falls beautifully on that marble-like stone, which, +whether the heavens be in gloom or glory, "shines well where it stands," +and flings across the lake a majestic shadow. Methought there passed +along the lawn the image of one now in his tomb! The memory of that +bright day returns, when Windermere glittered with all her sails in +honour of the great Northern Minstrel, and of him the Eloquent, whose +lips are now mute in the dust. Methinks we see his smile benign—that we +hear his voice silver-sweet!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But away with melancholy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor doleful changes ring"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>as such thoughts came like shadows, like shadows let them depart—and +spite of that which happeneth to all men—"this one day we give to +merriment." Pull, Billy, pull—or we will turn you round—and in that +case there is no refreshment nearer than Newby-bridge. The Naiad feels +the invigorated impulse—and her cut-water murmurs to the tune of six +knots through the tiny cataract foaming round her bows. The woods are +all running down the lake,—and at that rate, by two <i>post meridiem</i> +will be in the sea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> + +<p>Commend us—on a tour—to lunch and dinner in one. 'Tis a saving both of +time and money—and of all the dinner-lunches that ever were set upon a +sublunary table, the <i>facile principes</i> are the dinner-lunches you may +devour in the White Lion, Bowness. Take a walk—and a seat on the green +that overlooks the village, almost on a level with the lead-roof of the +venerable church—while Hebe is laying the cloth for a repast fit for +Jove, Juno, and the other heathen gods and goddesses; and if you must +have politics—why, call for the <i>Standard</i> or <i>Sun</i> (Heavens! there is +that hawk already at the <i>Times</i>), and devote a few hurried and hungry +minutes to the French Revolution. Why, the Green of all Greens—often +traced by us of yore beneath the midnight moonlight, till a path was +worn along the edge of the low wall, still called "North's Walk"—is +absolutely converted into a reading-room, and our laking party into a +political club. There is Louisa with the <i>Leeds Intelligencer</i>—and +Matilda with the <i>Morning Herald</i>—and Harriet with that York paper +worth them all put together—for it tells of Priam, and the Cardinal, +and St Nicholas—but, hark! a soft footstep! And then a soft voice—no +dialect or accent pleasanter than the Westmoreland—whispers that the +dinner-lunch is on the table—and no leading article like a cold round +of beef, or a veal pie. Let the Parisians settle their Constitution as +they will—meanwhile let us strengthen ours; and after a single glass of +Madeira—and a horn of home-brewed—let us off on foot—on horseback—in +gig—car and chariot—to Troutbeck.</p> + +<p>It is about a Scottish mile, we should think, from Bowness to Cook's +House—along the turnpike road—half the distance lying embowered in the +Rayrig woods—and half open to lake, cloud, and sky. It is pleasant to +lose sight now and then of the lake along whose banks you are +travelling, especially if during separation you become a Druid. The +water woos you at your return with her bluest smile, and her whitest +murmur. Some of the finest trees in all the Rayrig woods have had the +good sense to grow by the roadside, where they can see all that is +passing—and make their own observations on us deciduous plants. Few of +them seem to be very old—not much older than Christopher North—and, +like him, they wear well, trunk sound to the core, arms with a long +sweep, and head in fine proportions of cerebral development, fortified +against all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> storms—perfect pictures of oaks in their prime. You may +see one—without looking for it—near a farmhouse called +Miller-ground—himself a grove. His trunk is clothed in a tunic of moss, +which shows the ancient Sylvan to great advantage, and it would be no +easy matter to give him a fall. Should you wish to see Windermere in all +her glory, you have but to enter a gate a few yards on this side of his +shade, and ascend an eminence called by us Greenbank—but you had as +well leave your red mantle in the carriage, for an enormous white, +long-horned Lancashire bull has for some years established his +head-quarters not far off, and you would not wish your wife to become a +widow, with six fatherless children. But the royal road of poetry is +often the most splendid—and by keeping the turnpike, you soon find +yourself on a terrace to which there was nothing to compare in the +hanging gardens of Babylon. There is the widest breadth of water—the +richest foreground of wood—and the most magnificent background of +mountains—not only in Westmoreland but—believe us—in all the world. +That blue roof is Calgarth—and no traveller ever pauses on this brow +without giving it a blessing—for the sake of the illustrious dead; for +there long dwelt in the body Richard Watson, the Defender of the Faith, +and there within the shadow of his memory still dwell those, dearest on +earth to his beatified spirit. So pass along in high and solemn thought, +till you lose sight of Calgarth in the lone road that leads by St +Catharine's, and then relapse into pleasant fancies and picturesque +dreams. This is the best way by far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and +downs in this life were ever more enlivening—not even the ups and downs +of a bird learning to fly. Sheep-fences, six feet high, are admirable +contrivances for shutting out scenery; and by shutting out much scenery, +why, you confer an unappreciable value on the little that remains +visible, and feel as if you could hug it to your heart. But sometimes +one does feel tempted to shove down a few roods of intercepting +stone-wall higher than the horse-hair on a cuirassier's casque—though +sheep should eat the suckers and scions, protected as they there shoot, +at the price of the concealment of the picturesque and the poetical from +beauty-searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is said, which has never +a turning; so this must be a short one, which has a hundred.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> You have +turned your back on Windermere—and our advice to you is, to keep your +face to the mountains. Troutbeck is a jewel—a diamond of a stream—but +Bobbin Mills have exhausted some of the most lustrous pools, changing +them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Deep dells are his +delight—and he loves the rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded +banks—and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang at intervals over +his winding course, and seem sometimes to block it up; but the miner +works his way out beneath galleries and arches in the living +stone—sometimes silent—sometimes singing—and sometimes roaring like +thunder—till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere he reaches the wooden +bridge in the bonny holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the swan +that sometimes sees his image in his breast, and through alder and +willow banks murmurs away his life in the Lake.</p> + +<p>Yes—that is Troutbeck Chapel—one of the smallest—and to our eyes the +very simplest—of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it be +remembered when more pretending edifices are forgotten—just like some +mild, sensible, but perhaps somewhat too silent person, whose +acquaintanceship—nay, friendship—we feel a wish to cultivate we scarce +know why, except that he is mild, sensible, and silent; whereas we would +not be civil to the <i>brusque</i>, upsetting, and loquacious puppy at his +elbow, whose information is as various as it is profound, were one word +or look of courtesy to save him from the flames. For Heaven's sake, +Louisa, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel. There is nothing but a square +tower—a horizontal roof—and some perpendicular walls. The outlines of +the mountains here have no specific character. That bridge is but a poor +feature—and the stream here very commonplace. Put them not on paper. +Yet alive—is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a +soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here—in this +utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil; and as the +bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green +pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled +heart whispers to itself, "this is peace!"</p> + +<p>The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your +Troutbeck <i>statesmen</i>, we have heard, are the most litigious—the most +quarrelsome about straws. Not a foot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>path, in all the parish that has +not cost many pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant style is +referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the +Quarter Sessions. No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a +march-wall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a +frost-loosened stone tumble from some <i>skrees</i> down upon a neighbour's +field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many +of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and +ears mainly to fee attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go the +same road—and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields, +will sue for something or another <i>in formâ pauperis</i>, were it but the +worthless wood and second-hand nails that may be destined for his +coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life—but we must take +pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were +every whit as bad in the time of the patriarchs—else—whence the +satirical sneer, "sham Abraham?" Yonder is the village straggling away +up along the hill-side, till the furthest house seems a rock fallen with +trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in +clusters of twos or threes—with here and there what in Scotland we +should call a <i>clachan</i>—many a sma' toun within the ae lang toun; but +where in all braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of +rural dwellings, all dropt down where the Painter and the Poet would +have wished to plant them, on knolls and in dells, and on banks and +braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in +picturesque confusion by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, and by +flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich as those of the Hesperides?</p> + +<p>If you have no objections—our pretty dears—we shall return to Bowness +by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march—so that we may one +and all indulge in our own silent fancies—and let not a word be spoken, +virgins—under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable—till we crown +the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already—and we hear our +musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his +cottage, the head and shoulders of Windermere are seen in their most +majestic shape—and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale +so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland, +gorgeous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> land," by gazing on which for an hour we shall all become +poets and poetesses. Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same +critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round—and despises the +twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down—from head to +foot—from the Brathay to the Leven—of the proper breadth precisely—to +a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay—on which the birds +love to balance themselves—at low or high water, to be visible longer +or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such +occasions since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our +skiff from the Endeavour, the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be +impaired—so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of +its sylvan shores. True, there are flaws in the diamond—but only when +the squalls come; and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the +first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue as an angel's eyes. Lowood +Bay—we are now embarked in Mr Jackson's prettiest pinnace—when the sun +is westering—which it now is—surpasses all other bays in fresh-water +mediterraneans. Eve loves to see her pensive face reflected in that +serenest mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossible—but sure she +never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in +that truest of all glasses, set in the richest of all frames. Pleased +she retires—with a wavering motion—and casting "many a longing, +lingering look behind," fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods; +while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger—we really know not +which—takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with +her crescent-moon-coronet, wreathed perhaps with a white cloud, and just +over the silver bow the lustre of one large yellow star.</p> + +<p>As none of the party complain of hunger, let us crack among us a single +bottle of our worthy host's choice old Madeira—and then haste in the +barouche (ha! here it is) to Bowness. It is right now to laugh—and +sing—and recite poetry—and talk all manner of nonsense. Didn't ye hear +something crack? Can it be a spring—or merely the axle-tree? Our +clerical friend from Chester assures us 'twas but a string of his +guitar—so no more shrieking—and after coffee we shall have</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rise up, rise up, Xarifa, lay your golden cushion down!"<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>And then we two, my dear sir, must have a contest at chess—at which, if +you beat us, we shall leave our bed at midnight, and murder you in your +sleep. "But where," murmurs Matilda, "are we going?" To Oresthead, +love—and Elleray—for you must see a sight these sweet eyes of thine +never saw before—a <span class="smcap">sunset</span>.</p> + +<p>We have often wondered if there be in the world one woman indisputably +and undeniably the most beautiful of all women—or if, indeed, our first +mother were "the loveliest of her daughters, Eve." What human female +beauty is all men feel—but few men know—and none can tell—further +than that it is perfect spiritual health, breathingly embodied in +perfect corporeal flesh and blood, according to certain heaven-framed +adaptations of form and hue, that by a familiar yet inscrutable mystery, +to our senses and our souls express sanctity and purity of the immortal +essence enshrined within, by aid of all associated perceptions and +emotions that the heart and the imagination can agglomerate round them, +as instantly and as unhesitatingly as the faculties of thought and +feeling can agglomerate round a lily or a rose, for example, the +perceptions and emotions that make them—by divine right of inalienable +beauty—the Royal Families of Flowers. This definition—or description +rather—of human female beauty, may appear to some, as indeed it appears +to us, something vague; but all profound truths—out of the exact +sciences—are something vague; and it is manifestly the design of a +benign and gracious Providence that they should be so till the end of +time—till mortality puts on immortality—and earth is heaven. +Vagueness, therefore, is no fault in philosophy—any more than in the +dawn of morning, or the gloaming of eve. Enough, if each clause of the +sentence that seeks to elucidate a confessed mystery, has a meaning +harmonious with all the meanings in all the other clauses—and that the +effect of the whole taken together is musical—and a tune. Then it is +Truth. For all Falsehood is dissonant—and verity is consent. It is our +faith, that the souls of some women are angelic—or nearly so—by nature +and the Christian religion; and that the faces and persons of some women +are angelic, or nearly so—whose souls, nevertheless, are seen to be far +otherwise—and, on that discovery, beauty fades or dies. But may not +soul and body—spirit and matter—meet in perfect union at birth; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> +grow together into a creature, though of spiritual mould, comparable +with Eve before the Fall? Such a creature—such creatures—may have +been; but the question is—did you ever see one? We almost think that we +have—but many long years ago;</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"She is dedde,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gone to her death-bedde<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All under the willow-tree."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And it may be that her image in the moonlight of memory and imagination +may be more perfectly beautiful than she herself ever was, when</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Upgrew that living flower beneath our eye."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes—'tis thus that we form to ourselves—incommunicably within our +souls—what we choose to call Ideal Beauty—that is, a life-in-death +image or Eidolon of a Being whose voice was once heard, and whose +footsteps once wandered among the flowers of this earth. But it is a +mistake to believe that such beauty as this can visit the soul only +after the original in which it once breathed is no more. For as it can +only be seen by profoundest passion—and the profoundest are the +passions of Love, and Pity, and Grief—then why may not each and all of +these passions—when we consider the constitution of this world and this +life—be awakened in their utmost height and depth by the sight of +living beauty, as well as by the memory of the dead? To do so is surely +within "the reachings of our souls,"—and if so, then may the virgin +beauty of his daughter, praying with folded hands and heavenward face +when leaning in health on her father's knees, transcend even the ideal +beauty which shall afterwards visit his slumbers nightly, long years +after he has laid her head in the grave. If by ideal beauty you mean a +beauty beyond whatever breathed, and moved, and had its being on +earth—then we suspect that not even "that inner eye which is the bliss +of solitude" ever beheld it; but if you merely mean by ideal beauty, +that which is composed of ideas, and of the feelings attached by nature +to ideas, then, begging your pardon, my good sir, all beauty whatever is +ideal—and you had better begin to study metaphysics.</p> + +<p>But what we were wishing to say is this—that whatever may be the truth +with regard to human female beauty—Win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>dermere, seen by sunset from the +spot where we now stand, Elleray, is at this moment the most beautiful +scene on this earth. The reasons why it must be so are multitudinous. +Not only can the eye take in, but the imagination, in its awakened +power, can master all the component elements of the spectacle—and while +it adequately discerns and sufficiently feels the influence of each, is +alive throughout all its essence to the divine agency of the whole. The +charm lies in its entirety—its unity, which is so perfect—so seemeth +it to our eyes—that 'tis in itself a complete world—of which not a +line could be altered without disturbing the spirit of beauty that lies +recumbent there, wherever the earth meets the sky. There is nothing here +fragmentary; and had a poet been born, and bred here all his days, nor +known aught of fair or grand beyond this liquid vale, yet had he sung +truly and profoundly of the shows of nature. No rude and shapeless +masses of mountains—such as too often in our own dear Scotland encumber +the earth with dreary desolation—with gloom without grandeur—and +magnitude without magnificence. But almost in orderly array, and +irregular just up to the point of the picturesque, where poetry is not +needed for the fancy's pleasure, stand the Race of Giants—mist-veiled +transparently—or crowned with clouds slowly settling of their own +accord into all the forms that Beauty loves, when with her sister-spirit +Peace she descends at eve from highest heaven to sleep among the shades +of earth.</p> + +<p>Sweet would be the hush of lake, woods, and skies, were it not so +solemn! The silence is that of a temple, and, as we face the west, +irresistibly are we led to adore. The mighty sun occupies with his +flaming retinue all the region. Mighty yet mild—for from his disc, +awhile insufferably bright, is effused now a gentle crimson light, that +dyes all the west in one uniform glory, save where yet round the cloud +edges lingers the purple, the green, and the yellow lustre, unwilling to +forsake the violet beds of the sky, changing, while we gaze, into +heavenly roses; till that prevailing crimson colour at last gains entire +possession of the heavens, and all the previous splendour gives way to +one, whose paramount purity, lustrous as fire, is in its steadfast +beauty sublime. And, lo! the lake has received that sunset into its +bosom. It, too, softly burns with a crimson glow—and, as sinks the sun +below the mountains, Windermere, gorgeous in her array as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> the western +sky, keeps fading away as it fades, till at last all the ineffable +splendour expires, and the spirit that has been lost to this world in +the transcendent vision, or has been seeing all things appertaining to +this world in visionary symbols, returns from that celestial sojourn, +and knows that its lot is, henceforth as heretofore, to walk weariedly +perhaps, and woe-begone, over the no longer divine but disenchanted +earth!</p> + +<p>It is very kind in the moon and stars—just like them—to rise so soon +after sunset. The heart sinks at the sight of the sky, when a +characterless night succeeds such a blaze of light—like dull reality +dashing the last vestiges of the brightest of dreams. When the moon is +"hid in her vacant interlunar cave," and not a star can "burst its +cerements," imagination in the dim blank droops her wings—our thoughts +become of the earth earthly—and poetry seems a pastime fit but for +fools and children. But how different our mood, when</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glows the firmament with living sapphires,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and Diana, who has ascended high in heaven, without our having once +observed the divinity, bends her silver bow among the rejoicing stars, +while the lake, like another sky, seems to contain its own luminaries, a +different division of the constellated night! 'Tis merry Windermere no +more. Yet we must not call her melancholy—though somewhat sad she +seems, and pensive, as if the stillness of universal nature did touch +her heart. How serene all the lights—how peaceful all the shadows! +Steadfast alike—as if they would brood for ever—yet transient as all +loveliness—and at the mercy of every cloud. In some places, the lake +has disappeared—in others, the moonlight is almost like sunshine—only +silver instead of gold. Here spots of quiet light—there lines of +trembling lustre—and there a flood of radiance checkered by the images +of trees. Lo! the Isle called Beautiful has now gathered upon its +central grove all the radiance issuing from that celestial Urn; and +almost in another moment it seems blended with the dim mass of mainland, +and blackness enshrouds the woods. Still as seems the night to +unobservant eyes, it is fluctuating in its expression as the face of a +sleeper overspread with pleasant but disturbing dreams. Never for any +two successive moments is the aspect of the night the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> same—each smile +has its own meaning, its own character; and Light is felt to be like +Music, to have a melody and a harmony of its own—so mysteriously allied +are the powers and provinces of eye and ear, and by such a kindred and +congenial agency do they administer to the workings of the spirit.</p> + +<p>Well, that is very extraordinary—Rain—rain—rain! All the eyes of +heaven were bright as bright might be—the sky was blue as violets—that +braided whiteness, that here and there floated like a veil on the brow +of night, was all that recalled the memory of clouds—and as for the +moon, no faintest halo yellowed round her orb, that seemed indeed "one +perfect chrysolite;"—yet while all the winds seemed laid asleep till +morn, and beauty to have chained all the elements into peace—overcast +in a moment is the firmament—an evanishing has left it blank as +mist—there is a fast, thick, pattering on the woods—yes—rain—rain— +rain—and ere we reach Bowness, the party will be wet through to their +skins. Nay—matters are getting still more serious—for there was +lightning—yea, lightning! Ten seconds! and hark, very respectable +thunder! With all our wisdom, we have not been weather-wise—or we +should have known, when we saw it, an electrical sunset. Only look now +towards the West. There floats Noah's Ark—a magnificent spectacle; and +now for the Flood. That far-off sullen sound proclaims cataracts. And +what may mean that sighing and moaning and muttering up among the +cliffs? See—see how the sheet lightning shows the long lake-shore all +tumbling with foamy breakers. A strong wind is there—but here there is +not a breath. But the woods across the lake are bowing their heads to +the blast. Windermere is in a tumult—the storm comes flying on wings +all abroad—and now we are in the very heart of the hurricane. See, in +Bowness is hurrying many a light—for the people fear we may be on the +lake; and faithful Billy, depend on't, is launching his life-boat to go +to our assistance. Well, this is an adventure.—But soft—what ails our +Argand Lamp! Our study is in such darkness that we cannot see our +paper—in the midst of a thunderstorm we conclude, and to bed by a flaff +of lightning.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE MOORS.</h2> + +<h3>PROLOGUE.</h3> + + +<p>Once we knew the Highlands absolutely too well—not a nook that was not +as familiar to us as our brown study. We had not to complain of the +lochs, glens, woods, and mountains alone, for having so fastened +themselves upon us on a great scale that we found it impossible to shake +them off; but the hardship in our case was, that all the subordinate +parts of the scenery, many of them dull and dreary enough, and some of +them intolerably tedious, had taken it upon themselves so to thrust +their intimacy upon us, in all winds and weathers, that without giving +them the cut direct there was no way of escaping from the burden of +their friendship. To courteous and humane Christians, such as we have +always been both by name and nature as far back as we can recollect, it +is painful to cut even an impudent stone, or an upsetting tree that may +cross our path uncalled for, or obtrude itself on our privacy when we +wish to be alone in our meditations. Yet, we confess, they used +sometimes sorely to try our temper. It is all very well for you, our +good sir, to say in excuse for them that such objects are inanimate. So +much the worse. Were they animate, like yourself, they might be reasoned +with on the impropriety of interrupting the stream of any man's +soliloquies. But being not merely inanimate but irrational, objects of +that class know not to keep their own place, which indeed, it may be +said in reply, is kept for them by nature. But that Mistress of the +Ceremonies, though enjoying a fine green old age, cannot be expected to +be equally attentive to the proceedings of all the objects under her +control. Accordingly, often when she is not looking, what more common +than for a huge hulking fellow of a rock, with an absurd tuft of trees +on his head, who has observed you lying half-asleep on the greensward, +to hang eavesdropping, as it were, over your most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> secret thoughts, +which he whispers to the winds, and they to all the clouds! Or for some +grotesque and fantastic ash, with a crooked back, and arms +disproportionately long, like a giant in extreme old age dwindling into +a dwarf, to jut out from the hole in the wall, and should your leaden +eye chance at the time to love the ground, to put his mossy fist right +in your philosophical countenance! In short, it is very possible to know +a country so thoroughly well, outside and in, from mountain to +mole-hill, that you get mutually tired of one another's company, and are +ready to vent your quarrel in reciprocal imprecations.</p> + +<p>So was it once with us and the Highlands. That "too much familiarity +breeds contempt" we learned many a long year ago, when learning to write +large text; and passages in our life have been a running commentary on +the theme then set us by that incomparable caligraphist, Butterworth. +All "the old familiar faces" occasionally come in for a portion of that +feeling; and on that account, we are glad that we saw, but for one day +and one night, Charles Lamb's. Therefore, some dozen years ago we gave +up the Highlands, not wishing to quarrel with them, and confined our +tender assiduities to the Lowlands, while, like two great flats as we +were, we kept staring away at each other, with our lives on the same +level. All the consequences that might naturally have been expected have +ensued; and we are now as heartily sick of the Lowlands, and they of us. +What can we do but return to our First Love?</p> + +<p>Allow us to offer another view of the subject. There is not about Old +Age one blessing more deserving gratitude to Heaven, than the gradual +bedimming of memory brought on by years. In youth, all things, internal +and external, are unforgetable, and by the perpetual presence of passion +oppress the soul. The eye of a woman haunts the victim on whom it may +have given a glance, till he leaps perhaps out of a four-story window. A +beautiful lake, or a sublime mountain, drives a young poet as mad as a +March hare. He loses himself in an interminable forest louring all round +the horizon of a garret six feet square. It matters not to him whether +his eyes be open or shut. He is at the mercy of all Life and all Nature, +and not for one hour can he escape from their persecutions. His soul is +the slave of the Seven Senses, and each is a tyrant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> with instruments of +torture, to whom and to which Phalaris, with his brazen bull, was a +pointless joke. But in old age "the heart of a man is oppressed with +care" no longer; the Seven Tyrants have lost their sceptres, and are +dethroned; and the grey-headed gentleman feels that his soul has "set up +its rest." His eyes are dazzled no more with insufferable light—no more +his ears tingle with music too exquisite to be borne—no more his touch +is transport. The scents of nature, stealing from the balmy mouths of +lilies and roses, are deadened in his nostrils. He is above and beyond +the reach of all the long arms of many-handed misery, as he is out of +the convulsive clutch of bliss. And is not this the state of best +happiness for mortal man? Tranquillity! The peaceful air that we breathe +as we are westering towards the sunset-regions of our Being, and feel +that we are about to drop down for ever out of sight behind the Sacred +Mountains.</p> + +<p>All this may be very fine, but cannot be said to help us far on with our +Prologue. Let us try it again. Old men, we remarked, ought to be +thankful to Heaven for their dim memories. Never do we feel that more +profoundly than when dreaming about the Highlands. All is confusion. +Nothing distinctly do we remember—not even the names of lochs and +mountains. Where is Ben Cru—Cru—Cru—what's-his-name? +Ay—ay—Cruachan. At this blessed moment we see his cloud-capped +head—but we have clean forgotten the silver sound of the name of the +county he encumbers. Ross-shire? Nay, that won't do—he never was at +Tain. We are assured by Dr Reid's, Dr Beattie's, and Dugald Stewart's +great Instinctive First Principle Belief, that oftener than once, or ten +times either, have we been in a day-long hollow among precipices dear to +eagles, called Glen-Etive. But where begins or where ends that "severe +sojourn" is now to us a mystery—though we hear the sound of the sea and +the dashing of cataracts. Yet though all is thus dim in our memory, +would you believe it that nothing is utterly lost? No, not even the +thoughts that soared like eagles vanishing in the light—or that dived +like ravens into the gloom. They all reappear—those from the +Empyrean—these from Hades—reminding us of the good or the evil borne +in other days, within the spiritual regions of our boundless being. The +world of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> eye and ear is not in reality narrowed because it glimmers; +ever and anon as years advance, a light direct from heaven dissipates +the gloom, and bright and glorious as of yore the landscape laughs to +the sea, the sea to heaven, and heaven back again to the gazing spirit +that leaps forward to the hailing light with something of the same +divine passion that gave wings to our youth.</p> + +<p>All this may be still finer, yet cannot be said, any more than the +preceding paragraph, much to help us on with our Prologue. To come then, +if possible, to the point at once—We are happy that our dim memory and +our dim imagination restore and revive in our mind none but the +characteristic features of the scenery of the Highlands, unmixed with +baser matter, and all floating magnificently through a spiritual haze, +so that the whole region is now more than ever idealised; and in spite +of all his present, past, and future prosiness—Christopher North, soon +as in thought his feet touch the heather, becomes a poet.</p> + +<p>It has long been well known to the whole world that we are a sad +egotist—yet our egotism, so far from being a detraction from our +attraction, seems to be the very soul of it, making it impossible in +nature for any reasonable being to come within its sphere, without being +drawn by sweet compulsion to the old wizard's heart. He is so <i>humane</i>! +Only look at him for a few minutes, and liking becomes love—love +becomes veneration. And all this even before he has opened his lips—by +the mere power of his ogles and his temples. In his large mild blue eyes +is written not only his nature, but miraculously, in German text, his +very name, <span class="newfont">Christopher North</span>. Mrs Gentle was the first to discover it; +though we remember having been asked more than once in our youth, by an +alarmed virgin on whom we happened at the time to be looking tender, "If +we were aware that there was something preternatural in our eyes?" +<span class="newfont">Christopher</span> is conspicuous +in our right eye—<span class="newfont">North</span> in our left; and when +we wish to be incog., we either draw their fringed curtains, or, +nun-like, keep the tell-tale orbs fixed on the ground. Candour whispers +us to confess, that some years ago a child was exhibited at sixpence +with <span class="smcap">William Wood</span> legible in its optics—having been affiliated, by +ocular evidence, on a gentleman of that name,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> who, with his dying +breath, disowned the soft impeachment. But in that case nature had +written a vile scrawl—in ours her hand is firm, and goes off with a +flourish.</p> + +<p>Have you ever entered, all alone, the shadows of some dilapidated old +burial-place, and in a nook made beautiful by wild-briers and a +flowering thorn, beheld the stone image of some long-forgotten worthy +lying on his grave? Some knight who perhaps had fought in Palestine,—or +some holy man, who in the Abbey—now almost gone—had led a long still +life of prayer? The moment you knew that you were standing among the +dwellings of the dead, how impressive became the ruins! Did not that +stone image wax more and more lifelike in its repose? And as you kept +your eyes fixed on the features Time had not had the heart to +obliterate, seemed not your soul to hear the echoes of the Miserere sung +by the brethren?</p> + +<p>So looks Christopher—on his couch—in his <span class="smcap">alcove</span>. He is taking his +siesta—and the faint shadows you see coming and going across his face +are dreams. 'Tis a pensive dormitory, and hangs undisturbed in its +spiritual region as a cloud on the sky of the Longest Day when it falls +on the Sabbath.</p> + +<p>What think you of <span class="smcap">our Father</span>, alongside of the Pedlar in "The +Excursion?" Wordsworth says—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i20">"Amid the gloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Appear'd a roofless hut; four naked walls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That stared upon each other! I look'd round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And to my wish and to my hope espied<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Him whom I sought; a man of reverend age,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But stout and hale, for travel unimpair'd.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was he seen upon the cottage bench,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An iron-pointed staff lay at his side."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Alas! "stout and hale" are words that could not be applied, without +cruel mocking, to our figure. "Recumbent in the shade" unquestionably he +is—yet, "recumbent" is a clumsy word for such quietude; and, recurring +to our former image, we prefer to say, in the words of Wilson,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Still is he as a frame of stone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That in its stillness lies alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With silence breathing from its face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For ever in some holy place,<br /></span> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> +</div> +<span class="i0">Chapel or aisle—on marble laid,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With pale hands on his pale breast spread,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An image humble, meek, and low,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of one forgotten long ago!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No "iron-pointed staff lies at his side"—but "Satan's dread," <span class="smcap">the +Crutch</span>! Wordsworth tells us over again that the Pedlar—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"With no appendage but a staff,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The prized memorial of <i>relinquish'd</i> toils,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Screen'd from the sun."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>On his couch, in his Alcove, Christopher is reposing—not his limbs +alone, but his very essence. <span class="smcap">The Crutch</span> is, indeed, both <i>de jure</i> and +<i>de facto</i> the prized memorial of toils—but, thank Heaven, not +<i>relinquished</i> toils; and then how characteristic of the dear merciless +old man—hardly distinguishable among the fringed draperies of his +canopy, the dependent and independent <span class="smcap">Knout</span>!</p> + +<p>Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep? We shrewdly suspect not—'twas but a +doze. "Recumbent in the shade, <i>as if asleep</i>"—"Upon that cottage-bench +<i>reposed</i> his limbs" induce us to lean to the opinion that he was but on +the border of the Land of Nod. Nay, the poet gets more explicit, and +with that minute particularity so charming in poetical description, +finally informs us that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Supine the wanderer lay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>His eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shadows of the breezy elms above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dappling his face."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It would appear, then, on an impartial consideration of all the +circumstances of the case, that the "man of reverend age," though +"recumbent" and "supine" upon the "cottage bench," "as if asleep," and +"his eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut," was in a mood between +sleeping and waking; and this creed is corroborated by the following +assertion—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"He had not heard the sound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of my approaching steps, and in the shade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unnoticed did I stand some minutes' space.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At length I hail'd him, seeing that his hat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had newly scoop'd a running stream."<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>He rose; and so do We, for probably by this time you may have discovered +that we have been describing Ourselves in our siesta or mid-day +snooze—as we have been beholding in our mind's eye our venerated and +mysterious Double.</p> + +<p>We cannot help flattering ourselves—if indeed it be flattery—that +though no relative of his, we have a look of the Pedlar—as he is +elaborately painted by the hand of a great master in the aforesaid Poem.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Him had I mark'd the day before—alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And station'd in the public way, with, face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turn'd to the sun then setting, while that staff<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Afforded to the figure of the man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Detain'd for contemplation or repose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Graceful support," &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As if it were yesterday, we remember our first interview with the Bard. +It was at the Lady's Oak, between Ambleside and Rydal. We were then in +the very flower of our age—just sixty; so we need not say the century +had then seen but little of this world. The Bard was a mere boy of some +six lustres, and had a lyrical-ballad look that established his identity +at first sight, all unlike the lackadaisical. His right hand was within +his vest on the region of the heart, and he ceased his crooning as we +stood face to face. What a noble countenance! at once austere and +gracious—haughty and benign—of a man conscious of his greatness while +yet companioning with the humble—an unrecognised power dwelling in the +woods. Our figure at that moment so impressed itself on his imagination, +that it in time supplanted the image of the real Pedlar, and grew into +the <i>Emeritus of the Three Days</i>. We were standing in that very +attitude—having deposited on the coping of the wall our Kit, since +adopted by the British Army, with us at once a library and a larder.</p> + +<p>And again—and even more characteristically,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">"Plain was his garb:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom no one could have pass'd without remark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his whole figure breathed intelligence.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time had compress'd the freshness of his cheeks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into a narrower circle of deep red,<br /></span> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> +</div> +<span class="i0">But had not tamed his eye, that under brows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it brought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From years of youth; whilst, like a being made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of many beings, he had wondrous skill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To blend with knowledge of the years to come,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Human, or such as lie beyond the grave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In our intellectual characters we indulge the pleasing hope that there +are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty +will not permit us to dwell—and incur acquirements, more particularly +in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"While yet he linger'd in the rudiments<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of science, and among her simplest laws,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His triangles—they were the stars of heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The silent stars! oft did he take delight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To measure the altitude of some tall crag,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That is the eagle's birthplace," &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So it was with us. Give us but a base and a quadrant—and when a student +in Jemmy Millar's class, we could have given you the altitude of any +steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals.</p> + +<p>Occasionally, too, in a small party of friends, though, not proud of the +accomplishment, we have been prevailed on, as you may have heard, to +delight humanity with a song—"The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," +"Flee up, flee up, thou bonnie bonnie Cock," or "Auld Langsyne"—just as +the Pedlar</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16">"At request would sing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Old songs, the product of his native hills;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A skilful distribution of sweet sounds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As cool refreshing water, by the care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the industrious husbandman diffused<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through a parch'd meadow-field in time of drought."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as that of the "Vagrant +Merchant."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And surely never did there live on earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And teasing ways of children vex'd not him:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Indulgent listener was he to the tongue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To his fraternal sympathy address'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Obtain reluctant hearing."<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>Who can read the following lines, and not think of Christopher North?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16">"Birds and beasts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the mute fish that glances in the stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And harmless reptile coiling in the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gorgeous insect hovering in the air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The fowl domestic, and the household dog—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In his capacious mind he loved them all."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>True, that our love of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The mute fish that glances in the stream,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or +with the pleasure of "filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have +reason to know, was like his poet and ourselves, in that art a +craftsman, and for love beat the mole-catcher at busking a batch of +May-flies. We question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a +green dragon. "The harmless reptile coiling in the sun" we are not so +sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom in our simplicity we +mistook for a slow-worm—the very day, by the by, on which we were +poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for +mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as +the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin +between finger and thumb to compress their mealy wings. The household +dog we do indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicions we +prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic +fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing +them at their <i>walks</i></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Among the rural villages and farms;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and though game to the back-bone, they are allowed to wear the spurs +nature gave them—to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is +the sward, like the <i>sod</i>, ever reddened with their heroic blood, for +hateful to our ears the war-song,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Welcome to your gory bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or to victory!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>'Tis our way, you know, to pass from gay to grave matter, and often from +a jocular to a serious view of the same subject—it being natural to +us—and having become habitual too, from our writing occasionally in +<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>. All<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> the world knows our admiration of +Wordsworth, and admits that we have done almost as much as Jeffrey or +Taylor to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles." But we +are not a nation of idolaters, and worship neither graven image nor man +that is born of a woman. We may seem to have treated the Pedlar with +insufficient respect in that playful parallel between him and Ourselves; +but there you are wrong again, for we desire thereby to do him honour. +We wish now to say a few words on the wisdom of making such a personage +the chief character in a Philosophical Poem.</p> + +<p>He is described as endowed by nature with a great intellect, a noble +imagination, a profound soul, and a tender heart. It will not be said +that nature keeps these her noblest gifts for human beings born in this +or that condition of life: she gives them to her favourites—for so, in +the highest sense, they are to whom such gifts befall; and not +unfrequently, in an obscure place, of one of the <span class="smcap">Fortunati</span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">"The fulgent head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Star-bright appears."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of such a being in a humble +dwelling in the Highlands of Scotland.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Among the hills of Atholl he was born;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where on a small hereditary farm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An unproductive slip of barren ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A virtuous household, though exceeding poor."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His childhood was nurtured at home in Christian love and truth—and +acquired other knowledge at a winter school; for in summer he "tended +cattle on the hill,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i30">"that stood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the influence of such education and occupation among such natural +objects, Wordsworth expounds in some as fine poetry as ever issued from +the cells of philosophic thought.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So the foundations of his mind were laid."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The boy had small need of books—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i24">"For many a tale<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Traditionary, round the mountains hung,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many a legend, peopling the dark woods,<br /></span> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> +</div> +<span class="i0">Nourish'd Imagination in her growth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gave the mind that apprehensive power<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By which she is made quick to recognise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The moral properties and scope of things."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But in the Manse there were books—and he read</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The life and death of martyrs, who sustain'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With will inflexible, those fearful pangs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Triumphantly display'd in records left<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of persecution and the Covenant."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you +used to ride to the races on a pony, by the side of your sire the +Squire, this boy was your equal in knowledge, though you had a private +tutor all to yourself, and were then a promising lad, as indeed you are +now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had +small Latin, and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages may be +learned—trust us—by slow degrees—by the mind rejoicing in the +consciousness of its growing faculties—during leisure hours from other +studies—as they were by the Atholl adolescent. A Scholar—in your sense +of the word—he might not be called, even when he had reached his +seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and +Virgil; nor of English poetry had he read much—the less the better for +such a mind—at that age, and in that condition—for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Accumulated feelings press'd his heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By nature, by the turbulence subdued<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of his own mind, by mystery and hope,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the first virgin passion of a soul<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Communing with the glorious Universe."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But he had read Poetry—ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read +at the same age—and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16">"Among the hills<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The divine Milton."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus endowed, and thus instructed,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"By Nature, that did never yet betray<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heart that loved her,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>the youth was "greater than he knew;" yet that there was something great +in, as well as about him, he felt—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thus daily thirsting in that lonesome life,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for some diviner communication than had yet been vouchsafed to him by +the Giver and Inspirer of his restless Being.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The growth of intellect, yet gaining more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every moral feeling of his soul<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The keen, the wholesome air of poverty,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And drinking from the well of homely life."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But he is in his eighteenth year, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"Is summon'd to select the course<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of humble industry that promised best<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To yield him no unworthy maintenance."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For a season he taught a village school, which many a fine, high, and +noble spirit has done and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills he +loved, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Savoyard to quit his native rocks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Spirit attach'd to regions mountainous<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like their own steadfast clouds), did now impel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His restless mind to look abroad with hope."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It had become his duty to choose a profession—a trade—a calling. He +was not a gentleman, mind ye, and had probably never so much as heard a +rumour of the existence of a silver fork: he had been born with a wooden +spoon in his mouth—and had lived, partly from choice and partly from +necessity, on a vegetable diet. He had not ten pounds in the world he +could call his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his father's son was +to be trusted to that amount by any family that chanced to have it among +the Atholl hills—therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gain'd merited respect in simpler times;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When squire, and priest, and they who round them dwelt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In rustic sequestration, all dependent<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the <span class="smcap">Pedlar's</span> toil, supplied their wants,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought.<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the +hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be +Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest +nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by +working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the +Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without +victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to +the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay +homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous +human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are +Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a +shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand +cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core, +notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted, +the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to +consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths +uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence +there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a +faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to +indulge, and nearly let die.</p> + +<p>Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron's <i>Scotland</i> an interesting passage, +illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class +of persons from whom he has chosen one—not, mind you, imaginary, though +for purposes of imagination—adding that "his own personal knowledge +emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As +they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form +habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation, and that, with all +their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish +the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. In North +America," says he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done +and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than +all the missionaries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent +among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more +than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of +Scotland to England for the purpose to <i>carry the pack</i>, was considered +as going to lead the life, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> acquire the fortune of a gentleman. +When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment, +he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded +as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known +gentlemen who had carried the pack—one of them a man of great talents +and acquirements—who lived in his old age in the highest circles of +society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage—<i>for +he was then very rich</i>; but you could not sit ten minutes in his company +without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging +to the "aristocracy of Nature."</p> + +<p>You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious +Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon—and sometimes absurdly called +the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted +in colours that will never die—the Birds of the New World. He was a +weaver—a Paisley weaver—a useful trade, and a pleasant place—where +these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. +Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this +day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored +the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what +have I gained by it?—only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an +invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in +glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair +daughters of wealth and indolence—the ample mirror, flowery floor, and +magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his +wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting +echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with +squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the +resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting +this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there +sits poverty and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill rags, and +ever shivering over the fireless chimney. Ascending this stair, the +voice of joy bursts on my ear—the bridegroom and bride, surrounded by +their jocund companions, circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke, +or join in the raptures of the noisy dance—the squeaking fiddle +breaking through the general uproar in sudden intervals, while the +sounding floor groans beneath its unruly load.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> Leaving these happy +mortals, and ushering into this silent mansion, a more solemn—a +striking object presents itself to my view. The windows, the furniture, +and everything that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn +white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse, +while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless +clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their +brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their +gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for +consolation, her Bible; and in this house the wife brawls, the children +shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury +should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily +occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralised +upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of +mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never +had a being except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors."</p> + +<p>At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of +his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a +more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an +account in his journal, from which it appears that his success was far +from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character, +occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects +of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are +not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some +that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the wounded pride founded on +conscious merit. "You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are +susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the +least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest +thwartings of your expectations—think what I felt." Wilson himself +attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage +of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A <i>packman</i> +is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The +idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are +mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every +opportunity, and using every mean art within their power, to cheat." +This is a sad account of the estima<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>tion in which a trade was then held +in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to +the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions +on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth +are in the right: both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen +were then, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally +esteemed to be—peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty +sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"—and +for a plack people will forget principle who have, as we say in +Scotland, missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there +was degradation in such a calling; and he latterly vented his +contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and +nature of <i>packman</i>. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in +better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years +over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there +can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and +of respect—his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very +happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very +great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like +Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher.</p> + +<p>Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we +may believe the truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the hand +and heart of a still wiser man—though his wisdom has been gathered from +less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay floors of the +labouring poor.</p> + +<p>It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" +of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns, "the +fient a pride, nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on +earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is +his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had +he not studied the character of his subjects in "huts where poor men +lie"—had he not "stooped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such +huts, as willingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious +laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration he +"derived from the light of setting suns," was not so sacred as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> that +which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, +when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty +high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. You are +a scholar, and love poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, and +will be sad to think that heaven had not made you a pedlar.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In days of yore how fortunately fared<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Baronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with gifts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Munificent, and love, and Ladies' praise;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now meeting on his road an armed Knight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a clear brook;—beneath an Abbey's roof<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One evening sumptuously lodged; the next<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Humbly, in a religious Hospital;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Him, sleeping or awake, the Robber spared;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He walk'd—protected from the sword of war<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By virtue of that sacred Instrument<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His dear companion wheresoe'er he went,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Opening from Land to Land an easy way<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By melody, and by the charm of verse.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From his long journeyings and eventful life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than this obscure Itinerant had skill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To gather, ranging through the tamer ground<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of these our unimaginative days;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Accoutred with his burden and his staff;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now, when free to move with lighter pace.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look'd on this Guide with reverential love?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each with the other pleased, we now pursued<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our journey—beneath favourable skies.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rarely a house, that did not yield to him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some way-beguiling tale.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> +<span class="i0">—Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Huts where his charity was blest; his voice<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heard as the voice of an experienced friend.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With his own mind, unable to subdue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Impatience, through inaptness to perceive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">General distress in his particular lot;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or cherishing resentment, or in vain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And finding in herself no steady power<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To draw the line of comfort that divides<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the injustice of our brother men;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To him appeal was made as to a judge;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The perturbation; listen'd to the plea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So grounded, so applied, that it was heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With soften'd spirit—e'en when it condemn'd."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What was to hinder such a man—thus born and thus bred—with such a +youth and such a prime—from being in his old age worthy of walking +among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"On man, on nature, and on human life?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And remember he was a <i>Scotsman</i>—compatriot of <span class="smcap">Christopher North</span>.</p> + +<p>What would you rather have had the Sage in "The Excursion" to have been? +The Senior Fellow of a College? A head? A retired Judge? An Ex-Lord +Chancellor? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire? or, at once to condescend +on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable +Custos Rotulorum?</p> + +<p>You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham +Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the +estates and honours of his ancestors?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who is he that bounds with joy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Light as the wind along the grass.<br /></span> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> +</div> +<span class="i0">Can this be He that hither came<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In secret, like a smother'd flame?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For whom such thoughtful tears were shed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For shelter and a poor man's bread?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days +had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no +longer safe—and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The Boy must part from Mosedale groves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And leave Blencathara's ragged coves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And quit the flowers that summer brings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Glenderamakin's lofty springs;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must vanish, and his careless cheer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be turn'd to heaviness and fear."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his +foot on the mountains.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Again he wanders forth at will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tends a flock from hill to hill:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His garb is humble; ne'er was seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such garb with such a noble mien;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among the shepherd grooms no mate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hath he, a child of strength and state."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So lives he till he is restored.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, ages after he was laid in earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now mark—that Poem has been declared by one and all of the "Poets of +Britain" to be equal to anything in the language; and its greatness lies +in the perfect truth of the profound philosophy which so poetically +delineates the education of the naturally noble character of Clifford. +Does he sink in our esteem because at the Feast of the Restoration he +turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper who sings,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Happy day and mighty hour,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When our shepherd in his power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To his ancestors restored,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a reappearing star,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a glory from afar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">First shall head the flock of war"?<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>No—his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and now deeply +imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget, +he appears noblest when showing himself faithful in his own hall to the +"huts where poor men lie;" while we know not, at the solemn close, which +life the Poet has most glorified—the humble or the high—whether the +Lord did the Shepherd more ennoble, or the Shepherd the Lord.</p> + +<p>Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth +thus records of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast of Brougham +Castle, and what he records of the low-born Pedlar in "The Excursion?" +None. They are both educated among the hills; and according to the +nature of their own souls and that of their education, is the +progressive growth and ultimate formation of their character. Both are +exalted beings—because both are wise and good—but to his own coeval he +has given, besides eloquence and genius,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The vision and the faculty divine,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When years had brought the philosophic mind"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>he might walk through the dominions of the Intellect and the +Imagination, a Sage and a Teacher.</p> + +<p>Look into life, and watch the growth of character. Men are not what they +seem to the outward eye—mere machines moving about in customary +occupations—productive labourers of food and wearing apparel—slaves +from morn to night at taskwork set them by the Wealth of Nations. They +are the Children of God. The soul never sleeps—not even when its +wearied body is heard snoring by people living in the next street. All +the souls now in this world are for ever awake; and this life, believe +us, though in moral sadness it has often been rightly called so, is no +dream. In a dream we have no will of our own, no power over ourselves; +ourselves are not felt to be ourselves; our familiar friends seem +strangers from some far-off country; the dead are alive, yet we wonder +not; the laws of the physical world are suspended, or changed, or +confused by our phantasy; Intellect, Imagination, the Moral Sense, +Affection, Passion, are not possessed by us in the same way we possess +them out of that mystery: were Life a Dream, or like a Dream, it would +never lead to Heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> + +<p>Again, then, we say to you, look into life and watch the growth of +character. In a world where the ear cannot listen without hearing the +clank of chains, the soul may yet be free as if it already inhabited the +skies. For its Maker gave it <span class="smcap">Liberty of Choice of Good or of Evil</span>; and +if it has chosen the good it is a King. All its faculties are then fed +on their appropriate food provided for them in nature. It then knows +where the necessaries and the luxuries of its life grow, and how they +may be gathered—in a still sunny region inaccessible to blight—"no +mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother." In the beautiful language +of our friend Aird,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the Hills of God."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Go, read the <span class="smcap">Excursion</span> then—venerate the <span class="smcap">Pedlar</span>—pity the +<span class="smcap">Solitary</span>—respect the <span class="smcap">Priest</span>, and love the <span class="smcap">Poet</span>.</p> + +<p>So charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice—of all sounds +on earth the sweetest surely to our ears—and, therefore, we so dearly +love the monologue, and from the dialogue turn averse, impatient of him +ycleped the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, will keep prattling +and babbling on between the still deep pools of our discourse, which +nature feeds with frequent waterfalls—so charmed have we been with the +sound of our own voice, that, scarcely conscious the while of more than +a gentle ascent along the sloping sward of a rural Sabbath-day's +journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Highland +league—five miles—of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the +Mountain-top. True that his altitude is not very great—somewhere, we +should suppose, between two and three thousand feet—much higher than +the Pentlands—somewhat higher than the Ochils—a middle-sized Grampian. +Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable +bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so, +supporting the globe. So is Andes; but his strength has never been put +to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras—but we must not be +personal—so suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in +mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might +be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers?</p> + +<p>These mountains are neither immense nor enormous—nor are there any such +in the British Isles. Look for a few of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> highest on Riddell's +ingenious Scale—in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland +the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole-hills to Chimborazo. +Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an +Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture—for Vulture he +is—flies league-high—the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself +half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long +river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of +the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, +can see the rising and the setting sun, and his march on the meridian, +without a telescope. If ever he fly by night—and we think we have seen +a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life—he must be a +rare astronomer.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"High from the summit of a craggy cliff<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He drives them from his fort, the towering seat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For ages of his empire; which in peace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He wings his course, and preys in distant isles."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas! +such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions +would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds. +Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some +inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the +dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself +driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the +unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded +in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in +the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we +do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere +to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the +Himalayas would not satisfy our aspirations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> But we can calculate the +distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon.</p> + +<p>Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains, +as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do +to ours—and let "Andes, giant of the Western Star," but dare to look at +us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from +his cloudy hands. There you stand—and were you to rear your summits +much higher into heaven, you would alarm the hidden stars.</p> + +<p>Yet we have seen you higher—but it was in storm. In calm like this you +do well to look beautiful—your solemn altitude suits the sunny season, +and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your +heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and +show them to the glens, crowned with fire.</p> + +<p>Are they a sea of mountains! No—they are mountains in a sea. And what a +sea! Waves of water, when at the prodigious, are never higher than the +foretop of a man-of-war. Waves of vapour—they alone are seen flying +mountains high—dashing, but howling not—and in their silent ascension, +all held together by the same spirit, but perpetually changing its +beautiful array, where order seems ever and anon to come in among +disorder, there is a grandeur that settles down in the soul of youthful +poet roaming in delirium among the mountain glooms, and "pacifies the +fever of his heart."</p> + +<p>Call not now these vapours waves; for movement there is none among the +ledges, and ridges, and roads, and avenues, and galleries, and groves, +and houses, and churches, and castles, and fairy palaces—all framed of +mist. Far up among and above that wondrous region, through which you +hear voices of waterfalls deepening the silence, behold hundreds of +mountain-tops—blue, purple, violet—for the sun is shining straight on +some and aslant on others—and on those not at all; nor can the shepherd +at your side, though he has lived among them all his life, till after +long pondering tell you the names of those most familiar to him; for +they seem to have all interchanged sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun +himself, the Eagle-Breeder, looks so serenely in his rainbow, that you +might almost mistake him for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds.</p> + +<p>Have you not seen sunsets in which the mountains were imbedded in masses +of clouds all burning and blazing—yes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> blazing—with unimaginable +mixtures of all the colours that ever were born—intensifying into a +glory that absolutely became insupportable to the soul as insufferable +to the eyes—and that left the eyes for hours after you had retreated +from the supernatural scene, even when shut, all filled with floating +films of cross-lights, cutting the sky-imagery into gorgeous fragments? +And were not the mountains of such sunsets, whether they were of land or +of cloud, sufficiently vast for your utmost capacities and powers of +delight and joy longing to commune with the Region then felt to be in +very truth Heaven? Nor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, +conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond—while the senses themselves +seemed to have had given them a revelation, that as it was created could +be felt but by an immortal spirit.</p> + +<p>It elevates our being to be in the body near the sky—at once on earth +and in heaven. In the body? Yes—we feel at once fettered and free. In +Time we wear our fetters, and heavy though they be, and painfully +riveted on, seldom do we welcome Death coming to strike them off—but +groan at sight of the executioner. In eternity we believe that all is +spiritual—and in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes but to prove +that its foundation lies rooted far down below all earthquakes, +endurable is the sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, while +yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being absorbed in the great forms +of the outward universe, and they speak as if such absorption were +celestial and divine. But is not this a material creed? Let Imagination +beware how she seeks to glorify the objects of the senses, and having +glorified them, to elevate them into a kindred being with our own, +exalting them that we may claim with them that kindred being, as if we +belonged to them and not they to us, forgetting that they are made to +perish, we to live for ever!</p> + +<p>But let us descend the mountain by the side of this torrent. What a +splendid series of translucent pools! We carry "The Excursion" in our +pocket, for the use of our friends; but our own presentation-copy is +here—we have gotten it by heart. And it does our heart good to hear +ourselves recite. Listen, ye Naiads, to the famous picture of the Ram:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thus having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalm'd<br /></span> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> +</div> +<span class="i0">In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A twofold image; on a grassy bank<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Another and the same! Most beautiful<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the green turf, with his imperial front<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The breathing creature stood; as beautiful<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And each seem'd centre of his own fair world.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Antipodes unconscious of each other,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet, in partition, with their several spheres<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blended in perfect stillness to our sight.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah! what a pity were it to disperse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or to disturb so fair a spectacle,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet a breath can do it."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Oh! that the Solitary, and the Pedlar, and the Poet, and the Priest and +his Lady, were here to see a sight more glorious far than that +illustrious and visionary Ram. Two Christopher Norths—as Highland +chieftains—in the Royal Tartan—one burning in the air—the other in +the water—two stationary meteors, each seeming native to its own +element! This setting the heather, that the linn on fire—this ablaze +with war, that tempered into truce; while the Sun, astonied at the +spectacle, nor knowing the refulgent substance from the resplendent +shadow, bids the clouds lie still in heaven, and the winds all hold +their breath, that exulting nature may be permitted for a little while +to enjoy the miracle she unawares has wrought—alas! gone as she gazes, +and gone for ever! Our bonnet has tumbled into the Pool—and +Christopher—like the Ram in "The Excursion"—stands shorn of his +beams—no better worth looking at than the late Laird of Macnab.</p> + +<p>Now, since the truth must be told, that was but a Flight of Fancy—and +our apparel is more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a Highland chief. +'Tis all of a snuffy brown—an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. +Single-breasted our coatee—and we are in shorts. Were our name to be +imposed by our hat, it would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back a +wallet—and in our hand the Crutch. And thus, not without occasional +alarm to the cattle, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking along the +sward and swimming across the stream, and leaping over the quagmires—by +no means unlike that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> extraordinary pedestrian who has been accompanying +us for the last half-hour, far overhead up-by yonder, as if he meant +mischief; but he will find that we are up to a trick or two, and not +easily to be done brown by a native, a Cockney of Cloud-Land, a +long-legged awkward fellow with a head like a dragon and proud of his +red plush, in that country called thunder-and-lightning breeches, hot +very, one would think, in such sultry weather—but confound us if he has +not this moment stript them off, and be not pursuing his journey <i>in +puris naturalibus</i>—yes, as naked as the minute he was born—our Shadow +on the Clouds!</p> + +<p>The Picture of the Ram has been declared by sumphs in search of the +sublime to border on the Burlesque. They forget that a sumph may just as +truly be said to border on a sage. All things in heaven and on earth, +mediately and immediately, border on one another—much depends on the +way you look at them—and Poets, who are strange creatures, often love +to enjoy and display their power by bringing the burlesque into the +region of the sublime. Of what breed was the Tup? Cheviot, Leicester, +Southdown? Had he gained the Cup at the Great North Show? We believe +not, and that his owner saw in him simply a fine specimen of an ordinary +breed—a shapely and useful animal. In size he was not to be named on +the same day with the famous Ram of Derby, "whose tail was made a rope, +sir, to toll the market-bell." Jason would have thought nothing of him +compared with the Golden Fleece. The Sun sees a superior sire of flocks +as he enters Aries. Sorry are we to say it, but the truth must be +spoken, he was somewhat bandy-legged, and rather coarse in the wool. But +heaven, earth, air, and water conspired to glorify him, as the Poet and +his friends chanced to come upon him at the Pool, and, more than them +all united, the Poet's own soul; and a sheep that would not have sold +for fifty shillings, became Lord Paramount of two worlds, his regal mind +all the time unconscious of its empiry, and engrossed with the thought +of a few score silly ewes.</p> + +<p>Seldom have we seen so serene a day. It seems to have lain in one and +the same spirit over all the Highlands. We have been wandering since +sunrise, and 'tis now near sunset; yet not an hour without a visible +heaven in all the Lochs. In the pure element overflowing so many +spacious vales and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> glens profound, the great and stern objects of +nature have all day long been looking more sublime or more beautiful in +the reflected shadows, invested with one universal peace. The momentary +evanescence of all that imagery at a breath touches us with the thought +that all it represents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will as +utterly pass away. Such visions, when gazed on in that wondrous depth +and purity on a still slow-moving day, always inspire some such feeling +as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all things, when +the setting sun is seen to sink behind the mountain, and all the golden +pomp at the same instant to evanish from the Loch.</p> + +<p>Evening is preparing to let fall her shades—and Nature, cool, fresh, +and unwearied, is laying herself down for a few hours' sleep. There had +been a long strong summer drought, and a week ago you would have +pitied—absolutely pitied the poor Highlands. You missed the +cottage-girl with her pitcher at the well in the brae, for the spring +scarcely trickled, and the water-cresses were yellow before their time. +Many a dancing hill-stream was dead—only here and there one stronger +than her sisters attempted a <i>pas-seul</i> over the shelving rocks; but all +choral movements and melodies forsook the mountains, still and silent as +so much painted canvass. Waterfalls first tamed their thunder, then +listened alarmed to their own echoes, wailed themselves away into +diminutive murmurs, gasped for life, died, and were buried at the feet +of the green slippery precipices. Tarns sank into moors; and there was +the voice of weeping heard and low lament among the water-lilies. Ay, +millions of pretty flowerets died in their infancy, even on their +mother's breast; the bee fainted in the desert for want of the +honey-dew, and the ground-cells of industry were hushed below the +heather. Cattle lay lean on the brownness of a hundred hills, and the +hoof of the red-deer lost its fleetness. Along the shores of lochs great +stones appeared, within what for centuries had been the lowest +water-mark; and whole bays, once bright and beautiful with reed-pointed +wavelets, became swamps, cracked and seamed, or rustling in the aridity +with a useless crop, to the sugh of the passing wind. On the shore of +the sea alone you beheld no change. The tides ebbed and flowed as +before—the small billows racing over the silver sands to the same goal +of shells, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> climbing up to the same wildflowers that bathe the +foundation of some old castle belonging to the ocean.</p> + +<p>But the windows of heaven were opened,—and, like giants refreshed with +mountain-dew, the rivers flung themselves over the cliffs with roars of +thunder. The autumnal woods are fresher than those of summer. The mild +harvest-moon will yet repair the evil done by the outrageous sun; and, +in the gracious after-growth, the green earth far and wide rejoices as +in spring. Like people that have hidden themselves in caves when their +native land was oppressed, out gush the torrents, and descend with songs +to the plain. The hill-country is itself again when it hears the voice +of streams. Magnificent army of mists! whose array encompasses islands +of the sea, and who still, as thy glorious vanguard keeps deploying +among the glens, rollest on in silence more sublime than the trampling +of the feet of horses, or the sound of the wheels of chariots, to the +heath-covered mountains of Scotland, we bid thee hail!</p> + +<p>In all our wanderings through the Highlands, towards night we have +always found ourselves at home. What though no human dwelling was at +hand? We cared not—for we could find a bedroom among the casual +inclinations of rocks, and of all curtains the wild-brier forms itself +into the most gracefully-festooned draperies, letting in green light +alone from the intercepted stars. Many a cave we know of—cool by day, +and warm by night—how they happen to be so, we cannot tell—where no +man but ourselves ever slept, or ever will sleep; and sometimes, on +startling a doe at evening in a thicket, we have lain down in her lair, +and in our slumbers heard the rain pattering on the roofing birk-tree, +but felt not one drop on our face, till at dawning we struck a shower of +diamonds from the fragrant tresses. But to-night we shall not need to +sleep among the sylvans; for our Tail has pitched our Tent on the +Moor—and is now sweeping the mountain with telescope for sight of our +descending feet. Hark! signal-gun and bagpipe hail our advent, and the +Pyramid brightens in its joy, independent of the sunlight, that has left +but one streak in the sky.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE MOORS.</h2> + +<h3>FLIGHT FIRST.—GLEN-ETIVE.</h3> + + +<p>Yes! all we have to do is to let down their lids—to will what our eyes +shall see—and, lo! there it is—a creation! Day dawns, and for our +delight in soft illumination from the dim obscure floats slowly up a +visionary loch—island after island evolving itself into settled +stateliness above its trembling shadow, till, from the overpowering +beauty of the wide confusion of woods and waters, we seek relief, but +find none, in gazing on the sky; for the east is in all the glory of +sunrise, and the heads and the names of the mountains are uncertain +among the gorgeous colouring of the clouds. Would that we were a +painter! Oh! how we should dash, on the day and interlace it with night! +That chasm should be filled with enduring gloom, thicker and thicker, +nor the sun himself suffered to assuage the sullen spirit, now lowering +and threatening there, as if portentous of earthquake. Danger and fear +should be made to hang together for ever on those cliffs, and half-way +up the precipice be fixed the restless cloud ascending from the abyss, +so that in imagination you could not choose but hear the cataract. The +Shadows should seem to be stalking away like evil spirits before angels +of light—for at our bidding the Splendours should prevail against them, +deploying from the gates of Heaven beneath the banners of morn. Yet the +whole picture should be harmonious as a hymn—as a hymn at once sublime +and sweet—serene and solemn; nor should it not be felt as even +cheerful—and sometimes as if there were about to be merriment in +Nature's heart—for the multitude of the isles should rejoice—and the +new-woke waters look as if they were waiting for the breezes to enliven +them into waves, and wearied of rest to be longing for the motion +already beginning to rustle by fits along the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> sylvan shores. Perhaps a +deer or two—but we have opened a corner of the fringed curtains of our +eyes—the idea is gone—and Turner or Thomson must transfer from our +paper to his canvass the imperfect outline—for it is no more—and make +us a present of the finished picture.</p> + +<p>Strange that, with all our love of nature and of art, we never were a +Painter. True that in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at a Lion or +a Tiger—and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to +spring in keelivine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might +well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even yet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa +at a savage scene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up confused +shatterings of rocks, and flings a mountainous region into convulsions, +as if an earthquake heaved, <i>in a way that is no canny</i>, making people +shudder as if something had gone wrong with this planet of ours, and +creation were falling back into chaos. But we love scenes of beautiful +repose too profoundly ever to dream of "transferring them to canvass." +Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration—though we look +with delight on the work when done by others—the picture without the +process—the product of genius without thought of its mortal +instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, +feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world, as well as the inner, +is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetry—we +have proved <i>that</i> to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech +you—how a little Loch seems to rise up with its tall heronry—a central +isle—and all its sylvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the +floor of our Cave, from which in three minutes we could hobble on our +crutch down the inclining greensward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in +that canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches—not any other kind of +tree—except a few pines, on whose tops the large nests repose—and here +and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for Roes!</p> + +<p>The great masters, were their eyes to fall on our idle words, might +haply smile—not contemptuously—on our ignorance of art—but graciously +on our knowledge of nature. All we have to do, then, is to learn the +theory and practice of art—and assuredly we should forthwith set about +doing so, had we any reasonable prospect of living long enough to open +an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> exhibition of pictures from our own easel. As it is, we must be +contented with that Gallery, richer than the Louvre, which our +imagination has furnished with masterpieces beyond all price or +purchase—many of them touched with her own golden finger, the rest the +work of high but not superior hands. Imagination, who limns in air, has +none of those difficulties to contend with that always beset, and often +baffle, artists in oils or waters. At a breath she can modify, alter, +obliterate, or restore; at a breath she can colour vacuity with rainbow +hues—crown the cliff with its castle—swing the drawbridge over the +gulf profound—through a night of woods roll the river along on its +moonlit reach—by fragmentary cinctures of mist and cloud, so girdle one +mountain that it has the power of a hundred—giant rising above giant, +far and wide, as if the mighty multitude, in magnificent and triumphant +disorder, were indeed scaling heaven.</p> + +<p>To speak more prosaically, every true and accepted lover of nature +regards her with a painter's as well as a poet's eye. He breaks not down +any scene rudely, and with "many an oft-repeated stroke;" but +unconsciously and insensibly he transfigures into Wholes, and all day +long, from morn till dewy eve, he is preceded, as he walks along, by +landscapes retiring in their perfection, one and all of them the birth +of his own inspired spirit. All non-essentials do of themselves drop off +and disappear—all the characteristics of the scenery range themselves +round a centre recognised by the inner sense that cannot err—and thus +it is that "beauty pitches her tents before him"—that sublimity +companions the pilgrim in the waste wilderness—and grandeur for his +sake keeps slowly sailing or settling in the clouds. With such pictures +has our Gallery been so thickly hung round for many years, that we have +often thought there was not room for one other single frame; yet a +vacant space has always been found for every new <i>chef-d'œuvre</i> that +came to add itself to our collection—and the light from that cupola so +distributes itself that it falls wherever it is wanted—wherever it is +wanted not how tender the shadow! or how solemn the gloom!</p> + +<p>Why, we are now in Glen-Etive—and sitting with our sketch-book at the +mouth of our Tent. Our oft-repeated passionate prayer,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>has once more, after more than twenty years' absence, in this haunt of +our fanciful youth and imaginative manhood, been granted, and +Christopher, he thinks, could again bound along these cliffs like a +deer. Ay, well-nigh quarter of a century has elapsed since we pitched +this self-same snow-white Tent amid the purple heather, by the Linn of +Dee. How fleetly goes winnowing on the air even the weariest waving of +Time's care-laden wings! A few yellow weather-stains are on the +canvass—but the pole is yet sound—or call it rather mast—for we have +hoisted our topgallant,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And lo! the silver cross, to Scotland dear,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>languidly lifts itself up, an ineffectual streamer, in the fitful +morning breezes!</p> + +<p>Bold son, or bright daughter of England! hast thou ever seen a <span class="smcap">Scottish +Thrissle</span>? What height are you—Captain of the Grenadier Guards? "Six +feet four on my stocking-soles." Poo—a dwarf! Stand up with your back +to that stalk. Tour head does not reach above his waist—he hangs high +over you—"his radious croun of rubies." There's a Flower! dear to Lady +Nature above all others, saving and excepting the Rose, and he is the +Rose's husband—the Guardian Genii of the land consecrated the Union, +and it has been blest. Eyeing the sun like an angry star that will not +suffer eclipse either from light or shadow—but burns proudly—fiercely—in +its native lustre—storm-brightened, and undishevelled by the tempest in +which it swings. See! it stoops beneath the blast within reach of your +hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and your hand will be as if it had +crushed a sleeping wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it—to do that would +require a giant with an iron glove. Then let it alone to dally with the +wind, and the sun, and the rain, and the snow—all alike dear to its +spears and rubies; and as you look at the armed lustre, you will see a +beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's warlike peace. The stalk +indeed is slender, but it sways without danger of breaking in the blast; +in the calm it reposes as gently as the gowan at its root. The softest +leaf that enfolds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, not greener +than those that sting not if but tenderly you touch them, for they are +green as the garments of the Fairies that dance by moonlight round the +Symbol of old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> Scotland, and unchristened creatures though they the +Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the <span class="smcap">Awful Thrissle</span> all the +health and happiness that are in the wholesome stars.</p> + +<p>The dawn is softly—slowly—stealing upon day; for the uprisen sun, +though here the edge of his disc as yet be invisible, is diffusing +abroad "the sweet hour of prime," and all the eastern region is tinged +with crimson, faint and fine as that which sleeps within the wreaths of +the sea-sounding shells. Hark! the eagle's earliest cry, yet in his +eyrie. Another hour, and he and his giant mate will be seen spirally +ascending the skies, in many a glorious gyration, tutoring their +offspring to dally with the sunshine, that, when their plumes are +stronger, they may dally with the storm. O, Forest of Dalness! how sweet +is thy name! Hundreds of red-deer are now lying half-asleep among the +fern and heather, with their antlers, could our eyes now behold them, +motionless as the birch-tree branches with which they are blended in +their lair. At the signal-belling of their king, a hero unconquered in a +hundred fights, the whole herd rises at once like a grove, and with +their stately heads lifted aloft on the weather-gleam, snuff the sweet +scent of the morning air, far and wide surcharged with the honey-dew yet +unmelting on the heather, and eye with the looks of liberty the glad +daylight that mantles the Black Mount with a many-coloured garment. Ha! +the first plunge of the salmon in the Rowan-tree Pool. There again he +shoots into the air, white as silver, fresh run from the sea! For +Loch-Etive, you must know, is one of the many million arms of Ocean, and +bright now are rolling in the billows of the far-heaving tide. Music +meet for such a morn and such mountains. Straight stretches the glen for +leagues, and then, bending through the blue gloom, seems to wind away +with one sweep into infinitude. The Great Glen of Scotland—Glen-More +itself—is not grander. But the Great Glen of Scotland is yet a living +forest. Glen-Etive has few woods or none—and the want of them is +sublime. For centuries ago pines and oaks in the course of nature all +perished; and they exist now but in tradition wavering on the tongues of +old bards, or deep down in the mosses show their black trunks to the +light, when the torrents join the river in spate, and the moor divulges +its secrets as in an earthquake. Sweetly sung, thou small, brown, +moorland<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> bird, though thy song be but a twitter! And true to thy +time—even to a balmy minute—art thou, with thy velvet tunic of black +striped with yellow, as thou windest thy small but not sullen horn—by +us called in our pride <span class="smcap">Humble-Bee</span>—but not, methinks, so very humble, +while booming high in air in oft-repeated circles, wondering at our +Tent, and at the flag that now unfolds its gaudy length like a burnished +serpent, as if the smell of some far-off darling heather-bed had touched +thy finest instinct, away thou fliest straight southward to that rich +flower-store, unerringly as the carrier-pigeon wafting to distant lands +some love-message on its wings. Yet humble after all thou art; for all +day long, making thy industry thy delight, thou returnest at shut of +day, cheerful even in thy weariness, to thy ground-cell within the +knoll, where as Fancy dreams the Fairies dwell—a Silent People in the +Land of Peace.</p> + +<p>And why hast thou, wild singing spirit of the Highland Glenorchy, that +cheerest the long-withdrawing vale from Inveruren to Dalmally, and from +Dalmally Church-tower to the Old Castle of Kilchurn, round whose +mouldering turrets thou sweepest with more pensive murmur, till thy name +and existence are lost in that noble loch—why hast thou never had thy +Bard? "A hundred bards have I had in bygone ages," is thy reply; "but +the Sassenach understands not the traditionary strains, and the music of +the Gaelic poetry is wasted on his ear." Songs of war and of love are +yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when +the moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft +reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears +the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years. +Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to +thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and brackeny, +and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the +thick-falling dews perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier +music to every waterfall.</p> + +<p>There it was, on a little river-island, that once, whether sleeping or +waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard +small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to +the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly +instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> +stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem +came floating over our couch, and then alighted without footsteps among +the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living +creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing +but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical +dewdrops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our +eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision! +Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all +hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among +the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers +unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier, a Fairy, lying with +uncovered face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge +grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the +creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head +and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not +louder than the twittering of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up +the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The +flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and +in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever—the very dews +glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and, +with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar +off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the +disenthralled Orohy began to rejoice as before, through all her streams +and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of +the moon, we awoke.</p> + +<p>Age is the season of Imagination, youth of Passion; and having been long +young, shall we repine that we are now old? They alone are rich who are +full of years—the Lords of Time's Treasury are all on the staff of +Wisdom; their commissions are enclosed in furrows on their foreheads, +and secured to them for life. Fearless of fate, and far above fortune, +they hold their heritage by the great charter of nature for behoof of +all her children who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for their +decease; for every hour dispenses their wealth, and their bounty is not +a late bequest, but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sanctifies their +gifts to gratitude; and their worth is more clearly seen and profoundly +felt within the solemn gloom of the grave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> + +<p>And said we truly that Age is the season of Imagination? That Youth is +the season of Passion your own beating and bounding hearts now tell +you—your own boiling blood. Intensity is its characteristic; and it +burns like a flame of fire, too often but to consume. Expansion of the +soul is ours, with all its feelings and all its "thoughts, that wander +through eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have wings, for power +is given her, beyond the dove's or the eagle's, and no weariness can +touch her on that heavenward flight.</p> + +<p>Yet we are all of "the earth earthy," and, young and old alike, must we +love and honour our home. Your eyes are bright—ours are dim; but "it is +the soul that sees," and "this diurnal sphere" is visible through the +mist of tears. In that light how more than beautiful—how holy—appears +even this world! All sadness, save of sin, is then most sacred; and sin +itself loses its terrors in repentance, which, alas! is seldom perfect +but in the near prospect of dissolution. For temptation may intercept +her within a few feet of her expected rest, nay, dash the dust from her +hand that she has gathered from the burial-place to strew on her head; +but Youth sees flowery fields and shining rivers far-stretching before +her path, and cannot imagine for a moment that among life's golden +mountains there is many a Place of Tombs!</p> + +<p>But let us speak only of this earth—this world—this life—and is not +Age the season of Imagination? Imagination is Memory imbued by joy or +sorrow with creative power over the past, till it becomes the present, +and then, on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till +all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in +illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the Muses; and how +divinely indeed they sang around her as she lay in the pensive shade!</p> + +<p>You know the words of Milton—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Till old experience doth attain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To something like prophetic strain;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and you know, while reading them, that Experience is consummate Memory, +Imagination wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with +Genius, and in its "prophetic strain"—Inspiration.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p> + +<p>We would fain lower our tone—and on this theme speak like what we are, +one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap now +twenty-three feet on level ground (our utmost might be twenty-three +inches), nevertheless we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty +minutes,"—ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. +What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first, worms +though we be, we cannot even crawl;—disdainful next of that +acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig;—pretty lambs, +we then totter to the terror of our deep-bosomed dames—till the welkin +rings with admiration to behold, <i>sans</i> leading-strings, the weanlings +walk;—like wildfire then we run, for we have found the use of our +feet;—like wild-geese then we fly, for we may not doubt we have +wings;—in car, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and sky, and +universal nature. The car runs on a post—the ship on a rock—the "air +hath bubbles as the water hath"—the balloon is one of them, and bursts +like a bladder—and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons. +Where, pray, in all this is there a single symptom or particle of +Imagination? It is of Passion "all compact."</p> + +<p>True, this is not a finished picture—'tis but a slight sketch of the +season of Youth; but paint it as you will, and if faithful to nature you +will find Passion in plenty, and a dearth of Imagination. Nor is the +season of Youth therefore to be pitied—for Passion respires and expires +in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent as the unwise +lecture, it is mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth we are the +creatures, the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly +in spite of its severity; for ere long we come to discern through the +dust of our own raising, the pinnacles of towers and temples serenely +ascending into the skies, high and holy places for rule, for rest, or +for religion, where as kings we may reign, as priests minister, as +saints adore.</p> + +<p>We do not deny, excellent youth, that to your eyes and ears beautiful +and sublime are the sights and sounds of Nature—and of Art her Angel. +Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed ours, and deliver thyself up withouten +dread, or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, where night for ever +dwells—to the glory of skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. +Coming and going a thousand and a thousand times, yet, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> its familiar +beauty, ever new as a dream—let thy soul span the heavens with the +rainbow. Ask thy heart in the wilderness if that "thunder, heard +remote," be from cloud or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shudder +at the shuddering moor, and your flesh creep upon your bones, as the +heather seems to creep on the bent, with the awe of a passing +earthquake. Let the sea-mew be thy guide up the glen, if thy delight be +in peace profounder than ever sat with her on the lull of summer waves! +For the inland loch seems but a vale overflowing with wondrous +light—and realities they all look, these trees and pastures, and rocks +and hills, and clouds—not softened images, as they are, of realities +that are almost stern even in their beauty, and in their sublimity +over-awing; look at yon precipice that dwindles into pebbles the granite +blocks that choke up the shore!</p> + +<p>Now all this, and a million times more than all this, have we too done +in our Youth, and yet 'tis all nothing to what we do whenever we will it +in our Age. For almost all <i>that</i> is passion; spiritual passion +indeed—and as all emotions are akin, they all work with, and into one +another's hands, and, however remotely related, recognise and welcome +one another, like Highland cousins, whenever they meet. Imagination is +not the Faculty to stand aloof from the rest, but gives the one hand to +Fancy and the other to Feeling, and <i>sets</i> to Passion, who is often so +swallowed up in himself as to seem blind to their <i>vis-à-vis</i>, till all +at once he hugs all the Three, as if he were demented, and as suddenly +sporting <i>dos-à-dos</i>—is off on a gallopade by himself right slick away +over the mountain-tops.</p> + +<p>To the senses of a schoolboy a green sour crab is as a golden pippin, +more delicious than any pine-apple—the tree which he climbs to pluck it +seems to grow in the garden of Eden—and the parish, moorland though it +be, over which he is let loose to play—Paradise. It is barely possible +there may be such a substance as matter, but all its qualities worth +having are given it by mind. By a necessity of nature, then, we are all +poets. We all make the food we feed on; nor is jealousy, the green-eyed +monster, the only wretch who discolours and deforms. Every evil thought +does so—every good thought gives fresh lustre to the grass—to the +flowers—to the stars. And as the faculties of sense, after becoming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> +finer and more fine, do then, because that they are earthly, gradually +lose their power, the faculties of the soul, because that they are +heavenly, become then more and more and more independent of such +ministrations, and continue to deal with images, and with ideas which +are diviner than images, nor care for either partial or total eclipse of +the daylight, conversant as they are, and familiar with a more +resplendent—a spiritual universe.</p> + +<p>You still look incredulous and unconvinced of the truth of our +position—but it was established in our first three paragraphs; and the +rest, though proofs too, are intended merely for illustrations. Age +alone understands the language of old Mother Earth—for Age alone, from +his own experience, can imagine its meanings in trouble or in +rest—often mysterious enough even to him in all conscience—but +intelligible though inarticulate—nor always inarticulate; for though +sobs and sighs are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and groans and +gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and cries, as if the old Earth were +undergoing a violent death—yet many a time and oft, within these few +years, have we heard her slowly syllabling words out of the Bible, and +as in listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed stars responded to +their truth, and, like Mercy visiting Despair, the Moon bore it into the +heart of the stormy clouds.</p> + +<p>And are there not now—have there never been young Poets? Many; for +Passion, so tossed as to leave, perhaps to give, the sufferer power to +reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical because creative, and loves to +express itself in "Prose or numerous verse," at once its nutriment and +relief. Nay, Nature sometimes gifts her children with an imaginative +spirit, that, from slight experiences of passion, rejoices to idealise +intentions, and incidents, and characters all coloured by it, or subject +to its sway; and these are Poets, not with old heads on young shoulders, +but with old hearts in young bosoms; yet such premature genius seldom +escapes blight, the very springs of life are troubled, and its possessor +sinks, pines, fades, and dies. So was it with Chatterton and Keats.</p> + +<p>It may be, after all, that we have only proved Age to be the strongest +season of Imagination; and if so, we have proved all we wish, for we +seek not to deny, but to vindicate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> Knowledge is power to the poet as +it is power to all men—and indeed without Art and Science what is +Poetry? Without cultivation the faculty divine can have but imperfect +vision. The inner eye is dependent on the outward eye long familiar with +material objects—a finer sense, cognisant of spiritualities, but +acquired by the soul from constant communion with shadows—innate the +capacity, but awakened into power by gracious intercourse with Nature. +Thus Milton <i>saw</i>—after he became blind.</p> + +<p>But know that Age is not made up of a multitude of years—though that be +the vulgar reckoning—but of a multitude of experiences; and that a man +at thirty, if good for much, must be old. How long he may continue in +the prime of Age, God decrees; many men of the most magnificent +minds—for example, Michael Angelo—have been all-glorious in power and +majesty at fourscore and upwards; but one drop of water on the brain can +at any hour make it barren as desert dust. So can great griefs.</p> + +<p>Yestreen we had rather a hard bout of it in the Tent—the Glenlivet was +pithy—and our Tail sustained a total overthrow. They are snoring as if +it still were midnight. And is it thus that we sportsmen spend our time +on the Moors? Yet while "so many of our poorest subjects are yet +asleep," let us re-point the nib of our pen, and in the eye of the +sweet-breathed morning—moralise.</p> + +<p>Well-nigh quarter a century, we said, is over and gone since by the Linn +of Dee we pitched—on that famous excursion—<span class="smcap">the Tent</span>. Then was the +genesis of that white witch Maga—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Like some tall Palm her noiseless fabric grew!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nay, not noiseless—for the deafest wight that ever strove to hear with +his mouth wide open, might have sworn that he heard the sound of ten +thousand hammers. Neither grew she like a Palm—but like a Banyan-tree. +Ever as she threw forth branches from her great unexhausted stem, they +were borne down by the weight of their own beauty to the soil—the deep, +black rich soil in which she grew, originally sown there by a bird of +Paradise, that dropt the seed from her beak as she sailed along in the +sunshiny ether—and every limberest spray there again taking root, +reascended a stately scion, and so on ceaselessly through all the hours, +each in itself a spring-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>season, till the figurative words of Milton +have been fulfilled,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16">—"Her arms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Branching so broad and long, that in the ground<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High overarch'd, and echoing walks between;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There oft the Ettrick Shepherd, shunning heat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At loopholes cut through thickest shade."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But, alas! for the Odontist! He, the "<i>Deliciæ generis Humani</i>," is +dead. The best of all the Bishops of Bristol is no more. Mansel had not +a tithe of his wit—nor Kaye a tithe of his wisdom. And can it be that +we have not yet edited "His Remains!" "Alas! poor Yorick!" If Hamlet +could smile even with the skull of the Jester in his hands, whom when a +princely boy he had loved, hanging on his neck many a thousand times, +why may not we, in our mind's eye seeing that mirthful face "quite +chap-fallen," and hearing as if dismally deadened by the dust, the voice +that "so often set our table on a roar!" Dr Parr's wig, too, is all out +of frizzle; a heavier shot has dishevelled its horsehair than ever was +sent from the Shepherd's gun; no more shall it be mistaken for owl +a-blink on the mid-day bough, or ptarmigan basking in the sun high up +among the regions of the snow. It has vanished, with other lost things, +to the Moon; and its image alone remains for the next edition of the +celebrated treatise "<i>De Rebus Deperditis</i>," a suitable and a welcome +frontispiece, transferred thither by the engraver's cunning from the +first of those Eight Tomes that might make the Trone tremble, laid on +the shoulders of Atlas who threatens to put down the Globe, by the least +judicious and the most unmerciful of editors that ever imposed upon the +light living the heavy dead—John Johnson, late of Birmingham, Fellow of +the Royal Society, and of the Royal College of Physicians, whose +practice is duller than that of all Death's doctors, and his +prescriptions in that preface unchristianly severe. ODoherty, likewise, +has been gathered to his fathers. The Standard-bearer has lowered his +colours before the foe who alone is invincible. The Ensign, let us not +fear, has been advanced to a company without purchase, in the +Celestials; the Adjutant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> has got a Staff appointment. Tims was lately +rumoured to be in a galloping consumption; but the very terms of the +report, about one so sedentary, were sufficient to give it the lie. +Though puny, he is far from being unwell; and still engaged in polishing +tea-spoons and other plated articles, at a rate cheaper than travelling +gypsies do horn. Prince Leopold is now King of the Belgians—but we must +put an end in the Tent to that portentous snore.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Arise, awake, or be for ever fallen!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ho—ho! gentlemen—so you have had the precaution to sleep in your +clothes. The sun, like Maga, is mounting higher and higher in heaven; so +let us, we beseech you, to breakfast, and then off to the Moors.</p> + +<p>"Substantial breakfast!" by Dugald Dhu, and by Donald Roy, and by Hamish +Bhan—heaped up like icebergs round the pole. How nobly stands in the +centre that ten-gallon Cask of Glenlivet! Proud is that Round to court +his shade. That twenty-pound Salmon lies beneath it even as yesterday he +lay beneath the cliff, while a column of light falls from him on that +Grouse-Pie. Is not that Ham beautiful in the calm consciousness of his +protection? That Tongue mutely eloquent in his praise? Tap him with your +knuckles, tenderly as if you loved him—and that with all your heart and +soul you do—and is not the response firm as from the trunk of the +gnarled oak? He is yet "Virgin of Proserpina"—"by Jove" he is; no +wanton lip has ever touched his mouth so chaste; so knock out the bung, +and let us hear him gurgle. With diviner music does he fill the pitcher, +and with a diviner liquidity of light than did ever Naiad from fount of +Helicon or Castaly, pour into classic urn gracefully uplifted by Grecian +damsel to her graceful head, and borne away, with a thanksgiving hymn, +to her bower in the olive-grove.</p> + +<p>All eggs are good eating; and 'tis a vulgar heresy which holds that +those laid by sea-fowl have a fishy taste. The egg of the Sew-mew is +exceeding sweet; so is that of the Gull. Pleasant is even the yolk of +the Cormorant—in the north of England ycleped the Scarth, and in the +Lowlands of Scotland the Black Byuter. Try a Black Byuter's egg, my dear +boy; for though not newly laid, it has since May been preserved in +butter, and is as fresh as a daisy after a shower. Do not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> afraid of +stumbling on a brace of embryo Black Byuters in the interior of the +globe, for by its weight we pronounce it an egg in no peril of +parturition. You may now smack your lips, loud as if you were smacking +your palms, for that yellow morsel was unknown to Vitellius. Don't crush +the shell, but throw it into the Etive, that the Fairies may find it at +night, and go dancing in the fragile but buoyant canoe, in fits of small +shrill laughter, along with the foam-bells over the ebb-tide Rapids +above Connal's raging Ferry.</p> + +<p>The salmon is in shivers, and the grouse-pie has vanished like a dream.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that this world is proud of!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Only a goose remains! and would that he too were gone to return no more; +for he makes us an old man. No tradition survives in the Glen of the era +at which he first flourished. He seems to have belonged to some tribe of +the Anseres now extinct; and as for his own single individual self, our +senses tell us, in a language not to be misinterpreted, that he must +have become defunct in the darkness of antiquity. But nothing can be too +old for a devil—so at supper let us rectify him in Cayenne.</p> + +<p>Oh! for David Wilkie, or William Simpson (while we send Gibb to bring +away yonder Shieling and its cliff), to paint a picture—coloured, if +possible, from the life—of the Interior of our airy Pyramid. Door open, +and perpendicular canvass walls folded up—that settled but cloudy sky, +with here its broad blue fields, and there its broad blue glimpsing +glades—this greensward mound in the midst of a wilderness of +rock-strewn heather—as much of that one mountain, and as many of those +others, as it can be made to hold—that bright bend of the river—a +silver bow—and that white-sanded, shelly, shingly shore at Loch-Etive +Head, on which a troop of Tritons are "charging with all their +chivalry," still driven back and still returning, to the sound of +trumpets, of "flutes and soft recorders," from the sea. On the table, +all strewn and scattered "in confusion worse confounded," round the +Cask, which</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">—"dilated stands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like Teneriffe or Atlas <i>unremoved</i>,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>what "buttery touches" might be given to the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">—"reliquias Danaum atque inmitis Achillei!"<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>Then the camp-beds tidily covered and arranged along their own +department of the circle—quaint dresses hanging from loops, all the +various apparelling of hunter, shooter, fisher, and forester—rods, +baskets, and nets occupying their picturesque division—fowling-pieces, +double and single, rejoicing through the oil-smooth brownness of their +barrels in the exquisite workmanship of a Manton and a Lancaster—American +rifles, with their stocks more richly silver-chased than you could have +thought within reach of the arts in that young and prosperous +land—duck-guns, whose formidable and fatal length had in Lincolnshire +often swept the fens—and on each side of the door, a brass carronade on +idle hours to awaken the echoes—sitting erect on their hurdies, +deer-hound, greyhound, lurcher, pointer, setter, spaniel, varmint, and +though last, not least, O'Bronte watching Christopher with his steadfast +eyes, slightly raised his large hanging triangular ears, his Thessalian +bull dewlaps betokening keen anxiety to be off and away to the mountain, +and with a full view of the white star on his coal-black breast;—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Plaided and plumed in their tartan array"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>our three chosen Highlanders, chosen for their strength and their +fleetness from among the prime Children of the Mist—and Tickler the +Tall, who keeps growing after threescore and ten like a stripling, and +leaves his mark within a few inches of the top of the pole, arrayed in +tights of Kendal green, bright from the skylight of the inimitable +Vallance or the matchless Williams—green too his vest, and green also +his tunic—while a green feather in a green bonnet dances in its airy +splendour, and gold button-holes give at once lustre and relief to the +glowing verdure (such was Little John, when arrayed in all his glory; to +walk behind Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as they glided from tree to +tree, in wait for the fallow-deer in merry Sherwood)—North in his +Quaker garb—Quaker-like all but in cuffs and flaps, which, when he goes +to the Forest, are not—North, with a figure combining in itself all the +strength of a William Penn, <i>sans</i> its corpulency, all the agility +of a Jem Belcher with far more than a Jem Belcher's bottom—with a face +exhibiting in rarest union all the philosophy of a Bacon, the benevolence +of a Howard, the wisdom of a Wordsworth, the fire of a Byron, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> gnosticity +of a John Bee, and the up-to-trappishness combined not only with perfect +honesty, but with honour bright, of the Sporting Editor of <i>Bell's Life +in London</i>—and then, why if Wilkie or Simpson fail in making a <span class="smcap">gem</span> of +all that, they are not the men of genius we took them for, that is all, +and the art must be at a low ebb indeed in these kingdoms.</p> + +<p>Well, our Tail has taken wings to itself and flown away with Dugald Dhu +and Donald Roy; and we, with Hamish Bhan, with Ponto, Piro, Basta, and +O'Bronte, are left by ourselves in the Tent. Before we proceed farther, +it may not be much amiss to turn up our little fingers—yestreen we were +all a leetle opstropelous—and spermaceti is not a more "sovereign +remedy for an inward bruise," than is a hair from the dog's tail that +bit you an antidote to any pus that produces rabies in the shape of +hydrophobia. Fill up the quaich, Hamish! a caulker of Milbank can harm +no man at any hour of the day—at least in the Highlands. Sma' Stell, +Hamish—assuredly Sma' Stell!</p> + +<p>Ere we start, Hamish, play us a Gathering—and then a Pibroch. "The +Campbells are coming" is like a storm from the mountain sweeping +Glen-More, that roars beneath the hastening hurricane with all its +woods. No earthquake like that which accompanies the trampling of ten +thousand men. So, round that shoulder, Hamish—and away for a mile up +the Glen—then, turning on your heel, blow till proud might be the +mother that bore you; and from the Tent-mouth Christopher will keep +smart fire from his Pattereroes, answered by all the echoes. +Hamish—indeed</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"The dun-deer's hide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On swifter foot was never tied—"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for even now as that cloud—rather thunderous in his aspect—settles +himself over the Tent—ere five minutes have elapsed—a mile off is the +sullen sound of the bagpipe!—music which, if it rouse you not when +heard among the mountains, may you henceforth confine yourself to the +Jew's harp. Ay, here's a claymore—let us fling away the scabbard—and +in upon the front rank of the bayoneted muskets, till the Saxon array +reels, or falls just where it has been standing, like a swathe of grass. +So swept of old the Highlanders—shepherds and herdsmen—down the wooded +cliffs of the pass of Killiecrankie,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> till Mackay's red-coats lay redder +in blood among the heather, or passed away like the lurid fragments of a +cloud. "The Campbells are coming"—and we will charge with the heroes in +the van. The whole clan is maddening along the Moor—and Maccallum More +himself is at their head. But we beseech you, O'Bronte! not to look so +like a lion—and to hush in your throat and breast that truly Leonine +growl—for after all, 'tis but a bagpipe with ribands</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Streaming like meteors to the troubled air,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and all our martial enthusiasm has evaporated in—wind.</p> + +<p>But let us inspect Brown Bess. Till sixty, we used a single barrel. At +seventy we took to a double;—but dang detonators—we stick to the +flint. "Flint," says Colonel Hawker, "shoots strongest into the bird." A +percussion-gun is quicker, but flint is fast enough; and it does, +indeed, argue rather a confusion than a rapidity of ideas, to find fault +with lightning for being too slow. With respect to the flash in the pan, +it is but a fair warning to ducks, for example, to dive if they can, and +get out of the way of mischief. It is giving birds a chance for their +lives, and is it not ungenerous to grudge it? When our gun goes to our +shoulder, that chance is but small; for with double-barrel Brown Bess, +it is but a word and a blow,—the blow first, and long before you could +say Jack Robinson, the gorcock plays thud on the heather. But we beg +leave to set the question at rest for ever by one single clencher. We +have killed fifty birds—grouse—at fifty successive shots—one bird +only to the shot. And mind, not mere pouts—cheepers—for we are no +chicken-butchers—but all thumpers—cocks and hens as big as their +parents, and the parents themselves likewise; not one of which fell <i>out +of bounds</i> (to borrow a phrase from the somewhat silly though skilful +pastime of pigeon-shooting), except one that suddenly soared half-way up +to the moon, and then</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Into such strange vagaries fell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As he would dance,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. Now, what more could have done +a detonator in the hands of the devil himself? Satan might have shot as +well, perhaps, as Christopher North—better we defy him; and we cannot +doubt that his detonator—given to him in a present, we believe, by Joe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> +Manton—is a prime article—one of the best ever manufactured on the +percussion system. But what more could he have done? When we had killed +our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the Christian reader, would not +the odds have been six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, at the +close of the match, ten birds behind perhaps, and with a bag shamefully +rich in poor pouts, that would have fallen to the ground had he but +thrown salt on their tails, have looked excessively sheepish? True, that +in rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from its detonating power, +more correctly than the common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon, +will then often not act at all; but that is its only advantage, and we +confess a great one, especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on the +country to say that it always rains, for it almost as often snows. +However, spite of wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor shall +any newfangled invention, howsoever ingenious, wean us from our First +Love.</p> + +<p>Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen—in whose veins the blood yet +gallops, canters, or trots—despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in whose +veins the blood creeps like a wearied pedestrian at twilight hardly able +to hobble into the wayside inn—for thus so long preferring the steel +pen to the steel barrel (the style of both is equally polished)—our +Bramah to our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, Tickler and the +Admiral, whose united ages amount to little more than a century and a +half, are already slaughtering their way along the mountain-side, the +one on Buachaille Etive, and the other on the Black Mount. But we love +not to commit murder long before meridian—"gentle lover of Nature" as +we are; so, in spite of the scorn of the more passionate sportsman, we +shall continue for an hour or two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting +our eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue sky, from +memorandum-book to mountain, from ink-bottle to loch, and delight +ourselves, and perchance a few thousand others, by a waking-dream +description of Glen-Etive.</p> + +<p>'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling anywhere speck-like on +the river-winding plain—or nest-like among the brushwood knolls—or +rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do +our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptom of life. Two +houses we know to be in the solitude—ay, two—one of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> near the +head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen—but both +distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart +of the Moor. We were mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible—for +yonder it looms in a sullen light, and before we have finished the +sentence, may have again sunk into the moor. Ay, it is gone—for lights +and shadows coming and going, we know not whence nor whither, here +travel all day long—the sole tenants—very ghostlike—and seemingly in +their shiftings imbued with a sort of dim uncertain life. How far off +from our Tent may be the Loch? Miles—and silently as snow are seen to +break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs an aerial haze, +the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at +the head of the Glen? Miles—for though that speck in the sky into which +they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot +hear its cry. What giants are these right opposite our Pyramid?—Co—grim +chieftain—and his Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven cliffs! +This is what may be well called—Nature on a grand scale. And then, how +simple! We begin to feel ourselves—in spite of all we can do to support +our dignity by our pride—a mighty small and insignificant personage. We +are about six feet high—and everybody around us about four thousand. +Yes, that is the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no idea that in any +situation we could be such dwindled dwarfs, such perfect pigmies. Our +Tent is about as big as a fir-cone—and Christopher North an insect!</p> + +<p>What a wild world of clouds all over that vast central wilderness of +Northern Argyllshire lying between Cruachan and Melnatorran—Corryfinuarach +and Ben Slarive, a prodigious land! defying description, and in memory +resembling not realities, but like fragments of tremendous dreams. Is it +a sterile region? Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a blade of +grass—not a bent of heather—not even moss. And so they go shouldering +up into the sky—enormous masses—huger than churches or ships. And +sometimes not unlike such and other structures—all huddled together—yet +never jostling, so far as we have seen; and though often overhanging, as +if the wind might blow them over with a puff, steadfast in the storm +that seems rather to be an earthquake, and moving not an hair's-breadth, +while all the shingly sides of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> mountains—you know shingle—with an +inconstant clatter—hurry-skurry—seem to be breaking up into debris.</p> + +<p>Is that the character of the whole region? No, you darling; it has vales +on vales of emerald, and mountains on mountains of amethyst, and streams +on streams of silver; and, so help us Heaven!—for with these eyes we +have seen them, a thousand and a thousand times—at sunrise and sunset, +rivers on rivers of gold. What kind of climate? All kinds, and all kinds +at once—not merely during the same season, but the same hour. Suppose +it three o'clock of a summer afternoon—you have but to choose your +weather. Do you desire a close sultry breathless gloom? You have it in +the stifling dens of Ben-Anēa, where lions might breed. A breezy +coolness, with a sprinkling of rain? Then open your vest to the green +light in the dewy vales of Benlūra. Lochs look lovely in mist, and so +thinks the rainbow—then away with you ere the rainbow fade—away, we +beseech you, to the wild shores of Lochan-a-Lūrich. But you would +rather see a storm, and hear some Highland thunder? There is one at this +moment on Unimore, and Cruachlīa growls to Meallanuir, till the +cataracts of Glashgour are dumb as the dry rocks of Craig-teōnan.</p> + +<p>In those regions we were, when a boy, initiated into the highest +mysteries of the Highlands. No guide dogged our steps—as well might a +red-deer have asked a cur to show him the Forest of Braemar, or +Beniglo—an eagle where best to build his eyrie have advised with the +Glasgow Gander. O heavens! how we were bewildered among the vast objects +that fed that delirium of our boyhood! We dimly recognised faces of +cliffs wearing dreadful frowns; blind though they looked, they seemed +sensible of our approach; and we heard one horrid monster mutter, "What +brings thee here, infatuated Pech?—begone!" At his impotent malice we +could not choose but smile, and shook our staff at the blockhead, as +since at many a greater blockhead even than he have we shook—and more +than shook our Crutch. But as through "pastures green and quiet waters +by," we pursued, from sunrise to sunset, our uncompanioned way, some +sweet spot, surrounded by heather, and shaded by fern, would woo us to +lie down on its bosom, and enjoy a visionary sleep! Then it was that the +mountains confidentially told us their names—and we got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> them all by +heart; for each name characterised its owner by some of his peculiar and +prominent qualities—as if they had been one and all christened by poets +baptising them from a font</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">"Translucent, pure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>O! happy pastor of a peaceful flock! Thou hast long gone to thy reward! +One—two—three—four successors hast thou had in that manse—(now it +too has been taken down and the plough gone over it)—and they all did +their duty; yet still is thy memory fragrant in the glen; for deeds like +thine "smell sweet, and blossom in the dust!" Under heaven, we owed our +life to thy care of us in a brain fever. Sometimes thy face would grow +grave, never angry, at our sallies—follies—call them what you will, +but not sins. And methinks we hear the mild old man somewhat mournfully +saying, "Mad boy! out of gladness often cometh grief—out of mirth +misery; but our prayers, when thou leavest us, shall be, that never, +never may such be thy fate!" Were those prayers heard in heaven and +granted on earth? We ask our heart in awe, but its depths are silent, +and make no response.</p> + +<p>But is it our intention to sit scribbling here all day? Our fancy lets +our feet enjoy their sinecure, and they stretch themselves out in +indolent longitude beneath the Tent-table, while we are settled in +spirit, a silent thought, on the battlements of our cloud-castle on the +summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our cloud-castle rests upon a +foundation of granite precipices; and down along their hundred chasms, +from which the eye recoils, we look on Loch-Etive bearing on its bosom +stationary—so it seems in the sunshine—one snow-white sail! What +brings the creature there—and on what errand may she be voyaging up the +uninhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the uninhabited mountains? +Some poet, perhaps, steers her—sitting at the helm in a dream, and +allowing her to dance her own way, at her own will, up and down the +green glens and hills of the foam-crested waves—a swell rolling in the +beauty of light and music for ever attendant on her, as the Sea-mew—for +so we choose to name her—pursues her voyage—now on water, and now, as +the breezes drop, in the air—elements at times undistinguishable, as +the shadows of the clouds and of the mountains mingle their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> imagery in +the sea. Oh! that our head, like that of a spider, were all studded with +eyes—that our imagination, sitting in the "palace of the soul" (a noble +expression, borrowed or stolen by Byron from Waller), might see all at +once all the sights from centre to circumference, as if all rallying +around her for her own delight, and oppressing her with the poetry of +nature—a lyrical, an elegiac, an epic, or a tragic strain. Now the +bright blue water-gleams enchain her vision, and are felt to constitute +the vital, the essential spirit of the whole—Loch Awe land-serpent, +large as serpent of the sea, lying asleep in the sun, with his burnished +skin all bedropt with scales of silver and of gold—the lands of Lorn, +mottled and speckled with innumerous lakelets, where fancy sees millions +of water-lilies riding at anchor in bays where the breezes have fallen +asleep—Oban, splendid among the splendours of that now almost +motionless mediterranean, the mountain-loving Linnhe Loch—Jura, Islay, +Colonsay, and nameless other islands, floating far and wide away on—on +to Coll and Tiree, drowned beneath the faint horizon. But now all the +eyes in our spider-head are lost in one blaze of undistinguishable +glory; for the whole Highlands of Scotland are up in their power against +us—rivers, lochs, seas, islands, cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen +drops from our hand, and here we are—not on the battlements of the +air-palace on the summit of Cruachan, but sitting on a tripod or +three-legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our MS. before us, and +at our right hand a quaich of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder +ten-gallon cask—and here's to the health of "Honest men and bonny +lasses" all over the globe.</p> + +<p>So much for description—an art in which the Public (God bless her, +where is she now—and shall we ever see her more?) has been often +pleased to say that we excel. But let us off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto! +Basta! to your paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. Pointers! +ye are a noble trio. White, O Ponto! art thou as the foam of the sea. +Piro! thou tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's hide, and +fleet as he while thou rangest the mountain-brow, now hid in heather, +and now reappearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, Basta!—for +finest-scented though be thy scarlet nostrils, one bad trick alone hast +thou; and whenever that grey wing glances from some pillar-stone in the +wilderness, headlong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> goest thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself +to-day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail or sun herself on the +cliff. As for thee, O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright breast, +keep thou like a serf at our heels, and when our course lies over the +fens and marshes, thou mayest sweep like a hairy hurricane among the +flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake himself, and, with thy +fan-like tail proudly spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet, +with a smile, the monstrous mallard.</p> + +<p>But in what direction shall we go, callants—towards what airt shall we +turn our faces? Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and descend into +Glen-Creran, where the stony regions that the ptarmigan loves melt away +into miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we near the salmon-haunted +Loch so beautiful, loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights of +Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with sylvan shades, wherein the cushat coos, +and the roe glides through the secret covert? Or shall we away up by +Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of +Streams, that from all their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch +have never yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of +bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, or trunk of a +tree—none but trunks of trees there, and all dead for centuries—that +had sunk down where it grew, and spanned the flood that eddies round it +with a louder music? Wild region! yet not barren; for there are cattle +on a thousand hills, that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their heads +as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him in a +half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. There flocks of +goats—outliers from Dalness—may be seen as if following one another on +the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that frown down unfathomed +abysses—and there is frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's wing, +and his gobble gathering together his brood, scattered by the lightning +that in its season volleys through the silence, else far deeper than +that of death;—for the silence of death—that is, of a churchyard +filled with tombs—is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness that +prevails under the shadow of Unimore and Attchorachan, with their cliffs +on which the storms have engraven strange hieroglyphical inscriptions, +which, could but we read them wisely, would record the successive ages +of the Earth, from the hour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> when fire or flood first moulded the +mountains, down to the very moment that we are speaking, and with small +steel-hammer roughening the edges of our flints that they may fail not +to murder. Or shall we away down by Armaddy, where the Fox-Hunter +dwells—and through the woods of Inverkinglass and Achran, "double, +double, toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Benanea and +Mealcopucaich, and drop down like two unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae, +with a peep in the distance of the young tower of Dalmally, and the old +turrets of Kilchurn? Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, which +by that route lies between this our Tent and the many tarns that freshen +the wildernesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word—tip the wink—tongue +on your cheek—up with your forefinger—and we shall go; for hark, +Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight—a long day is yet before us—and +what if we be benighted? We have a full moon and plenty of stars.</p> + +<p>All these are splendid schemes—but what say you, Hamish, to one less +ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits +down by Armaddy—the Forge—Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in +some six or seven hours—and then let us try that famous salmon-cast +nearest the mansion—(you have the rods?)—and if time permit, an hour's +trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass of the Brander, for one of those +giants that have immortalised the names of a Maule, a Goldie, and a +Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, what a beard! You cannot have been shaved +since Whitsunday—and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those +dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot—mulish in nought +but an inveterate aversion to all stumbling. And now for the heather! +But are you sure, gents, <i>that we are on</i>?</p> + +<p>And has it come to this! Where is the grandson of the desert-born?</p> + +<p>Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta wert a flyer! A fencer beyond +compare! Dost thou remember how, for a cool five hundred, thou clearedst +yon canal in a style that rivalled that of the red-deer across the +chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do was to hold hard and not ride over +the hounds, when running breast-high on the rear of Reynard the savage +pack wakened the welkin with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, +and whipper-in and huntsman were flogging on their faltering flight in +vain through fields and forests flying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> behind thy heels that glanced +and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What steed like thee in all +Britain at a steeple-chase? Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and +skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other horses—heavy there as +dragoons—seemed fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, soil-sunk +to the knees. Ditches dwindled beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as +rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate +plunged thy sixteen hands and a-half height, like a Polar monster +leaping from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up thy small head +and fine neck and high shoulder, like a Draco from the weltering waters, +with a few proud pawings to which the recovered greensward rang, thy +whole bold, bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, crested by old +Christopher, and after one short snorting pause, over the miry +meadows—tantivy!—tantivy!—away! away! away!</p> + +<p>Oh! son of a Rep! were not those glorious days? But Time has laid his +finger on us both, Filho; and never more must we two be seen by the edge +of the cover,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the golden hills."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>'Tis the last learned and highest lesson of Wisdom, Filho, in man's +studious obedience to Nature's laws—<i>to know when to stop in his +career</i>. Pride, Passion, Pleasure, all urge him on; while Prudence, +Propriety, Peace, cry halt! halt! halt! That mandate we have timeously +obeyed; and having, unblamed we hope, and blameless, carried on the +pastimes of youth into manhood, and even through the prime of manhood to +the verge of age—on that verge, after some few farewell vagaries up and +down the debatable land, we had the resolution to drop our bridle-hand, +to unloosen the spurs from our heels, and to dismount from the +stateliest and swiftest steed, Filho, that ever wafted mortal man over +moor and mountain like a storm-driven cloud.</p> + +<p>You are sure <i>we are on</i>, Hamish? And that he will not run away? Come, +come, Surefoot, none of your funking! A better mane for holding on by we +could not imagine. Pure Shelty you say, Hamish? From his ears we should +have suspected his grandfather of having been at least a Zebra.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE MOORS.</h2> + +<h3>FLIGHT SECOND—THE COVES OF CRUACHAN.</h3> + + +<p>Comma—semicolon—colon—full-point! All three scent-struck into +attitude steady as stones. That is beautiful. Ponto straight as a +rod—Piro in a slight curve—and Basta a perfect semicircle. O'Bronte! +down on your marrowbones. But there is no need, Hamish, either for hurry +or haste. On such ground, and on such a day, the birds will lie as if +they were asleep. Hamish, the flask!—not the powder-flask, you +dotterel—but the Glenlivet. 'Tis thus we always love to steady our hand +for the first shot. It gives a fine feeling to the forefinger.</p> + +<p>Ha! the heads of the old cock and hen, like snakes, above the +heather—motionless, but with glancing eyes—and preparing for the +spring. Whirr—whirr—whirr—bang—bang—tapsilleery—tapsalteery—thud— +thud—thud! Old cock and old hen both down, Hamish. No mean omen, no +awkward augury, of the day's sport. Now for the orphan family—marked ye +them round</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The swelling instep of the mountain's foot?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Faith and she's the teevil's nainsel—that is she—at the shutin'; for +may I tine ma mull, and never pree sneeshin' mair, if she haena richt +and left murdered fowre o' the creturs!"—"Four!—why, we only covered +the old people; but if younkers will cross, 'tis their own fault that +they bite the heather."—"They're a' fowre spewin', sir, except ane—and +her head's aff—and she's jumpin' about waur nor ony o' them, wi' her +bluidy neck. I wuss she mayna tak to her wings again, and owre the +knowe. But ca' in that great toozy outlandish dowg, sir, for he's +devourin' them—see hoo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> he's flingin' them, first ane and then anither, +outowre his shouther, and keppin' them afore they touch the grun' in his +mouth, like a mountebank wi' a shour o' oranges!"—"Hamish, are they +bagged?"—"Ou ay."—"Then away to windward, ye sons of bitches—Heavens, +how they do their work!"</p> + +<p>Up to the time of our grand climacteric we loved a wide range—and +thought nothing of describing and discussing a circle of ten miles +diameter in a day, up to our hips in heather. But for these dozen or +twenty years bypast we have preferred a narrow beat, snugly seated on a +shelty, and pad the hoof on the hill no more. Yonder is the kind of +ground we now love—for why should an old man make a toil of a pleasure? +'Tis one of the many small coves belonging to Glen-Etive, and looks down +from no very great elevation upon the Loch. Its bottom, and sides nearly +half-way up, are green pastures, sheep-nibbled as smooth as a lawn—and +a rill, dropping in diamonds from the cliffs at its upper end, betrays +itself, where the water is invisible, by a line of still livelier +verdure. An old dilapidated sheepfold is the only building, and seems to +make the scene still more solitary. Above the green pastures are the +richest beds and bosoms of heather ever bees murmured on—and above them +nothing but bare cliffs. A stiff breeze is now blowing into this cove +from the sea-loch; and we shall slaughter the orphan family at our +leisure. 'Tis probable they have dropped—single bird after single +bird—or in twos and threes—all along the first line of heather that +met their flight; and if so, we shall pop them like partridges in +turnips. Three points in the game! Each dog, it is manifest, stands to a +different lot of feathers; and we shall slaughter them, without +dismounting, <i>seriatim</i>. No, Hamish—we must dismount—give us your +shoulder—that will do. The Crutch—now we are on our pins. Take a +lesson. Whirr! Bang! Bag number one, Hamish. Ay, that is right, +Ponto—back Basta. Ditto, ditto. Now Ponto and Basta both back +Piro—right and left this time—and not one of the brood will be left to +cheep of Christopher. Be ready—attend us with the other double-barrel. +Whirr! Bang—bang—bang—bang! What think you of that, you son of the +mist? There is a shower of feathers! They are all at sixes and sevens +upon the greensward at the edge of the heather. Seven birds at four +shots! The whole family is now disposed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> of—father, mother, and eleven +children. If such fire still be in the dry wood, what must it have been +in the green? Let us lie down in the sheltered shade of the mossy walls +of the sheepfold—take a drop of Glenlivet—and philosophise.</p> + +<p>Hollo! Hamish, who are these strange, suspicious-looking strangers +thitherwards-bound, as hallan-shaker a set as may be seen on an August +day? Ay, ay, we ken the clan. A week's residence to a man of gumption +gives an insight into a neighbourhood. Unerring physiognomists and +phrenologists are we, and what with instinctive, and what with intuitive +knowledge, we keek in a moment through all disguise. He in the centre of +the group is the stickit minister—on his right stands the drunken +dominie—on his left the captain, who in that raised look retains token +of <i>delirium tremens</i>—the land-louper behind him is the land-measurer, +who would be well to do in the world were he "monarch of all he +surveyed,"—but has been long out at elbows, and his society not much +courted since he was rude to the auld wife at the time the gudeman was +at the peats. That fine tall youth, the widow's son in Gleno, and his +friend the Sketcher, with his portfolio under his arm, are in +indifferent company, Hamish; but who, pray, may be the phenomenon in +plush, with bow and arrow, and tasseled horn, bonnet jauntily screwed to +the sinister, glass stuck in socket, and precisely in the middle of his +puckered mouth a cigar. You do not say so—a grocer's apprentice from +the Gorbals!</p> + +<p>No need of confabulating there, gemmen, on the knowe—come forward and +confront Christopher North. We find we have been too severe in our +strictures. After all, they are not a bad set of fellows, as the world +goes—imprudence must not be too harshly condemned—Shakespeare taught +us to see the soul of good in things evil—these two are excellent lads; +and, as for impertinence, it often proceeds from <i>mauvais honte</i>, and +with a glance we shall replace the archer behind his counter.</p> + +<p>How goes it, Cappy? Rather stiff in the back, minister, with the mouth +of the fowling-piece peeping out between the tails of your long coat, +and the butt at the back of your head, by way of bolster? You will find +it more comfortable to have her in hand. That bamboo, dominie, is well +known to be an air-gun. Have you your horse-pistol with you to-day, +sur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>veyor? Sagittarius, think you, you could hit, at twoscore, a +haystack flying? Sit down, gentlemen, and let's have a crack.</p> + +<p>So ho! so ho! so ho! We see her black eyes beneath a primrose tuft on +the brae. In spring all one bank of blossoms; but 'tis barish now and +sheep-nibbled, though few eyes but our own could have thus detected +there the brown back of Maukin. Dominie, your bamboo. Shoot her sitting? +Fie fie—no, no. Kick her up, Hamish. There she goes. We are out of +practice at single ball—but whizz! she has it between the shoulders. +Head-over-heels she has started another—why, that's funny—give us your +bow and arrow, you green grocer—twang! within an inch of her fud. +Gentlemen, suppose we tip you a song. Join all in the chorus.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<span class="smcap"> +<span class="i10">the powcher's song.<br /></span> +</span> +</div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">When I was boon apprentice<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In vamous Zoomerzet Shere,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Lauks! I zerved my meester truly<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Vor neerly zeven yeer,<br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>U</i>ntil I took to <i>Pow</i>ching,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Az you zhall quickly heer.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Cho.</span> Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Az me and ma coomerades<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Were zetting on a snere,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Lauks! the Geamkeepoors caem oop to uz;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Vor them we did na kere,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">'Case we could fight or wrestle, lads,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Jump over ony wheere.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Cho.</span> Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Az we went oot wan morning<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Atwixt your vive and zeex,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">We cautcht a here alive, ma lads,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">We found un in a deetch;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">We popt un in a bag, ma lads,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">We yoiten off vor town,<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> +</div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">We took un to a neeghboor's hoose,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And we zold un vor a crown.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">We zold un vor a crown, ma lads,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">But a wont tell ye wheere.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Cho.</span> Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Then here's success to Powching,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Vor A doos think it feere,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And here's look to ere a gentleman<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Az wants to buy a heere,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And here's to ere a geamkeepoor,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Az woona zell it deere.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Cho.</span> Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In the zeazon of the year.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Presbytery might have overlooked your fault, Mac, for the case was +not a flagrant one, and you were willing, we understand, to make her an +honest woman. Do you think you could recollect one of your sermons? In +action and in unction you had not your superior in the Synod. Do give us +a screed about Nimrod or Nebuchadnezzar. No desecration in a +sermon—better omitted, we grant, prayer and psalm. Should you be unable +to reproduce an entire discourse, yet by dove-tailing—that is, a bit +from one and a bit from another—surely you can be at no loss for half +an hour's miscellaneous matter—heads and tails. Or suppose we let you +off with a View of the Church Question. You look glum and shake your +head. Can you, Mac, how can you resist that Pulpit?</p> + +<p>Behold in that semicircular low-browed cliff, backed by a range of bonny +green braes dipping down from the hills that do themselves come shelving +from the mountains, what appears at first sight to be a cave, but is +merely a blind window, as it were, a few feet deep, arched and faced +like a beautiful work of masonry, though chisel never touched it, nor +man's hand dropped the line along the living stone thus wrought by +nature's self, who often shows us, in her mysterious processes, +resemblances of effects produced by us her children on the same +materials by our more most elaborate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> art. It is a very pulpit, and that +projecting slab is the sounding-board. That upright stone in front of +it, without the aid of fancy, may well be thought the desk. To us +sitting here, this spot of greensward is the floor; the sky that hangs +low, as if it loved it, the roof of the sanctuary; nor is there any harm +in saying, that we, if we choose to think so, are sitting in a kirk.</p> + +<p>Shall we mount the pulpit by that natural flight of steps, and, like a +Sedgwick or a Buckland, with a specimen in one hand, and before our eyes +mountains whose faces the scars of thunder have intrenched, tell you how +the globe, after formation on formation, became fit residence for +new-created man, and habitable no more to flying dragons? Or shall we, +rather, taking the globe as we find it, speculate on the changes wrought +on its surface by us, whom God gave feet to tread the earth, and faces +to behold the heavens, and souls to soar into the heaven of heavens, on +the wings of hope, aspiring through temporal shades to eternal light?</p> + +<p>Brethren!—The primary physical wants of the human being are food, +clothing, shelter, and defence. To supply these he has invented all his +arts. Hunger and Thirst cultivate the earth. Fear builds castles and +embattles cities. The animal is clothed by nature against cold and +storm, and shelters himself in his den. Man builds his habitation, and +weaves his clothing. With horns, or teeth, or claws, the strong and +deadly weapons with which nature has furnished them, the animal kinds +wage their war; he forges swords and spears, and constructs implements +of destruction that will send death almost as far as his eye can mark +his foe, and sweep down thousands together. The animal that goes in +quest of his food, that pursues or flies from his enemy, has feet, or +wings, or fins; but man bids the horse, the camel, the elephant, bear +him, and yokes them to his chariot. If the strong animal would cross the +river, he swims. Man spans it with a bridge. But the most powerful of +them all stands on the beach and gazes on the ocean. Man constructs a +ship, and encircles the globe. Other creatures must traverse the element +nature has assigned, with means she has furnished. He chooses his +element, and makes his means. Can the fish traverse the waters? So can +he. Can the bird fly the air? So can he.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> Can the camel speed over the +desert? He shall bear man as his rider.</p> + +<p>"That's beautifu'!" "Tuts, haud your tongue, and tak a chow. There's +some shag." "Is he gaun to be lang, Hamish?" "Wheesht! you micht as weel +be speakin in the kirk."</p> + +<p>But to see what he owes to inventive art, we should compare man, not +with inferior creatures, but with himself, looking over the face of +human society, as history or observation shows it. We shall find him +almost sharing the life of brutes, or removed from them by innumerable +differences, and incalculable degrees. In one place we see him +harbouring in caves, naked, living, we might almost say, on prey, +seeking from chance his wretched sustenance, food which he eats just as +he finds it. He lives like a beggar on the alms of nature. Turn to +another land, and you see the face of the earth covered with the works +of his hand—his habitation, widespreading stately cities—his clothing +and the ornaments of his person culled and fashioned from the three +kingdoms of nature. For his food the face of the earth bears him +tribute; and the seasons and changes of heaven concur with his own art +in ministering to his board. This is the difference which man has made +in his own condition by the use of his intellectual powers, awakened and +goaded on by the necessities of his physical constitution.</p> + +<p>The various knowledge, the endlessly multiplied observation, the +experience and reasonings of man added to man, of generation following +generation, which were required to bring to a moderate state of +advancement the great primary arts subservient to physical life—the +arts of providing food, habitation, clothing, and defence, <i>we</i> are +utterly unable to conceive. We are <i>born</i> to the knowledge which was +collected by the labours of many ages. How slowly were those arts reared +up which still remain to us! How many which had laboriously been brought +to perfection, have been displaced by superior invention, and fallen +into oblivion! Fenced in as we are by the works of our predecessors, we +see but a small part of the power of man contending with the +difficulties of his lot. But what a wonderful scene would be opened +before our eyes, with what intense interest should we look on, if we +could indeed behold him armed only with his own implanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> powers, and +going forth to conquer the creation! If we could see him beginning by +subduing evils, and supplying painful wants—going on to turn those +evils and wants into the means of enjoyment—and at length, in the +wantonness and pride of his power, filling his existence with +luxuries;—if we could see him from his first step, in the untamed +though fruitful wilderness, advancing to subdue the soil, to tame and +multiply the herds—from bending the branches into a bower, to fell the +forest and quarry the rock—seizing into his own hands the element of +fire, directing its action on substances got from the bowels of the +earth—fashioning wood, and stone, and metal, to the will of his +thought—searching the nature of plants to spin their fibres, or with +their virtues to heal his diseases;—if we could see him raise his first +cities, launch his first ship, calling the winds and waters to be his +servants, and to do his work—changing the face of the earth—forming +lakes and rivers—joining seas, or stretching the continent itself into +the dominion of the sea;—if we could do all this in imagination, then +should we understand something of what man's intellect has done for his +physical life, and what the necessities of his physical life have done +in forcing into action all the powers of his intelligence.</p> + +<p>But there are still higher considerations arising from the influence of +man's physical necessities on the destiny of the species. It is this +subjugation of natural evil, and this created dominion of art, that +prepares the earth to be the scene of his social existence. His hard +conquest was not the end of his toil. He has conquered the kingdom in +which he was to dwell in his state. The full unfolding of his moral +powers was only possible in those states of society which are thus +brought into being by his conflict with all his physical faculties +against all the stubborn powers of the material universe; for out of the +same conquest Wealth is created. In this progress, and by means thus +brought into action, society is divided into classes. Property itself, +the allotment of the earth, takes place, because it is the bosom of the +earth that yields food. That great foundation of the stability of +communities is thus connected with the same necessity; and in the same +progress, and out of the same causes, arise the first great Laws by +which society is held together in order. Thus that whole wonderful +development of the Moral Nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> of man, in all those various forms +which fill up the history of the race, in part arises out of, and is +always intimately blended with, the labours to which he has been aroused +by those first great necessities of his physical nature. But had the +tendency to increase his numbers been out of all proportion to the means +provided by nature, and infinitely multipliable by art, for the +subsistence of human beings, how could this magnificent march have moved +on?</p> + +<p>Hence we may understand on what ground the ancient nations revered so +highly, and even deified, the authors of the primary arts of life. They +considered not the supply of the animal wants merely; but they +contemplated that mighty change in the condition of mankind to which +these arts have given origin. It is on this ground that they had raised +the character of human life, that Virgil assigns them their place in the +dwellings of bliss, among devoted patriots and holy priests, among those +whom song or prophecy had inspired, among those benefactors of the race +whose names were to live for ever, giving his own most beautiful +expression to the common sentiment of mankind.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quique pii vates, et Phœbo digna locuti,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo;<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Omnibus his</i> niveâ cinguntur tempora vittâ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"That's Latin for the minister and the dominie." "Wheesht! Heard you +ever the like o' that? Though I dinna understand a word o't, it gars me +a' grue." "Wheesht! wheesht!—we maun pit him intil Paurliment"—"Rather +intil the General Assembly, to tussle wi' the wild men." "He's nae +Moderate, man; and gin I'm no sair mistaen, he's a wild man himsel, and +wull uphaud the Veto." "Wheesht! wheesht! wheesht!"</p> + +<p>True, that in savage life men starve. But is that any proof that nature +has cursed the race with a fatal tendency to multiply beyond the means +of subsistence? None whatever. Attend for a little to this point. Of the +real power of the bodily appetites for food, and the sway they may +attain over the moral nature of the mind, we, who are protected by our +place among the arrangements of civil society from greatly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> suffering +under it, can indeed form no adequate conception. Let us not now speak +of those dreadful enormities which, in the midst of dismal famine, are +recorded to have been perpetrated by civilised men, when the whole moral +soul, with all its strongest affections and instinctive abhorrences, has +sunk prostrate under the force of that animal suffering. But the power +of which we speak, as attained by this animal feeling, subsists +habitually among whole tribes and nations. It is that power which it +acquires over the mind of the savage, who is frequently exposed to +suffer its severity, and who hunts for himself the food with which he is +to appease it. Compare the mind of the human being as you are accustomed +to behold him, knowing the return of this sensation only as a grateful +incitement to take the ready nourishment which is spread for his repast, +with that of his fellow-man bearing through the lonely woods the gnawing +pang that goads him to his prey. Hunger <i>is</i> in his heart; hunger bears +along his unfatiguing feet; hunger lies in the strength of his arm; +hunger watches in his eye; hunger listens in his ear; as he couches down +in his covert, silently waiting the approach of his expected spoil, this +is the sole thought that fills his aching breast—"I shall satisfy my +hunger!" When his deadly aim has brought his victim to the ground, this +is the thought that springs up as he rushes to seize it, "I have got +food for my hungry soul!" What must be the usurpation of animal nature +here over the whole man! It is not merely the simple pain, as if it were +the forlornness of a human creature bearing about his famishing +existence in helplessness and despair—though that, too, is indeed a +true picture of some states of our race; but here is not a suffering and +sinking wretch—he is a strong hunter, and puts forth his strength +fiercely under the urgency of this passion. All his might in the +chase—all pride of speed, and strength, and skill—all thoughts of long +and hard endurance—all images of perils past—all remembrances and all +foresight—are gathered on that one strong and keen desire—are bound +down to the sense of that one bitter animal want. These feelings +recurring day by day in the sole toil of his life, bring upon his soul a +vehemence and power of desire in this object, of which we can have no +conception, till he becomes subjected to hunger as to a mighty animal +passion—a passion such as it rages in those fierce animal kinds which +it drives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> with such ferocity on their prey. He knows hunger as the wolf +knows it—he goes forth with his burning heart, like the tiger to lap +blood. But turn to man in another condition to which he has been brought +by the very agency of his physical on his intellectual and moral being! +How far removed is he now from that daily contention with such evils as +these! How much does he feel himself assured against them by belonging +to the great confederacy of social life! How much is it veiled from his +eyes by the many artificial circumstances in which the satisfaction of +the want is involved! The work in which he labours the whole day—on +which his eyes are fixed and his hands toil—is something altogether +unconnected with his own wants—connected with distant wants and +purposes of a thousand other men in which he has no participation. And +as far as it is a work of skill, he has to fix his mind on objects and +purposes so totally removed from himself, that they all tend still more +to sever his thoughts from his own necessities; and thus it is that +civilisation raises his moral character, when it protects almost every +human being in a country from that subjection to this passion, to which +even noble tribes are bound down in the wilderness of nature.</p> + +<p>"It's an awfu' thing hunger, Hamish, sure aneuch; but I wush he was +dune; for that vice o' his sing-sangin is makin me unco sleepy—and ance +I fa' owre, I'm no easy waukenin. But wha's that snorin?"</p> + +<p>Yet it is the most melancholy part of all such speculation, to observe +what a wide gloom is cast over them by this severe necessity, which is +nevertheless the great and constant cause of the improvement of their +condition. It is not suffering alone—for <i>that</i> they may be inured to +bear,—but the darkness of the understanding, and the darkness of the +heart, which comes on under the oppression of toil, that is miserable to +see. Our fellow-men, born with the same spirit as ourselves, seem yet +denied the common privileges of that spirit. They seem to bring +faculties into the world that cannot be unfolded, and powers of +affection and desire which not their fault but the lot of their birth +will pervert and degrade. There is a humiliation laid upon our nature in +the doom which seems thus to rest upon a great portion of our species, +which, while it requires our most considerate compassion for those who +are thus depressed, compels us to humble ourselves under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> sense of +our own participation in the nature from which it flows. Therefore, in +estimating the worth, the virtue of our fellow-men, whom Providence has +placed in a lot that yields to them the means, and little more than the +means, of supporting life in themselves and those born of them, let us +never forget how intimate is the necessary union between the wants of +the body and the thoughts of the soul. Let us remember, that over a +great portion of humanity the soul is in a struggle for its independence +and power with the necessities of that nature in which it is enveloped. +It has to support itself against sickening, or irritating, or maddening +thoughts, inspired by weariness, lassitude, want, or the fear of want. +It is chained down to the earth by the influence of one great and +constant occupation—that of providing the means of its mortal +existence. When it shows itself shook and agitated, or overcome in the +struggle, what ought to be the thoughts and feelings of the wise for +poor humanity! When, on the other hand, we see nature preserving itself +pure, bold, and happy amidst the perpetual threatenings or assaults of +those evils from which it cannot fly, and though oppressed by its own +weary wants, forgetting them all in that love which ministers to the +wants of others,—when we see the brow wrinkled and drenched by +incessant toil, the body in the power of its prime bowed down to the +dust, and the whole frame in which the immortal spirit abides marked, +but not dishonoured, by its slavery to fate,—and when, in the midst of +all this ceaseless depression and oppression, from which man must never +hope to escape on earth, we see him still seeking and still finding joy, +delight, and happiness in the finer affections of his spiritual being, +giving to the lips of those he loves the scanty morsel earned by his own +hungry and thirsty toil, purchasing by sweat, sickness, and fever, +Education and Instruction and Religion to the young creatures who +delight him who is starving for their sakes, resting with gratitude on +that day, whose return is ever like a fresh fountain to his exhausted +and weary heart, and preserving a profound and high sense of his own +immortality among all the earth-born toils and troubles that would in +vain chain him down to the dust;—when we see all this, and think of all +this, we feel indeed how rich may be the poorest of the poor, and learn +to respect the moral being of man in its triumphs over the power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> of his +physical nature. But we do not learn to doubt or deny the wisdom of the +Creator. We do not learn from all these struggles, and all these +defeats, and all these victories, and all these triumphs, that God sent +us His creatures into this life to starve, because the air, the earth, +and the waters have not wherewithal to feed the mouths that gape for +food through all the elements! Nor do we learn that want is a crime, and +poverty a sin—and that they who <i>would</i> toil, but cannot, and they who +<i>can</i> toil, but have no work set before them, are intruders at Nature's +table, and must be driven, by those who are able to pay for their seats, +to famine, starvation, and death—almost denied a burial!—Finis. Amen.</p> + +<p>Often has it been our lot, by our conversational powers to set the table +on a snore. The more stirring the theme, the more soporific the sound of +our silver voice. Look there, we beseech you! In a small spot of +"stationary sunshine"—lie Hamish, and Surefoot, and O'Bronte, and +Ponto, and Piro, and Basta, all sound asleep! Dogs are troubled +sleepers—but these four are now like the dreamless dead. Horses, too, +seem often to be witch-ridden in their sleep. But at this moment +Surefoot is stretched more like a stone than a shelty in the land of +Nod. As for Hamish, were he to lie so braxy-like by himself on the hill, +he would be awakened by the bill of the raven digging into his sockets. +We are Morpheus and Orpheus in one incarnation—the very Pink of +Poppy—the true spirit of Opium—of Laudanum the concentrated +Essence—of the black Drop the Gnome.</p> + +<p>Indeed, gentlemen, you have reason to be ashamed of yourselves—but +where is the awkward squad? Clean gone. They have stolen a march on us, +and while we have been preaching they have been poaching—<i>sans</i> mandate +of the Marquess and Monzie. We may catch them ere close of day; and, if +they have a smell of slaughter, we shall crack their sconces with our +Crutch. No apologies, Hamish—'tis only making the matter worse; but we +expected better things of the Dogs. O'Bronte! fie! fie! sirrah. Your +sire would not have fallen asleep during a speech of ours—and such a +speech!—he would have sat it out without winking—at each more splendid +passage testifying his delight by a yowl. Leap over the Crutch, you +reprobate, and let us see thee scour. Look at him, Hamish, already +beckoning to us on his hurdies from the hill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>-top. Let us scale those +barriers—and away over the table-land between that summit and the head +of Gleno. No sooner said than done—and here we are on the level—such a +level as the ship finds on the main sea, when in the storm-lull she +rides up and down the green swell, before the trade-winds that cool the +tropics. The surface of this main land-sea is black in the gloom, and +green in the glimmer, and purple in the light, and crimson in the +sunshine. O, never looks Nature so magnificent</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As in this varying and uncertain weather,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When gloom and glory force themselves together,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When calm seems stormy, and tempestuous light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At day's meridian lowers like noon of night!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Whose are these fine lines? Hooky Walker, <span class="smcap">Our own</span>. Dogs! +Down—down—down—be stonelike, O Shelty!—and Hamish, sink thou into +the heather like a lizard; for if these old dim eyes of ours may be in +aught believed, yonder by the birches stands a Red-Deer snuffing the +east wind! Hush! hush! hush! He suspects an enemy in that airt—but +death comes upon him with stealthy foot, from the west; and if Apollo +and Diana—the divinities we so long have worshipped—be now propitious, +his antlers shall be entangled in the heather, and his hoofs beat the +heavens. Hamish, the rifle! A tinkle as of iron, and a hiss accompanying +the explosion—and the King of the Wilderness, bounding up into the air +with his antlers higher than ever waved chieftain's plume, falls down +stone-dead where he stood; for the blue-pill has gone through his +vitals, and lightning itself could hardly have withered him into more +instantaneous cessation of life!</p> + +<p>He is an enormous animal. What antlers! Roll him over, Hamish, on his +side! See, up to our breast, nearly, reaches the topmost branch. He is +what the hunter of old called a "Stag of Ten." His eye has lost the +flash of freedom—the tongue that browsed the brushwood is bitten +through by the clenched teeth—the fleetness of his feet has felt that +fatal frost—the wild heart is hushed, Hamish—tame, tame, tame; and +there the Monarch of the Mountains—the King of the Cliffs—the Grand +Llama of the Glens—the Sultan of the Solitudes—the Dey of the +Deserts—the Royal Ranger of the Woods and Forests—yea, the very Prince +of the Air and Thane of Thunder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>—"shorn of all his beams," lies +motionless as a dead Jackass by the wayside, whose hide was not thought +worth the trouble of flaying by his owners the gypsies! "To this +complexion has he come at last"—he who at dawn had borrowed the wings +of the wind to carry him across the cataracts!</p> + +<p>A sudden pang shoots across our heart. What right had we to commit this +murder? How, henceforth, shall we dare to hold up our head among the +lovers of liberty, after having thus stolen basely from behind on him, +the boldest, brightest, and most beautiful of all her sons! We, who for +so many years have been just able to hobble, and no more, by aid of the +Crutch—who feared to let the heather-bent touch our toe, so sensitive +in its gout—We, the old and impotent, all last winter bed-ridden, and +even now seated like a lameter on a shelty, strapped by a patent buckle +to a saddle provided with a pummel behind as well as before—such an +unwieldy and weary wretch as We—"fat, and scant of breath"—and with +our hand almost perpetually pressed against our left side, when a +coughing-fit of asthma brings back the stitch, seldom an absentee—to +assassinate <span class="smcap">that red-deer</span>, whose flight on earth could accompany the +eagles in heaven; and not only to assassinate him, but, in a moral vein, +to liken his carcass to that of a Jackass! It will not bear further +reflection; so, Hamish, out with your whinger, and carve him a dish fit +for the gods—in a style worthy of Sir Tristrem, Gill Morice, Robin +Hood, or Lord Ranald. No; let him lie till nightfall, when we shall be +returning from Inveraw with strength sufficient to bear him to the Tent.</p> + +<p>But hark, Hamish, to that sullen croak from the cliff! The old raven of +the cove already scents death—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sagacious of his quarry from afar!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But where art thou, Hamish? Ay, yonder is Hamish, wriggling on his very +belly, like an adder, through the heather to windward of the croaker, +whose nostrils, and eyes, and bill, are now all hungrily fascinated, and +as it were already fastened into the very bowels of the beast. His days +are numbered. That sly serpent, by circuitous windings insinuating his +limber length through among all obstructions, has ascended unseen the +drooping shoulder of the cliff, and now cautiously erects his crest +within a hundred yards or more of the unsuspecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> savage, still +uttering at intervals his sullen croak, croak, croak! Something +crumbles, and old Sooty, unfolding his huge wings, lifts himself up like +Satan, about to sail away for a while into another glen; but the rifle +rings among the rocks—the lead has broken his spine—and look! how the +demon, head-over-heels, goes tumbling down, down, down, many hundred +fathoms, dashed to pieces and impaled on the sharp-pointed granite! Ere +nightfall the bloody fragments will be devoured by his mate. Nothing now +will disturb the carcass of the deer. No corbies dare enter the cove +where the raven reigned; the hawk prefers grouse to venison, and so does +the eagle, who, however, like a good Catholic as he is—this is +Friday—has gone out to sea for a fish dinner, which he devours to the +music of the waves on some isle-rock. Therefore lie there, dethroned +king! till thou art decapitated; and ere the moon wanes, that haunch +will tower gloriously on our Tent-table at the Feast of Shells.</p> + +<p>What is your private opinion, O'Bronte, of the taste of Red-deer blood? +Has it not a wild twang on the tongue and palate, far preferable to +sheep's-head? You are absolutely undergoing transfiguration into a +deer-hound! With your fore-paws on the flank, your tail brandished like +a standard, and your crimson flews (thank you, Shepherd, for that word) +licked by a long lambent tongue red as crimson, while your eyes express +a fierce delight never felt before, and a stifled growl disturbs the +star on your breast—just as you stand now, O'Bronte, might Edwin +Landseer rejoice to paint thy picture, for which, immortal image of the +wilderness, the Duke of Bedford would not scruple to give a draft on his +banker for one thousand pounds!</p> + +<p>Shooting grouse after red-deer is, for a while at first, felt to be like +writing an anagram in a lady's album, after having given the +finishing-touch to a tragedy or an epic poem. 'Tis like taking to +catching shrimps in the sand with one's toes, on one's return from +Davis' Straits in a whaler that arrived at Peterhead with sixteen fish, +each calculated at ten tun of oil. Yet, 'tis strange how the human soul +can descend, pleasantly at every note, from the top to the bottom of +passion's and imagination's gamut.</p> + +<p>A Tarn—a Tarn! with but a small circle of unbroken water in the centre, +and all the rest of its shallowness brist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>ling, in every bay, with reeds +and rushes, and surrounded, all about the mossy flat, with marshes and +quagmires! What a breeding-place—"procreant cradle" for water-fowl! Now +comes thy turn, O'Bronte—for famous is thy name, almost as thy sire's, +among the flappers. Crawl down to leeward, Hamish, that you may pepper +them—should they take to flight overhead to the loch. Surefoot, taste +that greensward, and you will find it sweet and succulent. Dogs, +heel—heel!—and now let us steal, on our Crutch, behind that knoll, and +open a sudden fire on the swimmers, who seem to think themselves out of +shot at the edge of that line of water-lilies; but some of them will +soon find themselves mistaken, whirling round on their backs, and vainly +endeavouring to dive after their friends that disappear beneath the +agitated surface shot-swept into spray. Long Gun! who oft to the +forefinger of Colonel Hawker has swept the night-harbour of Poole all +alive with widgeons, be true to the trust now reposed in thee by Kit +North! And though these be neither geese, nor swans, nor hoopers, yet +send thy leaden shower among them feeding in their play, till all the +air be afloat with specks, as if at the shaking of a feather-bed that +had burst the ticking, and the tarn covered with sprawling mawsies and +mallards, in death-throes among the ducklings! There it lies on its +rest—like a telescope. No eye has discovered the invention—keen as +those wild eyes are of the plouterers on the shallows. Lightning and +thunder! to which all the echoes roar. But we meanwhile are on our back; +for of all the recoils that ever shook a shoulder, that one was the +severest—but 'twill probably cure our rheumatism and——Well +done—nobly, gloriously done, O'Bronte! Heaven and earth, how otter-like +he swims! Ha, Hamish! you have cut off the retreat of that airy +voyager—you have given it him in his stern, Hamish—and are reloading +for the flappers. One at a time in your mouth, O'Bronte! Put about with +that tail for a rudder—and make for the shore. What a stately creature! +as he comes issuing from the shallows, and bearing the old mallard +breast-high, walks all dripping along the greensward, and then shakes +from his curled ebony the flashing spray-mist. He gives us one look as +we crown the knoll, and then in again with a spang and a plunge far into +the tarn, caring no more for the reeds than for so many windle-straes, +and, fast as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> a sea-serpent, is among the heart of the killed and +wounded. In unerring instinct he always seizes the dead—and now a +devil's dozen lie along the shore. Come hither, O'Bronte, and caress thy +old master. Ay—that showed a fine feeling—did that long shake that +bedrizzled the sunshine. Put thy paws over our shoulders, and round our +neck, true son of thy sire—oh! that he were but alive, to see and share +thy achievements: but indeed, two such dogs, living together in their +prime at one era, would have been too great glory for this sublunary +canine world. Therefore Sirius looked on thy sire with an evil eye, and +in jealousy—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tantæne animis cælestibus iræ!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>growled upon some sinner to poison the Dog of all Dogs, who leapt up +almost to the ceiling of the room where he slept—our own bedroom—under +the agony of that accursed arsenic, gave one horrid howl, and expired. +Methinka we know his murderer—his eye falls when it meets ours on the +Street of Princes; and let him scowl there but seldom—for though 'tis +but suspicion, this fist, O'Bronte, doubles at the sight of the +miscreant—and some day, impelled by wrath and disgust, it will smash +his nose flat with the other features, till his face is a pancake. Yea! +as sure as Themis holds her balance in the skies, shall the poisoner be +punished out of all recognition by his parents, and be disowned by the +Irish Cockney father that begot him, and the Scotch Cockney mother that +bore him, as he carries home a tripe-like countenance enough to make his +paramour the scullion miscarry, as she opens the door to him on the +fifth flat of a common stair. But we are getting personal, O'Bronte, a +vice abhorrent from our nature.</p> + +<p>There goes our Crutch, Hamish, whirling aloft in the sky like a rainbow +flight, even like the ten-pound hammer from the fling of George Scougal +at the St Ronans games. Our gout is gone—so is our asthma—eke our +rheumatism—and, like an eagle, we have renewed our youth. There is hop, +step, and jump, for you, Hamish—we should not fear, young and agile as +you are, buck, to give you a yard. But now for the flappers. Pointers +all, stir your stumps and into the water. This is rich. Why, the reeds +are as full of flappers as of frogs. If they can fly, the fools don't +know it. Why, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> is a whole musquito-fleet of yellow boys, not a +month old. What a prolific old lady must she have been, to have kept on +breeding till July. There she sits, cowering, just on the edge of the +reeds, uncertain whether to dive or fly. By the creak and cry of the +cradle of thy first-born, Hamish, spare the plumage on her yearning and +quaking breast. The little yellow images have all melted away, and are +now, in holy cunning of instinct, deep down beneath the waters, shifting +for themselves among the very mud at the bottom of the reeds. By-and-by +they will be floating with but the points of their bills above the +surface, invisible among the air-bells. The parent duck has also +disappeared; the drake you disposed of, Hamish, as the coward was +lifting up his lumbering body, with fat doup and long neck in the air, +to seek safer skies. We male creatures—drakes, ganders, and men +alike—what are we, when affection pleads, in comparison with females! +In our passions, we are brave, but these satiated, we turn upon our heel +and disappear from danger, like dastards. But doves, and ducks, and +women, are fearless in affection to the very death. Therefore have we +all our days, sleeping or waking, loved the sex, virgin and matron; nor +would we hurt a hair of their heads, grey or golden, for all else that +shines beneath the sun.</p> + +<p>Not the best practice this in the world, certainly, for pointers—and it +may teach them bad habits on the hill; but, in some situations, all dogs +and all men are alike, and cross them as you will, not a breed but shows +a taint of original sin, when under a temptation sufficiently strong to +bring it out. Ponto, Piro, and Basta, are now, according to their +abilities, all as bad as O'Bronte—and never, to be sure, was there such +a worrying in this wicked world. But now we shall cease our fire, and +leave the few flappers that are left alive to their own meditations. Our +conduct for the last hour must have seemed to them no less unaccountable +than alarming, and something to quack over during the rest of the +season. Well, we do not remember ever to have seen a prettier pile of +ducks and ducklings. Hamish, take census. What do you say—two score? +That beats cockfighting. Here's a hank of twine, Hamish, tie them +altogether by the legs, and hang them, in two divisions of equal +weights, over the crupper of Surefoot.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE MOORS.</h2> + +<h3>FLIGHT THIRD—STILL LIFE.</h3> + + +<p>We have been sufficiently slaughterous for a man of our fine +sensibilities and moderate desires, Hamish; and as, somehow or other, +the scent seems to be beginning not to lie well—yet the air cannot be +said to be close and sultry either—we shall let Brown Bess cool herself +in both barrels—relinquish, for an hour or so, our seat on Shelty, and, +by way of a change, pad the hoof up that smooth ascent, strangely left +stoneless—an avenue positively looking as if it were artificial, as it +stretches away, with its beautiful green undulations, among the blocks; +for though no view-hunter, we are, Hamish, what in fine language is +called a devout worshipper of Nature, an enthusiast in the sublime; and +if Nature do not show us something worth gazing at when we reach yonder +altitudes, she must be a grey deceiver, and we shall never again kneel +at her footstool, or sing a hymn in her praise.</p> + +<p>The truth is, we have a rending headache, for Bess has been for some +hours on the kick, and Surefoot on the jog, and our exertions in the +pulpit were severe—action, Hamish, action, action, being, as +Demosthenes said some two or three thousand years ago, essential to +oratory; and you observed how nimbly we kept changing legs, Hamish, how +strenuously brandishing arms, throughout our discourse—saving the +cunning pauses, thou simpleton, when, by way of relief to our auditors, +we were as gentle as sucking-doves, and folded up our wings as if about +to go to roost, whereas we were but meditating a bolder flight—about to +soar, Hamish, into the empyrean. Over and above all that, we could not +brook Tickler's insolence, who, about the sma' hours, challenged us, you +know, quaich for quaich; and though we gave him a fair back-fall, yet we +suffered in the tulzie, and there is at this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> moment a throbbing in our +temples that threatens a regular brain-fever. We burn for an air-bath on +the mountain-top. Moreover, we are seized with a sudden desire for +solitude—to be plain, we are getting sulky; so ascend, Surefoot, +Hamish, and be off with the pointers—O'Bronte goes with us—north-west, +making a circumbendibus round the <i>Tomhans</i>, where Mhairhe M'Intyre +lived seven years with the fairies; and in a couple of hours or so you +will find us under the Merlin Crag.</p> + +<p>We offer to walk any man of our age in Great Britain. But what <i>is</i> our +age? Confound us if we know within a score or two. Yet we cannot get rid +of the impression that we are under ninety. However, as we seek no +advantage, and give no odds, we challenge the octogenarians of the +United Kingdom—fair toe and heel—a twelve-hour match—for love, fame, +and a legitimate exchequer bill for a thousand. Why, these calves of +ours would look queer, we confess, on the legs of a Leith porter; but +even in our prime they were none of your big vulgar calves, but they +handled like iron—now more like butter. There is still a spring in our +instep; and our knees, sometimes shaky, are to-day knit as Pan's and +neat as Apollo's. Poet we may not be, but Pedestrian we are; with +Wordsworth we could not walk along imaginative heights, but, if not +grievously out of our reckoning; on the turnpike road we could keep pace +with Captain Barclay for a short distance—say from Dundee to Aberdeen.</p> + +<p>Oh! Gemini! but we are in high spirits. Yes—delights there indeed are, +which none but pedestrians know. Much—all depends on the character of +the wanderer; he must have known what it is to commune with his own +thoughts and feelings, and be satisfied with them even as with the +converse of a chosen friend. Not that he must always, in the solitudes +that await him, be in a meditative mood, for ideas and emotions will of +themselves arise, and he will only have to enjoy the pleasures which his +own being spontaneously affords. It would indeed be a hopeless thing, if +we were always to be on the stretch for happiness. Intellect, +Imagination, and Feeling, all work of their own free-will, and not at +the order of any taskmaster. A rill soon becomes a stream—a stream a +river—a river a loch—and a loch a sea. So it is with the current +within the spirit. It carries us along, without either oar or sail, +increasing in depth, breadth, and swiftness, yet all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> the while the easy +work of our own wonderful minds. While we seem only to see or hear, we +are thinking and feeling far beyond the mere notices given by the +senses; and years afterwards we find that we have been laying up +treasures, in our most heedless moments, of imagery, and connecting +together trains of thought that arise in startling beauty, almost +without cause or any traceable origin. The Pedestrian, too, must not +only love his own society, but the society of any other human beings, if +blameless and not impure, among whom his lot may for a short season be +cast. He must rejoice in all the forms and shows of life, however simple +they may be, however humble, however low; and be able to find food for +his thoughts beside the ingle of the loneliest hut, where the inmates +sit with few words, and will rather be spoken to than speak to the +stranger. In such places he will be delighted—perhaps surprised—to +find in uncorrupted strength all the primary elements of human +character. He will find that his knowledge may be wider than theirs, and +better ordered, but that it rests on the same foundation, and +comprehends the same matter. There will be no want of sympathies between +him and them; and what he knows best, and loves most, will seldom fail +to be that also which they listen to with greatest interest, and +respecting which there is the closest communion between the minds of +stranger and host. He may know the courses of the stars according to the +revelation of science—they may have studied them only as simple +shepherds, "whose hearts were gladdened" walking on the mountain-top. +But they know—as he does—who sowed the stars in heaven, and that their +silent courses are all adjusted by the hand of the Most High.</p> + +<p>Oh! blessed, thrice blessed years of youth! would we choose to live over +again all your forgotten and unforgotten nights and days! Blessed, +thrice blessed we call you, although, as we then felt, often darkened +almost into insanity by self-sown sorrows springing out of our restless +soul. No, we would not again face such troubles, not even for the +glorious apparitions that familiarly haunted us in glens and forests, on +mountains and on the great sea. But all, or nearly all, that did once so +grievously disturb, we can lay in the depths of the past, so that +scarcely a ghastly voice is heard,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> a ghastly face beheld; while all +that so charmed of yore, or nearly all, although no longer the daily +companions of our life, still survive to be recalled at solemn hours, +and with a "beauty still more beauteous" to reinvest the earth, which +neither sin nor sorrow can rob of its enchantments. We can still travel +with the solitary mountain-stream from its source to the sea, and see +new visions at every vista of its winding waters. The waterfall flows +not with its own monotonous voice of a day or an hour, but like a choral +anthem pealing with the hymns of many years. In the heart of the blind +mist on the mountain-ranges we can now sit alone, surrounded by a world +of images, over which time holds no power but to consecrate or +solemnise. Solitude we can deepen by a single volition, and by a single +volition let in upon it the stir and noise of the world and life. Why, +therefore, should we complain, or why lament the inevitable loss or +change that time brings with it to all that breathe? Beneath the shadow +of the tree we can yet repose, and tranquillise our spirit by its +rustle, or by the "green light" uncheckered by one stirring leaf. From +sunrise to sunset, we can lie below the old mossy tower, till the +darkness that shuts out the day, hides not the visions that glide round +the ruined battlements. Cheerful as in a city can we traverse the +houseless moor; and although not a ship be on the sea, we can set sail +on the wings of imagination, and when wearied, sink down on savage or +serene isle, and let drop our anchor below the moon and stars.</p> + +<p>And 'tis well we are so spiritual; for the senses are of no use here, +and we must draw for amusement on our internal sources. A day-like night +we have often seen about midsummer, serenest of all among the Hebrides; +but a night-like day, such as this, ne'er before fell on us, and we +might as well be in the Heart o' Mid-Lothian. 'Tis a dungeon, and a dark +one—and we know not for what crime we have been condemned to solitary +confinement. Were it mere mist we should not mind; but the gloom is +palpable, and makes resistance to the hand. We did not think clouds +capable of such condensation—the blackness may be felt like velvet on a +hearse. Would that something would rustle—but no—all is breathlessly +still, and not a wind dares whistle. If there be anything visible or +audible hereabout, then are we stone-blind and stone-deaf. We have a +vision!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p> + +<p>See! a great City in a mist! All is not shrouded—at intervals something +huge is beheld in the sky—what we know not, tower, temple, spire, dome, +or a pile of nameless structures—one after the other fading away, or +sinking and settling down into the gloom that grows deeper and deeper +like a night. The stream of life seems almost hushed in the blind blank, +yet you hear ever and anon, now here, now there, the slow sound of feet +moving to their own dull echoes, and lo! the Sun</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Looks through the horizontal misty air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shorn of his beams,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>like some great ghost. Ay, he <i>looks</i>! does he not? straight on <i>your</i> +face, as if you two were the only beings there—and were held <i>looking</i> +at each other in some strange communion. Surely you must sometimes have +felt that emotion, when the Luminary seemed no longer luminous, but a +dull-red brazen orb, sick unto the death—obscure the Shedder of Light +and the Giver of Life lifeless!</p> + +<p>The Sea has sent a tide-borne wind to the City, and you almost start in +wonder to behold all the heavens clear of clouds (how beautiful was the +clearing!) and bending in a mighty blue bow, that brightly overarches +all the brightened habitations of men! The spires shoot up into the +sky—the domes tranquilly rest there—all the roofs glitter as with +diamonds, all the white walls are lustrous, save where, here and there, +some loftier range of buildings hangs its steadfast shadow o'er square +or street, magnifying the city, by means of separate multitudes of +structures, each town-like in itself, and the whole gathered together by +the outward eye, and the inward imagination, worthy indeed of the name +of Metropolis.</p> + +<p>Let us sit down on this bench below the shadow of the Parthenon. The air +is now so rarified, that you can see not indistinctly the figure of a +man on Arthur's Seat. The Calton, though a city hill, is as green as the +Carter towering over the Border-forest. Not many years ago, no stone +edifice was on his unviolated verdure—he was a true rural Mount, where +the lassies bleached their claes, in a pure atmosphere, aloof from the +city smoke almost as the sides and summit of Arthur's Seat. Flocks of +sheep might have grazed here, had there been enclosures, and many milch +cows. But in their absence a pastoral character was given to the Hill by +its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> green silence, here and there broken by the songs and laughter of +those linen-bleaching lassies, and by the arm-in-arm strolling of lovers +in the morning light or the evening shade. Here married people used to +walk with their children, thinking and feeling themselves to be in the +country; and here elderly gentlemen, like ourselves, with gold-headed +canes or simple crutches, mused and meditated on the ongoings of the +noisy lower world. Such a Hill, so close to a great City, yet +undisturbed by it, and imbued at all times with a feeling of sweeter +peace, because of the immediate neighbourhood of the din and stir of +which its green recess high up in the blue air never partook, seems now, +in the mingled dream of imagination and memory, to have been a +super-urban Paradise! But a city cannot, ought not to be, controlled in +its growth; the natural beauty of this hill has had its day; now it is +broken all round with wide walks, along which you might drive chariots +abreast; broad flights of stone-stairs lead up along the once elastic +brae-turf; and its bosom is laden with towers and temples, monuments and +mausoleums. Along one side, where hanging gardens might have been, +magnificent as those of the old Babylon, stretches the macadamised Royal +Road to London, flanked by one receptacle for the quiet dead, and by +another for the unquiet living—a churchyard and a prison dying away in +a bridewell. But, making amends for such hideous deformities, with front +nobly looking to the cliffs, over a dell of dwellings seen dimly through +the smoke-mist, stands, sacred to the Muses, an Edifice that might have +pleased the eye of Pericles! Alas, immediately below one that would have +turned the brain of Palladio! Modern Athens indeed! Few are the Grecians +among thy architects; those who are not Goths are Picts—and the King +himself of the Painted People designed Nelson's Monument.</p> + +<p>But who can be querulous on such a day? Weigh all its defects, designed +and undesigned, and is not Edinburgh yet a noble city? Arthur's Seat! +how like a lion! The magnificent range of Salisbury Crags, on which a +battery might be built to blow the whole inhabitation to atoms! Our +friend here, the Calton, with his mural crown! Our Castle on his Cliff! +gloriously hung round with national histories along all his battlements! +Do they not embosom him in a style of grandeur worthy, if such it be, of +a "City of Palaces?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> Call all things by their right names, in heaven +and on earth. Palaces they are not—nor are they built of marble; but +they are stately houses, framed of stone from Craig-Leith quarry, almost +as pale as the Parian; and when the sun looks fitfully through the +storm, or as now, serenely through the calm, richer than Parian in the +tempestuous or the peaceful light. Never beheld we the city wearing such +a majestic metropolitan aspect.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ay, proudly fling thy white arms to the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Queen of the unconquer'd North!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>How near the Firth! Gloriously does it supply the want of a river. It is +a river, though seeming, and sweeping into, the sea; but a river that +man may never bridge; and though still now as the sky, we wish you saw +it in its magnificent madness, when brought on the roarings of the +stormful tide</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Coast-cities alone are Queens. All inland are but Tributaries. Earth's +empiry belongs to the Power that sees its shadow in the sea. Two +separate Cities, not twins—but one of ancient and one of modern +birth—how harmoniously, in spite of form and features characteristically +different, do they coalesce into one Capital! This miracle, methinks, is +wrought by the Spirit of Nature on the World of Art. Her great features +subdue almost into similarity a Whole constructed of such various +elements, for it is all felt to be kindred with those guardian cliffs. +Those eternal heights hold the Double City together in an amity that +breathes over both the same national look—the impression of the same +national soul. In the olden time, the city gathered herself almost under +the very wing of the Castle; for in her heroic heart she ever heard, +unalarmed but watchful, the alarums of war, and that cliff, under +heaven, was on earth the rock of her salvation. But now the foundation +of that rock, whence yet the tranquil burgher hears the morning and the +evening bugle, is beautified by gardens that love its pensive shadow, +for it tames the light to flowers by rude feet untrodden, and yielding +garlands for the brows of perpetual peace. Thence elegance and grace +arose; and while antiquity breathes over that wilderness of antique +structures picturesquely huddled along the blue line of sky—as Wilkie +once finely said, like the spine of some enormous ani<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>mal; yet all along +this side of that unrivered and mound-divided dell, now shines a new +world of radiant dwellings, declaring by their regular but not +monotonous magnificence, that the same people, whose "perfervid genius" +preserved them by war unhumbled among the nations in days of darkness, +have now drawn a strength as invincible from the beautiful arts which +have been cultivated by peace in the days of light.</p> + +<p>And is the spirit of the inhabitation there worthy of the place +inhabited? We are a Scotsman. And the great English Moralist has asked, +where may a Scotsman be found who loves not the honour or the glory of +his country better than truth? We are that Scotsman—though for our +country would we die. Yet dearer too than life is to us the honour—if +not the glory of our country; and had we a thousand lives, proudly would +we lay them all down in the dust rather than give—or see given—one +single stain</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>on which as yet no stain appears save those glorious weather-stains, +that have fallen on its folds from the clouds of war and the storms of +battle. Sufficient praise to the spirit of our land, that she knows how +to love, admire, and rival—not in vain—the spirit of high-hearted and +heroic England. Long as we and that other noble Isle</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Set as an emerald in the casing sea,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>in triple union breathe as one,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then come against us the whole world in arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we will meet them!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What is a people without pride? But let them know that its root rests on +noble pillars; and in the whole range of strength and stateliness, what +pillars are there stronger and statelier than those glorious two—Genius +and Liberty? Here valour has fought—here philosophy has meditated—here +poetry has sung. Are not our living yet as brave as our dead? All wisdom +has not perished with the sages to whom we have built or are building +monumental tombs. The muses yet love to breathe the pure mountain-air of +Caledon. And have we not amongst us one myriad-minded man, whose name, +without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> offence to that high-priest of nature, or his devoutest +worshippers, may flow from our lips even when they utter that of +<span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>?</p> + +<p>The Queen of the North has evaporated—and we again have a glimpse of +the Highlands. But where's the Sun? We know not in what airt to look for +him, for who knows but it may now be afternoon? It is almost dark enough +for evening—and if it be not far on in the day, then we shall have +thunder. What saith our repeater? One o'clock. Usually the brightest +hour of all the twelve—but anything but bright at this moment. Can +there be an eclipse going on—an earthquake at his toilette—or merely a +brewing of storm? Let us consult our almanac. No eclipse set down for +to-day—the old earthquake dwells in the neighbourhood of Comrie, and +has never been known to journey thus far north—besides, he has for some +years been bed-ridden; argal, there is about to be a storm. What a fool +of a land-tortoise were we to crawl up to the top of a mountain, when we +might have taken our choice of half-a-dozen glens with cottages in them +every other mile, and a village at the end of each with a comfortable +Change-house! And up which of its sides, pray, was it that we crawled? +Not this one—for it is as steep as a church—and we never in our life +peeped over the brink of an uglier abyss. Ay, Mister Merlin, 'tis wise +of you to be flying home into your crevice—put your head below your +wing, and do cease that cry.—Croak! croak! croak! Where is the sooty +sinner? We hear he is on the wing—but he either sees or smells us, +probably both, and the horrid gurgle in his throat is choked by some +cloud. Surely that was the sughing of wings! A Bird! alighting within +fifty yards of us—and, from his mode of folding his wings—an Eagle! +This is too much—within fifty yards of an Eagle on his own +mountain-top. Is he blind? Age darkens even an Eagle's eyes—but he is +not old, for his plumage is perfect—and we see the glare of his +far-keekers as he turns his head over his shoulder and regards his eyrie +on the cliff. We would not shoot him for a thousand a-year for life. Not +old—how do we know that? Because he is a creature who is young at a +hundred—so says Audubon—Swainson—our brother James—and all +shepherds. Little suspects he who is lying so near him with his Crutch. +Our snuffy suit is of a colour with the storm-stained granite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>—and if he +walk this way he will get a buffet. And he <i>is</i> walking this way—his +head up, and his tail down,—not hopping like a filthy raven—but one +foot before the other—like a man—like a King. We do not altogether +like it—it is rather alarming—he may not be an Eagle after all—but +something worse—"Hurra! ye Sky-scraper! Christopher is upon you! take +that, and that, and that"—all one tumbling scream, there he goes, +Crutch and all, over the edge of the Cliff. Dashed to death—but +impossible for us to get the body. Whew! dashed to death indeed! There +he wheels, all on fire, round the thunder gloom. Is it electric matter +in the atmosphere—or fear and wrath that illumine his wings?</p> + +<p>We wish we were safe down. There is no wind here yet—none to speak of; +but there is wind enough, to all appearance, in the region towards the +west. The main body of the clouds is falling back on the reserve—and +observing that movement the right wing deploys; as for the left, it is +broken, and its retreat will soon be a flight. Fear is contagious—the +whole army has fallen into irremediable disorder—has abandoned its +commanding position—and in an hour will be self-driven into the sea. We +call that a Panic.</p> + +<p>Glory be to the corps that covers the retreat. We see now the cause of +that retrograde movement. In the north-west, "far off its coming shone," +and "in numbers without number numberless," lo! the adverse Host! Thrown +out in front, the beautiful rifle brigade comes fleetly on, extending in +open order along the vast plain between the aerial Pine-mountains to yon +Fire-cliffs. The enemy marches in masses—the space between the +divisions now widening and now narrowing—and as sure as we are alive we +hear the sound of trumpets. The routed army has rallied and +reappears—and, hark, on the extreme left a cannonade. Never before had +the Unholy Alliance a finer park of artillery—and now its fire opens +from the great battery in the centre, and the hurly-burly is general far +and wide over the whole field of battle.</p> + +<p>But these lead drops dancing on our bonnet tell us to take up our crutch +and be off—for there it is sticking—by-and-by the waters will be in +flood, and we may have to pass a night on the mountain. Down we go.</p> + +<p>We do not call this the same side of the mountain we crawled up? There, +all was purple except what was green<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>—and we were happy to be a +heather-legged body, occasionally skipping like a grasshopper on turf. +Here, all rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ptarmigans. We hate +shingle from the bottom of our —— oh dear! oh dear! but <i>this</i> is +painful—sliddering on shingle away down what is anything but an +inclined plane—feet foremost—accompanied with rattling debris—at +railroad speed—every twenty yards or so dislodging a stone as big as +oneself, who instantly joins the procession, and there they go hopping +and jumping along with us, some before, some at each side, and, we +shudder to think of it, some behind—well somersetted over our head, +thou Grey Wackè—but mercy on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this +lasts, in another minute we are all at the bottom of that pond of pitch. +Take care of yourself, O'Bronte!</p> + +<p>Here we are—sitting! How we were brought to assume this rather uneasy +posture we do not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to the fact. +Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape appears to have been little less than +miraculous, and must have been mainly owing, under Providence, to the +Crutch. Who's laughing? 'Tis you, you old Witch, in hood and cloak, +crouching on the cliff as if you were warming your hands at the fire. +Hold your tongue—and you may sit there to all eternity if you +choose—you cloud-ridden hag! No—there will be a blow-up some day—as +there evidently has been here before now; but no more Geology—from the +tarn, who is a 'tarnation deep 'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our +guide down to the Low Country.</p> + +<p>Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green +serenity—not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable +to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell—"the air is balm." No +sultriness—how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had +wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury—Cherub we never were +nor Cauliflower—by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we +have made one day a whole week—with, at the end, a Sabbath. For all +over the really moun<i>taineous</i> region of the Highlands, every glen has +its own indescribable kind of day—all vaguely comprehended under the +One Day that may happen to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists, +meeting in the evening after a long absence—having, perhaps, parted +that morning—on comparing notes lose their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> temper, and have been even +known to proceed to extremities in defence of facts well established of +a most contradictory and irreconcilable nature.</p> + +<p>Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In the glen beyond that range he +would have used the minnow—and in the huge hollow behind our friends to +the South-east, he might just as well try the bare hook—though it is +not universally true that trouts don't rise when there is thunder. Let +us see how he throws. What a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, you +there; friend, what sport? What sport we say? No answer; are you deaf? +Dumb? He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try what a whack on +the back may elicit. Down he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of +most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a goat, is off like a shot. +Alas! we have frightened the wretch out of his few poor wits, and he may +kill himself among the rocks. He is indeed an idiot—an innocent. We +remember seeing him near this very spot forty years ago—and he was not +young then—they often live to extreme old age. No wonder he was +terrified—for we are duly sensible of the <i>outre tout ensemble</i> we must +have suddenly exhibited in the glimmer that visits those weak red +eyes—he is an albino. That whack was rash, to say the least of it—our +Crutch was too much for him; but we hear him whining—and moaning—and, +good God! there he is on his knees with hands clasped in +supplication—"Dinna kill me—dinna kill me—'am silly—'am silly—and +folk say 'am auld—auld—auld." The harmless creature is convinced we +are not going to kill him—takes from our hand what he calls his +fishing-rod and tackle—and laughs like an owl. "Ony meat—ony meat—ony +meat?" "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this wallet, and you and we +shall have our dinner." "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a can say +the Lord's Prayer." "What's your name, my man?" "Daft Dooggy the +Haveril." "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this—a drop of water on +the brain will do it—so wise physicians say, and we believe it. For all +that, the brain is not the soul. He takes the food with a kind of +howl—and carries it away to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by +mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a +saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!"</p> + +<p>This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> so +congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is +familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days—as if that cottage +were our dwelling-place—and we had retired hither to await the close. +Were we never here before—in the olden and golden time? Those dips in +the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a +morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost +as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which +we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness +often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among +the past times in the dormitory—call it not the burial-place—overshadowed +by sweet or solemn imagery—in the inland regions; nor can we question +the recollections as they rise—being ghosts, they are silent—their +coming and their going alike a mystery—but sometimes—as now—they are +happy hauntings—and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning +youth.</p> + +<p>'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands—yet we know not that +a painter would see in it the subject of a picture—for the sprinklings +of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no +reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the +remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent +with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green +wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools +there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but +each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that +above its homehills there are mountains—and these are cliffs on which +the eagle might not disdain to build—but the range wheels away in its +grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits +swimming in the distant clouds.</p> + +<p>God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what +Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most +lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a +look at thy happiness—for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and +think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee +and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may +lay our hands on it and bless it—and promise, as thou art growing up +here, sometimes to think of the voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> that spake to thee by the +Birk-tree well. Love, fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches—and +whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven.</p> + +<p>Do not be afraid of him, sweet one! O'Bronte would submit to be flayed +alive rather than bite a child: see, he offers you a paw—take it +without trembling; nay, he will let thee ride on his back, my pretty +dear—won't thou, O'Bronte?—and scamper with thee up and down the +knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing to bear the Fairy Queen. +Thou tellest us thy father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are +dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as plaintive. Smile—laugh— +sing—as thou wert doing a minute ago—as thou hast done for many a +morning—and shalt do for many a morning more on thy way to the well—in +the woods—on the braes—in the house,—often all by thyself when the +old people are out of doors not far off—or when sometimes they have for +a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words—and no +evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne,—and +nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth will ever be able to +hurt a hair on thy head.</p> + +<p>My stars! what a lovely little animal! A tame fawn, by all that is +wild—kneeling down—to drink—no—no—at his lady's feet. The collie +catched it—thou sayest—on the edge of the Auld wood—and by the time +its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon +learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of +this—and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human +dwellings. What! it dances like a kid—does it—and sometimes you put a +garland of wildflowers round its neck—and pursue it like a huntress, as +it pretends to be making its escape into the forest?</p> + +<p>Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts +with a spring—so—and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign, +and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush—that was a graceful curtsy. Keep +the crooked sixpence for good-luck, and you never will want. With the +yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what +else you like; and now—you two, lead the way—try a race to the +door—and old Christopher North will carry the pitcher—balancing it on +his head—thus—ha! O'Bronte galloping along as umpire. The Fawn has it, +and by a neck has beat Camilla.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p> + +<p>We shall lunch ere we go—and lunch well too—for this is a poor man's, +not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer—"give us this +day our daily bread." Sweeter—richer bannocks of barley-meal never met +the mouth of mortal man—nor more delicious butter. "We salt it, sir, +for a friend in Glasgow—but now and then we tak a bite of the fresh—do +oblige us a', sir, by eatin, and you'll maybe find the mutton-ham no +that bad, though I've kent it fatter—and, as you hae a lang walk afore +you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggeest a glass o' +speerit in your milk. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his +life—but we keep it for a cordial—and that bottle—to be sure it's a +gey big ane—and would thole replenishing—has lasted us sin' +Whitsuntide."</p> + +<p>So presseth us to take care of number one the gudewife, while the +gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith +nothing, and the bonny wee bit lassie sits on her stool at the wunnock +wi' her coggie ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or +nothing, out of bashfulness in presence of Christopher North, who she +believes is a good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great man. Our +third bannock has had the gooseberry jam laid on it thick by "the +gudewife's ain hand,"—and we suspect at that last wide bite we have +smeared the corners of our mouth—but it will only be making matters +worse to attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! thou hast a +cunning look—purring on our knees—and though those glass een o' thine +are blinking at the cream on the saucer—with which thou jalousest we +intend to let thee wet thy whiskers,—we fear thou mak'st no bones of +the poor birdies in the brake, and that many an unlucky leveret has lost +its wits at the spring of such a tiger. Cats are queer creatures, and +have an instinctive liking to Warlocks.</p> + +<p>And these two old people have survived all their children—sons and +daughters! They have told us the story of their life—and as calmly as +if they had been telling of the trials of some other pair. Perhaps, in +our sympathy, though we say but little, they feel a strength that is not +always theirs—perhaps it is a relief from silent sorrow to speak to one +who is a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, a brother in +affliction—but prayer like thanksgiving assures us that there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> is in +this hut a Christian composure, far beyond the need of our pity, and +sent from a region above the stars.</p> + +<p>There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidiness, it is pleasant to know, has +for a good many years past been establishing itself in Scotland among +the minor domestic virtues. Once established it will never decay; for it +must be felt to brighten, more than could be imagined by our fathers, +the whole aspect of life. No need for any other household fairy to sweep +this floor. An orderly creature we have seen she is, from all her +movements out and in doors—though the guest of but an hour. They have +told us that they had known what are called better days—and were once +in a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in +the country; and their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of its +serene and simple spirit—at once Lowland and Highland—to us a pleasant +union, not without a certain charm of grace.</p> + +<p>What loose leaves are those lying on the Bible? A few odd numbers of the +<span class="smcap">Scottish Christian Herald</span>. We shall take care, our friends, that all the +Numbers, bound in three large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, be +lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite to you, our worthy friends, a +small sacred Poem, which we have by heart. Christian, keep your eye on +the page, and if we go wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you say +many psalms and hymns? But we need not ask—for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Piety is sweet to infant minds;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>what they love they remember—for how easy—how happy—to get dear +things by heart! Happiest of all—the things held holy on earth as in +heaven—because appertaining here to Eternal Life.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">by the rev. duncan grant, a.m., minister of forres.<br /></span></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May our <span class="smcap">Herald's</span> feet appear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May his voice be to our ear.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let the tenants of our rocks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shepherds watching o'er their flocks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Village swain and peasant boy,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thee salute with songs of joy!<br /></span></div></div> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> +</div> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Christian Herald</span>! spread the story<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of Redemption's wondrous plan;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Tis His highest gift to man;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Angels on their harps of gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love its glories to unfold;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heralds who its influence wield,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Make the waste a fruitful field.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To the fount of mercy soaring,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the wings of faith and love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the depths of grace exploring,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the light shed from above;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Show us whence life's waters flow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And where trees of blessing grow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Breathing Eden's rich perfume.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Love to God and man expressing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In thy course of mercy speed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lead to springs of joy and blessing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And with heavenly manna feed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Scotland's children high and low,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till the Lord they truly know:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As to us our fathers told,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He was known by them of old.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To the young, in season vernal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Jesus in His grace disclose;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the tree of life eternal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Neath whose shade they may repose,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shielded from the noontide ray,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And from ev'ning's tribes of prey;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And refresh'd with fruits of love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And with music from above.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Christian Herald</span>! may the blessing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of the Highest thee attend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, this chiefest boon possessing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou may'st prove thy country's friend<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Tend to make our land assume<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Something of its former bloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When the dews of heaven were seen<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sparkling on its pastures green,<br /></span></div></div> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> +</div> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the voice of warm devotion<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the throne of God arose—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mighty as the sound of ocean,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Calm as nature in repose;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sweeter, than when Araby<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rising 'bove the shining sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To Jehovah's list'ning ear."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is time we were going—but we wish to hear how thy voice sounds, +Christian, when it reads. So read these same verses, first "into +yourself," and then to us. They speak of mercies above your +comprehension, and ours, and all men's; for they speak of the infinite +goodness and mercy of God—but though thou hast committed in thy short +life no sins, or but small, towards thy fellow-creatures—how couldst +thou? yet thou knowest we are all sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest +on whose merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Thank you, +Christian. Three minutes from two by your house-clock—she gives a clear +warning—and three minutes from two by our watch—rather curious this +coincidence to such a nicety—we must take up our Crutch and go. Thank +thee, bonny wee Christian—in wi' the bannocks intil our pouch—but we +fear you must take us for a sad glutton.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Zickety, dickety, dock,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mouse ran up the nock;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The nock struck one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down the mouse ran,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Zickety, dickety, dock."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Come closer, Christian—and let us put it to thine ear. What a pretty +face of wonder at the chime! Good people, you have work to do in the +hay-field—let us part—God bless you—Good-by—farewell!</p> + +<p>Half an hour since we parted—we cannot help being a little sad—and +fear we were not so kind to the old people—not so considerate as we +ought to have been—and perhaps, though pleased with us just now, they +may say to one another before evening that we were too merry for our +years. Nonsense. We were all merry together—daft Uncle among the +lave—for the creature came stealing in and sat down on his own stool in +the corner; and what's the use of wearing a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> long face at all times like +a Methodist minister? A Methodist minister! Why, John Wesley was facete, +and Whitfield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty—though he, we believe, +was not a Methody; yet were their hearts fountains of tears—and ours is +not a rock—if it be, 'tis the rock of Horeb.</p> + +<p>Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the Merlin Crag. What sport? Why, five +brace is not so much amiss—and they are thumpers. Fifteen brace in all. +Ducks and flappers. Seven leash. We are getting on.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">"But what are these,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So wither'd and so wild in their attire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That man may question? You seem to understand me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By each at once her choppy finger laying<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet your beards forbid me to interpret<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That you are so!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Shakespeare is not familiar, we find, among the natives of Loch-Etive +side—else these figures would reply,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glammis!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But not satisfied with laying their choppy fingers on their skinny lips, +they now put them to their plooky noses, having first each dipped fore +and thumb in his mull, and gibber Gaelic, to us unintelligible as the +quacking of ducks, when a Christian auditor has been prevented from +catching its meaning by the gobbling of turkeys.</p> + +<p>Witches at the least, and about to prophesy to us some pleasant events, +that are to terminate disastrously in after years. Is there no nook of +earth perfectly solitary—but must natural or supernatural footsteps +haunt the remotest and most central places? But now we shall have our +fortunes told in choice Erse, for sure these are the Children of the +Mist, and perhaps they will favour us with a running commentary on +Ossian. Stout, grim, heather-legged bodies they are, one and all, and +luckily we are provided with snuff and tobacco sufficient for the whole +crew. Were they even ghosts they will not refuse a sneeshin, and a +Highland spirit will look picturesque puffing a cigar!—Hark! we know +them and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> their vocation. These are the Genii of the Mountain-dew; and +their hidden enginery, depend on't, is not far off, but buried in the +bowels of some brae. See!—a faint mist dissipating itself over the +heather! There—at work, shaming the idle waste, and in use and wont to +break even the Sabbath-day, is a <span class="smcap">Still</span>!</p> + +<p>Do we look like Excisemen? The Crutch has indeed a suspicious family +resemblance to a gauging-rod; and literary characters, like us, may well +be mistaken for the Supervisor himself. But the smuggler's eye knows his +enemy at a glance, as the fox knows a hound; and the whispering group +discern at once that we are of a nobler breed. That one fear dispelled, +Highland hospitality bids us welcome, even into the mouth of the +malt-kiln, and, with a smack on our loof, the Chief volunteers to +initiate us into the grand mysteries of the Worm.</p> + +<p>The turf-door is flung outward on its lithe hinges, and already what a +gracious smell! In we go, ushered by unbonneted Celts, gentlemen in +manners wherever the kilt is worn; for the tartan is the symbol of +courtesy, and Mac a good password all the world over between man and +man. Lowland eyes are apt to water in the peat-reek, but ere long we +shall have another "drappie in our ee," and drink to the Clans in the +"uuchristened cretur." What a sad neglect in our education, among all +the acquired lingoes extant, to have overlooked the Gaelic! Yet nobody +who has ever heard P. R. preach an Erse Sermon, need despair of +discoursing in that tongue after an hour's practice; so let us forget, +if possible, every word of English, and the language now needed will +rise up in its place.</p> + +<p>And these figures in men's coats and women's petticoats are females? We +are willing to believe it in spite of their beards. One of them +absolutely suckling a child! Thank you, my dear sir, but we cannot +swallow the contents of that quaich. Yet, let us try.—A little too +warm, and rather harsh; but meat and drink to a man of age. That seems +to be goat-milk cheese, and the scones are barley; and they and the +speerit will wash one another down in an amicable plea, nor quarrel at +close quarters. Honey too—heather-honey of this blessed year's produce. +Hecate's forefinger mixes it in a quaich with mountain-dew—and that is +Atholl-brose?</p> + +<p>There cannot be the least doubt in the world that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> Hamiltonian +system of teaching languages is one of the best ever invented. It will +enable any pupil of common-run powers of attention to read any part of +the New Testament in Greek in some twenty lessons of an hour each. But +what is that to the principle of the Worm? Half a blessed hour has not +elapsed since we entered into the door of this hill-house, and we offer +twenty to one that we read Ossian <i>ad aperturam libri</i>, in the original +Gaelic. We feel as if we could translate the works of Jeremy Bentham +into that tongue—ay, even Francis Maximus Macnab's Theory of the +Universe. We guarantee ourselves to do both, this identical night before +we go to sleep, and if the printers are busy during the intermediate +hours, to correct the press in the morning. Why, there are not above +five thousand roots—but we are getting a little gizzy—into a state of +civilation in the wilderness—and, gentlemen, let us drink—in solemn +silence—the "Memory of Fingal."</p> + +<p>O St Cecilia! we did not lay our account with a bagpipe! What is the +competition of pipers in the Edinburgh Theatre, small as it is, to this +damnable drone in an earth-cell, eight feet by six! Yet while the drums +of our ears are continuing to split like old parchment title-deeds to +lands nowhere existing, and all our animal economy, from finger to toe, +is one agonising dirl, Æolus himself sits as proud as Lucifer in +Pandemonium; and as the old soldiers keep tending the Worm in the reek +as if all were silence, the male-looking females, and especially the +he-she with the imp at her breast, nod, and smirk, and smile, and snap +their fingers, in a challenge to a straspey—and, by all that is +horrible, a red hairy arm is round our neck, and we are half choked with +the fumes of whisky-kisses. An hour ago we were dreaming of Malvina! and +here she is with a vengeance, while we in the character of Oscar are +embraced till almost all the Lowland breath in our body expires.</p> + +<p>And this is <span class="smcap">still-life</span>.</p> + +<p>Extraordinary it is, that, go where we will, we are in a wonderfully +short time discovered to be Christopher North. A few years ago, the +instant we found our feet in a mine in Cornwall, after a descent of +about one-third the bored earth's diameter, we were saluted by name by a +grim Monops who had not seen the upper regions for years, preferring the +in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>terior of the planet; and forthwith "Christopher North," "Christopher +North," reverberated along the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking +in all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a glimpse of the famous +Editor. On another occasion, we remember, when coasting the south of +Ireland in our schooner, falling in with a boat like a cockle-shell, +well out of the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked Paddies that +were ensnaring the finny race, two smoked us at the helm, and bawled up, +"Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a balloon, and by any accident +descend in the interior of Africa, we have not the slightest doubt that +Sultan Belloo would know us in a jiffy, having heard our person so +frequently described by Major Denham and Captain Clapperton. So we are +known, it seems, in the Still—by the men of the Worm? Yes—the +principal proprietor in the concern is a schoolmaster over about +Loch-Earn-Head—a man of no mean literary abilities, and an occasional +contributor to the Magazine. He visits The Shop in breeches—but now +mounts the kilt—and astonishes us by the versatility of his talents. In +one of the most active working bees we recognise a cadie, formerly in +Auld Reekie ycleped "The Despatch," now retired to the Braes of +Balquhidder, and breathing strongly the spirit of his youth. With that +heather-houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of Day, we were, for +the quarter of a century that we held a large grazing farm, in the +annual practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; and—wonderful, +indeed, to think how old friends meet—we were present at the amputation +of the right leg of that timber-toed hero with the bushy whiskers—in +the Hospital of Rosetta—having accompanied Sir David Baird's splendid +Indian army into Egypt.</p> + +<p>Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing +the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the +true influence of <span class="smcap">The Still</span>? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of +idleness is that which consists in being up night and day—traversing +moors and mountains in all weathers—constantly contriving the most +skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some +disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert—when all is +lost except honour—hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!) +wickedly wasted among the heather-roots, and the whole beautiful +Apparatus lying bat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>tered and spiritless in the sun beneath the accursed +blows of the Pagans—returns, after a few weeks set apart to natural +grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to the self-same work, even +within view of the former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the first +amalgamated hotness that deserves the name of speerit, devotes the whole +Board of Excise to the Infernal Gods?</p> + +<p>The argument of idleness has not a leg to stand on, and falls at once to +the ground.—But the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that there is a +certain degree of dishonesty in cheating the Excise; and we shall allow +yourself to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the sma' still as +any moral writer on Honesty with whom we have the pleasure occasionally +to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows either grow or purchase +their own malt. They do not steal it; and many is the silent benediction +that we have breathed over a bit patch of barley, far up on its stony +soil among the hills, bethinking us that it would yield up its precious +spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge for it any very extravagant +price—for what is twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a-gallon for such +drink divine as is now steaming before us in that celestial caldron?</p> + +<p>Having thus got rid of the charge of idleness and dishonesty, nothing +more needs to be said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and we come +now, in the second place, to consider it in a Social Light. The biggest +bigot will not dare to deny, that without whisky the Highlands of +Scotland would be uninhabitable. And if all the population were gone, or +extinct, where then would be your social life? Smugglers are seldom +drunkards; neither are they men of boisterous manners or savage +dispositions. In general, they are grave, sedate, peaceable characters, +not unlike elders of the Kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on rare +occasions when human patience is exhausted, to be merciful. Four +pleasanter men do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, than the +friends with whom we are now on the hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet—a +profound and beautiful reflection—and no doubt originally made by some +peripatetic philosopher at a Still. The very soul of the strong drink +evaporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. An evil day would it +indeed be for Scotland, that should witness the extinguishment of all +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> free and unlicensed mountain stills! The charm of Highland +hospitality would be wan and withered, and the <i>doch-an-dorras</i>, instead +of a blessing, would sound like a ban.</p> + +<p>We have said that smugglers are never drunkards, not forgetting that +general rules are proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and declare +that the Highlanders are the soberest people in Europe. Whisky is to +them a cordial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the umbrella and +wraprascal! were you ever in the Highlands? We shall produce a single +day from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that will out-argue you +on the present subject, in half an hour. What sound is that? The rushing +of rain from heaven, and the sudden outcry of a thousand waterfalls. +Look through a chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for the mists, +the heath-covered desert is steaming like the smoke of a smouldering +fire. Winds biting as winter come sweeping on their invisible chariots +armed with scythes, down every glen, and scatter far and wide over the +mountains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you have a taste of the +summer cold, more dangerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes +"aitches" into the unprepared bones, and congeals the blood of the +shelterless shepherd on the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit +down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and bold as a rainbow he faces +the reappearing sun, and feels assured (though there he may be mistaken) +of dying at a good old age.</p> + +<p>Then think, oh think, how miserably poor are most of those men who have +fought our battles, and so often reddened their bayonets in defence of +our liberties and our laws! Would you grudge them a little whisky? And +depend upon it, a little is the most, taking one day of the year with +another, that they imbibe. You figure to yourself two hundred thousand +Highlanders, taking snuff, and chewing tobacco, and drinking whisky, all +year long. Why, one pound of snuff, two of tobacco, and two gallons of +whisky, would be beyond the mark of the yearly allowance of every +grown-up man! Thousands never taste such luxuries at all—meal and +water, potatoes and salt, their only food. The animal food, sir, and the +fermented liquors of various kinds, Foreign and British, which to our +certain knowledge you have swallowed within the last twelve months, +would have sufficed for fifty families in our abstemious region of mist +and snow. We have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> known you drink a bottle of champagne, a bottle of +port, and two bottles of claret, frequently at a sitting, equal, in +prime cost, to three gallons of the best Glenlivet! And <span class="smcap">You</span> (who, by the +way, are an English clergyman, a circumstance we had entirely forgotten, +and have published a Discourse against Drunkenness, dedicated to a +Bishop) pour forth the Lamentations of Jeremiah over the sinful +multitude of Small Stills! Hypocrisy! hypocrisy! where shalt thou hide +thy many-coloured sides?</p> + +<p>Whisky is found by experience to be, on the whole, a blessing in so +misty and mountainous a country. It destroys disease and banishes death; +without some such stimulant the people would die of cold. You will see a +fine old Gael, of ninety or a hundred, turn up his little finger to a +caulker with an air of patriarchal solemnity altogether scriptural; his +great-grandchildren eyeing him with the most respectful affection, and +the youngest of them toddling across the floor, to take the quaich from +his huge, withered, and hairy hand, which he lays on the amiable +Joseph's sleek craniology, with a blessing heartier through the +Glenlivet, and with all the earnestness of religion. There is no +disgrace in getting drunk—in the Highlands—not even if you are of the +above standing—for where the people are so poor, such a state is but of +rare occurrence; while it is felt all over the land of sleet and snow, +that a 'drap o' the cretur' is a very necessary of life, and that but +for its 'dew' the mountains would be uninhabitable. At fairs, and +funerals, and marriages, and suchlike merry meetings, sobriety is sent +to look after the sheep; but, except on charitable occasions of that +kind, sobriety stays at home among the peat-reek, and is contented with +crowdy. Who that ever stooped his head beneath a Highland hut would +grudge a few gallons of Glenlivet to its poor but unrepining inmates? +The seldomer they get drunk the better—and it is but seldom they do so; +but let the rich man—the monied moralist, who bewails and begrudges the +Gael a modicum of the liquor of life, remember the doom of a certain +Dives, who, in a certain place that shall now be nameless, cried, but +cried in vain, for a drop of water. Lord bless the Highlanders, say we, +for the most harmless, hospitable, peaceable, brave people that ever +despised breeches, blew pibrochs, took invincible standards, and +believed in the authenticity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> Ossian's poems. In that pure and lofty +region ignorance is not, as elsewhere, the mother of vice—penury cannot +repress the noble rage of the mountaineer as "he sings aloud old songs +that are the music of the heart;" while superstition herself has an +elevating influence, and will be suffered, even by religion, to show her +shadowy shape and mutter her wild voice through the gloom that lies on +the heads of the remote glens, and among the thousand caves of echo in +her iron-bound coasts, dashed on for ever—night and day—summer and +winter—by those sleepless seas, who have no sooner laid their heads on +the pillow than up they start with a howl that cleaves the Orcades, and +away off in search of shipwrecks round the corner of Cape Wrath.</p> + +<p>In the third place, what shall we say of the poetical influence of +<span class="smcap">Stills</span>? What more poetical life can there be than that of the men with +whom we are now quaffing the barley-bree? They live with the moon and +stars. All the night winds are their familiars. If there be such things +as ghosts, and fairies, and apparitions—and that there are, no man who +has travelled much by himself after sunset will deny, except from the +mere love of contradiction—they see them; or when invisible, which they +generally are, hear them—here—there—everywhere—in sky, forest, cave, +or hollow-sounding world immediately beneath their feet. Many poets walk +these wilds; nor do their songs perish. They publish not with Blackwood +or with Murray—but for centuries on centuries, such songs are the +preservers, often the sources, of the oral traditions that go glimmering +and gathering down the stream of years. Native are they to the mountains +as the blooming heather, nor shall they ever cease to invest them with +the light of poetry—in defiance of large farms, Methodist preachers, +and the Caledonian Canal.</p> + +<p>People are proud of talking of solitude. It redounds, they opine, to the +honour of their great-mindedness to be thought capable of living, for an +hour or two, by themselves, at a considerable distance from knots or +skeins of their fellow-creatures. Byron, again, thought he showed his +superiority by swearing as solemnly as a man can do in the Spenserian +stanza that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To sit alone, and muse o'er flood and fell,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>has nothing whatever to do with solitude—and that, if you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> wish to know +and feel what solitude really is, you must go to Almack's.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This is to be alone,—this, this is solitude."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His Lordship's opinions were often peculiar—but the passage has been +much admired; therefore we are willing to believe that the Great Desert +is, in point of loneliness, unable to stand a philosophical, much less a +poetical comparison, with a well-frequented Fancy-ball. But is the +statement not borne out by facts? Zoology is on its side—more +especially two of its most interesting branches, Entomology and +Ornithology.</p> + +<p>Go to a desert and clap your back against a cliff. Do you think yourself +alone? What a ninny! Your great clumsy splay feet are bruising to death +a batch of beetles. See that spider whom you have widowed, running up +and down your elegant leg, in distraction and despair, bewailing the +loss of a husband who, however savage to the ephemerals, had always +smiled sweetly upon her. Meanwhile your shoulders have crushed a colony +of small red ants settled in a moss city beautifully roofed with +lichens—and that accounts for the sharp tickling behind your ear, which +you keep scratching, no Solomon, in ignorance of the cause of that +effect. Should you sit down—we must beg to draw a veil over your +hurdies, which at the moment extinguish a fearful amount of animal +life—creation may be said to groan under them; and, insect as you are +yourself, you are defrauding millions of insects of their little day. +All the while you are supposing yourself alone! Now, are you not, as we +hinted, a prodigious ninny? But the whole wilderness—as you choose to +call it—is crawling with various life. London with its million and a +half of inhabitants—including of course the suburbs—is, compared with +it, an empty joke. Die—and you will soon be picked to the bones. The +air swarms with sharpers—and an insurrection of radicals will attack +your corpse from the worm-holes of the earth. Corbies, ravens, hawks, +eagles, all the feathered furies of beak and bill, will come flying ere +sunset to anticipate the maggots, and carry your remains—if you will +allow us to call them so—over the whole of Argyllshire in many living +sepulchres. We confess ourselves unable to see the solitude of this—and +begin to agree with Byron, that a man is less crowded at a masquerade.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> + +<p>But the same subject may be illustrated less tragically, and even with +some slight comic effect. A man among mountains is often surrounded on +all sides with mice and moles. What cosy nests do the former construct +at the roots of heather, among tufts of grass in the rushes, and the +moss on the greensward! As for the latter, though you think you know a +mountain from a molehill, you are much mistaken; for what is a mountain, +in many cases, but a collection of molehills—and of fairy +knolls?—which again introduce a new element into the composition, and +show, in still more glaring colours, your absurdity in supposing +yourself to be in solitude. The "Silent People" are around you at every +step. You may not see them—for they are dressed in invisible green; but +they see you, and that unaccountable whispering and buzzing sound one +often hears in what we call the wilderness, what is it, or what can it +be, but the fairies making merry at your expense, pointing out to each +other the extreme silliness of your meditative countenance, and laughing +like to split at your fond conceit of being alone among a multitude of +creatures far wiser than yourself.</p> + +<p>But should all this fail to convince you that you are never less alone +than when you think yourself alone, and that a man never knows what it +is to be in the very heart of life till he leaves London, and takes a +walk in Glen-Etive—suppose yourself to have been leaning with your back +against that knoll, dreaming of the far-off race of men, when all at +once the support gives way inwards, and you tumble head over heels in +among a snug coterie of kilted Celts, in the very act of creating +Glenlivet in a great warlock's caldron, seething to the top with the +Spirit of Life!</p> + +<p>Such fancies as these, among many others, were with us in the Still. But +a glimmering and a humming and a dizzy bewilderment hangs over that time +and place, finally dying away into oblivion. Here are we sitting in a +glade of a birch-wood in what must be Gleno—some miles from the Still. +Hamish asleep, as usual, whenever he lies down, and all the dogs +yowffing in dreams, and Surefoot standing with his long beard above +ours, almost the same in longitude. We have been more, we suspect, than +half-seas over, and are now lying on the shore of sobriety, almost a +wreck. The truth is, that the new spirit is even more dangerous than the +new light.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> Both at first dazzle, then obfuscate, and lastly darken into +temporary death. There is, we fear, but one word of one syllable in the +English language that could fully express our late condition. Let our +readers solve the enigma. Oh! those quaichs! By</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">"What drugs, what spells,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What conjurations, and what mighty magic"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>was Christopher overthrown! A strange confusion of sexes, as of men in +petticoats and women in breeches—gowns transmogrified into +jackets—caps into bonnets—and thick naked hairy legs into slim ankles +decent in hose—all somewhere whirling and dancing by, dim and obscure, +to the sound of something groaning and yelling, sometimes +inarticulately, as if it came from something instrumental, and then +mixed up with a wild gibberish, as if shrieking, somehow or other, from +living lips, human and brute—for a dream of yowling dogs is over +all—utterly confounds us as we strive to muster in recollection the few +last hours that have passed tumultuously through our brain—and then a +wide black moor, sometimes covered with day, sometimes with night, +stretches around us, hemmed in on all sides by the tops of mountains +seeming to reel in the sky. Frequent flashes of fire, and a whirring as +of the wings of birds—but sound and sight alike uncertain—break again +upon our dream. Let us not mince the matter—we can afford the +confession—we have been overtaken by liquor—sadly intoxicated—out +with it at once! Frown not, fairest of all sweet—for we lay our +calamity, not to the charge of the Glenlivet circling in countless +quaichs, but at the door of that inveterate enemy to sobriety—the Fresh +Air.</p> + +<p>But now we are as sober as a judge. Pity our misfortune—rather than +forgive our sin. We entered that Still in a State of innocence before +the Fall. Where we fell, we know not—in divers ways and sundry +places—between that magic cell on the breast of Benachochie, and this +glade in Gleno. But</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There are worse things in life than a fall among heather."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Surefoot, we suppose, kept himself tolerably sober—and O'Bronte, at +each successive cloit, must have assisted us to remount—for Hamish, +from his style of sleeping, must have been as bad as his master; and, +after all, it is wonderful to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> think how we got here—over hags and +mosses, and marshes, and quagmires, like those in which "armies whole +have sunk." But the truth is, that never in the whole course of our +lives—and that course has been a strange one—did we ever so often as +once lose our way. Set us down blindfolded on Zahara, and we will beat +the caravan to Timbuctoo. Something or other mysteriously indicative of +the right direction touches the soles of our feet in the shape of the +ground they tread; and even when our souls have gone soaring far away, +or have sunk within us, still have our feet pursued the shortest and the +safest path that leads to the bourne of our pilgrimage. Is not that +strange? But not stranger surely than the flight of the bee, on his +first voyage over the coves of the wilderness to the far-off +heather-bells—or of the dove that is sent by some Jew stock-jobber, to +communicate to Dutchmen the rise or fall of the funds, from London to +Hamburg, from the clear shores of silver Thames to the muddy shallows of +the Zuyder Zee.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE MOORS.</h2> + +<h3>FLIGHT FOURTH—DOWN RIVER AND UP LOCH.</h3> + + +<p>Let us inspect the state of Brown Bess. Right barrel empty—left +barrel—what is the meaning of this?—crammed to the muzzle! Ay, that +comes of visiting Stills. We have been snapping away at the coveys and +single birds all over the moor, without so much as a pluff, with the +right-hand cock—and then, imagining that we had fired, have kept +loading away at the bore to the left, till, see! the ramrod absolutely +stands upright in the air, with only about three inches hidden in the +hollow! What a narrow—a miraculous escape has the world had of losing +Christopher North! Had he drawn that trigger instead of this, Brown Bess +would have burst to a moral certainty, and blown the old gentleman +piecemeal over the heather. "In the midst of life we are in death!" +Could we but know one in a hundred of the close approachings of the +skeleton, we should lead a life of perpetual shudder. Often and often do +his bony fingers almost clutch our throat, or his foot is put out to +give us a cross-buttock. But a saving arm pulls him back, ere we have +seen so much as his shadow. We believe all this—but the belief that +comes not from something steadfastly present before our eyes, is barren; +and thus it is, since believing is not seeing, that we walk hoodwinked +nearly all our days, and worst of all blindness is that of ingratitude +and forgetfulness of Him whose shield is for ever over us, and whose +mercy shall be with us in the world beyond the grave.</p> + +<p>By all that is most beautifully wild in animated nature, a Roe! a Roe! +Shall we slay him where he stands, or let him vanish in silent glidings +in among his native woods? What a fool for asking ourselves such a +question! Slay him where he stands to be sure—for many pleasant seasons +hath he led in his leafy lairs, a life of leisure, delight, and love, +and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> hour is come when he must sink down on his knees in a sudden +and unpainful death—fair sylvan dreamer! We have drawn that +multitudinous shot—and both barrels of Brown Bess now are loaded with +ball—for Hamish is yet lying with his head on the rifle. Whiz! whiz! +one is through lungs, and another through neck—and seemingly rather to +sleep than die (so various are the many modes of expiration!)</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"In quietness he lays him down<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Gently, as a weary wave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sinks, when the summer breeze has died,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Against an anchor'd vessel's side."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ay—Hamish—you may start to your feet—and see realised the vision of +your sleep. What a set of distracted dogs! But O'Bronte first catches +sight of the quarry—and clearing, with grasshopper spangs, the patches +of stunted coppice, stops stock-still beside the roe in the glade, as if +admiring and wondering at the beauty of the fair spotted creature! Yes, +dogs have a sense of the beautiful. Else how can you account for their +loving so to lie down at the feet and lick the hands of the virgin whose +eyes are mild, and forehead meek, and hair of placid sunshine, rather +than act the same part towards ugly women, who, coarser and coarser in +each successive widow-hood, when at their fourth husband are beyond +expression hideous, and felt to be so by the whole canine tribe? Spenser +must have seen some dog like O'Bronte lying at the feet and licking the +hand of some virgin—sweet reader, like thyself—else never had he +painted the posture of that Lion who guarded through Fairyland</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A divine line of Wordsworth's, which we shall never cease quoting on to +the last of our inditings, even to our dying day!</p> + +<p>But where, Hamish, are all the flappers, the mawsies, and the mallards? +What! You have left them—hare, grouse, bag, and all, at the Still! We +remember it now—and all the distillers are to-night to be at our Tent, +bringing with them feathers, fur, and hide—ducks, pussy, and deer. But +take the roe on your stalwart shoulders, Hamish, and bear it down to the +sylvan dwelling at the mouth of Gleno. Surefoot has a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> sufficient burden +in us—for we are waxing more corpulent every day—and ere long shall be +a Silenus.</p> + +<p>Ay, travel all the world over, and a human dwelling lovelier in its +wildness shall you nowhere find, than the one that hides itself in the +depth of its own beauty, beneath the last of the green knolls +besprinkling Gleno, dropt down there in presence of the peacefulest bay +of all Loch-Etive, in whose cloud-softened bosom it sees itself +reflected among the congenial imagery of the skies. And, hark! a murmur +as of swarming bees! 'Tis a Gaelic school—set down in this loneliest of +all places, by that religious wisdom that rests not till the seeds of +saving knowledge shall be sown over all the wilds. That greyhaired +minister of God, whom all Scotland venerates, hath been here from the +great city on one of his holy pilgrimages. And, lo! at his bidding, and +that of his coadjutors in the heavenly work, a Schoolhouse has risen +with its blue roof—the pure diamond-sparkling slates of +Ballahulish—beneath a tuft of breeze-breaking trees. But whence come +they—the little scholars—who are all murmuring there? We said that the +shores of Loch-Etive were desolate. So seem they to the eye of +Imagination, that loves to gather up a hundred scenes into one, and to +breathe over the whole the lonesome spirit of one vast wilderness. But +Imagination was a liar ever—a romancer and a dealer in dreams. Hers are +the realms of fiction,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A boundless contiguity of shade!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the land of truth is ever the haunt of the heart—there her eye +reposes or expatiates, and what sweet, humble, and lowly visions arise +before it, in a light that fadeth not away, but abideth for ever! +Cottages, huts, shielings, she sees hidden—few and far between +indeed—but all filled with Christian life—among the hollows of the +hills—and up, all the way up the great glens—and by the shores of the +loneliest lochs—and sprinkled, not so rarely, among the woods that +enclose little fields and meadows of their own—all the way down—more +and more animated—till children are seen gathering before their doors +the shells of the contiguous sea.</p> + +<p>Look and listen far and wide through a sunshiny day, over a rich wooded +region, with hedgerows, single trees, groves, and forests, and yet haply +not one bird is to be seen or heard—neither plumage nor song. Yet many +a bright lyrist is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> there, all mute till the harbinger-hour of sunset, +when all earth, air, and heaven, shall be ringing with one song. Almost +even so is it with this mountain-wilderness. Small bright-haired, +bright-eyed, bright-faced children, come stealing out in the morning +from many hidden huts, each solitary in its own site, the sole dwelling +on its own brae or its own dell. Singing go they one and all, alone or +in small bands, trippingly along the wide moors; meeting into pleasant +parties at cross-paths or at fords, till one stated hour sees them all +gathered together, as now in the small Schoolhouse of Gleno, and the +echo of the happy hum of the simple scholars is heard soft among the +cliffs. But all at once the hum now ceases, and there is a hurry out of +doors, and an exulting cry; for the shadow of Hamish, with the roe on +his shoulders, has passed the small lead-latticed window, and the +Schoolroom has emptied itself on the green, which is now brightening +with the young blossoms of life. "A roe—a roe—a roe!"—is still the +chorus of their song; and the Schoolmaster himself, though educated at +college for the kirk, has not lost the least particle of his passion for +the chase, and with kindling eyes assists Hamish in laying down his +burden, and gazes on the spots with a hunter's joy. We leave you to +imagine his delight and his surprise when, at first hardly trusting his +optics, he beholds <span class="smcap">Christopher on Surefoot</span>, and then, patting the shelty +on the shoulder, bows affectionately and respectfully to the Old Man, +and while our hands grasp, takes a pleasure in repeating over and over +again that celebrated surname—North—North—North.</p> + +<p>After a brief and bright hour of glee and merriment, mingled with grave +talk, nor marred by the sweet undisturbance of all those elves maddening +on the Green around the Roe, we express a wish that the scholars may all +again be gathered together in the Schoolroom, to undergo an examination +by the Christian Philosopher of Buchanan Lodge. 'Tis in all things +gentle, in nothing severe. All slates are instantly covered with +numerals, and 'tis pleasant to see their skill in finest fractions, and +in the wonder-working golden rule of three. And now the rustling of +their manuals is like that of rainy breezes among the summer leaves. No +fears are here that the Book of God will lose its sanctity by becoming +too familiar to eye, lip, and hand. Like the sunlight in the sky, the +light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> that shines there is for ever dear—and unlike any sunlight in +any skies, never is it clouded, permanently bright, and undimmed before +pious eyes by one single shadow. We ought, perhaps, to be ashamed, but +we are not so—we are happy that not an urchin is there who is not fully +better acquainted with the events and incidents recorded in the Old and +New Testaments than ourselves; and think not that all these could have +been so faithfully committed to memory without the perpetual operation +of the heart. Words are forgotten unless they are embalmed in spirit; +and the air of the world, blow afterwards rudely as it may, shall never +shrivel up one syllable that has been steeped into their souls by the +spirit of the Gospel—felt by these almost infant disciples of Christ to +be the very breath of God.</p> + +<p>It has turned out one of the sweetest and serenest afternoons that ever +breathed a hush over the face and bosom of August woods. Can we find it +in our mind to think, in our heart to feel, in our hand to write, that +Scotland is now even more beautiful than in our youth! No—not in our +heart to feel—but in our eyes to see—for they tell us it is the truth. +The people have cared for the land which the Lord their God hath given +them, and have made the wilderness to blossom like the rose. The same +Arts that have raised their condition have brightened their habitation; +Agriculture, by fertilising the loveliness of the low-lying vales, has +sublimed the sterility of the stupendous mountain heights—and the +thundrous tides, flowing up the lochs, bring power to the cornfields and +pastures created on hill-sides once horrid with rocks. The whole country +laughs with a more vivid verdure—more pure the flow of her streams and +rivers—for many a fen and marsh has been made dry, and the rainbow +pictures itself on clearer cataracts.</p> + +<p>The Highlands were, in our memory, overspread with a too dreary gloom. +Vast tracts there were in which Nature herself seemed miserable; and if +the heart find no human happiness to repose on, Imagination will fold +her wings, or flee away to other regions, where in her own visionary +world she may soar at will, and at will stoop down to the homes of this +real earth. Assuredly the inhabitants are happier than they then +were—<i>better off</i>—and therefore the change, whatever loss it may +comprehend, has been a gain in good. Alas! poverty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>—penury—want—even +of the necessaries of life—are too often there still rife; but patience +and endurance dwell there, heroic and better far, Christian—nor has +Charity been slow to succour regions remote but not inaccessible, +Charity acting in power delegated by Heaven to our National Councils. +And thus we can think not only without sadness, but with an elevation of +soul inspired by such example of highest virtue in humblest estate, and +in our own sphere exposed to other trials be induced to follow it, set +to us in many "a virtuous household, though exceeding poor." What are +the poetical fancies about "mountain scenery," that ever fluttered on +the leaves of albums, in comparison with any scheme, however prosaic, +that tends in any way to increase human comforts? The best sonnet that +ever was written by a versifier from the South to the Crown of +Benlomond, is not worth the worst pair of worsted stockings trotted in +by a small Celt going with his dad to seek for a lost sheep among the +snow-wreaths round his base. As for eagles, and ravens, and red-deer, +"those magnificent creatures so stately and bright," let them shift for +themselves—and perhaps in spite of all our rhapsodies—the fewer of +them the better; but among geese, and turkeys, and poultry, let +propagation flourish—the fleecy folk baa—and the hairy hordes bellow +on a thousand hills. All the beauty and sublimity on earth—over the +Four Quarters of the World—is not worth a straw if valued against a +good harvest. An average crop is satisfactory; but a crop that soars +high above an average—a golden year of golden ears—sends joy into the +heart of heaven. No prating now of the degeneracy of the potato. We can +sing now with our single voice, like a numerous chorus, of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Potatoes drest both ways, both roasted and boiled;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sixty bolls to the acre on a field of our own of twenty acres—mealier +than any meal—Perth reds—to the hue on whose cheeks dull was that on +the face of the Fair Maid of Perth, when she blushed to confess to +Burn-y-win' that hand-over-hip he had struck the iron when it was hot, +and that she was no more the Glover's. O bright are potato blooms!—O +green are potato-shaws!—O yellow are potato-plums! But how oft are +blighted summer hopes and broken summer promises! Spare not the +shaw—heap high the mounds—that damp nor frost may dim a single eye; so +that all winter through poor men may pros<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>per, and spring see settings +of such prolific vigour, that they shall yield a thousandfold—and the +sound of rumbledethumps be heard all over the land.</p> + +<p>Let the people eat—let them have food for their bodies, and then they +will have heart to care for their souls; and the good and the wise will +look after their souls with sure and certain hope of elevating them from +their hovels to heaven, while prigs, with their eyes in a fine frenzy +rolling, rail at railroads, and all the other vile inventions of an +utilitarian age to open up and expedite communication between the +Children of the Mist and the Sons and Daughters of the Sunshine, to the +utter annihilation of the sublime Spirit of Solitude. Be under no sort +of alarm for Nature. There is some talk, it is true, of a tunnel through +Cruachan to the Black Mount, but the general impression seems to be that +it will be a <i>great bore</i>. A joint-stock company that undertook to +remove Ben-Nevis, is beginning to find unexpected obstructions. Feasible +as we confess it appeared, the idea of draining Loch Lomond has been +relinquished for the easier and more useful scheme of converting the +Clyde from below Stonebyres to above the Bannatyne Fall into a +canal—the chief lock being, in the opinion of the most ingenious +speculators, almost ready-made at Corra Linn. Shall we never be done +with our soliloquy? It may be a little longish, for age is prolix—but +every whit as natural and congenial with circumstances, as Hamlet's "to +be or not to be, that is the question." O beloved Albin! our soul +yearneth towards thee, and we invoke a blessing on thy many thousand +glens. The man who leaves a blessing on any one of thy solitary places, +and gives expression to a good thought in presence of a Christian +brother, is a missionary of the church. What uncomplaining and +unrepining patience in thy solitary huts! What unshrinking endurance of +physical pain and want, that might well shame the Stoic's philosophic +pride! What calm contentment, akin to mirth, in so many lonesome +households, hidden the greatest part of the year in mist and snow! What +peaceful deathbeds, witnessed but by a few, a very few grave but +tearless eyes! Ay, how many martyrdoms for the holy love and religion of +nature, worse to endure than those of old at the stake, because +protracted through years of sore distress, for ever on the very limit of +famine, yet for ever far removed from despair! Such is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> people among +whom we seek to drop the books, whose sacred leaves are too often +scattered to the winds, or buried in the dust of Pagan lands. Blessed is +the fount from whose wisely-managed munificence the small house of God +will rise frequent in the wide and sea-divided wilds, with its humble +associate, the heath-roofed school, in which, through the silence of +nature, will be heard the murmuring voices of the children of the poor, +instructed in the knowledge useful for time, and of avail for eternity.</p> + +<p>We leave a loose sovereign or two to the Bible Fund; and remounting +Surefoot, while our friend the schoolmaster holds the stirrup tenderly +to our toe, jog down the road which is rather alarmingly like the +channel of a drought-dried torrent, and turning round on the saddle, +send our farewell salutes to the gazing scholars, first, bonnet waved +round our head, and then, that replaced, a kiss flung from our hand. +Hamish, relieved of the roe, which will be taken up (how, you shall +by-and-by hear) on our way back to the Tent, is close at our side, to be +ready should Shelty stumble; O'Bronte as usual bounds in the van; and +Ponto, Piro, and Basta, impatient for the next heather hill, keep close +at our heels through the wood.</p> + +<p>We do not admire that shooting-ground which resembles a poultry-yard. +Grouse and barn-door fowls are constructed on opposite principles, the +former being wild, and the latter tame creatures, when in their +respective perfection. Of all dull pastimes, the dullest seems to us +sporting in a preserve; and we believe that we share that feeling with +the Grand Signior. The sign of a lonely wayside inn in the Highlands, +ought not to be the Hen and Chickens. Some shooters, we know, sick of +common sport, love slaughter. From sunrise to sunset of the First Day of +the Moors, they must bag their hundred brace. That can only be done +where pouts prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where you have +half-a-dozen attendants to hand you double-barrels <i>sans</i> intermission, +for a round dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire. Commend us to a +plentiful sprinkling of game; to ground which seems occasionally barren, +and which it needs a fine instructed eye to traverse scientifically, and +thereof to detect the latent riches. Fear and Hope are the Deities whom +Christopher in his Sporting Jacket worships; and were they +unpropitious,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> the Moors would lose all their witchcraft. We are a dead +shot, but not always, for the forefinger of our right hand is the most +fitful forefinger in all this capricious world. Like all performers in +the Fine Arts, our execution is very uncertain; and though "<i>toujours +pret</i>" is the impress on one side of our shield, "<i>hit and miss</i>" is +that on the other, and often the more characteristic. A gentleman ought +not to shoot like a gamekeeper, any more than at billiards to play like +a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to tool his prads like the +Portsmouth Dragsman. We choose to shoot like a philosopher as we are, +and to preserve the golden mean in murder. We hold, with Aristotle, that +all virtue consists in the middle between the two extremes; and thus we +shoot in a style equidistant from that of the gamekeeper on the one +hand, and that of the bagman on the other, neither killing nor missing +every bird; but, true to the spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine, +leaning with a decided inclination towards the first rather than the +second predicament. If we shoot too well one day, we are pretty sure to +make amends for it by shooting just as much too ill another; and thus, +at the close of the week, we can go to bed with a clear conscience. In +short, we shoot like gentlemen, scholars, poets, philosophers as we are; +and looking at us, you have a sight</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Of him who walks (rides) in glory and in joy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Following his dog upon the mountain-side,"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>a man evidently not shooting for a wager, and performing a match from +the mean motive of avarice or ambition, but blazing away "at his own +sweet will," and, without seeming to know it, making a great noise in +the world. Such, believe us, is ever the mode in which true genius +displays at once the earnestness and the modesty of its character.—But, +Hamish—Hamish—Hamish—look with both thine eyes on yonder bank—yonder +sunny bank, beneath the shade of that fantastic cliff's superincumbent +shadow—and seest thou not basking there a miraculous amount of the +right sort of feathers? They have packed, Hamish—they have packed, +early as it yet is in the season; and the question is—<i>What shall we +do?</i> We have it. Take up a position—Hamish—about a hundred yards in +the rear—on yonder knoll—with the Colonel's Sweeper. Fire from the +rest—mind, from the rest, Hamish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>right into the centre of that bed of +plumage, and we shall be ready, with Brown Bess and her sister, to pour +in our quartette upon the remains as they rise—so that not escape shall +one single feather. Let our coming "to the present" be your +signal.—Bang! Whew!—what a flutter! Now take that—and that—and +that—and that! Ha! Hamish—as at the springing of a mine, the whole +company has perished. Count the dead. Twenty-one! Life is short—and by +this compendious style we take Time by the forelock. But where the devil +are the ducks? Oh, yes! with the deer at the Still. Bag, and be +stirring. For the Salmon-pond is murmuring in our ear; and in another +hour we must be at Inveraw. Who said that Cruachan was a steep mountain? +Why, with a gentle, smooth, and easy slope, he dips his footsteps in the +sea-salt waters of Loch Etive's tide, as if to accommodate the old +gentleman who, half-a-century ago, used to beard him in his pride on his +throne of clouds. Heaven bless him!—he is a kind-hearted mountain, +though his forehead be furrowed, and his aspect grim in stormy weather. +A million memories "o' auld lang syne" revive, as almost "smooth-sliding +without a step" Surefoot travels through the sylvan haunts, by us +beloved of yore, when every day was a dream, and every dream filled to +overflowing with poetic visions that swarmed in every bough, on every +bent, on every heather-bell, on every dewdrop, in every mote o' the sun, +in every line of gossamer, all over greenwood and greensward, grey +cliff, purple heath, blue lock, "wine-faced sea,"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"with locks divinely spreading,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like sullen hyacinths in vernal hue,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and all over the sky, seeming then a glorious infinitude, where light, +and joy, and beauty had their dwelling in calm and storm alike for +evermore.</p> + +<p>Heaven bless thee—with all her sun, moon, and stars! there thou art, +dearest to us of all the lochs of Scotland—and they are all +dear—mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, grove-girdled, +wide-winding, and far-stretching, with thy many-bayed banks and braes of +brushwood, fern, broom, and heather, rejoicing in their huts and +shielings, thou glory of Argyllshire, rill-and-river-fed, sea-arm-like, +floating in thy majesty, magnificent Loch Awe!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p> + +<p>Comparisons, so far from being odious, are always suggested to our +hearts by the spirit of love. We behold Four Lochs—Loch Awe, before our +bodily eyes, which sometimes sleep—Loch Lomond, Windermere, Killarney, +before those other eyes of ours that are waking ever. The longest is +Loch Awe, which from that bend below Sonnachan to distant Edderline, +looks like a river. But cut off, with the soft scythe or sickle of +fancy, twenty miles of the length of the mottled snake, who never coils +himself up except in misty weather, and who is now lying outstretched in +the sunshine, and the upper part, the head and shoulders, are of +themselves a Loch. Pleasant are his many hills, and magnificent his one +mountain. For you see but Cruachan. He is the master-spirit. Call him +the noblest of Scotland's Kings. His subjects are princes; and +gloriously they range around him, stretching high, wide, and far away, +yet all owing visible allegiance to him, their sole and undisputed +sovereign. The setting and the rising sun do him homage. Peace loves—as +now—to dwell within his shadow; but high among the precipices are the +halls of the storms. Green are the shores as emerald. But the dark +heather with its purple bloom sleeps in sombre shadow over wide regions +of dusk, and there is an austere character in the cliffs. Moors and +mosses intervene between holms and meadows, and those black spots are +stacks of last year's peats—not huts, as you might think; but those +other specks are huts, somewhat browner—few roofed with straw, almost +all with heather—though the better houses are slated—nor is there in +the world to be found slate of a more beautiful pale-green colour than +in the quarries of Ballahulish. The scene is vast and wild; yet so much +beauty is interfused, that at such an hour as this its character is +almost that of loveliness; the rude and rugged is felt to be rural, and +no more; and the eye, gliding from the cottage gardens on its banks to +the islands on the bosom of the Loch, loses sight of the mighty masses +heaved up to the heavens, while the heart forgets that they are there, +in its sweet repose. The dim-seen ruins of castle or religious house, +secluded from all the stir that disturbed the shore, carries back our +dreams to the olden time, and we awake from our reveries of "sorrows +suffered long ago," to enjoy the apparent happiness of the living world.</p> + +<p>Loch Lomond is a sea! Along its shores might you voyage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> in your swift +schooner, with shifting breezes, all a summer's day, nor at sunset, when +you dropped anchor, have seen half the beautiful wonders. It is +many-isled; and some of them are in themselves little worlds, with woods +and hills. Houses are seen looking out from among old trees, and +children playing on the greensward that slopes safely into deep water, +where in rushy havens are drawn up the boats of fishermen, or of +woodcutters who go to their work on the mainland. You might live all +your life on one of those islands, and yet be no hermit. Hundreds of +small bays indent the shores, and some of a majestic character take a +fine bold sweep with their towering groves, enclosing the mansion of a +Colquhoun or a Campbell at enmity no more, or the turreted castle of the +rich alien, who there finds himself as much at home as in his hereditary +hall, Sassenach and Gael now living in gentle friendship. What a +prospect from the Point of Firkin! The Loch in its whole length and +breadth—the magnificent expanse unbroken, though bedropped, with +unnumbered isles—and the shores diversified with jutting cape and +far-shooting peninsula, enclosing sweet separate seclusions, each in +itself a loch. Ships might be sailing here, the largest ships of war; +and there is anchorage for fleets. But the clear course of the lovely +Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with gravelly shallows, and guards +Loch Lomond from the white-winged roamers that from all seas come +crowding into the Firth of Clyde, and carry their streaming flags above +the woods of Ardgowan. And there stands Ben. What cares he for all the +multitude of other lochs his gaze commands—what cares he even for the +salt-sea foam tumbling far away off into the ocean? All-sufficient for +his love is his own loch at his feet. How serenely looks down the Giant! +Is there not something very sweet in his sunny smile? Yet were you to +see him frown—as we have seen him—your heart would sink; and what +would become of you—if all alone by your own single self, wandering +over the wide moor that glooms in utter houselessness between his +corries and Glenfalloch—what if you were to hear the strange mutterings +we have heard, as if moaning from an earthquake among quagmires, till +you felt that the sound came from the sky, and all at once from the +heart of night that had strangled day burst a shattering peal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> that +might waken the dead—for Benlomond was in wrath, and vented it in +thunder?</p> + +<p>Perennially enjoying the blessing of a milder clime, and repaying the +bounty of nature by beauty that bespeaks perpetual gratitude—merry as +May, rich as June, shady as July, lustrous as August, and serene as +September, for in her meet the characteristic charms of every season, +all delightfully mingled by the happy genius of the place commissioned +to pervade the whole from heaven, most lovely yet most majestic, we +breathed the music of thy name, and start in this sterner solitude at +the sweet syllabling of Windermere, Windermere! Translucent thy waters +as diamond without a flaw. Unstained from source to sea are all the +streams soft issuing from their silver springs among those beautiful +mountains. Pure are they all as dew—and purer look the white clouds +within their breast. These are indeed the Fortunate Groves! Happy is +every tree. Blest the "Golden Oak," which seems to shine in lustre of +his own, unborrowed from the sun. Fairer far the flower-tangled grass of +those wood-encircled pastures than any meads of Asphodel. Thou need'st +no isles on thy heavenly bosom, for in the sweet confusion of thy shores +are seen the images of many isles, fragments that one might dream had +been gently loosened from the land, and had floated away into the lake +till they had lost themselves in the fairy wilderness. But though thou +need'st them not, yet hast thou, O Windermere! thine own steadfast and +enduring isles—her called the Beautiful—and islets not far apart that +seem born of her; for theirs the same expression of countenance—that of +celestial calm—and, holiest of the sisterhood, one that still retains +the ruins of an oratory, and bears the name of the Virgin Mother Mild, +to whom prays the mariner when sailing, in the moonlight, along Sicilian +seas.</p> + +<p>Killarney! From the village of Cloghereen issued an uncouth figure, who +called himself the "Man of the Mountain;" and pleased with Pan, we +permitted him to blow his horn before us up to the top of Mangerton, +where the Devil, 'tis believed, scooped out the sward beneath the cliffs +into a Punch-bowl. No doubt he did, and the Old Potter wrought with +fire. 'Tis the crater of an extinct volcano. Charles Fox, Weld says, and +Wright doubts, swam the Pool. Why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> not? 'Tis not so cold as the Polar +Sea. We swam across it—as Mulcocky, were he alive, but he is dead, +could vouch; and felt braced like a drum. What a panorama! Our first +feeling was one of grief that we were not an Irishman. We knew not where +to fix our gaze. Surrounded by the dazzling bewilderment of all that +multitudinous magnificence, the eye, as if afraid to grapple with the +near glory—for such another day never shone from heaven—sought relief +in the remote distance, and slid along the beautiful river Kenmare, +insinuating itself among the recesses of the mountains, till it rested +on the green glimmer of the far-off sea. The grandeur was felt, far off +as it was, of that iron-bound coast. Coming round with an easy sweep, as +the eyes of an eagle may do, when hanging motionless aloft he but turns +his head, our eyes took in all the mighty range of the Reeks, and rested +in awe on Carran Tual. Wild yet gentle was the blue aerial haze over the +glimpses of the Upper Lake, where soft and sweet, in a girdle of rocks, +seemed to be hanging, now in air and now in water—for all was strangely +indistinct in the dim confusion—masses of green light that might be +islands with their lovely trees; but suddenly tipt with fire shone out +the golden pinnacles of the Eagle's Nest; and as again they were tamed +by cloud-shadow, the glow of Purple Mountain for a while enchained our +vision, and then left it free to feast on the forests of Glena, till, +wandering at the capricious will of fancy, it floated in delight over +the woods of Mucruss, and long lost among the trembling imagery of the +water, found lasting repose on the steadfast beauty of the sylvan isle +of Inisfallen.</p> + +<p>But now for the black mass of rapid waters that, murmuring from loch to +river, rush roaring through that rainbow-arch, and bathe the green woods +in freshening spray-mist through a loveliest landscape, that steals +along with its meadow-sprinkling trees close to the very shore of Loch +Etive, binding the two lochs together with a sylvan band—her whose +calmer spirit never knows the ebb or flow of tide, and her who +fluctuates even when the skies are still with the swelling and subsiding +tumult duly sent up into and recalled down from the silence of her +inland solitude. And now for one pool in that river, called by eminence +the Salmon Pool, whose gravelly depths are sometimes paved with the blue +backs of the silver-scaled shiners, all strong as sunbeams, for a while +reposing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> there, till the river shall blacken in its glee to the floods +falling in Glen-Scrae and Glenorchy, and then will they shoot through +the cataract—for 'tis all one fall between the lochs—passionate of the +sweet fresh waters in which the Abbey-Isle reflects her one ruined +tower, or Kilchurn, at all times dim or dark in the shadow of Cruachan, +see his grim turrets, momentarily less grim, imaged in the tremblings of +the casual sunshine. Sometimes they lie like stones, nor, unless you +stir them up with a long pole, will they stir in the gleam, more than if +they were shadows breathed from trees when all winds are dead. But at +other times, they are on feed; and then no sooner does the fly drop on +the water in its blue and yellow gaudiness (and oh! but the brown +mallard wing is bloody—bloody!) than some snout sucks it in—some snout +of some swine-necked shoulder-bender; and instantly—as by dexterously +dropping your elbow you give him the butt, and strike the barb through +his tongue—down the long reach of the river vista'd along that straight +oak-avenue—but with clear space of greensward between wood and +water—shoots the giant steel-stung in his fear, bounding blue-white +into the air, and then down into the liquid element with a plunge as of +a man, or rather a horse, till your heart leaps to your mouth, or, as +the Greeks we believe used to say, to your nose, and you are seen +galloping along the banks, by spectators in search of the picturesque, +and ignorant of angling, supposed in the act of making your escape, with +an incomprehensible weapon in both hands, from some rural madhouse.</p> + +<p>Eh? eh? not in our hat—not in our waistcoat—not in our jacket—not in +our breeches! By the ghost of Autolycus some pickpocket, while we were +moralising, has abstracted our Lascelles! We may as well tie a stone to +each of our feet, and sink away from all sense of misery in the Salmon +Pool. Oh! that it had been our purse! Who cares for a dozen dirty +sovereigns and a score of nasty notes? And what's the use of them to us +now, or indeed at any time? And what's the use of this identical rod? +Hang it, if a little thing would not make us break it! A multiplying +reel, indeed! The invention of a fool. The Tent sees not us again; this +afternoon we shall return to Edinburgh. Don't talk to us of flies at the +next village. There are no flies at the village—there is no village. O +Beelzebub! O Satan! was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> ever man tempted as we are tempted? See—see a +Fish—a fine Fish—an enormous Fish—leaping to insult us! Give us our +gun that we may shoot him—no—no, dang guns—and dang this great clumsy +rod! There—let it lie there for the first person that passes—for we +swear never to angle more. As for the Awe, we never liked it—and wonder +what infatuation brought us here. We shall be made to pay for this +yet—whew! there was a twinge—that big toe of ours we'll warrant is as +red as fire, and we bitterly confess that we deserve the gout. Och! och! +och!</p> + +<p>But hark! whoop and hollo, and is that too the music of the hunter's +horn? Reverberating among the woods a well-known voice salutes our ear; +and there! bounds Hamish over the rocks like a chamois taking his +pastime. Holding up our <span class="smcap">Lascelles</span>! he places it with a few respectful +words—hoping we have not missed it—and standing aloof—leaves us to +our own reflections and our flies. Nor do those amount to remorse—nor +these to more than a few dozens. Samson's strength having been +restored—we speak of our rod, mind ye, not of ourselves—we lift up our +downcast eyes, and steal somewhat ashamed a furtive glance at the trees +and stones that must have overheard and overseen all our behaviour. We +leave those who have been in anything like the same predicament to +confess—not publicly—there is no occasion for that—nor on their +knees—but to their own consciences, if they have any, their grief and +their joy, their guilt, and, we hope, their gratitude. Transported +though they were beyond all bounds, we forgive them; for even those +great masters of wisdom, the Stoics, were not infallible, nor were they +always able to sustain, at their utmost strength, in practice the +principles of their philosophy.</p> + +<p>Phin! this Rod is thy masterpiece. And what Gut! <i>There she has it!</i> +Reel-music for ever! Ten fathom are run out already—and see how she +shoots, Hamish;—such a somerset as that was never thrown from a +spring-board. Just the size for strength and agility—twenty pound to an +ounce—jimp weight, Hamish—ha! Harlequin art thou—or Columbine? +Assuredly neither Clown nor Pantaloon. Now we have turned her ladyship's +nose up the stream, her lungs, if she have any, must be beginning to +labour, and we almost hear her snore. What! in the sulks already—sullen +among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> stones. But we shall make you mudge, madam, were we to tear +the very tongue out of your mouth. Ay, once more down the middle to the +tune of that spirited country-dance—"Off she goes!" Set corners, and +reel! The gaff, Hamish—the gaff! and the landing-net! For here is a +shallow of the silver sand, spreading into the bay of a ford—and ere +she recovers from her astonishment, here will we land her—with a strong +pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether—just on the edge of the +greensward—and then smite her on the shoulder, Hamish—and, to make +assurance doubly sure, the net under her tail, and hoist her aloft in +the sunshine, a glorious prize, dazzling the daylight, and giving a +brighter verdure to the woods.</p> + +<p>He who takes two hours to kill a fish—be its bulk what it may—is no +man, and is not worth his meat, nor the vital air. The proportion is a +minute to the pound. This rule were we taught by the "Best at Most" +among British sportsmen—Scrope the Matchless on moor, mountain, river, +loch, or sea; and with exquisite nicety have we now carried it into +practice. Away with your useless steelyards. Let us feel her teeth with +our forefinger, and then held out at arm's length—so—we know by +feeling, that she is, as we said soon as we saw her side, a +twenty-pounder to a drachm, and we have been true to time, within two +seconds. She has literally no head; but her snout is in her shoulders. +That is the beauty of a fish—high and round shoulders, short-waisted, +no loins, but all body, and not long of terminating—the shorter still +the better—in a tail sharp and pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent +in the sky.</p> + +<p>And lo, and behold! there is Diana—but not crescent—for round and +broad is she as the sun himself—shining in the south, with as yet a +needless light—for daylight has not gone down in the west—and we can +hardly call it gloaming. Chaste and cold though she seem, a nunlike +luminary who has just taken the veil—a transparent veil of fine fleecy +clouds—yet, alas! is she frail as of old, when she descended on the top +of Latmos, to hold dalliance with Endymion. She has absolutely the +appearance of being in the family way—and not far from her time. Lo! +two of her children stealing from ether towards her feet. One on her +right hand, and another on her left—the fairest daughters that ever +charmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> mother's heart—and in heaven called stars. What a celestial +trio the three form in the sky! The face of the moon keeps brightening +as the lesser two twinkle into darker lustre; and now, though day is +still lingering, we feel that it is Night. When the one comes and when +the other goes, what eye can note, what tongue can tell—but what heart +feels not in the dewy hush divine—as the power of the beauty of earth +decays over us, and a still dream descends upon us in the power of the +beauty of heaven!</p> + +<p>But hark! the regular twang and dip of oars coming up the river—and lo! +indistinct in the distance, something moving through the moonshine—and +now taking the likeness of a boat—a barge—with bonneted heads leaning +back at every flashing stroke—and, Hamish, list! a choral song in thine +own dear native tongue! Sent hither by the Queen of the sea-fairies to +bear back in state Christopher North to the Tent? No. 'Tis the big coble +belonging to the tacksman of the Awe—and the crew are going to pull her +through the first few hours of the night—along with the flowing +tide—up to Kinloch-Etive, to try a cast with their long net at the +mouth of the river, now winding dim like a snake from King's House +beneath the Black Mount, and along the bays at the head of the Loch. A +rumour that we were on the river had reached them—and see an awning of +tartan over the stern, beneath which, as we sit, the sun may not smite +our head by day, nor the moon by night. We embark—and descending the +river like a dream, rapidly but stilly, and kept in the middle of the +current by cunning helmsman, without aid of idle oar, all six suspended, +we drop along through the sylvan scenery, gliding serenely away back +into the mountain-gloom, and enter into the wider moonshine trembling on +the wavy verdure of the foam-crested sea. May this be Loch-Etive? +Yea—verily; but so broad here is its bosom, and so far spreads the +billowy brightness, that we might almost believe that our bark was +bounding over the ocean, and marching merrily on the main. Are we—into +such a dream might fancy for a moment half beguile herself—rowing back, +after a day among the savage islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in +the offing, on a voyage of discovery round the world?</p> + +<p>Where are all the dogs? Ponto, Piro, Basta, trembling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> partly with cold, +partly with hunger, partly with fatigue, and partly with fear, among and +below the seats of the rowers—with their noses somewhat uncomfortably +laid between their fore-paws on the tarry timbers; but O'Bronte boldly +sitting at our side, and wistfully eyeing the green swell as it heaves +beautifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap overboard, and +wallow like a walrus in the brine, of which you might almost think he +was born and bred, so native seems the element to the "Dowg o' Dowgs." +Ay, these are sea-mews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in the +moonshine; but we <i>shall</i> not shoot them—no—no—no—we <i>will</i> not +shoot you, ye images of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly +attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts of the billows, in +motion quick almost as your slowest flight, while ye linger around, and +behind, and before our path, like fair spirits wiling us along up this +great Loch, farther and farther through gloom and glimmer, into the +heart of profounder solitude. On what errands of your own are ye +winnowing your way, stooping ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in +the waves, and then up into the open air—the blue light filling this +magnificent hollow—or seen glancing along the shadows of the mountains +as they divide the Loch into a succession of separate bays, and often +seem to block it up, till another moonlight reach is seen extending far +beyond, and carries the imagination on—on—on—into inland recesses +that seem to lose at last all connection with the forgotten sea. All at +once the moon is like a ghost;—and we believe—Heaven knows why—in the +authenticity of Ossian's Poems.</p> + +<p>Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We devoutly hope there was—for if +so, then there were a prodigious number of fine fellows, besides his +Bardship, who after their death figured away as their glimmering ghosts, +with noble effect, among the moonlight mists of the mountains. The +poetry of Ossian has, it is true, since the days of Macpherson, in no +way coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr Wordsworth, who has +written beautiful lines about the old Phantom, states that fact as an +argument against its authenticity. He thinks Ossian, as we now possess +him, no poet; and alleges, that if these compositions had been the good +things so many people have thought them, they would, in some way or +other, have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> breathed their spirit over the poetical genius of the land. +Who knows that they may not do so yet? The time may not have come. But +must all true poetry necessarily create imitation, and a school of +imitators? One sees no reason why it must. Besides, the life which the +poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly passed away; and the poetry +itself, good, bad, or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imitate +it at all you must almost transcribe it. That, for a good many years, +was often done, but naturally inspired any other feeling than delight or +admiration. But the simple question is, Do the poems of Ossian delight +greatly and widely? We think they do. Nor can we believe that they would +not still delight such a poet as Mr Wordsworth. What dreariness +overspreads them all! What a melancholy spirit shrouds all his heroes, +passing before us on the cloud, after all their battles have been +fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The very picture of the old +blind Hero-bard himself, often attended by the weeping virgins whom war +has made desolate, is always touching, often sublime. The desert is +peopled with lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap them with +ghosts, whose remembrances of this life are all dirge and elegy. True, +that the images are few and endlessly reiterated; but that, we suspect, +is the case with all poetry composed not in a philosophic age. The great +and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all +its purposes. The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his +hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same +strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any +greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived +and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we +suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think +dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and +mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, +and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no +tenderness—no pathos—no beauty? Alas for thousands of hearts and souls +if it be even so! For then are many of their holiest dreams worthless +all, and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of the understanding, +which a bit of philosophical criticism will purge away, as the leech's +phial does a disease of the blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p> + +<p>Macpherson's "Ossian," is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not—but +Christopher North says it is—with all reverence for the King. Let its +antiquity be given up—let such a state of society as is therein +described be declared impossible—let all the inconsistencies and +violations of nature ever charged against it be acknowledged—let all +its glaring plagiarisms from poetry of modern date inspire what derision +they may—and far worse the perpetual repetition of its own imbecilities +and inanities, wearying one down even to disgust and anger;—yet, in +spite of all, are we not made to feel, not only that we are among the +mountains, but to forget that there is any other world in existence, +save that which glooms and glimmers, and wails and raves around us in +mists and clouds, and storms and snows—full of lakes and rivers, +sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, with a sky as troublous as the +earth—yet both at times visited with a mournful beauty that sinks +strangely into the soul—while the shadowy life depictured there eludes +not our human sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they be—so sweet and +sad are their voices—do there float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or +unhonoured—single, or in bands—the ghosts of the brave and beautiful; +when the few stars are dim, and the moon is felt, not seen, to be +yielding what faint light there may be in the skies.</p> + +<p>The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not only so, but all the +mountains are bagpipes, and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes in the +world are here, and they fill heaven and earth. 'Tis no +exaggeration—much less a fiction—but the soul and body of truth. There +Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the boat hangs by midships on +the very point that commands all the echoes, he fills the whole night +with the "Campbells are coming," till the sky yells with the gathering +as of all the Clans. His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to catch +their emotions; his fingers cease their twinkling; and still that wild +gathering keeps playing of itself among the mountains—fainter and +fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, till it dies away far—far +off—as if in infinitude—sweet even and soft in its evanescence as some +lover's lute.</p> + +<p>We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters +the whole face of nature, confusing its most settled features, and with +a gentle glamoury blending with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> greensward what once was the grey +granite, and investing with apparent woodiness what an hour ago was the +desolation of herbless cliffs—yet not all the changes that wondrous +nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could +metamorphose out of our recognition that Glen, in which, one +night—long—long ago—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>we were visited by a dream—a dream that shadowed forth in its +inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life—the +graves—the tombs where many we loved are now buried—that churchyard, +where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest.</p> + +<p>But who shouts from the shore, Hamish—and now, as if through his +fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky? Ah, +ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. 'Tis +the schoolmaster of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat—kilted, +we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but +stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong +in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red +hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat, and followed it himself +like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties—my heroes—the +wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots +an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the lantern, +twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent.</p> + +<p>In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be +so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A sound there is in the sea-green swell, and the hollows of the rocks, +that keep muttering and muttering, as their entrances feel the touch of +the tide. But nothing beneath the moon can be more solemn, now that her +aspect is so wan, and that some melancholy spirit has obscured the +lustre of the stars. We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry were +visiting our slumber. All is sad within us, yet why we know not; and the +sadness is stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> foolish +pastime, spent by a being who believes that he is immortal, and that +this life is but the threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and paltry +pastimes indeed are they all! But are they more so than those pursuits +of which the moral poet has sung,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The paths of glory lead but to the grave!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Methinks, now, as we are entering into a sabler mass of shadow, that the +doctrine of eternal punishment of sins committed in time—but—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here's a health to all good lasses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here's a health to all good lasses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let the bumper toast go round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let the bumper toast go round!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Best on your oars, lads. Hamish! the quaich! give each man a caulker, +that his oar may send a bolder twang from its rollock, and our +fish-coble walk the waves like a man-of-war's gig, with the captain on +board, going ashore, after a long cruise, to meet his wife. Now she +spins! and lo! lights at Kinloch-Etive, and beyond on the breast of the +mountain, bright as Hesperus—the Pole-star of our Tent!</p> + +<p>Well, this is indeed the Londe of Faery! A car with a nag caparisoned at +the water edge! On with the roe, and in with Christopher and the Fish. +Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. After a cast or two, which, may they be +successful as the night is auspicious, your presence, gentlemen, will be +expected in the Tent. Now, Hamish, handle thou the ribbons—alias the +hair-tether—and we will touch him behind, should he linger, with a +weapon that might</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Create a soul under the ribs of death."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, as he carries us along a +fine natural causeway, like Ossian's car-borne heroes. From the size and +state of the stones over which we make such a clatter, we shrewdly +suspect that the parliamentary grant for destroying the old Highland +torrent-roads has not extended its ravages to Glen-Etive. O'Bronte,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Like panting Time, toils after us in vain;"<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>and the pointers are following us by our own scent, and that of the roe, +in the distant darkness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise we shall +overshoot our mark, and meet with some accident or other, perhaps a +capsize on Buachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had no idea the +circle of greensward in front of the Tent was so spacious. Why, there is +room for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to turn with its eight +horses, and that enormous ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could +have made us think at this moment of London? Certes, the association of +ideas is a droll thing, and also sometimes most magnificent. Dancing in +the Tent, among strange figures! Celebration of the nuptials of some +Arab chief, in an oasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia! Heavens! +look at Tickler! How he hauls the Hizzies! There is no time to be +lost—he and the Admiral must not have all the sport to themselves; and, +by-and-by, spite of age and infirmity, we shall show the Tent a touch of +the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers! Christopher is upon +you—behold the Tenth Avatar incarnated in North.</p> + +<p>But what Apparitions at the Tent-door salute our approach?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Back step these two fair angels, half afraid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So suddenly to see the Griesly King!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Glencreran or Glenco, kilted to the +knee, and not unconscious of their ankles, one twinkle of which is +sufficient to bid "Begone dull care" for ever. One hand on a shoulder of +each of the mountain-nymphs—sweet liberties—and then embraced by both, +half in their arms, and half on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so +pleasantly let down from triumphal car, on the soft surface of his +mother-earth? Ay, there lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller +slain! But was there ever such a rush of dogs! We shall be extinguished. +Down, dogs, down—nay, ladies and gentlemen, be seated—on one another's +knees as before—we beseech you—we are but men like yourselves—and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Without the smile from partial beauty won,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh! what were man?—a world without a sun!"<br /></span></div></div> + +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> +</div> + +<p>What it is to be the darling of gods and men, and women and children! +Why the very stars burn brighter—and thou, O Moon! art like the Sun. We +foresee a night of dancing and drinking—till the mountain-dew melt in +the lustre of morn. Such a day should have a glorious death—and a +glorious resurrection. Hurra! Hurra!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Moors for ever! The Moors! The Moors!</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM.</h2> + + +<p>What do you mean by original genius? By that fine line in the "Pleasures +of Hope"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To muse on Nature with a poet's eye?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Why—genius—one kind of it at least—is transfusion of self into all +outward things. The genius that does that—naturally, but novelly—is +original; and now you know the meaning of one kind of original genius. +Have we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have you? Yea, both of Us. +Our spirits animate the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, smiles, +laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though +perhaps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to +drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus—and lo! +list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened +heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in +communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the +hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. +What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps that ever stung had been +revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We +are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be +seen any more than if we were in the middle of the sea. Yet a wan glare +shows that the snow-storm is strangely shadowed by superincumbent +cliffs; and though you cannot see, you <i>hear</i> the mountains. Rendings +are going on, frequent, over your head—and all around the blind +wilderness—the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the +moanings, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were +angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the +cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> and rooking and tossing of +old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Red comes the river down, and loud and oft<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The angry spirit of the water shrieks,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>more fearful than at midnight in this night-like day—whose meridian is +a total sun eclipse. The river runs by, blood-like, through the +snow—and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, +that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible—more and +more terrible—as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan—ere +long he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining +rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into +the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear +thunder, though you know that cannot be—but sublimer than thunder is +the nameless noise so like that of agonised life—that eddies far and +wide around—high and huge above—fear all the while being at the bottom +of your heart—an objectless, dim, dreary, undefinable fear, whose +troubled presence—if any mortal feeling be so—is sublime. Your +imagination is troubled, and dreams of death, but of no single corpse, +of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourself—for the Hut in which you +thus enjoy the storm is safer than the canopied cliff-calm of the +eagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from its deepest and darkest +foundations, and all that lay hidden there of the wild and wonderful, +the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and pathetic, is now upturned +in dim confusion, and imagination, working among the hoarded gatherings +of the heart, creates out of them moods kindred and congenial with the +hurricane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till +that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which +is heard, undergo alternate mutual transfiguration; and the blind +Roaring Day—at once substance, shadow, and soul—is felt to be one with +ourselves—the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive.</p> + +<p>We are in a Highland Hut—if we called it a Shieling we did so merely +because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once +brings to eye and ear—the rustling of leaves on a summer sylvan bower, +by simple art slightly changed from the form of the growth of nature, +or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> the waving of fern on the turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with +wildflowers and mosses, and moulded by one single season into a +knoll-like beauty, beside its guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all +evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the +Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet +Shieling-season, when, far away from all other human dwellings, on the +dip of some great mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journey-long +glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with +him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk +and cross—Luath his sole companion—his sole care the pasturing +herds—the sole sounds he hears the croak of the raven on the cliff, or +bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in +some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid +the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his +tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the +sunny, moonlight, starry months,—the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her +dying father gave into his arms—the old blind soldier—knowing that the +boy would shield her innocence when every blood-relation had been +buried—now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the +Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird—the happiest +of all living things—her own Ronald's dark-haired Bride.</p> + +<p>We are in a Highland Hut among a Highland Snow-storm—and all at once +amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of +Burns—the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound +pathos are they charged!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I think me on the ourie cattle,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle<br /></span> +<span class="i12">O' winter war,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle,<br /></span> +<span class="i12">Beneath a scaur!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, in the merry months o' spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delighted me to hear thee sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i12">What comes o' thee?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i12">An' close thy ee?<br /></span></div></div> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> +</div> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lone from your savage homes exiled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i12">My heart forgets,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While pitiless the tempest wild<br /></span> +<span class="i12">Sore on you beats."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Burns is our Lowland bard—but poetry is poetry all over the world, when +streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of +inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes +of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the +Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm +that enshrouds the day. Ay—the one single door of this Hut—the one +single "winnock," does "rattle"—by fits—as the blast smites it, in +spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all round the buried +dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan—fear +has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle—and all the +other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the +meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent, +now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have +been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when +summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle +in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks +feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all +the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia—a realm of +wrath—woe—danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood—when +the bagpipe blows—is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The +limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of +battle within the shadow of the Pyramids,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Brought from the dust the sound of liberty,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old +Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on "that +thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the +banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyrie the eagle's +wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night +imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand-in-hand as is their wont when +crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> +strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful +inland or the more wrathful sea.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"They think upon the ourie cattle<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And silly sheep,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct.</p> + +<p>How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the +noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, in the merry months o' spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delighted me to hear thee sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">What comes o' thee?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">An' close thy ee?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The whole earth is for a moment green again—trees whisper—streamlets +murmur—and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her +groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those +sweet-singers are now dead—or that they "cow'r the chittering +wing"—never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the ee" +that shall never more be re-illumined with love, when the Season of +Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with +the survivors of some gentler climate.</p> + +<p>The poet's heart, humanised to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its +own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each +syllable tells—each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the +life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at +such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos +reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these +few simplest words,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">"My heart forgets,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While pitiless the tempest wild<br /></span> +<span class="i10">Sore on you beats!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the "silly sheep;" but who knows +that they are not <i>sent</i> on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear +has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about +to perish!—an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on +which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, +that we felt that interference providential—as if we had indeed seen +the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We +all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot +it—but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday.</p> + +<p>One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco—the families of +two brothers—seldom visiting each other on working-days—seldom meeting +even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk—seldom coming +together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these +are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken +together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each +family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible +threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two +dwellings together—as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to +another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings +were. <i>That</i> in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered +rock—lown in all storms—with greensward and garden on a slope down to +a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once woefully reddened!) and +<i>growing</i>—so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge +stones that overshadow it—out of the earth. <i>That</i> in Glencreran, more +conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between +mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when +the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark +indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old +oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan; +but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, +near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive; +and, except this old oak-like grove of pines, there is not a tree, and +hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are +kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a +perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light +is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts—for they are huts and no +more—and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the +beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your +heart—and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, +not even in its most solitary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> places, have not swept from the scenes +they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be +allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the +bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay.</p> + +<p>These Huts belonged to brothers—and each had an only child—a son and a +daughter—born on the same day—and now blooming on the verge of youth. +A year ago, and they were but mere children—but what wondrous growth of +frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before +our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn +and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought +closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most +sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the +sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins +grown up before their parents' eyes, Flora Macdonald—a name hallowed of +yore—the fairest, and Ranald Cameron, the boldest of all the living +flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday, +and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow. +Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and +Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the +many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of +February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, +so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same +hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the +happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the +smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water +glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along +the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place—a bank of birch-trees +beneath a cliff that takes its name from the Eagles.</p> + +<p>On their meeting seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly +inspired with joy and beauty? Insects unheard by them before, hummed and +glittered in the air—from tree-roots, where the snow was thin, little +flowers, or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were seen looking +out as if alive—the trees themselves seemed budding as if it were +already spring—and rare as in that rocky region are the birds of song, +a faint trill for a moment touched their ears, and the flutter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> a +wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest. +Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills +unreached by the frost—and merry, thought they, was the music of these +contented prisoners. Not Summer's self, in its deepest green, so +beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of Winter; +and as their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen +before a sky of such perfect blue, a sun so gentle in its brightness, or +altogether a week-day in any season, so like a Sabbath in its stillness, +so like a holyday in its joy! Lovers were they—although as yet they +scarcely knew it; for from love only could have come such bliss as now +was theirs, a bliss that while it beautified was felt to come from the +skies.</p> + +<p>Flora sang to Ranald many of her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs +that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the +branches of storm-tossed trees when the subsiding tempest is about to +let them rest. Monotonous music! But irresistible over the heart it has +once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it +breathes—a mournfulness brooding and feeding on the same note that is +at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment—of which the +singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is +haunted by all that is most piteous, by the faces of the dead in their +paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may +pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears!</p> + +<p>How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to +see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of +great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea—tales which +he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over +Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of +blood!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The sun sat high in his meridian tower,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings +believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they +had met in the prime of the morn!</p> + +<p>The boy starts to his feet—and his keen eye looks along the ready +rifle—for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> and the passion +of the chase was hereditary in his blood, Lo! a deer from Dalness, +hound-driven or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, +then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and then away—away! The +rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the +animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh! +for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering +heavily along, the snow spotted as he bounds with blood, the huge animal +at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me, +Flora!" the boy-hunter cries—and flinging down their plaids, they turn +their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the +stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl—and Ranald, as he ever and +anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion +as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and +more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the +deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off—now standing at +bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the +forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd +while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly +to him with my rifle—and shoot him through the heart!"</p> + +<p>Up—up—up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round +many a jutting promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer +kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then, +for some hundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while the boy, +maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more +looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was +hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion—till at last he struck +the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air +was spurned by the convulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald upon +the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lifted up a look of triumph to +the mountain-tops.</p> + +<p>Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her—and he is alone—nor knows +it—he and the Red-deer—an enormous animal—fast stiffening in the +frost of death.</p> + +<p>Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and they seem to waver and +whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> Faster they fall and +faster—the flakes are almost as large as leaves—and overhead whence so +suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are you? where +are you, Flora?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that +no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck far off upon the snow! +'Tis she—'tis she—and again Ranald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and +the heart of the hunter burns within him like a new-stirred fire. Shrill +as the eagle's cry disturbed in his eyrie, he sends a shout down the +glen—and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last at his +side. Panting and speechless she stands—and then dizzily sinks on his +breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face +all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not falling but driven—for the +day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the skies are now +lowering savage symptoms of a fast-coming night-storm.</p> + +<p>Bare is poor Flora's head, and sorely drenched her hair, that an hour or +two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the +warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had +kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would +the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in +his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! "Oh! Flora! +if you would not fear to stay here by yourself—under the protection of +God, who surely will not forsake you—soon will I go and come from the +place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we +may be able to outlive the hurricane—you wrapped up in them—and +folded—O my dearest sister—in my arms!"—"I will go with you down the +glen, Ranald!" and she left his breast—but, weak as a day-old lamb, +tottered and sank down on the snow. The cold—intense as if the air were +ice—had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race; and +it was manifest that here she must be for the night—to live or to die. +And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while +the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring +long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a +sea-born tempest from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both knew the tide +was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow-blasts from afar; and +from the opposite quarter of the sky an inland<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> tempest was raging to +meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all +hands they were environed with death.</p> + +<p>"I will go—and, till I return, leave you with God."—"Go, Ranald!" and +he went and came—as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings!</p> + +<p>Miles away—and miles back had he flown—and an hour had not been with +his going and his coming—but what a dreary wretchedness meanwhile had +been hers! She feared that she was dying—that the cold snow-storm was +killing her—and that she would never more see Ranald, to say to him +farewell. Soon as he was gone, all her courage had died. Alone, she +feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus +miserably to die. He came—and her whole being was changed. Folded up in +both the plaids, she felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me—kiss me, Ranald—for +your love—great as it is—is not as my love. You must never forget me, +Ranald—when your poor Flora is dead."</p> + +<p>Religion with these two young creatures was as clear as the light of the +Sabbath-day—and their belief in heaven just the same as in earth. The +will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parents' +will—and the same was their loving obedience to its decrees. If she was +to die—supported now by the presence of her brother—Flora was utterly +resigned; if she were to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms +of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes—ceased +breathing—and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell +around them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, thinking that she +was dead.</p> + +<p>"Wretched sinner that I am!—my wicked madness brought her here to die +of cold!" And he smote his breast—and tore his hair—and feared to look +up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm.</p> + +<p>All at once, without speaking a word, Ranald lifted Flora in his arms, +and walked away up the glen—here almost narrowed into a pass. +Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that +of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly +remembered, were but a short way off—whether or not they had any roof, +he had forgotten; but the thought even of such shelter seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> a thought +of salvation. There it was—a snow-drift at the opening that had once +been a door—snow up the holes once windows—the wood of the roof had +been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if +they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was +all trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low +lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the +hurricane, and that all huddled together looked on him as on the +shepherd come to see how they were faring in the storm.</p> + +<p>And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms. +All colour—all motion—all breath seemed to be gone—and yet something +convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, +but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung as a +sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in +cruel weather—some pine-branches left by the woodcutters who had felled +the few trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that +corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there +with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of +his distracted heart might be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse. +The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, +and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place +in which it seemed possible that she might revive—miserable as it was +with mire-mixed snow—and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And +she did revive—and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be +not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the afternoon—night-like though +it was—and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red +returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death +away.</p> + +<p>"Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I dreamt to-night he was perishing +in the snow!"—"Flora, fear not—God is with us." "Wild swans, they say, +are come to Loch-Phoil—let us go, Ranald, and see them—but no +rifle—for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where +they lay bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way +beneath the increasing weight;—but there it still hung—though the +drift came over their feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing +upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> am overcome with drowsiness, and +fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me—and what noise is +this in our house?"—"Fear not—fear not, Flora—God is with us." +"Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm! +Oh! I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these +Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep—which soon becomes that +of death.</p> + +<p>Night itself came—but Flora and Ranald knew it not—and both lay now +motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions—though earth-born, +heavenly all—pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last +despair—had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the +brave boy—who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a +fever—with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore +afraid of some nameless ill, had submitted to lay down his head beside +his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and +all its storms!</p> + +<p>Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco—and +they were among the happiest of the humbly happy, blessing this the +birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet +songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran—and tender thoughts of +her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to +their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own +ghosts, and all its own ghost-like visitings, and they had seen their +Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the +quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too Love, who starts at +shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to +realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the +dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left +them in the morning—night had come, and he and Flora were not +there—but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their +infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed +their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had +laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by +bringing back to them Flora on her birthday—and, strange though it +afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear +from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay +down in untroubled sleep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p> + +<p>And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good +or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? +As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the +inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's +House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions +where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the +long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buachaille-Etive and the Black +Mount, towards the lone House of Dalness, that lives in everlasting +shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred +frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength—and then away over the +drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with their sheep-dogs +scouring the loose snows—in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his +head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the Correi where last +he tasted blood. All "plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds +laughed at the storm—and hark! you hear the bagpipe play—the music the +Highlanders love both in war and in peace.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"They think then of the ourie cattle,<br /></span> +<span class="i12">And silly sheep;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night—for the snow-storm will +sweep her out of heaven—up the mountain and down the glen they go, +marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at +nightfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth +where once stood the old Grove of Pines. Following the dogs, who know +their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now +close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so—and why howls +Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead +body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest, when the +antlers went by! Not dead—nor dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in +both is frozen—and will the iced blood in their veins ever again be +thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the roofless ruin—and the frightened sheep +know not what is the terrible Shape that is howling there. But a man +enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of them +at the doorway—and then lifts up the other; and, by the flash of a +rifle, they see that it is Ranald Cameron and Flora Macdonald, +seemingly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds +burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured +that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not +there—and licks the face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to his +eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their +plaids—how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the +field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and +wounded, they bore away the shattered body—yet living—of the youthful +warrior, who had shown that of such a Clan, he was worthy to be the +Chief.</p> + +<p>The storm was with them all the way down the glen—nor could they have +heard each other's voices had they spoke—but mutely they shifted the +burden from strong hand to hand—thinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of +what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind +people walk through what to them is the night of crowded +daystreets—unpausing turn round corners—unhesitatingly plunge down +steep stairs—wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life—and +reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For +God is with the blind. So is he with all who walk on works of mercy. +This saving band had no fear—and therefore there was no danger—on the +edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the +mountains shown momentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful +night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow +at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The +dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did +not deceive them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct were guides +that erred not, and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves did +Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way, as +if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting +their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges +were—stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the +wild-fowl feed. And thus Instinct, and Reason, and Faith conducted the +saving band along—and now they are at Glenco—and at the door of the +Hut.</p> + +<p>To life were brought the dead; and there at midnight sat they up like +ghosts. Strange seemed they—for a while—to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> each other's eyes—and at +each other they looked as if they had forgotten how dearly once they +loved. Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each other's faces, +thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. "Flora!" said +Ranald—and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, +reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom +they had put their trust had sent them deliverance. Flora, too, knew her +parents, who were on their knees—and she strove to rise up and kneel +down beside them—but she was powerless as a broken reed—and when she +thought to join with them in thanksgiving, her voice was gone. Still as +death sat all the people in the hut—and one or two who were fathers +were not ashamed to weep.</p> + +<p>Who were they—the solitary pair—all alone by themselves save a small +image of her on whose breast it lay—whom—seven summers after—we came +upon in our wanderings, before their Shieling in Correi-Vollach at the +foot of Ben Chrulas, who sees his shadow in a hundred lochs? Who but +Ranald and Flora!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Nay, dry up—Daughter of our Age, dry up thy tears! and we shall set a +vision before thine eyes to fill them with unmoistened light.</p> + +<p>Oft before have those woods and waters—those clouds and mountains—that +sun and sky, held thy spirit in Elysium,—thy spirit, that then was +disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glory of the elements. +<span class="smcap">'Tis Windermere—Windermere</span>! Never canst thou have forgotten those more +than fortunate—those thrice-blessed Isles! But when last we saw them +within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, summer suns had overloaded +them with beauty, and they stooped their flowers and foliage down to the +blushing, the burning deep, that glowed in its transparency with other +groves as gorgeous as themselves, the whole mingling mass of reality and +of shadow forming one creation. But now, lo! Windermere in Winter. All +leafless now the groves that girdled her as if shifting rainbows were in +love perpetually letting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. Gone +now are her banks of emerald that carried our calm gazings with them, +sloping away back into the cerulean sky. Her mountains, shadowy in +sunshine, and seeming restless as seas, where are they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> now?—The +cloud-cleaving cliffs that shot up into the blue region where the +buzzard sailed? All gone. But mourn not for that loss. Accustom thine +eye—and through it thy soul, to that transcendent substitution, and +deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou ever the bosom of the Lake +hushed into profounder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides through the +sunshine—no clanking oar is heard leaving or approaching cape, point, +or bay—no music of voice, stop, or string, wakens the sleeping echoes. +How strangely dim and confused on the water the fantastic frostwork +imagery, yet more steadfastly hanging there than ever hung the banks of +summer! For all one sheet of ice, now clear as the Glass of Glamoury in +which that lord of old beheld his Geraldine—is Windermere, the +heaven-loving and the heaven-beloved. Not a wavelet murmurs in all her +bays, from the sylvan Brathay to where the southern straits narrow into +a river—now chained too the Leven on his sylvan course towards that +perilous Estuary afar off raging on its wreck-strewn sands. The frost +came after the last fall of snow—and not a single flake ever touched +that surface; and now that you no longer miss the green twinkling of the +large July leaves, does not imagination love those motionless frozen +forests, cold but not dead, serene but not sullen, inspirative in the +strangeness of their appareling of wild thoughts about the scenery of +foreign climes, far away among the regions of the North, where Nature +works her wonders aloof from human eyes, and that wild architect Frost, +during the absence of the sun, employs his night of months in building +and dissolving his ice-palaces, magnificent beyond the reach of any +power set to work at the bidding of earth's crowned and sceptred kings? +All at once a hundred houses, high up among the hills, seem on fire. The +setting sun has smitten them, and the snow-tracts are illuminated by +harmless conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted up by a lurid +splendour, in its strong suddenness sublime. But look, look we beseech +you, at the sun—the sunset—the sunset region—and all that kindred and +corresponding heaven, effulgent where a minute ago lay in its cold +glitter the blue bosom of the lake. Who knows the laws of light and the +perpetual miracle of their operation? God—not thou. The snow-mountains +are white no more, but gorgeous in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> colouring as the clouds. Lo! +Pavey-Ark—magnificent range of cliffs—seeming to come forward, while +you gaze!—How it glows with a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers +decked the precipice in that delicate splendour! Langdale-Pikes, +methinks, are tinged with finest purple, and the thought of violets is +with us as we gaze on the tinted bosom of the mountains dearest to the +setting sun. But that long broad slip of orange-coloured sky is +yellowing with its reflection almost all the rest of our Alps—all but +yon stranger—the summit of some mountain belonging to another +region—ay—the Great Gabel—silent now as sleep—when last we clomb his +cliffs, thundering in the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud he +stands pallid like a ghost. Beyond the reach of the setting sun he lours +in his exclusion from the rejoicing light, and imagination personifying +his solitary vastness into forsaken life, pities the doom of the forlorn +Giant. Ha! just as the eye of day is about to shut, one smile seems sent +afar to that lonesome mountain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his +forehead.</p> + +<p>On which of the two sunsets art thou now gazing? Thou who art to our old +loving eyes so like the "mountain nymph, sweet Liberty?" On the sunset +in the heaven—or the sunset in the lake? The divine truth is—O +Daughter of our Age!—that both sunsets are but visions of our own +spirits. Again both are gone from the outward world—and nought remains +but a forbidding frown of the cold bleak snow. But imperishable in thy +imagination will both sunsets be—and though it will sometimes retire +into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there among the unsuspected +treasures of forgotten imagery that have been unconsciously accumulating +there since first those gentle eyes of thine had perfect vision given to +their depths—yet mysteriously brought back from vanishment by some one +single silent thought, to which power has been yielded over that bright +portion of the Past, will both of them sometimes reappear to thee in +solitude—or haply when in the very heart of life. And then surely a few +tears will fall for sake of him—then no more seen—by whose side thou +stoodest, when that double sunset enlarged thy sense of beauty, and made +thee in thy father's eyes the sweetest—best—and brightest +poetess—whose whole life is musical inspiration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>—ode, elegy, and hymn, +sung not in words but in looks—sigh-breathed or speechlessly distilled +in tears flowing from feelings the farthest in this world from grief.</p> + +<p>So much, though but little, for the beautiful—with, perhaps, a tinge of +the sublime. Are the two emotions different and distinct—think'st thou, +O! metaphysical critic of the gruesome countenance—or modifications of +one and the same? 'Tis a puzzling question—and we, Sphinx, might wait +till doomsday, before you, Œdipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly +a Rose is one thing and Mount Ætna is another—an antelope and an +elephant—an insect and a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun—a little +lucid well in which the fairies bathe, and the Polar Sea in which +Leviathan is "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait"—the jewelled +finger of a virgin bride, and grim Saturn with his ring—the upward eye +of a kneeling saint, and a comet "that from his horrid hair shakes +pestilence and war." But let the rose bloom on the mouldering ruins of +the palace of some great king—among the temples of Balbec or Syrian +Tadmor—and in its beauty, methinks, 'twill be also sublime. See the +antelope bounding across a raging chasm—up among the region of eternal +snows on Mont Blanc—and deny it, if you please—but assuredly we think +that there is sublimity in the fearless flight of that beautiful +creature, to whom nature grudged not wings, but gave instead the power +of plumes to her small delicate limbs, unfractured by alighting among +the pointed rocks. All alone, by your single solitary self, in some +wide, lifeless desert, could you deny sublimity to the unlooked-for hum +of the tiniest insect, or to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his +gauze-wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to quench your thirst in +that little lucid well where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the +image of the evening star shining in some strange subterranean world? We +suspect that you would hold in your breath, and swear devoutly that it +was sublime. Dead on the very evening of her marriage day is that virgin +bride whose delicacy was so beautiful; and as she lies in her white +wedding garments that serve for a shroud, that emblem of eternity and of +eternal love, the ring, upon her finger—with its encased star shining +brightly now that her eyes, once stars, are closed—would, methinks, be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> +sublime to all Christian hearts. In comparison with all these beautiful +sublimities, Mount Ætna, the elephant, the man-of-war, Leviathan +swimming the ocean-stream, Saturn with his ring, and with his horrid +hair the comet—might be all less than nothings. Therefore beauty and +sublimity are twin-feelings—one and the same birth—seldom +inseparable;—if you still doubt it, become a fire-worshipper, and sing +your morning and evening orisons to the rising and the setting sun.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>THE HOLY CHILD.</h2> + + +<p>This house of ours is a prison—this Study of ours a cell. Time has laid +his fetters on our feet—fetters fine as the gossamer, but strong as +Samson's ribs, silken-soft to wise submission, but to vain impatience +galling as cankered wound that keeps ceaselessly eating into the bone. +But while our bodily feet are thus bound by an inevitable and inexorable +law, our mental wings are free as those of the lark, the dove, or the +eagle—and they shall be expanded as of yore, in calm or tempest, now +touching with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved earth, and now +aspiring heavenwards, beyond the realms of mist and cloud, even unto the +very core of the still heart of that otherwise unapproachable sky which +graciously opens to receive us on our flight, when, disencumbered of the +burden of all grovelling thoughts, and strong in spirituality, we exult +to soar</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Beyond this visible diurnal sphere,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>nearing and nearing the native region of its own incomprehensible being.</p> + +<p>Now touching, we said, with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved +earth! How sweet that attraction to imagination's wings! How delightful +in that lower flight to skim along the green ground, or as now along the +soft-bosomed beauty of the virgin snow! We were asleep all night +long—sound asleep as children—while the flakes were falling, "and soft +as snow on snow" were all the descendings of our untroubled dreams. The +moon and all her stars were willing that their lustre should be veiled +by that peaceful shower; and now the sun, pleased with the purity of the +morning earth, all white as innocence, looks down from heaven with a +meek unmelting light, and still leaves undissolved the stainless +splendour. There is Frost in the air—but he "does his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> spiriting +gently," studding the ground-snow thickly with diamonds, and shaping the +tree-snow according to the peculiar and characteristic beauty of the +leaves and sprays, on which it has alighted almost as gently as the dews +of spring. You know every kind of tree still by its own spirit showing +itself through that fairy veil—momentarily disguised from +recognition—but admired the more in the sweet surprise with which again +your heart salutes its familiar branches, all fancifully ornamented with +their snow-foliage, that murmurs not like the green leaves of summer, +that like the yellow leaves of autumn strews not the earth with decay, +but often melts away into changes so invisible and inaudible, that you +wonder to find that it is all vanished, and to see the old tree again +standing in its own faint-green glossy bark, with its many million buds, +which perhaps fancy suddenly expands into a power of umbrage +impenetrable to the sun in Scorpio.</p> + +<p>A sudden burst of sunshine! bringing back the pensive spirit from the +past to the present, and kindling it, till it dances like light +reflected from a burning mirror. A cheerful Sun-scene, though almost +destitute of life. An undulating Landscape, hillocky and hilly, but not +mountainous, and buried under the weight of a day and night's incessant +and continuous snow-fall. The weather has not been windy—and now that +the flakes have ceased falling, there is not a cloud to be seen, except +some delicate braidings here and there along the calm of the Great Blue +Sea of Heaven. Most luminous is the sun, yet you can look straight on +his face, almost with unwinking eyes, so mild and mellow is his large +light as it overflows the day. All enclosures have disappeared, and you +indistinctly ken the greater landmarks, such as a grove, a wood, a hall, +a castle, a spire, a village, a town—the faint haze of a far-off and +smokeless city. Most intense is the silence; for all the streams are +dumb, and the great river lies like a dead serpent in the strath. Not +dead—for, lo! yonder one of his folds glitters—and in the glitter you +see him moving—while all the rest of his sullen length is palsied by +frost, and looks livid and more livid at every distant and more distant +winding. What blackens on that tower of snow? Crows roosting innumerous +on a huge tree—but they caw not in their hunger. Neither sheep nor +cattle are to be seen or heard—but they are cared for;—the folds and +the farmyards are all full of life—and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> ungathered stragglers are +safe in their instincts. There has been a deep fall—but no storm—and +the silence, though partly that of suffering, is not that of death. +Therefore, to the imagination, unsaddened by the heart, the repose is +beautiful. The almost unbroken uniformity of the scene—its simple and +grand monotony—lulls all the thoughts and feelings into a calm, over +which is breathed the gentle excitation of a novel charm, inspiring many +fancies, all of a quiet character. Their range, perhaps, is not very +extensive, but they all regard the home-felt and domestic charities of +life. And the heart burns as here and there some human dwelling +discovers itself by a wreath of smoke up the air, or as the +robin-redbreast, a creature that is ever at hand, comes flitting before +your path with an almost pert flutter of his feathers, bold from the +acquaintanceship he has formed with you in severer weather at the +threshold or window of the tenement, which for years may have been the +winter sanctuary of the "bird whom man loves best," and who bears a +Christian name in every clime he inhabits. Meanwhile the sun waxes +brighter and warmer in heaven—some insects are in the air, as if that +moment called to life—and the mosses that may yet be visible here and +there along the ridge of a wall or on the stem of a tree, in variegated +lustre frost-brightened, seem to delight in the snow, and in no other +season of the year to be so happy as in winter. Such gentle touches of +pleasure animate one's whole being, and connect, by many a fine +association, the emotions inspired by the objects of animate and of +inanimate nature.</p> + +<p>Ponder on the idea—the emotion of purity—and how finely soul-blent is +the delight imagination feels in a bright hush of new-fallen snow! Some +speck or stain—however slight—there always seems to be on the most +perfect whiteness of any other substance—or "dim suffusion veils" it +with some faint discolour—witness even the leaf of the lily or the +rose. Heaven forbid that we should ever breathe aught but love and +delight in the beauty of these consummate flowers! But feels not the +heart, even when the midsummer morning sunshine is melting the dews on +their fragrant bosoms, that their loveliness is "of the earth +earthy"—faintly tinged or streaked, when at the very fairest, with a +hue foreboding languishment and decay? Not the less for its sake are +those soulless flowers dear to us—thus owning kindred with them whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> +beauty is all soul enshrined for a short while on that perishable face. +Do we not still regard the insensate flowers—so emblematical of what, +in human life, we do most passionately love and profoundly pity—with a +pensive emotion, often deepening into melancholy that sometimes, ere the +strong fit subsides, blackens into despair! What pain doubtless was in +the heart of the Elegiac Poet of old, when he sighed over the transitory +beauty of flowers—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Conquerimur natura brevis quam gratia Florum!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But over a perfectly pure expanse of night-fallen snow, when unaffected +by the gentle sun, the first fine frost has encrusted it with small +sparkling diamonds, the prevalent emotion is Joy. There is a charm in +the sudden and total disappearance even of the grassy green. All the +"old familiar faces" of nature are for a while out of sight, and out of +mind. That white silence shed by heaven over earth carries with it, far +and wide, the pure peace of another region—almost another life. No +image is there to tell of this restless and noisy world. The +cheerfulness of reality kindles up our reverie ere it becomes a dream; +and we are glad to feel our whole being complexioned by the passionless +repose. If we think at all of human life, it is only of the young, the +fair, and the innocent. "Pure as snow," are words then felt to be most +holy, as the image of some beautiful and beloved being comes and goes +before our eyes—brought from a far distance in this our living world, +or from a distance further still in a world beyond the grave—the image +of virgin growing up sinlessly to womanhood among her parents' prayers, +or of some spiritual creature who expired long ago, and carried with her +her native innocence unstained to heaven.</p> + +<p>Such Spiritual Creature—too spiritual long to sojourn below the +skies—wert Thou—whose rising and whose setting—both most +starlike—brightened at once all thy native vale, and at once left it in +darkness. Thy name has long slept in our heart—and there let it sleep +unbreathed—even as, when we are dreaming our way through some solitary +place, without naming it we bless the beauty of some sweet wildflower, +pensively smiling to us through the snow.</p> + +<p>The Sabbath returns on which, in the little kirk among the hills, we saw +thee baptised. Then comes a wavering glimmer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> of five sweet years, that +to Thee, in all their varieties, were but as one delightful season, one +blessed life—and, finally, that other Sabbath, on which, at thy own +dying request—between services thou wert buried.</p> + +<p>How mysterious are all thy ways and workings, O gracious Nature! Thou +who art but a name given by us to the Being in whom all things are and +have life. Ere three years old, she, whose image is now with us, all +over the small sylvan world that beheld the evanescent revelation of her +pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of Sin—inherited +from those who disobeyed in Paradise—seemed from her fair clay to have +been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. +So pious people almost believed, looking on her so unlike all other +children, in the serenity of that habitual smile that clothed the +creature's countenance with a wondrous beauty, at an age when on other +infants is but faintly seen the dawn of reason, and their eyes look +happy just like the thoughtless flowers. So unlike all other +children—but unlike only because sooner than they she seemed to have +had given to her, even in the communion of the cradle, an intimation of +the being and the providence of God. Sooner, surely, than through any +other clay that ever enshrouded immortal spirit, dawned the light of +religion on the face of the "Holy Child."</p> + +<p>Her lisping language was sprinkled with words alien from common +childhood's uncertain speech, that murmurs only when indigent nature +prompts; and her own parents wondered whence they came, when first they +looked upon her kneeling in an unbidden prayer. As one mild week of +vernal sunshine covers the braes with primroses, so shone with fair and +fragrant feelings—unfolded, ere they knew, before her parents' +eyes—the divine nature of her who for a season was lent to them from +the skies. She learned to read out of the Bible—almost without any +teaching—they knew not how—just by looking gladly on the words, even +as she looked on the pretty daisies on the green—till their meanings +stole insensibly into her soul, and the sweet syllables, succeeding each +other on the blessed page, were all united by the memories her heart had +been treasuring every hour that her father or her mother had read aloud +in her hearing from the Book of Life. "Suffer little children to come +unto me, and forbid them not, for of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> such is the kingdom of +heaven"—how wept her parents, as these the most affecting of our +Saviour's words dropt silver-sweet from her lips, and continued in her +upward eyes among the swimming tears!</p> + +<p>Be not incredulous of this dawn of reason, wonderful as it may seem to +you, so soon becoming morn—almost perfect daylight—with the "Holy +Child." Many such miracles are set before us—but we recognise them not, +or pass them by with a word or a smile of short surprise. How leaps the +baby in its mother's arms, when the mysterious charm of music thrills +through its little brain! And how learns it to modulate its feeble +voice, unable yet to articulate, to the melodies that bring forth all +round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows what then may be the +thoughts and feelings of the infant awakened to the sense of a new +world, alive through all its being to sounds that haply glide past our +ears unmeaning as the breath of the common air! Thus have mere infants +sometimes been seen inspired by music, till, like small genii, they +warbled spell-strains of their own, powerful to sadden and subdue our +hearts. So, too, have infant eyes been so charmed by the rainbow +irradiating the earth, that almost infant hands have been taught, as if +by inspiration, the power to paint in finest colours, and to imitate +with a wondrous art, the skies so beautiful to the quick-awakened spirit +of delight. What knowledge have not some children acquired, and gone +down scholars to their small untimely graves! Knowing that such things +have been—are—and will be—why art thou incredulous of the divine +expansion of soul, so soon understanding the things that are divine—in +the "Holy Child?"</p> + +<p>Thus grew she in the eye of God, day by day waxing wiser and wiser in +the knowledge that tends towards the skies; and, as if some angel +visitant were nightly with her in her dreams, awakening every morn with +a new dream of thought, that brought with it a gift of more +comprehensive speech. Yet merry she was at times with her companions +among the woods and braes, though while they all were laughing, she only +smiled; and the passing traveller, who might pause for a moment to bless +the sweet creatures in their play, could not but single out one face +among the many fair, so pensive in its paleness, a face to be +remembered, coming from afar, like a mournful thought upon the hour of +joy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></p> + +<p>Sister or brother of her own had she none—and often both her +parents—who lived in a hut by itself up among the mossy stumps of the +old decayed forest—had to leave her alone—sometimes even all the day +long from morning till night. But she no more wearied in her +solitariness than does the wren in the wood. All the flowers were her +friends—all the birds. The linnet ceased not his song for her, though +her footsteps wandered into the green glade among the yellow broom, +almost within reach of the spray from which he poured his melody—the +quiet eyes of his mate feared her not when her garments almost touched +the bush where she brooded on her young. Shyest of the winged sylvans, +the cushat clapped not her wings away on the soft approach of such +harmless footsteps to the pine that concealed her slender nest. As if +blown from heaven, descended round her path the showers of the painted +butterflies, to feed, sleep, or die—undisturbed by her—upon the +wildflowers—with wings, when motionless, undistinguishable from the +blossoms. And well she loved the brown, busy, blameless bees, come +thither for the honey-dews from a hundred cots sprinkled all over the +parish, and all high overhead sailing away at evening, laden and +wearied, to their straw-roofed steps in many a hamlet garden. The leaf +of every tree, shrub, and plant, she knew familiarly and lovingly in its +own characteristic beauty; and she was loth to shake one dewdrop from +the sweetbrier rose. And well she knew that all nature loved in +return—that they were dear to each other in their innocence—and that +the very sunshine, in motion or in rest, was ready to come at the +bidding of her smiles. Skilful those small white hands of hers among the +reeds and rushes and osiers—and many a pretty flower-basket grew +beneath their touch, her parents wondering on their return home to see +the handiwork of one who was never idle in her happiness. Thus +early—ere yet but five years old—did she earn her mite for the +sustenance of her own beautiful life. The russet garb she wore she +herself had won—and thus Poverty, at the door of that hut, became even +like a Guardian Angel, with the lineaments of heaven on her brow, and +the quietude of heaven beneath her feet.</p> + +<p>But these were but her lonely pastimes, or gentle taskwork self-imposed +among her pastimes, and itself the sweetest of them all, inspired by a +sense of duty that still brings with it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> its own delight, and hallowed +by religion, that even in the most adverse lot changes slavery into +freedom—till the heart, insensible to the bonds of necessity, sings +aloud for joy. The life within the life of the "Holy Child," apart from +even such innocent employments as these, and from such recreations as +innocent, among the shadows and the sunshine of those sylvan haunts, was +passed—let us fear not to say the truth, wondrous as such worship was +in one so very young—was passed in the worship of God; and her +parents—though sometimes even saddened to see such piety in a small +creature like her, and afraid, in their exceeding love, that it +betokened an early removal from this world of one too perfectly pure +ever to be touched by its sins and sorrows—forbore, in an awful pity, +ever to remove the Bible from her knees, as she would sit with it there, +not at morning and at evening only, or all the Sabbath long, as soon as +they returned from the kirk, but often through all the hours of the +longest and sunniest weekdays, when, had she chosen to do so, there was +nothing to hinder her from going up the hill-side, or down to the little +village, to play with the other children, always too happy when she +appeared—nothing to hinder her but the voice she heard speaking in that +Book, and the hallelujahs that, at the turning over of each blessed +page, came upon the ear of the "Holy Child" from white-robed saints all +kneeling before His throne in heaven.</p> + +<p>Her life seemed to be the same in sleep. Often at midnight, by the light +of the moon shining in upon her little bed beside theirs, her parents +leant over her face, diviner in dreams, and wept as she wept, her lips +all the while murmuring, in broken sentences of prayer, the name of Him +who died for us all. But plenteous as were her penitential +tears—penitential in the holy humbleness of her stainless spirit, over +thoughts that had never left a dimming breath on its purity, yet that +seemed in those strange visitings to be haunting her as the shadows of +sins—soon were they all dried up in the lustre of her returning smiles. +Waking, her voice in the kirk was the sweetest among many sweet, as all +the young singers, and she the youngest far, sat together by themselves, +and within the congregational music of the psalm uplifted a silvery +strain that sounded like the very spirit of the whole, even like +an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>gelic harmony blent with a mortal song. But sleeping, still more +sweetly sang the "Holy Child;" and then, too, in some diviner +inspiration than ever was granted to it while awake, her soul composed +its own hymns, and set the simple scriptural words to its own mysterious +music—the tunes she loved best gliding into one another, without once +ever marring the melody, with pathetic touches interposed never heard +before, and never more to be renewed! For each dream had its own +breathing, and many-visioned did then seem to be the sinless creature's +sleep.</p> + +<p>The love that was borne for her all over the hill-region, and beyond its +circling clouds, was almost such as mortal creatures might be thought to +feel for some existence that had visibly come from heaven. Yet all who +looked on her, saw that she, like themselves, was mortal, and many an +eye was wet, the heart wist not why, to hear such wisdom falling from +such lips; for dimly did it prognosticate, that as short as bright would +be her walk from the cradle to the grave. And thus for the "Holy Child" +was their love elevated by awe, and saddened by pity—and as by herself +she passed pensively by their dwellings, the same eyes that smiled on +her presence, on her disappearance wept.</p> + +<p>Not in vain for others—and for herself, oh! what great gain!—for those +few years on earth did that pure spirit ponder on the word of God! Other +children became pious from their delight in her piety—for she was +simple as the simplest among them all, and walked with them hand in +hand, nor declined companionship with any one that was good. But all +grew good by being with her—and parents had but to whisper her name, +and in a moment the passionate sob was hushed—the lowering brow +lighted—and the household in peace. Older hearts owned the power of the +piety so far surpassing their thoughts; and time-hardened sinners, it is +said, when looking and listening to the "Holy Child," knew the error of +their ways, and returned to the right path as at a voice from heaven.</p> + +<p>Bright was her seventh summer—the brightest, so the aged said, that had +ever, in man's memory, shone over Scotland. One long, still, sunny, blue +day followed another, and in the rainless weather, though the dews kept +green the hills,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> the song of the streams was low. But paler and paler, +in sunlight and moonlight, became the sweet face that had been always +pale; and the voice that had been always something mournful, breathed +lower and sadder still from the too perfect whiteness of her breast. No +need—no fear—to tell her that she was about to die. Sweet whispers had +sung it to her in her sleep—and waking she knew it in the look of the +piteous skies. But she spoke not to her parents of death more than she +had often done—and never of her own. Only she seemed to love them with +a more exceeding love—and was readier, even sometimes when no one was +speaking, with a few drops of tears. Sometimes she disappeared—nor, +when sought for, was found in the woods about the hut. And one day that +mystery was cleared; for a shepherd saw her sitting by herself on a +grassy mound in a nook of the small solitary kirkyard, a long mile off +among the hills, so lost in reading the Bible, that shadow or sound of +his feet awoke her not; and, ignorant of his presence, she knelt down +and prayed—for a while weeping bitterly—but soon comforted by a +heavenly calm—that her sins might be forgiven her!</p> + +<p>One Sabbath evening, soon after, as she was sitting beside her parents +at the door of their hut, looking first for a long while on their faces, +and then for a long while on the sky, though it was not yet the stated +hour of worship, she suddenly knelt down, and leaning on their knees, +with hands clasped more fervently than her wont, she broke forth into +tremulous singing of that hymn which from her lips they never heard +without unendurable tears:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The hour of my departure's come,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I hear the voice that calls me home;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At last, O Lord, let trouble cease,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And let thy servant die in peace!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They carried her fainting to her little bed, and uttered not a word to +one another till she revived. The shock was sudden, but not unexpected, +and they knew now that the hand of death was upon her, although her eyes +soon became brighter and brighter, they thought, than they had ever been +before. But forehead, cheeks, lips, neck, and breast, were all as white, +and, to the quivering hands that touched them, almost as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> cold, as snow. +Ineffable was the bliss in those radiant eyes; but the breath of words +was frozen, and that hymn was almost her last farewell. Some few words +she spake—and named the hour and day she wished to be buried. Her lips +could then just faintly return the kiss, and no more—a film came over +the now dim blue of her eyes—the father listened for her breath—and +then the mother took his place, and leaned her ear to the unbreathing +mouth, long deluding herself with its lifelike smile; but a sudden +darkness in the room, and a sudden stillness, most dreadful both, +convinced their unbelieving hearts at last, that it was death.</p> + +<p>All the parish, it may be said, attended her funeral—for none stayed +away from the kirk that Sabbath—though many a voice was unable to join +in the Psalm. The little grave was soon filled up—and you hardly knew +that the turf had been disturbed beneath which she lay. The afternoon +service consisted but of a prayer—for he who ministered had loved her +with love unspeakable—and, though an old grey-haired man, all the time +he prayed he wept. In the sobbing kirk her parents were sitting, but no +one looked at them—and when the congregation rose to go, there they +remained sitting—and an hour afterwards, came out again into the open +air, and parting with their pastor at the gate, walked away to their +hut, overshadowed with the blessing of a thousand prayers.</p> + +<p>And did her parents, soon after she was buried, die of broken hearts, or +pine away disconsolately to their graves? Think not that they, who were +Christians indeed, could be guilty of such ingratitude. "The Lord +giveth, and the Lord taketh away—blessed be the name of the Lord!" were +the first words they had spoke by that bedside; during many, many long +years of weal or woe, duly every morning and night, these same blessed +words did they utter when on their knees together in prayer—and many a +thousand times besides, when they were apart, she in her silent hut, and +he on the hill—neither of them unhappy in their solitude, though never +again, perhaps, was his countenance so cheerful as of yore—and though +often suddenly amidst mirth or sunshine their eyes were seen to +overflow. Happy had they been—as we mortal beings ever can be +happy—during many pleasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> years of wedded life before she had been +born. And happy were they—on to the verge of old age—long after she +had here ceased to be. Their Bible had indeed been an idle Book—the +Bible that belonged to "the Holy Child,"—and idle all their kirk-goings +with "the Holy Child," through the Sabbath-calm—had those intermediate +years not left a power of bliss behind them triumphant over death and +the grave.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> +</div> +<h2>OUR PARISH.</h2> + + +<p>Nature must be bleak and barren indeed to possess no power over the +young spirit daily expanding on her breast into new susceptibilities, +that ere long are felt to fill life to overflowing with a perpetual +succession—an infinite series—of enjoyments. Nowhere is she destitute +of that power—not on naked sea-shores—not in central deserts. But our +boyhood was environed by the beautiful—its home was among moors and +mountains, which people in towns and cities called dreary, but which we +knew to be the cheerfullest and most gladsome parish in all braid +Scotland—and well it might be, for it was in her very heart. Mountains +they seemed to us in those days, though now we believe they are only +hills. But such hills!—undulating far and wide away till the highest +even on clear days seemed to touch the sky, and in cloudy weather were +verily a part of heaven. Many a valley, and many a glen—and many a +hollow that was neither valley nor glen—and many a flat, of but a few +green acres, which we thought plains—and many a cleft waterless with +its birks and breckans, except when the rains came down, and then they +all sang a new song in merry chorus—and many a wood, and many a grove, +for it takes no great number of trees to make a wood, and four firs by +themselves in a lonesome place are a grove—and many a single sycamore, +and many a single ash, kenned afar-off above its protected cottage—and +many an indescribable spot of scenery at once pastoral and agricultural +and sylvan, where, if house there was, you hardly knew it among the +rocks;—so was Our Parish, which people in towns and cities called +dreary, composed; but the composition itself,—as well might we hope +thus to show it to your soul's eye, as by a few extracts however fine, +and a few criticisms however exquisite, to give you the idea of a +perfect poem.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span></p> + +<p>But we have not given you more than a single hint of a great part of our +Parish—the Moor. It was then ever so many miles long, and ever so many +miles broad, and nobody thought of guessing how many miles round—but +some twenty years ago it was absolutely measured to a rood by a +landlouper of a land-surveyor—distributed—drained—enclosed—utterly +ruined for ever. No, not for ever. Nature laughs to scorn acts of +Parliament, and we predict that in a quarter of a century she will +resume her management of that moor. We rejoice to hear that she is +beginning already to take lots of it into her own hands. Wheat has no +business there, and should keep to the carses. In spring, she takes him +by the braird till he looks yellow in the face long before his time—in +summer, by the cuff of the neck till he lies down on his back and rots +in the rain—in autumn, by the ears, and rubs him against the grain till +he expires as fushionless as the windle-straes with which he is +interlaced—in winter, she shakes him in the stook till he is left but a +shadow which pigeons despise. See him in stack at Christmas, and you +pity the poor straw. Here and there bits of bear or big, and barley, she +permits to flourish—nor is she loth to see the flowers and shaws and +apples on the poor man's plant, the life-sustaining potato—which none +but political economists hate and all Christians love. She is not so +sure about turnips, but as they are a green crop she leaves them to the +care of the fly. But where have her gowans gone? There they still are in +flocks, which no cultivation can scatter or eradicate—inextinguishable +by all the lime that was ever brought unslokened from all the kilns that +ever glowed—by all the dung that was ever heaped up fresh and fuming +from all the Augean stables in the land. Yet her heart burns within her +to behold, even in the midst of what she abhors, the large dew-loved +heads of clover whitening or reddening, or with their rival colours +amicably intermingled, a new birth glorious in the place of reedy marish +or fen where the catspaws nodded—and them she will retain unto herself +when once more she shall rejoice in her Wilderness Restored.</p> + +<p>And would we be so barbarous as to seek to impede the progress of +improvement, and to render agriculture a dead letter? We are not so +barbarous, nor yet so savage. We love civilised life, of which we have +long been one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> smaller but sincerest ornaments. But agriculture, +like education, has its bounds. It is, like it, a science, and woe to +the country that encourages all kinds of quacks. Cultivate a moor! +educate a boor! First understand the character of Clods and Clodhoppers. +To say nothing now of the Urbans and Suburbans—a perilous people—yet +of great capabilities; for to discuss that question would lead us into +lanes; and as it is a long lane that has never a turning, for the +present we keep in the open air, and abstain from wynds. We are no +enemies to poor soils, far less to rich ones ignorantly and stupidly +called poor, which under proper treatment effuse riches; but to expect +to extract from paupers <i>a return</i> for the expenditure squandered by +miserly greed on their reluctant bottoms, cold and bare, is the insanity +of speculation, and such schemers deserve being buried along with their +capital in quagmires. Heavens! how they—the quagmires—suck in the +dung! You say they don't suck it in—well, then, they spew it out—it +evaporates—and what is the worth of weeds? Lime whitens a moss, that is +true, but so does snow. Snow melts—what becomes of lime no mortal knows +but the powheads—them it poisons, and they give up the ghost. Drains +are dug deep nowadays—and we respect Mr Johnstone. So are gold mines. +But from gold mines that precious metal—at a great expense, witness its +price—is exterred; in drains that precious metal, witness wages, is +interred, and then it becomes <i>squash</i>. Stirks starve—heifers are hove +with windy nothing—with oxen frogs compete in bulk with every prospect +of a successful issue, and on such pasturage where would be the virility +of the Bulls of Bashan?</p> + +<p>If we be in error, we shall be forgiven at least by all lovers of the +past, and what to the elderly seems the olden time. Oh, misery for that +Moor! Hundreds, thousands, loved it as well as we did; for though it +grew no grain, many a glorious crop it bore—shadows that glided like +ghosts—the giants stalked—the dwarfs crept; yet sometimes were the +dwarfs more formidable than the giants, lying like blackamoors before +your very feet, and as you stumbled over them in the dark, throttling as +if they sought to strangle you, and then leaving you at your leisure to +wipe from your mouth the mire by the light of a straggling +star;—sunbeams that wrestled with the shadows in the gloom—sometimes +clean flung, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> then they cowered into the heather, and insinuated +themselves into the earth; sometimes victorious, and then how they +capered in the lift, ere they shivered away—not always without a hymn +of thunder—in behind the clouds, to refresh themselves in their +tabernacle in the sky.</p> + +<p>Won't you be done with this Moor, you monomaniac? Not for yet a little +while—for we see Kitty North all by himself in the heart of it, a boy +apparently about the age of twelve, and happy as the day is long, though +it is the Longest Day in all the year. Aimless he seems to be, but all +alive as a grasshopper, and is leaping like a two-year-old across the +hags. Were he to tumble in, what would become of the personage whom +Kean's Biographer would call "the future Christopher the First?" But no +fear of that—for at no period of his life did he ever overrate his +powers—and he knows now his bound to an inch. Cap, bonnet, hat, he has +none; and his yellow hair, dancing on his shoulders like a mane, gives +him the look of a precocious lion's whelp. Leonine too in his aspect, +yet mild withal; and but for a certain fierceness in his gambols, you +would not suspect he was a young creature of prey. A fowling-piece is in +his left hand, and in his right a rod. And what may he be purposing to +shoot? Anything full-fledged that may play whirr or sugh. Good +grouse-ground this; but many are yet in the egg, and the rest are but +cheepers—little bigger than the small brown moorland bird that goes +birling up with its own short epithalamium, and drops down on the rushes +still as a stone. Them he harms not on their short flight—but marking +them down, twirls his piece like a fugleman, and thinks of the Twelfth. +Safer methinks wilt thou be a score or two yards further off, O Whaup! +for though thy young are yet callow, Kit is beginning to think they may +shift for themselves; and that long bill and that long neck, and those +long legs and that long body—the <i>tout-ensemble</i> so elegant, so +graceful, and so wild—are a strong temptation to the trigger;—click— +clack—whizz—phew—fire—smoke and thunder—head-over-heels topsy-turvy +goes the poor curlew—and Kit stands over him leaning on his +single-barrel, with a stern but somewhat sad aspect, exulting in his +skill, yet sorry for the creature whose wild cry will be heard no more.</p> + +<p>'Tis an oasis in the desert. That green spot is called a quag<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>mire—an +ugly name enough—but itself is beautiful; for it diffuses its own light +round about it, like a star vivifying its halo. The sward encircling it +is firm—and Kit lays him down, heedless of the bird, with eyes fixed on +the oozing spring. How fresh the wild cresses! His very eyes are +drinking! His thirst is at once excited and satisfied by looking at the +lustrous leaves—composed of cooling light without spot or stain. What +ails the boy? He covers his face with his hands, and in the silence +sighs. A small white hand, with its fingers spread, rises out of the +spring, as if it were beckoning to heaven in prayer—and then is sucked +slowly in again out of sight with a gurgling groan. The spring so fresh +and fair—so beautiful with its cresses and many another water-loving +plant beside—is changed into the same horrid quagmire it was that +day—a holiday—three years ago—when racing in her joy Amy Lewars +blindly ran into it, among her blithe companions, and suddenly perished. +Childhood, they say, soon dries its tears, and soon forgets. God be +praised for all his goodness! true it is that on the cheek of childhood +tears are dried up as if by the sunshine of joy stealing from on +high—but, God be praised for all his goodness! false it is that the +heart of childhood has not a long memory, for in a moment the mournful +past revives within it—as often as the joyful—sadness becomes sorrow, +sorrow grief, and grief anguish, as now it is with the solitary boy +seated by that ghastly spot in the middle of the wide moor.</p> + +<p>Away he flies, and he is humming a tune. But what's this? A merry-making +in the moor? Ay, merry-making; but were you to take part in it, you +would find it about the hardest work that ever tried the strength of +your spine. 'Tis a party of divot-flaughters. The people in the parish +are now digging their peats, and here is a whole household, provident of +winter, borrowing fuel from the moss. They are far from coals, and wood +is intended by nature for other uses; but fire in peat she dedicated to +the hearth, and there it burns all over Scotland, Highland and Lowland, +far and near, at many a holy altar. 'Tis the mid-day hour of rest. Some +are half asleep, some yet eating, some making a sort of under-voiced, +under-hand love. "Mr North! Mr North! Mr North!" is the joyful +cry—horny-fists first—downy-fists next—and after heartiest greeting, +Master Kitty is installed, enthroned on a knowe, Master of the +Ceremonies—and in good time gives them a song. Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> "galliards cry a +hall, a hall," and hark and lo! preluded by six smacks—three foursome +reels! "Sic hirdum-dirdum and sic din," on the sward, to a strathspey +frae the fiddle o' auld blin' Hugh Lyndsay, the itinerant musicianer, +who was noways particular about the number of his strings, and when one, +or even two snapped, used to play away at pretty much of the same tune +with redoubled energy and variations. He had the true old Niel-Gow yell, +and had he played on for ever, folk would have danced on for ever till +they had all, one after the other, dropped down dead. What steps!</p> + +<p>"Who will try me," cries Kit, "at loup-the-barrows?" "I will," quoth +Souple Tam. The barrows are laid—how many side by side we fear to +say—for we have become sensitive on our veracity—on a beautiful piece +of springy turf, an inclined plane with length sufficient for a run; and +while old and young line both sides of the lane near the loup, stript to +the sark and the breeks, Souple Tam, as he fondly thinks, shows the way +to win, and clears them all like a frog or a roebuck. "Clear the way, +clear the way for the callant, Kit's comin!" cries Ebenezer Brackenrigg, +the Elder, a douce man now, but a deevil in his youth, and like "a waff +o' lichtnin'" past their een, Kit clears the barrows a foot beyond +Souple Tam, and at the first fly is declared victor by acclamation. Oh, +our unprophetic soul, did the day indeed dawn—many long years after +this our earliest great conquest yet traditional in the parish—that ere +nightfall witnessed our defeat by—a tailor! The Flying Tailor of +Ettrick—the Lying Shepherd thereof—would they had never been born—the +one to triumph and the other to record that triumph;—yet let us be just +to the powers of our rival—for though all the world knows we were lame +when we leapt him, long past our prime, had been wading all day in the +Yarrow with some stones-weight in our creel, and allowed him a yard,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Great must I call him, for he vanquish'd <span class="smcap">me</span>."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What a place at night was that Moor! At night! That is a most +indeterminate mode of expression, for there are nights of all sorts and +sizes, and what kind of a night do we mean? Not a mirk night, for no man +ever walked that moor on a mirk night, except one, and he, though +blind-fou, was drowned. But a night may be dark without being mirk, with +or without stars; and on many such a night have we, but not always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> +alone—who was with us you shall never know—threaded our way with no +other clue than that of evolving recollections, originally notices, +across that wilderness of labyrinths, fearlessly, yet at times with a +beating heart. Our companion had her clue too, one in her pocket, of +blue worsted, with which she kept in repair all the stockings belonging +to the family, and one in her memory, of green ethereal silk, which, +finer far than any spider's web, she let out as she tript along the +moor, and on her homeward way she felt, by some spiritual touch, the +invisible lines, along which she retript as safely as if they had been +moonbeams. During such journeyings we never saw the moor, how then can +you expect us to describe it?</p> + +<p>But oftener we were alone. Earthquakes abroad are dreadful occurrences, +and blot out the obituary. But here they are so gentle that the heedless +multitude never feel them, and on hearing you tell of them, they +incredulously stare. That moor made no show of religion, but was a +Quaker. We had but to stand still for five minutes or so, no easy matter +then, for we were more restless than a wave, or to lie down with our ear +to the ground, and the spirit was sure to move the old Quaker, who +forthwith began to preach and pray and sing Psalms. How he moaned at +times as if his heart were breaking! At times, as if some old forgotten +sorrow were recalled, how he sighed! Then recovering his +self-possession, as if to clear his voice, he gave a hem, and then a +short nasty cough like a patient in a consumption. Now all was hush, and +you might have supposed he had fallen asleep, for in that hush you heard +what seemed an intermitting snore. When all at once, whew, whew, whew, +as if he were whistling, accompanied with a strange rushing sound as of +diving wings. That was in the air—but instantly after you heard +something odder still in the bog. And while wondering, and of your +wonder finding no end, the ground, which a moment before had felt firm +as a road, began to shrink, and sink, and hesitate, and hurry, and +crumble, and mumble all around you, and close up to your very feet—the +quagmires gurgling as if choked—and a subterranean voice distinctly +articulating Oh! Oh! Oh!</p> + +<p>We have heard of people who pretend not to believe in ghosts—geologists +who know how the world was created; but will they explain that moor? And +how happened it that only by nights and dark nights it was so haunted? +Beneath a wakeful moon and unwinking stars it was silent as a frozen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> +sea. You listened then, and heard but the grass growing, and beautiful +grass it was, though it was called coarse, and made the sweetest-scented +hay. What crowds of bum-bees' bikes—foggies—did the scythe not reveal +as it heaped up the heavy swathes—three hundred stone to the acre—by +guess,—for there was neither weighing nor measuring there then-a-days, +but all was in the lump—and there the rush-roped stacks stood all the +winter through, that they might be near the "eerie outlan' cattle," on +places where cart-wheel never circled, nor axle-tree creaked—nor ever +car of antique make trailed its low load along—for the horse would have +been laired. We knew not then at all—and now we but imperfectly +know—the cause of the Beautiful. Then we believed the Beautiful to be +wholly extern; something we had nothing to do with but to look at, and +lo! it shone divinely there! Happy creed if false—for in it, with +holiest reverence, we blamelessly adored the stars. There they were in +millions as we thought—every one brighter than another, when by chance +we happened to fix on any individual among them, that we might look +through its face into its heart. All above gloriously glittering, all +below a blank. Our body here, our spirit there—how mean our birthplace, +our death-home how magnificent! "Fear God and keep his commandments," +said a small still voice—and we felt that if He gave us strength to +obey that law, we should live for ever beyond all those stars.</p> + +<p>But were there no Lochs in our parish? Yea. Four. The Little Loch—the +White Loch—the Black Loch—and the Brother Loch. Not a tree on the +banks of any one of them—yet he had been a blockhead who called them +bare. Had there been any need for trees, Nature would have sown them on +hills she so dearly loved. Nor sheep nor cattle were ever heard to +complain of those pastures. They bleated and they lowed as cheerily as +the moorland birdies sang—and how cheerily that was nobody knew who had +not often met the morning on the brae, and shaken hands with her the +rosy-fingered like two familiar friends. No want of lown places there, +in which the creatures could lie with wool or hair unruffled among +surrounding storms. For the hills had been dropt from the hollow of His +hand who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"—and even high up, where +you might see tempest-stricken stones—some of them like pillars—but +placed not there by human art—there were cosy bields in wildest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> +weather, and some into which the snow was never known to drift, green +all the winter through—perennial nests. Such was the nature of the +region where lay our Four Lochs. They were some quarter of a mile—some +half mile—and some whole mile—not more—asunder; but there was no +great height—and we have a hundred times climbed the highest—from +which they could be all seen at once—so cannily were they embosomed, so +needed not to be embowered.</p> + +<p>The <span class="smcap">Little Loch</span> was the rushiest and reediest little rascal that ever +rustled, and he was on the very edge of the Moor. That he had fish we +all persisted in believing, in spite of all the successless angling of +all kinds that from time immemorial had assailed his sullen depths;—but +what a place for pow-heads! One continued bank of them—while yet they +were but eyes in the spawn—encircled it instead of water-lilies; and at +"the season of the year," by throwing in a few stones, you awoke a +croaking that would have silenced a rookery. In the early part of the +century a pike had been seen basking in the shallows, by eye-measurement +about ten feet long—but fortunately he had never been hooked, or the +consequences would have been fatal. We have seen the Little Loch alive +with wild-ducks; but it was almost impossible by position to get a shot +at them—and quite impossible, if you did, to get hold of the slain. Fro +himself—the best dog that ever dived—was baffled by the multiplicity +of impediments and obstructions—and at last refused to take the +water—sat down and howled in spiteful rage. Yet Imagination loved the +Little Loch, and so did Hope. We have conquered it in sleep both with +rod and gun—the weight of bag and basket has wakened us out of dreams +of murder that never were realised—yet once, and once only, in it we +caught an eel, which we skinned, and wore the shrivel for many a day +round our ankle—nor is it a vain superstition—to preserve it from +sprains. We are willing the Little Loch should be drained; but you would +have to dig a fearsome trench, for it used to have no bottom. A party of +us—six—ascertained that fact, by heaving into it a stone which +six-and-thirty schoolboys of this degenerate age could not have lifted +from its moss-bed—and though we watched for an hour, not a bubble rose +to the surface. It used sometimes to boil like a pot on breathless days, +for events happening in foreign countries disturbed the spring, and the +torments it suffered thousands of fathoms below, were mani<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>fested above +in turbulence that would have drowned a school-boy's skiff.</p> + +<p>The <span class="smcap">White Loch</span>—so called from the silver sand of its shores—had +likewise its rushy and reedy bogs; but access to every part of the main +body was unimpeded, and you waded into it, gradually deeper and deeper, +with such a delightful descent, that up to the arm-pits and then to the +chin, you could keep touching the sand with your big-toe, till you +floated away off at the nail, out of your depth, without for a little +while discovering that it was incumbent on you, for sake of your +personal safety, to take to regular swimming—and then how buoyant was +the milk-warm water, without a wave but of your own creating, as the +ripples went circling away before your breast or your breath! It was +absolutely too clear—for without knitting your brows you could not see +it on bright airless days—and wondered what had become of it—when all +at once, as if it had been that very moment created out of nothing, +there it was! endued with some novel beauty—for of all the lochs we +ever knew—and to be so simple too—the White Loch had surely the +greatest variety of expression,—but all within the cheerful—for +sadness was alien altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere for +ever wore a smile. Swans—but that was but once—our own eyes had seen +on it—and were they wild or were they tame swans, certain it is they +were great and glorious and lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow. +No house was within sight, and they had nothing to fear—nor did they +look afraid—sailing in the centre of the loch—nor did we see them fly +away—for we lay still on the hill-side till in the twilight we should +not have known what they were, and we left them there among the shadows +seemingly asleep. In the morning they were gone, and perhaps making love +in some foreign land.</p> + +<p>The <span class="smcap">Black Loch</span> was a strange misnomer for one so fair—for black we +never saw him, except it might be for an hour or so before thunder. If +he really was a loch of colour the original taint had been washed out of +him, and he might have shown his face among the purest waters of Europe. +But then he was deep; and knowing that, the natives had named him, in no +unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black Loch. We have seen wild-duck +eggs five fathoms down so distinctly that we could count them—and +though that is not a bad dive, we have brought them up, one in our mouth +and one in each hand, the tenants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> of course dead—nor can we now +conjecture what sank them there; but ornithologists see unaccountable +sights, and they only who are not ornithologists disbelieve Audubon and +Wilson. Two features had the Black Loch which gave it to our eyes a +pre-eminence in beauty over the other three—a tongue of land that +half-divided it, and never on hot days was without some cattle grouped +on its very point, and in among the water—and a cliff on which, though +it was not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. Yet in misty +weather, when its head was hidden, the shrill cry seemed to come from a +great height. There were some ruins too—tradition said of some church +or chapel—that had been ruins long before the establishment of the +Protestant faith. But they were somewhat remote, and likewise somewhat +imaginary, for stones are found lying strangely distributed, and those +looked to our eyes not like such as builders use, but to have been +dropped there most probably from the moon.</p> + +<p>But the best beloved, if not the most beautiful, of them all was the +<span class="smcap">Brother Loch</span>. It mattered not what was his disposition or genius, every +one of us boys, however different might be our other tastes, preferred +it far beyond the rest, and for once that we visited any of them we +visited it twenty times, nor ever once left it with disappointed hopes +of enjoyment. It was the nearest, and therefore most within our power, +so that we could gallop to it on shank's naigie, well on in the +afternoon, and enjoy what seemed a long day of delight, swift as flew +the hours, before evening prayers. Yet was it remote enough to make us +always feel that our race thither was not for every day—and we seldom +returned home without an adventure. It was the largest too by far of the +Four—and indeed its area would have held the waters of all the rest. +Then there was a charm to our heart as well as our imagination in its +name—for tradition assigned it on account of three brothers that +perished in its waters—and the same name for the same reason belongs to +many another loch—and to one pool on almost every river. But above all +it was the Loch for angling, and we long kept to perch. What schools! +Not that they were of a very large size—though pretty well—but +hundreds all nearly the same size gladdened our hearts as they lay, at +the close of our sport, in separate heaps on the greensward shore, more +beautiful out of all sight than your silver or golden fishes in a +glass-vase, where one appears to be twenty,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> and the delusive voracity +is all for a single crumb. No bait so killing as cowshairn-mauks, fresh +from their native bed, scooped out with the thumb. He must have been a +dear friend to whom in a scarcity, by the water-side, when the corks +were dipping, we would have given a mauk. No pike. Therefore the trout +were allowed to gain their natural size—and that seemed to be about +five pounds—adolescents not unfrequent swam two or three—and you +seldom or never saw the smaller fry. But few were the days "good for the +Brother Loch." Perch rarely failed you, for by perseverance you were +sure to fall in with one circumnatatory school or other, and to do +murderous work among them with the mauk, from the schoolmaster himself +inclusive down to the little booby of the lowest form. Not so with +Trout. We have angled ten hours a-day for half a-week (during the +vacance), without ever getting a single rise, nor could even that be +called bad sport, for we lived in momentary expectation, mingled with +fear, of a monster. Better far from sunrise to sunset never to move a +fin, than oh! me miserable! to hook a huge hero with shoulders like a +hog—play him till he comes floating side up close to the shore, and +then to feel the feckless fly leave his lip and begin gamboling in the +air, while he wallops away back into his native element, and sinks +utterly and for evermore into the dark profound. Life loses at such a +moment all that makes life desirable—yet strange! the wretch lives +on—and has not the heart to drown himself, as he wrings his hands and +curses his lot and the day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that ghastly +fit of fancy is gone by, and we imagine one of those dark, scowling, +gusty, almost tempestuous days, "prime for the Brother Loch." No glare +or glitter on the water, no reflection of fleecy clouds, but a +black-blue undulating swell, at times turbulent—with now and then a +breaking wave,—that was the weather in which the giants fed, showing +their backs like dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and sucking in +the red heckle among your very feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then +the fly was all the rage. This is a mystery, for you could do nothing +with the worm. Oh! that we had then known the science of the spinning +minnow! But we were then but an apprentice—who are now Emeritus Grand +Master. Yet at this distance of time—half a century and more—it is +impious to repine. Gut was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> not always to be got; and on such days a +three-haired snood did the business—for they were bold as lions, and +rashly rushed on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted body with +star-y-pointed tail maddened them with desire—no dallying with the gay +deceiver—they licked him in—they gorged him—and while satiating their +passion got involved in inextricable fate. You have seen a single strong +horse ploughing up-hill. How he sets his brisket to it—and snooves +along—as the furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the gliding +share. So snooved along the Monarch of the Mere—or the +heir-apparent—or heir-presumptive—or some other branch of the royal +family—while our line kept steadily cutting the waves, and our rod +enclosing some new segment of the sky.</p> + +<p>But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even +angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion +wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle +alway," thinks the wise boy—"off to some other game we altogether +flew." Never were there such hills for hare and hounds. There couched +many a pussy—and there Bob Howie's famous Tickler—the Grew of all +Grews—first stained his flews in the blood of the Fur. But there is no +coursing between April and October—and during the intervening months we +used to have many a hunt on foot, without dogs, after the leverets. We +all belonged to the High School indeed, and here was its playground. +Cricket we had then never heard of; but there was ample room and verge +enough for football. Our prime delight, however, was the chase. We were +all in perpetual training, and in such wind that there were no bellows +to mend after a flight of miles. We circled the Lochs. Plashing through +the marishes we strained winding up the hill-sides, till on the cairn +called a beacon that crowned the loftiest summit of the range, we stood +and waved defiance to our pursuers scattered wide and far below, for +'twas a Deer Hunt. Then we became cavaliers. We caught the long-maned +and long-tailed colts, and mounting bare-backed, with rush helmets and +segg sabres charged the nowte till the stirks were scattered, and the +lowing lord of herds himself taken captive, as he stood pawing in a nook +with his nose to the ground and eyes of fire. That was the riding-school +in which we learned to witch the world with noble horsemanship. We thus +got confirmed in that fine, easy, unconstrained, natural seat, which we +carried with us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> into the saddle when we were required to handle the +bridle instead of the mane. 'Tis right to hold on by the knees, but +equally so to hold on by the calves of the legs and the heels. The +modern system of turning out the toes, and sticking out the legs as if +they were cork or timber, is at once dangerous and ridiculous; hence in +our cavalry the men got unhorsed in every charge. On pony-back we used +to make the soles of our feet smack together below the belly, for +quadruped and biped were both unshod, and hoof needed no iron on that +stoneless sward. But the biggest fun of all was to "grup the auld mare," +and ride her sextuple, the tallest boy sitting on the neck, and the +shortest on the rump with his face to the tail, and holding on by that +fundamental feature by which the urchin tooled her along as by a tiller. +How the silly foal whinnied, as with light-gathered steps he accompanied +in circles his populous parent, and seemed almost to doubt her identity, +till one by one we slipped off over her hurdies, and let him take a +suck! But what comet is yon in the sky—"with fear of change perplexing +mallards?" A Flying Dragon. Of many degrees is his tail, with a tuft +like that of Taurus terrified by the sudden entrance of the Sun into his +sign. Up goes Sandy Donald's rusty and rimless beaver as a messenger to +the Celestial. He obeys, and stooping his head, descends with many +diverse divings, and buries his beak in the earth. The feather kite +quails and is cowed by him of paper, and there is a scampering of cattle +on a hundred hills.</p> + +<p>The Brother Loch saw annually another sight, when on the Green-Brae was +pitched a Tent—a snow-white Pyramid, gathering to itself all the +sunshine. There lords and ladies, and knights and squires, celebrated +Old May-day, and half the parish flocked to the Festival. The Earl of +Eglintoun, and Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, and old Sir John of Polloc, and +Pollock of that Ilk, and other heads of illustrious houses, with their +wives and daughters, a beautiful show, did not disdain them of low +degree, but kept open table in the moor; and would you believe it, +high-born youths and maidens ministered at the board to cottage lads and +lasses, whose sunburnt faces hardly dared to smile, under awe of that +courtesy—yet whenever they looked up there was happiness in their eyes. +The young ladies were all arrayed in green; and after the feast, they +took bows and arrows in their lily hands, and shot at a target in a +style that would have gladdened the heart of Maid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> Marian—nay, of Robin +himself;—and one surpassing bright—the Star of Ayr—she held a hawk on +her wrist—a tercel gentle—after the fashion of the olden time; and +ever as she moved her arm you heard the chiming of silver bells. And her +brother—gay and gallant as Sir Tristrem—he blew his tasseled bugle—so +sweet, so pure, so wild the music, that when he ceased to breathe, the +far-off repeated echoes, faint and dim, you thought died away in heaven +like an angel's voice.</p> + +<p>Was it not a Paragon of a Parish? But we have not told you one half of +its charms. There was a charm in every nook—and Youth was the master of +the spell. Small magicians were we in size, but we were great in might. +We had but to open our eyes in the morning, and at one look all nature +was beautiful. We have said nothing about the Burns. The chief was the +Yearn—endearingly called the Humbie, from a farm near the Manse, and +belonging to the minister. Its chief source was, we believe, the Brother +Loch. But it whimpled with such an infantine voice from the lucid bay, +which then knew nor sluice nor dam, that for a while it was scarcely +even a rill, and you had to seek for it among the heather. In doing so, +ten to one some brooding birdie fluttered off her nest—but not till +your next step would have crushed them all—or perhaps—but he had no +nest there—a snipe. There it is—betrayed by a line of livelier +verdure. Ere long it sparkled within banks of its own and "braes of +green bracken," and as you footed along, shoals of minnows, and perhaps +a small trout or two, brastled away to the other side of the shallow, +and hid themselves in the shadows. 'Tis a pretty rill now—nor any +longer mute; and you hear it murmur. It has acquired confidence on its +course, and has formed itself into its first pool—a waterfall, three +feet high, with its own tiny rocks, and a single birk—no, it is a +rowan—too young yet to bear berries—else might a child pluck the +highest cluster. Imperceptibly, insensibly, it grows just like life. The +Burn is now in his boyhood; and a bold, bright boy he is—dancing and +singing—nor heeding which way he goes along the wild, any more than +that wee rosy-cheeked, flaxen-headed girl seems to heed, who drops you a +curtsy, and on being asked by you, with your hand on her hair, where she +is going, answers wi' a soft Scottish accent—ah! how sweet—"Owre the +hill to see my Mither." Is that a house? No—a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> fauld. For this is the +Washing-Pool. Look around you, and you never saw such perfectly white +sheep. They are Cheviots; for the black-faces are on the higher hills to +the north of the moor. We see a few rigs of flax—and "lint is in the +bell"—the steeping whereof will sadly annoy the bit burnie, but poor +people must spin—and as this is not the season, we will think of +nothing that can pollute his limpid waters. Symptoms of husbandry! +Potato-shaws luxuriating on lazy-beds, and a small field with alternate +rigs of oats and barley. Yes, that is a house—"an auld clay +bigging,"—in such Robin Burns was born—in such was rocked the cradle +of Pollok. We think we hear two separate liquid voices—and we are +right—for from the flats beyond Floak, and away towards Kingswells, +comes another yet wilder burnie, and they meet in one at the head of +what you would probably call a meadow, but which we call a holm. There +seems to be more arable land hereabouts than a stranger could have any +idea of; but it is a long time since the ploughshare traced those almost +obliterated furrows on the hill-side; and such cultivation is now wisely +confined, you observe, to the lower lands. We fear the Yearn—for that +is his name now—heretofore he was anonymous—is about to get flat. But +we must not grudge him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, lulled by +the murmur of millions of humble-bees—we speak within bounds—on their +honied flowerage. We are confusing the seasons, for a few minutes ago we +spoke of "lint being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream how +sweetly do the seasons all slide into one another! After sleep comes +play, and see and hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling over rocks, +nor will rest in any one linn, but impatient of each beautiful prison in +which one would think he might lie a willing thrall, hurries on as if he +were racing against time, nor casts a look at the human dwellings now +more frequent near his sides. But he will be stopped by-and-by, whether +he will or no; for there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a mill. +But the wheel is at rest—the sluice on the lade is down—with the lade +he has nothing more to do than to fill it; and with undiminished volume +he wends round the miller's garden—you see Dusty Jacket is a +florist—and now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any rocks. 'Tis +but some hundred yards across from bank to brae—and as you angle along +on either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating high overhead;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> for +though, the braes are steep, they are all intersected with sheep-walks, +and ever and anon among the broom and the brackens are little platforms +of close-nibbled greensward, yet not bare—and nowhere else is the +pasturage more succulent—nor do the young creatures not care to taste +the primroses, though were they to live entirely upon them, they could +not keep down the profusion—so thickly studded in places are the +constellations—among sprinklings of single stars. Here the +hill-blackbird builds—and here you know why Scotland is called the +lintie's land. What bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. But +here there are no larks—a little further down and you will hear one +ascending or descending over almost every field of grass or of the +tender braird. Down the dell before you, flitting from stone to stone, +on short flight seeks the water-pyet—seemingly a witless creature with +its bonnie white breast—to wile you away from the crevice, even within +the waterfall, that holds its young—or with a cock of her tail she dips +and disappears. There is grace in the glancing sandpiper—nor, though +somewhat fantastical, is the water-wagtail inelegant—either belle or +beau—an outlandish bird that makes himself at home wherever he goes, +and, vain as he looks, is contented if but one admire him in a solitary +place—though it is true that we have seen them in half-dozens on the +midden in front of the cottage door. The blue slip of sky overhead has +been gradually widening, and the dell is done. Is that snow? A +bleachfield. Lasses can bleach their own linen on the green near the +pool, "atween twa flowery braes," as Allan has so sweetly sung, in his +truly Scottish pastoral "The Gentle Shepherd." But even they could not +well do without bleachfields on a larger scale, else dingy would be +their smocks and their wedding-sheets. Therefore there is beauty in a +bleachfield, and in none more than in Bell's-Meadows. But where is the +Burn? They have stolen him out of his bed, and, alas! nothing but +stones! Gather up your flies, and away down to yonder grove. There he is +like one risen from the dead; and how joyful his resurrection! All the +way from this down to the Brigg o' Humbie the angling is admirable, and +the burn has become a stream. You wade now through longer +grass—sometimes even up to the knees; and half-forgetting pastoral +life, you ejaculate "Speed the plough!" Whitewashed houses—but still +thatched—look down on you from among trees, that shelter them in +front;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> while behind is an encampment of stacks, and on each side a line +of offices, so that they are snug in every wind that blows. The Auld +Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for though the turn was perilous sharp, +time had so coloured it that in a sunny shower we have mistaken it for a +rainbow. That's Humbie House, God bless it! and though we cannot here +with our bodily sense see the Manse, with our spiritual eye we can see +it anywhere. Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The wind we see +has shifted to the south; and ere we reach the Cart, we shall have to +stuff our pockets. The Cart!—ay, the river Cart—not that on which +pretty Paisley stands, but the Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for +sake of Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at Glasgow, we visited +every Play-Friday, and deepened the ivy on its walls with our first +sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn becomes even sylvan now; and +though still sweet its murmurs to our ear, they no longer sink into our +hearts. So let it mingle with the Cart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and +the Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the river becomes a firth, +and the firth the sea;—but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the +vision that showed us the solitary region dearest to our imagination and +our hearts, and opening them on completion of the charm that works +within the spirit when no daylight is there, rejoice to find ourselves +again sole-sitting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch.</p> + +<p>Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish—pray give us one of yours, +that both may gain by comparison. But is ours a true picture? True as +Holy Writ—false as any fiction in an Arabian tale. How is this? +Perception, memory, imagination, are all moods—states of mind. But +mind, as we said before, is one substance, and matter another; and mind +never deals with matter without metamorphosing it like a mythologist. +Thus truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, become all one and the +same; for they are so essentially blended, that we defy you to show what +is biblical—what apocryphal—and what pure romance. How we transpose +and dislocate while we limn in aerial colours! Where tree never grew we +drop it down centuries old—or we tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, +and steep what was once his shadow in sunshine—hills sink at a touch, +or at a beck mountains rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the +spirit of the place remains the same; for in that spirit has imagination +all along been working, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> boon nature smiles on her son as he +imitates her creations—but "hers are heavenly, his an empty dream."</p> + +<p>Where lies Our Parish, and what is its name? Seek, and you will find it +either in Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. As for its name, +men call it the Mearns. M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter—and in +Scotland he has no superior—will perhaps accompany you to what once was +the Moor. All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there still; but the +Little Loch transmogrified into an auxiliar appurtenance to some cursed +Wark—the Brother Loch much exhausted by daily drains upon him by we +know not what wretch—the White Loch <i>larched</i>—and the Black Loch of a +ghastly blue, cruelly cultivated all close round the brim. From his moor</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The parting genius is with sighing sent;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but sometimes, on blear-eyed days, he is seen disconsolately sitting in +some yet mossy spot among the ruins of his ancient reign. That painter +has studied the aspect of the Old Forlorn, and has shown it more than +once on bits of canvass not a foot long; and such pictures will survive +after the Ghost of the Genius has bade farewell to the ruined solitudes +he had haunted ever since the flood, or been laid beneath the yet +unprofaned Green-Brae, above the Brother Loch, whence we devoutly trust +he will re-issue, though ages may have to elapse, to see all his +quagmires in their primeval glory, and all his hags more hideously +beautiful, as they yawn back again into their former selves, frowning +over the burial in their bottoms of all the harvests that had dared to +ripen above their heads.<br /><br /></p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class="notes"> +Transcriber's Note:<br /> +<br /> +Inconsistent hyphenation was not changed.<br /> +Table of Contents: Corrected 336 to 335<br /> +Page 127: Corrected word order problem<br /> +Page 132: Changed "this to happen her" to "this to happen to her" +</p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, VOLUME I (OF 2)***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 31666-h.txt or 31666-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/6/6/31666">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/6/31666</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution.</p> + + + +<pre> +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a> + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a> + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a> + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** +</pre> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/31666-h/images/north.png b/31666-h/images/north.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..961f4fc --- /dev/null +++ b/31666-h/images/north.png diff --git a/31666.txt b/31666.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2c6e64 --- /dev/null +++ b/31666.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16678 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I +(of 2), by John Wilson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume I (of 2) + + +Author: John Wilson + + + +Release Date: March 16, 2010 [eBook #31666] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, +VOLUME I (OF 2)*** + + +E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Joseph R. Hauser, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 31666-h.htm or 31666-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31666/31666-h/31666-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31666/31666-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + The original text uses macrons (a letter with a bar over + it) in some of the names. These have been replaced with + [=x], where x is the original letter. + + + + + + +RECREATIONS + +OF + +CHRISTOPHER NORTH + + +A New Edition in Two Volumes + +VOL. I. + + + + + + + +William Blackwood and Sons +Edinburgh and London +MDCCCLXVIII + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. I. + + PAGE +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET:-- + FYTTE FIRST, 1 + + FYTTE SECOND, 29 + + FYTTE THIRD, 52 + +TALE OF EXPIATION, 75 + +MORNING MONOLOGUE, 104 + +THE FIELD OF FLOWERS, 121 + +COTTAGES, 135 + +AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY, 179 + +INCH-CRUIN, 231 + +A DAY AT WINDERMERE, 242 + +THE MOORS!-- + PROLOGUE, 262 + + FLIGHT FIRST--GLEN-ETIVE, 290 + + FLIGHT SECOND--THE COVES OF CRUACHAN, 316 + + FLIGHT THIRD--STILL LIFE, 336 + + FLIGHT FOURTH--DOWN RIVER AND UP LOCH, 365 + +HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM, 390 + +THE HOLY CHILD, 410 + +OUR PARISH, 422 + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +Like most of Professor Wilson's miscellaneous writings, the articles +contained in the two following volumes appeared originally in +"Blackwood's Magazine." Having been revised and considerably remodelled +by their Author, they were published in three volumes, 8vo, in 1842, +under the general title, "The Recreations of Christopher North." In the +reprint, the special titles of some of the articles are different from +those which the same papers bear in the Magazine. + + + + +RECREATIONS + +OF + +CHRISTOPHER NORTH. + + + + +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. + +FYTTE FIRST. + + +There is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on +flood, field, and fell. The principles in human nature on which they +depend, are in all the same; but those principles are subject to +infinite modifications and varieties, according to the difference of +individual and national character. All such pastimes, whether followed +merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate means of +sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and knowledge of nature and +nature's laws; nor less, patience, perseverance, courage even, and +bodily strength or activity, while the spirit which animates and +supports them is a spirit of anxiety, doubt, fear, hope, joy, +exultation, and triumph--in the heart of the young a fierce passion--in +the heart of the old a passion still, but subdued and tamed down, +without, however, being much dulled or deadened, by various experience +of all the mysteries of the calling, and by the gradual subsiding of all +impetuous impulses in the frames of all mortal men beyond perhaps +three-score, when the blackest head will be becoming grey, the most +nervous knee less firmly knit, the most steely-springed instep less +elastic, the keenest eye less of a far-keeker, and, above all, the most +boiling heart less like a caldron or a crater--yea, the whole man +subject to some dimness or decay, and, consequently, the whole duty of +man like the new edition of a book, from which many passages that formed +the chief glory of the _editio princeps_ have been expunged--the whole +character of the style corrected without being thereby improved--just +like the later editions of the Pleasures of Imagination, which were +written by Akenside when he was about twenty-one, and altered by him at +forty--to the exclusion or destruction of many most _splendida vitia_, +by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its +brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse--perplexing +critics. + +Now, seeing that such pastimes are in number almost infinite, and +infinite the varieties of human character, pray what is there at all +surprising in your being madly fond of shooting--and your brother Tom +just as foolish about fishing--and cousin Jack perfectly insane on +fox-hunting--while the old gentleman your father, in spite of wind and +weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the +white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire wolds--and uncle Ben, as if +just escaped from Bedlam or St Luke's with Dr Haslam at his heels, or +with a few hundred yards' start of Dr Warburton, is seen galloping, in a +Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian +beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to +be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in +field and forest--"still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by +the name of Escape? + +Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have +thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the +alphabet; yet how many languages--some six thousand we believe, each of +which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you might +as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species +of sportsmen. + +There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound +development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and +deer-stalking--from being, in short, a universal genius in sports and +pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man. + +Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in pastimes. We do +not now speak of marbles--or knuckling down at taw--or trundling a +hoop--or pall-lall--or pitch and toss--or any other of the games of the +school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately +perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus Angling seems the earliest of +them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on +the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited +with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a +yarn-thread--for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut--his +rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his +play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing +had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after +month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul-engrossing +hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug--a tug! +With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, +he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull +away at the monster--and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans +and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far +away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, +two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, +and sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, +holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, +like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush +of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, +up-stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his +hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the +thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw--and at night, +"cabined, cribbed, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep--a +thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams! + +From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful daydream, haunted by +the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality--an art--a science--of +which the flaxen-headed schoolboy feels himself to be master--a mystery +in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now, all alone, in the +power of successful passion, to the distant brook--brook a mile +off--with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a +huge forest of six acres, between and the house in which he is boarded +or was born! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy +shallows--there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The +scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, +disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. +And oh! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the +braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of +sunshine! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two +pieces--yes, his line is of hair twisted--plaited by his own +soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly! +And the Fates, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, +ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the paidler in the +brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at +the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the +bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a +race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots +through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life +expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden +brightens up the sky. _Fortuna favet fortibus_--and with one long pull, +and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve-incher on +the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where +such an exploit was possible, and dashing upon him like an osprey, soars +up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries +off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging +him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him +bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and +feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow +light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly +splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzlingly; but now +the radiance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye +of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of +clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine. + +Springs, summers, autumns, winters--each within itself longer, by many +times longer than the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at last +through one's fingers like a knotless thread--pass over the curled +darling's brow; and look at him now, a straight and strengthy stripling, +in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after +rock-ledge, nor needing aught as he plashes knee-deep, or +waistband-high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of +his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely +seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the +sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown, rod of ash framed by +village wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is +dexterous; but a twenty-feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and +a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line +itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's +proboscis--the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw--from +butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," +the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses +materialised! A fish--fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore +to be woo'd--she is a salmon, therefore to be won"--but shy, timid, +capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any +other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in +spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last; and then +with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead, or worse than dead, +fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the lustre of her beauty, +insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable +things in a world of perishing!--But the salmon has grown sulky, and +must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct +with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver +bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very +head of the waterfall! Give her the butt--give her the butt--or she is +gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep!--Now comes the +trial of your tackle--and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge +of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards--right up the middle of +the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very +course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and +deep--and the line goes steady, boys, steady--stiff and steady as a Tory +in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal +fin--danger in the flap of her tail--and yet may her silver shoulder +shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, +and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now +level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or +obstruction--the coast is clear--no tree-roots here--no floating +branches--for during the night they have all been swept down to the +salt loch. _In medio tutissimas ibis_--ay, now you feel she begins to +fail--the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! +another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to +have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual +Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook!--you in the +tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the +devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?--Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is +that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you +think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tarn Grieve never gruppit sae +heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council.--Curse that collie! +Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks--if +that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, +come bellowing by between us and the river, then, "Madam! all is lost, +except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at +seven. Our will is made--ten thousand to the Foundling--ditto to the +Thames Tunnel--ha--ha--my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss +thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further +resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself +to death! No faith in female--she trusts to the last trial of her +tail--sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle +spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy +planet. Scrope--Bainbridge--Maule--princes among Anglers--oh! that you +were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious +sympathy--far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing +the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow +in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious +vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! +Poor Sandy--why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!--Peter! The +Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with +a swirl--whitening as she nears the sand--there she has it--struck right +into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or +Venus--and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of +beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood! + + "The child is father of the man, + And I would wish my days to be + Bound each to each by natural piety!" + +So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun, +formed of the last year's growth of a branch of the plane-tree--the +beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree--that +stands straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from +afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in +sheltered inland vale, still loving the roof of the fisherman's or +peasant's cottage. + +Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a very musket, such +as soldiers bear--a Christmas present from parent, once a colonel of +volunteers--nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, +formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hinder-end +of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon +tires of such ineffectual trigger--and his soul, as well as his hair, is +set on fire by that extraordinary compound--Gunpowder. He begins with +burning off his eyebrows on the King's birthday; squibs and crackers +follow, and all the pleasures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off +a gun--"and follows to the field some warlike lord"--in hopes of being +allowed to discharge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his +last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking +among the trees. This is his first practice in firearms, and from that +hour he is--a Shooter. + +Then there is in most rural parishes--and of rural parishes alone do we +condescend to speak--a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the +butt--perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is +bought, or borrowed, by the young shooter, who begins firing first at +barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living things--a strange cur, +who, from his lolling tongue, may be supposed to have the hydrophobia--a +cat that has purred herself asleep on the sunny churchyard wall, or is +watching mice at their hole-mouths among the graves--a water-rat in the +mill-lead--or weasel that, running to his retreat in the wall, always +turns round to look at you--a goose wandered from his common in +disappointed love--or brown duck, easily mistaken by the unscrupulous +for a wild one, in pond remote from human dwelling, or on meadow by the +river-side, away from the clack of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, +shouted out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flying +mark to the more advanced class; or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh +of day close to the cottage door among the chickens; or a flock of +pigeons wheeling overhead on the stubble-field, or sitting so thick +together that every stock is blue with tempting plumage. + +But the pistol is discharged for a fowling-piece--brown and rusty, with +a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion +to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up +into the air--and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent +dent in copper metal; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming +swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held sacred, but shot at +on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him--an opinion +strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small +brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the +many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game--and +still more, the long-winged legless black devilet, that, if it falls to +the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the +corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of +cannon-shot, gambols in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a +thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's +flight. It seems to boyish eyes that the creatures near the earth, when +but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers +growing on the coign of vantage: the signal is given to fire; but the +devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips +with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground but a +tiny bit of mossy mortar, inhabited by a spider! + +But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the schoolboy, or rather the +college boy, returning to his rural vacation (for in Scotland college +winters tread close, too close, on the heels of academies), has a gun--a +gun in a case--a double-barrel too--of his own--and is provided with a +licence, probably without any other qualification than that of hit or +miss. On some portentous morning he effulges with the sun in velveteen +jacket and breeches of the same--many-buttoned gaiters, and an +unkerchiefed throat. 'Tis the fourteenth of September, and lo! a +pointer at his heels--Ponto, of course--a game-bag like a beggar's +wallet at his side--destined to be at eve as full of charity--and all +the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see +the sight, would be the "mother that bore him;" the heart of that old +sportsman, his daddy, would sing for joy! The chained mastiff in the +yard yowls his admiration; the servant lasses uplift the pane of their +garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in +their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab Roger, who has been +cleaning out the barn, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and away +go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pupil through the autumnal +rime, off to the uplands, where--for it is one of the earliest of +harvests--there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The +turnip-fields are bright green with hope and expectation--and coveys are +couching on lazy beds beneath the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, +ditch-guarded on either side, shelters its own brood--imagination hears +the whirr shaking the dewdrops from the broom on the brae--and first one +bird and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no +contemptible covey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in clouds, +from the coppice brushwood with here and there an intercepting standard +tree. + +Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or +having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent +nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, +shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his +points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between +those inexorable knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy +enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole +parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts; +and the schoolmaster, fastening a knowing eye on dunce and neerdoweel, +holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the tawes. Frequent flogging +will cow the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels +now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, +rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smelling strongly, he +draws slowly and beautifully, and + + "There fix'd, a perfect semicircle stands." + +Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his eagerness, stumbling among +the stubble, when, hark and lo! the gabble of grey goslings, and the +bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! Bang goes the right-hand barrel +at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be off to the tune of "ower the +hills and far awa'," while the young gentleman, half-ashamed and +half-incensed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the left-hand +barrel, with a highly improper curse, at the father of the feathered +family before him, who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, +throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird of his usual habits, and, +after biting the dust with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, +breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary scene--and leaves himself +to be paid for at the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly +irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long, and not only harmless, +but honourable and useful life. + +It is nearly as impossible a thing as we know, to borrow a dog about the +time the sun has reached his meridian, on the First Day of the +Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into +his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of "tired Nature's sweet +restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a collie, who, from +numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don +in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip-field to +stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no +objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto to +perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in +upon them open-mouthed, despatches them right and left, even like the +famous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westminster. The birds are +bagged with a gentle remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded with a +whang of cheese. Elated by the pressure on his shoulder, the young +gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, like winking, +at every uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle by bringing +down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and, +wearied with such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who +can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he +could kick her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is half +full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the +cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge +of a wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy +sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her brain, and +turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece +of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior pouch of the +jacket, yet unstained by blood, yawns to receive her--and in she goes +plump; paws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all--while Luath, all the way +home to the Mains, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through; for +well he knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy, +whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or +burrowed beneath a snow-wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite +of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory +shot. + +But let us trace no further thus, step by step, the Pilgrim's Progress. +Look at him now--a finished sportsman--on the moors--the bright black +boundless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching away, by long Loch Ericht side, +into the dim and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, over the +bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that the pluffer at partridge-pouts who +had nearly been the death of poor Ponto? Lord Kennedy himself might take +a lesson now from the straight and steady style in which, on the +mountain brow, and up to the middle in heather, he brings his Manton to +the deadly level! More unerring eye never glanced along brown barrel! +Finer forefinger never touched a trigger! Follow him a whole day, and +not one wounded bird. All most beautifully arrested on their flight by +instantaneous death! Down dropped right and left, like lead on the +heather--old cock and hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as +calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from among a pile of plumage. +No random shot within--no needless shot out of distance--covered every +feather before stir of finger--and body, back, and brain, pierced, +broken, shattered! And what perfect pointers! There they stand, still as +death--yet instinct with life--the whole half-dozen! Mungo, the +black-tanned--Don, the red-spotted--Clara, the snow-white--Primrose, the +pale yellow--Basto, the bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many +colours, often seen afar through the mists like a meteor. + +So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's Progress--now briefly for the +Hunter's. Hunting, in this country, unquestionably commences with cats. +Few cottages without a cat. If you do not find her on the mouse watch +at the gable end of the house just at the corner, take a solar +observation, and by it look for her on bank or brae--somewhere about the +premises--if unsuccessful, peep into the byre, and up through a hole +among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is you see her eyes +glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into +the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the +baulks below the kipples. No. Well, then, let your eye travel along the +edge of that little wood behind the cottage--ay, yonder she is!--but she +sees both you and your two terriers--one rough and the other +smooth--and, slinking away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in +among the hazels, she either lies _perdu_, or is up a fir-tree almost as +high as the magpie's or corby's nest. + +Now, observe, shooting cats is one thing, and hunting them is +another--and shooting and hunting, though they may be united, are here +treated separately; so, in the present case, the cat makes her escape. +But get her watching birds--young larks, perhaps, walking on the lea--or +young linnets hanging on the broom--down-by yonder in the holm lands, +where there are no trees, except indeed that one glorious single tree, +the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by Glowrer, and then what a most +capital chase! Stretching herself up with crooked back, as if taking a +yawn--off she jumps, with tremendous spangs, and tail, thickened with +fear and anger, perpendicular. Youf--youf--youf--go the +terriers--head-over-heels perhaps in their fury--and are not long in +turning her--and bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all ablaze and +abristle. A she-devil incarnate! Hark--all at once now strikes up a +trio--Catalani caterwauling the treble--Glowrer taking the bass, and +Tearer the tenor--a cruel concert cut short by a squalling throttler. +Away--away along the holm--and over the knowe--and into the wood--for +lo! the gudewife, brandishing a besom, comes flying demented without her +mutch, down to the murder of her Tabby--her son, a stout stripling, is +seen skirting the potato-field to intercept our flight--and, most +formidable of all foes, the Man of the House himself, in his shirt +sleeves and flail in his hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, +across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off from the Manse. The +hunt's up--and 'tis a capital steeple-chase. Disperse--disperse! Down +the hill, Jack--up the hill, Gill--dive the dell, Kit--thread the wood, +Pat--a hundred yards' start is a great matter--a stern chase is always a +long chase--schoolboys are generally in prime wind--the old man begins +to puff, and blow, and snort, and put his paws to his paunch--the son is +thrown out by a double of dainty Davy's--and the "sair begrutten mither" +is gathering up the torn and tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, +and invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on her pitiless +murderers. Some slight relief to her bursting and breaking heart to vow +that she will make the minister hear of it on the deafest side of his +head--ay, even if she have to break in upon him sitting on Saturday +night, getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in his ain study. + +Now, gentle reader, again observe, that though we have now described, +_con amore_, a most cruel case of cat-killing, in which we certainly did +play a most aggravated part some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we +from recommending such wanton barbarity to the rising generation. We are +not inditing a homily on humanity to animals, nor have we been appointed +to succeed the Rev. Dr Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the +Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual Gibsonian sermon on +that subject--we are simply stating certain matters of fact, +illustrative of the rise and progress of the love of pastime in the +soul, and leave our readers to draw the moral. But may we be permitted +to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often make the most pious men; +that it does not follow, according to the wise saws and modern instances +of prophetic old women of both sexes, that he who in boyhood has worried +a cat with terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on one of his own +species; or that peccadilloes are the progenitors of capital crimes. +Nature allows to growing lads a certain range of wickedness, _sans peur +et sans reproche_. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock +ancient females--to laugh at Quakers--to make mouths at a decent man and +his wife riding double to church--the matron's thick legs ludicrously +bobbing from the pillion, kept firm on Dobbin's rump by her bottom, +"_ponderibus librata suis_,"--to tip the wink to young women during +sermon on Sunday--and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, +whether they will or no, on high-road or by-path--and to perpetrate many +other little nameless enormities. + +No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious +character; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by +pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is +of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that +he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his +dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and +frolic, even when trespasses, are not guilt; and though a cat have nine +lives, she has but one ghost--and that will haunt no house where there +are terriers. What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent, +you would not wish your only boy--your son and heir--the blended image +of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty--to be a smug, +smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his +forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his +white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always +moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his +nose--botanising with his maiden aunts--doing the pretty at tea-tables +with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and +attending to the kettle--telling tales on all naughty boys and +girls--laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny-pig--keeping +all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer--having his own +peg for his uncrushed hat--saying his prayers precisely as the clock +strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's-buff--and +puffed up every Sabbath eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon +memory for a sermon--while all the other boys are scolded for having +fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write +sermons himself at his tender years, nay--even to be able to give you +chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far +that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even +of his Sunday clothes--blotting his copy--impiously pinning pieces of +paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father--going to +the fishing not only without leave, but against orders--bathing in the +forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned--drying powder before the +schoolroom fire, and blowing himself and two crack-skulled cronies to +the ceiling--tying kettles to the tails of dogs--shooting an old woman's +laying hen--galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps--climbing +trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up the +tooth-of-time-indented sides of old castles after wallflowers and +starlings--being run away with in carts by colts against turnpike +gates--buying bad ballads from young gypsy-girls, who, on receiving a +sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change +out of that;"--on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail--a +devil for galloping--not only attending country races for a saddle and +collar, but entering for and winning the prize--dancing like a devil in +barns at kirns--seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming +heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be +involved--fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn +beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen +blue--and, to conclude "this strange eventful history," once brought +home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom, and +found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the +moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate! + +Nay, start not, parental reader--nor, in the terror of anticipation, +send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, +mayhap pursuing even such another career. Trust thou to the genial, +gracious, and benign _vis medicatrix naturae_. What though a few clouds +bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how +splendid the meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight the +beauty of the budding and blowing rose? Look how she revives beneath +dew, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even scarce endure the +lustre! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute the +snow of the swan? They fall off from her expanded wings, and, pure as a +spirit, she soars away, and descends into her own silver lake, stainless +as the water-lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immortal +soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its +nascent state--in this, less favoured than material and immaterial +things that perish? No--it is undergoing endless transmigrations,--every +hour a being different, yet the same--dark stains blotted out--rueful +inscriptions effaced--many an erasure of impressions once thought +permanent, but soon altogether forgotten--and vindicating, in the midst +of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial +origin, character, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, +like a taper in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shining +in inextinguishable and self-fed radiance--like a star in heaven. + +Therefore, bad as boys too often are--and a disgrace to the mother who +bore them--the cradle in which they were rocked--the nurse by whom they +were suckled--the schoolmaster by whom they were flogged--and the +hangman by whom it was prophesied they were to be executed--wait +patiently for a few years, and you will see them all transfigured--one +into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all +men to be Christians--another into a parliamentary orator, who commands +the applause of listening senates, and + + "Reads his history in a nation's eyes" + +--one into a painter, before whose thunderous heavens the storms of +Poussin "pale their ineffectual fires"--another into a poet composing +and playing, side by side, on his own peculiar harp, in a concert of +vocal and instrumental music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth--one +into a great soldier, who, when Wellington is no more, shall, for the +freedom of the world, conquer a future Waterloo--another who, hoisting +his flag on the "mast of some tall ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in +the Temeraire, lay two three-deckers on board at once, and clothe some +now nameless peak or promontory in immortal glory, like that shining on +Trafalgar. + +Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. Cats have a look of +hares--kittens of leverets--and they are all called Pussy. The terriers +are useful still, preceding the line like skirmishers, and with finest +noses startling the maukin from bracken-bush or rush bower, her skylight +garret in the old quarry, or her brown study in the brake. Away with +your coursing on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are seen squatted +from a distance, and the sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, +are let slip by a Tryer, running for cups and collars before lords and +ladies, and squires of high and low degree--a pretty pastime enough, no +doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. But will it for a moment +compare with the sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld witch" +from the bunweed-covered lea, when the throat of every pedestrian is +privileged to cry "halloo--halloo--halloo"--and whipcord-tailed +greyhound and hairy lurcher, without any invidious distinction of birth +or bearing, lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same moment, to +the same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing +Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with retroverted +eyes she turns her face to the mountain, and seeks the cairn only a +little lower than the falcon's nest. + +What signifies any sport in the open air, except in congenial scenery of +earth and heaven? Go, thou gentle Cockney! and angle in the New +River;--but, bold Englishman, come with us and try a salmon-cast in the +old Tay. Go, thou gentle Cockney! and course a suburban hare in the +purlieus of Blackheath;--but, bold Englishman, come with us and course +an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night an old +woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as you will with a +leash and a half of lightfoots, still returns at dark to the same form +in the turf-dyke of the garden of the mountain cottage. The children, +who love her as their own eyes--for she has been as a pet about the +family, summer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some +five years old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle--will +scarcely care to see her started--nay, one or two of the wickedest among +them will join in the halloo; for often, ere this, "has she cheated the +very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the lang dowgs walloping +ahint her, sair forfeuchen, up the benty brae--and it's no the day that +she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, or smooth Spring, or the red +Bick, or the hairy Lurcher--though a' fowre be let lowse on her at ance, +and ye surround her or she rise." What are your great big fat lazy +English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food +brought to their very mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with +five minutes' scamper among themselves--to the middle-sized, +hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel-legged, long-winded maukins of Scotland, +that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland +yardie that shelters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing +every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired as young eagles +ringing the sky for pastime, and before the dogs seem not so much +scouring for life as for pleasure--with such an air of freedom, liberty, +and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the +faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine--strong in +bone, and sound in bottom;--see, see how Tickler clears that +twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird--tops that hedge +that would turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbray--and +then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his own +length, and close upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off within a +point of due south. A kennel! He never was and never will be in a kennel +all his free joyful days. He has walked and run--and leaped and swam +about--at his own will, ever since he was nine days old--and he would +have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets +for him--he takes his meals with the family, sitting at the right hand +of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he +chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church. +That is the education of a Scottish greyhound--and the consequence is, +that you may pardonably mistake him for a deer dog from Badenoch or +Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse +of the antlers on the weather-gleam, + + "Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod + To his hills that encircle the sea." + +This may be called roughing +it--slovenly--coarse--rude--artless--unscientific. But we say no--it is +your only coursing. Gods! with what a bounding bosom the schoolboy +salutes the dawning of the cool--clear--crisp, yes, crisp October morn +(for there has been a slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows +are all glittering with rime); and, little time lost at dress or +breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch, and away to the +Trysting-hill Farmhouse, which he fears the gamekeeper and his grews +will have left ere he can run across the two long Scotch miles of moor +between him and his joy! With step elastic, he feels flying along the +sward as from a spring-board; like a roe, he clears the burns and bursts +his way through the brakes; panting, not from breathlessness but +anxiety, he lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole, and lo, the +green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat +before the door, and two or three tall raw-boned poachers--and there is +mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, +adventure, and desperation, in that word; while tall and graceful stand +the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen yet quiet +eyes, prophetic of their destined prey, and though motionless now as +stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like +lightning at the loved halloo! + +Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, +with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no +trifle--for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, +is moreover in the family way, and surely this time there will be twins +at least--and pours out a canty caulker for each crowing crony, +beginning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and +her self; and better speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers +another with "hinny," by way of Athole brose; but it is put off till +evening, for coursing requires a clear head, and the same sobriety then +adorned our youth that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although +an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn +office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, +anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market; and donning +his broad blue bonnet, and the shortest-tailed auld coat he can find, +and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his orders for +a' things about the place, and sets off with the younkers for a holiday. +Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as +he may look; and 'twould be well for this wicked world if no elder in it +had a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's +wife used to call his "awfu' fondness for the Grews!" + +And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed +it merely be some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had time and could +afford it, and lived in a tolerably open country, would not keep, at the +very least, three greyhounds? No better eating than a hare, though old +blockhead Burton--and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was +one in this world--in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. +Did he ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commencement, swallow a +tureen of hare-soup with half-a-peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he +did--and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no +occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he +never did--then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England--as +you love us and yourself--cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment +dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly +sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing +as melancholy meat--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--provided only there +be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. +But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even daunering +about the home-farm seeking for a hare! It is quite an art or science. +You must consult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the +night before--and of every day and night back to last Sunday, when +probably you were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares +shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they +love the fallow field--that, the stubble; this, you will see them, +almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland +lea--that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, +detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or +the bracken; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet +or wind--that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; now you may depend +on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a +bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his +fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the +airts;--in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even +if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be +called an ignorant man--is probably a better-informed man in the long +run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the +Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the +lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old +courser (him of the Sporting Annals included), who was not a man both of +abilities and virtues. But where were we?--at the Trysting-hill +Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-them-Out. + +Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills--for +we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the +rose--fleet of foot almost as the very antelope--Oh! now, alas! dim and +withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms--slow +as the sloth along the ground--spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered +pantaloon! + + "O heaven! that from our bright and shining years + Age would but take the things youth heeded not!" + +An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent to the +hills--and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, +intimates that she is in her old form behind the dyke--and the noble +dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that +her hour is come. Plash, plash, through the marsh, and then on the dry +furze beyond, you see her large dark-brown eyes--Soho, soho, +soho--Halloo, halloo, halloo--for a moment the seemingly horned creature +appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on +her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts--away fly hare +and hounds towards the mountain. + +Stand all still for a minute--for not a bush the height of our knee to +break our view--and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beautiful +exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in admiration the beatings of the +rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights--none more, none so +much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed +at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of +the falcon's wing! Instinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one +flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and +twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong passions! Now +they are all three upon her--and she dies! No! glancing aside, like a +bullet from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight +course--and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting +headlong one over the other, all three, with erected tails, suddenly +bring themselves up--like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one +after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and +again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind--and in a close line, +head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet--again, all +opened-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the +cliff. + +We are all on foot--and pray what horse could gallop through among all +these quagmires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the +water-cressy and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither +side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee--up that hill on +the perpendicular strewn with flint-shivers--down these loose-hanging +cliffs--through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as +iron--over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds--and-- +finally--up--up--up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the +cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a +patch of snow? + +The thing is impossible--so we are all on foot--and the fleetest keeper +that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give +us sixty yards. "Ha! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"--we +exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But +see--see--they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount--glancing +aside, she throws them all three out--yes, all three, and few enow too, +though fair play be a jewel--and ere they can recover, she is ahead a +hundred yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and +bottom! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; +but she steals away from them inch by inch--beating them all blind--and, +suddenly disappearing--Heaven knows how--leaves them all in the lurch. +With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping +tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, +and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in +defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third +time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland--nor can there any +longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most +sceptical, that she is--what all the country-side have long known her to +be--a Witch. + +From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy +in the order of nature--and so is it from coursing to Fox-Hunting--by +means, however, of a small intermediate step--the Harriers. Musical is a +pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring changes +in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country we +have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule +without an exception; and, as we shall see by-and-by, there is one too +here), and commend us even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the +pastoral or sylvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a +heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will +ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some fourteen hands, that +can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on +bridle-paths, or upon the pathless braes--and by judicious horsemanship, +you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far +out at the death. But the schoolboy--and the shepherd--and the +whipper-in--as each hopes for favour from his own Diana--let them all be +on foot--and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that +can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old +fox--but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless +young hare. What deceit in every double! What calculation in every +squat! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Labyrinth is the +creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre! +a-listening the baffled roar! Now into the pool she plunges, to free +herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent +course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, +fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely +beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping +of stone walls she crawls and scrambles--and now ventures from the wood +along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so +that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty +little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if +to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. +Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The +terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the +churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among +the number--and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of +the house of worship--and now, in momentary contrition, + + "Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!" + +and we bethink ourselves--alas! all in vain, for + + "_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_"-- + +of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity:-- + + "One lesson, reader, let us two divide, + Taught by what nature shows and what conceals, + Never to blend our pleasure and our pride + With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." + +It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice--so let us +conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime +is the very strongest that can possess the heart--nor, of all the heroes +of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. +His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two +words--Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the +sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate--that would +have been cutting his own throat--but to thin man-devouring wild +beasts--the Pards--with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, +where not even a wolf has existed for centuries--nor a wild boar--the +same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw +of the Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as +never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the +sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat--and gathers them together in +gallant array on the edge of the cover, + + "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard + Upon the golden hills." + +What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes and flaming +nostrils--betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will +revel in the chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut, sorrel, grey--of +all shades and hues--and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar +character of shape and form--yet all blending harmoniously as they crown +the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as +they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights +or deepening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy +sky. + +You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping +in the desert--and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of +the Saracenic chivalry; but take our word for it, great part of all such +descriptions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should +dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed? And how can that +full speed be anything more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, +the Barbs being up to the belly at every stroke? They are always, it is +said, in high condition--but we, who know something about horse-flesh, +give that assertion the lie. They have seldom anything either to eat or +drink; are lean as church-mice; and covered with, clammy sweat before +they have ambled a league from the tent. And then such a set of absurd +riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to +Brentford, _via_ the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and +such saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and ridden, accoutrements and +all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh +to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! +Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in to the death of all +the fine strong animal spirits--but blood intermingled and interfused by +twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her +power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey, + + "Gives the world assurance of a horse!" + +Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of +each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but +for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the Hussars of +England--confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers!--let the trumpet sound +a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be +opposed with spear and scimitar--and through their snow-ranks will the +Three Hundred go like thaw--splitting them into dissolution with the +noise of thunder. + +The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it; and where, we ask, were +the British cavalry ever overthrown? And how could the great +north-country horse-coupers perform their contracts, but for the +triumphs of the Turf? Blood--blood there must be, either for strength, +or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry--the Life Guards and +the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without +racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one +of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them 'twould be +palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his +rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war campaign? Thus he +becomes demi-corpsed with the noble animal; and what easy, equable +motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with +nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The hills +and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her +gentlemen--her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease--but, with +Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, +have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued +among the sylvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross +swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and still have they been in the +shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at +Saldanha--the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo! + +"Well, do you know, that, after all you have said, Mr North, I cannot +understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me +both cruel and dangerous." + +Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and +delivering them up to the transport of their high condition--for every +throbbing vein is visible--at the first full burst of that maddening +cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! +What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those +of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all +your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on +a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a +smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and +passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first +Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon--once, perhaps, +in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea +that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine +music--worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band +of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African +sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one +man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and +away--while wood and welkin rings--and nothing is felt--nothing is +imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dykes, +ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the +impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, +art, and science, in an enclosed, cultivated, civilised, and Christian +country. There they go--prince and peer, baronet and squire--the +nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each +on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son--for +could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander +would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his +way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. +Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, +halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go +wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged +steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud +as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the +country are dispersed the scarlet runners--and a hundred villages pour +forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, +or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the +perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five-barred +gate--away over the ears flies the ex-roughrider in a surprising +somerset--after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on +knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow--Friendship is a fine +thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed--but +Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly +leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a +"hark forward, tantivy!" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure--and +ere the fallen has risen and shaken himself, is round the corner of the +white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the +heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the +Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the +devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? +since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed +with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman +in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with +his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility +of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly +stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; +let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain +yield to fore-feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with +briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to +cliffs unscalable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go +sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high; yet "without +stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the +music grows fiercer and more savage--lo! all that remains together of +the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of +their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now +make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the +other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed +faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general +growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cosy, as he was an +hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the +cover--he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he +not, pray, well off for sepulture? + + + + +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. + +FYTTE SECOND. + + +We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear +egotistical--for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must +naturally be anxious to know something of our early history--and their +anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed +some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding +field-sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every +Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it +is necessary that we enter into some interesting details. + +There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a +duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old +tradition, had been out both in the Fifteen and Forty-five. There were +ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy +retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season +continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and +workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven +Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely +rather have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for +kicking when she received her discharge; so much so, indeed, that it was +reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the +recoil. She had a very wide mouth--and was thought by us "an awfu' +scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest +merit. She carried anything we chose to put into her--there still being +of all her performances a loud and favourable report--balls, buttons, +chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults--she had got +addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and +to another of hanging fire; habits of which it was impossible, for us +at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new +series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the +affection and admiration of us all, that faults like these did not in +the least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did +absolutely and positively and _bona fide_ "go off," was in proportion to +the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire--why, +we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the +level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth +clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right +shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, +took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the +blowing up of a rock. + +The "Lang Gun," again, was of a much gentler disposition, and, instead +of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, inclining +forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this +apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it +difficult for us to hold her horizontally--and hence the muzzle being +attracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of +the Shooter. That such is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to be +proved by this--that when the "Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid +across the shoulders of two boys standing about a yard the one before +the other, she kicked every bit as well as the blunderbuss. Her lock was +of a very peculiar construction. It was so contrived that, when on full +cock, the dog-head, as we used to call it, stood back at least seven +inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pulling the +trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in +general remained _in statu quo_--and there was perfect silence. She had +a worm-eaten stock, into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself +fairly inserted; and even with the aid of circumvoluting twine, 'twas +always coggly. Thus too, the vizy (_Anglice_ sight) generally inclined +unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us everyday +hitting and hurting objects of whose existence even we were not aware, +till alarmed by the lowing or the galloping of cattle on the hills; and +we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who +shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the +furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was +murdered. The "Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit--and, with slugs +or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. +Bob Howie at that distance arrested the career of a mad dog--a single +slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one +or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive--or, like many +other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a +silent prey to the rust of oblivion. + +Not a boy in the school had a game certificate--or, as it was called in +the parish--"a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit +necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not +that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually--on the +contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one--a fellow of infinite +fancy--with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But their +numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of +boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes +settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse +garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it +happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, +charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them +from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let +drive into the whirr--a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming +in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the +mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and +the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never +was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into +any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every +cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no +use in rainy weather--for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At +each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have +thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish. Seldom a +Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training +season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes, +all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates. +On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they +were busy on grain and pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions +embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million +families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable +multitude would have laughed at the Plague. + +The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from +our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. +Perhaps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, we spared the lyrists +of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the +other beneath the rosy cloud--while there was ever a sevenfold red +shield before Robin's breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, +or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn +or byre. Now and then the large bunting, conspicuous on a top-twig, and +proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom--or the cunning +stone-chat, glancing about the old dykes, usually shot at in vain--or +yellow-hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop +of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that +cruel creed--or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song--or +shilfa, the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his white-plumed wings in +shade and sunshine, in joy the most rapturous, in grief the most +despairing of all the creatures of the air--or redpole, balanced on the +down of the thistle or flower of the bunweed on the old clovery lea--or, +haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and +gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only +slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy +Land. + +But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old--and then woe to the rookery +on the elm-tree grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens, +rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under +that umbrage formed firm floor for Titania's feet--while others kept +dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all +the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted +parents, now dipping down in despair almost within shot, and now, as if +sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and +disappearing to return no more--till sunset should bring silence, and +the night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated +bowers; and then indeed would they come all flying back upon their +strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the +depth of far-off fir-woods, where they had lain quaking at the ceaseless +cannonade, some from the furrows of the new-brairded fields aloof on the +uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of +the moorish wilderness. + +Happiest of all human homes, beautiful Craig-Hall! For so even now dost +thou appear to be--in the rich, deep, mellow, green light of imagination +trembling on tower and tree--art thou yet undilapidated and undecayed, +in thy old manorial solemnity almost majestical, though even then thou +hadst long been tenanted but by a humble farmer's family--people of low +degree. The evening-festival of the First Day of the Books--nay, scoff +not at such an anniversary--was still held in thy ample kitchen--of old +the bower of brave lords and ladies bright--while the harper, as he sung +his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the +dais. The days of chivalry were gone--and the days had come of curds and +cream, and, preferred by some people though not by us, of cream-cheese. +Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and +chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more +lifelike seem the living! Middle-aged men and middle-aged women, +husbands and wives, those sedate, with hair combed straight on their +foreheads, sunburnt faces, and horny hands established on their +knees--these serene, with countenances many of them not unlovely--comely +all--and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms--as +they sat in their holiday dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had +hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, for a blink +restored! Boys and virgins--those bold even in their bashfulness--these +blushing whenever eyes met eyes,--nor would they--nor could they--have +spoken in the hush to save their souls; yet ere the evening star arose, +many a pretty maiden had, down-looking and playing with the hem of her +garment, sung linnet-like her ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many +a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Burns was +but a youth--walking mute among the wildflowers on the moor--nor aware +of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart! + +Of all the year's holidays, not even excepting the First of May, this +was the most delightful. The First of May, longed for so passionately +from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist +and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a +sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashed--the roomy +hay-waggon remained in its shed--the preparations made for us in the +distant moorland farmhouse were vain--the fishing-rods hung useless on +the nails--and disconsolate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, +ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month +of June" be frequently showery, it is almost always sunny too. Every +half-hour there is such a radiant blink that the young heart sings aloud +for joy; summer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are of little or no +use towards the Longest Day; there is something cheerful even in +thunder, if it be not rather too near; the lark has not yet ceased +altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled +beneath the sablest cloud; the green earth repels from her refulgent +bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in +the fulness and brightness of her contentment; through the heaviest +flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an +impatient smile, and all the rivers and burns, with the multitude of +their various voices, sing praises unto Heaven. + +Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we went bounding over the flowery +fields and broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. During the long +noisy day, we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was +to be; and during the long and almost as noisy evening, we forgot all +the pastime of the day. Weeks before, had each of us engaged his partner +for the first country dance, by right his own when supper came, and to +sit close to him with her tender side, with waist at first stealthily +arm-encircled, and at last boldly and almost with proud display. In the +churchyard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whispered into the +ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity +failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burnside cottage, +and with the contents of his basket leave a tender request, and from +behind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile, a kiss, and a waving +farewell. + +Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen made beautiful +with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius +decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting +a still nobler guest. But oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was +then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of +hawthorn, in the chimney--itself almost a tree, so thick--so deep--so +rich its load of blossoms--so like its fragrance to something breathed +from heaven--and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as she +approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's +breath--in an hour all melted quite away! No broom that nowadays grows +on the brae, so yellow as the broom--the golden broom--the broom that +seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself +had sunk--the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest--and of +its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark +hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her +merriment--dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose +bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses--conservatories-- +orangeries--are exquisitely balmy still--and, in presence of these +strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some +rich foreign clime. But now we carry the burden of our years along with +us--and that consciousness bedims the blossoms, and makes mournful the +balm, as from flowers in some fair burial-place, breathing of the tomb. +But oh! that Craig-Hall hawthorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they +send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that +all the weary worn-out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment, +and even now--the flight of that swallow seems more aerial--more alive +with bliss his clay-built nest--the ancient long-ago blue of the sky +returns to heaven--not for many a many a long year have we seen so +fair--so frail--so transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! The +very viol speaks--the very dance responds in Craig-Hall: this--this is +the very Festival of the First Day of the Rooks--Mary Mather, the pride +of the parish--the county--the land--the earth--is our partner--and long +mayest thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud--when the parting kiss is +given--and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into her +bosom! + +But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search +for it, even like a spinster of old, in the dis arranged spindle of one +of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, +hushed by machinery clink-clanking with power-looms in every town and +city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves--alone--or +with one chosen comrade; for even then we began to have our sympathies +and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, +but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, +and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a +perfect love--we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred--alone +or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and +stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whaup! At first +sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart +beating quick time in the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body +being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether--and we grew sick +with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, +like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample +wings--and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by +our ineffectual hail, seen falling far short of the deceptive distance, +while his mate that had lain couched--perhaps in her nest of eggs or +young, exposed yet hidden--within killing range, half-running, +half-flying, flapped herself into flight, simulating lame leg and +wounded wing; and the two disappearing together behind the hills, left +us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, to resume with live hopes +rising out of the ashes of the dead, our daily disappointed quest over +the houseless mosses. Yet now and then to our steady aim the bill of the +whaup disgorged blood--and as we felt the feathers in our hand, and from +tip to tip eyed the outstretched wings, Fortune, we felt, had no better +boon to bestow, earth no greater triumph. + +Hush--stoop--kneel--crawl--for by all our hopes of mercy--a heron--a +heron! An eel dangling across his bill! And now the water-serpent has +disappeared! From morning dawn hath the fowl been fishing here--perhaps +on that very stone--for it is one of those days when eels are a-roaming +in the shallows, and the heron knows that they are as likely to pass by +that stone as any other--from morning dawn--and 'tis now past meridian, +half-past two! Be propitious, oh ye Fates! and never--never--shall he +again fold his wings on the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees that +overtop the only tower left of the old castle. Another eel! and we too +can crawl silent as the sinuous serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes +dead--no, not dead--but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as +head-over-heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the serene unsettling +of himself from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, and his craw +filled with fish for his far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk +into the air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away like a +wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the current of air homewards +flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy course--laggard and lazy no +more--leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your motion in +watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible among the woods! + +The disgorged eels are returned--some of them alive--to their native +element--the mud. And the dead heron floats away before small winds and +waves into the middle of the tarn. Where is he--the matchless +Newfoundlander--_nomine gaudens_ FRO, because white as the froth of the +sea? Off with a collie. So--stript with the first intention, we plunge +from a rock, and, + + "Though in the scowl of heaven, the tarn + Grows dark as we are swimming," + +Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with the heron floating +before us, return to the heather-fringed shore, and give three cheers +that startle the echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the +Grey-Linn Cairn. + +Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock-and-river scene, beautiful +and bewildering as the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself brought +who knows where to seek the heron in all its solitary haunts. For often +when the moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be baffled by the +waves of tarn and loch, he sails away from his swinging-tree, and +through some open glade dipping down to the secluded stream, alights +within the calm chasm, and folds his wings in the breezeless air. The +clouds are driving fast aloft in a carry from the sea--but they are all +reflected in that pellucid pool--so perfect the cliff-guarded repose. A +better day--a better hour--a better minute for fishing could not have +been chosen by Mr Heron, who is already swallowing a par. Another--and +another--but something falls from the rock into the water; and +suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses himself to a short +flight up the channel--round that tower-like cliff standing strangely by +itself, with a crest of self-sown flowering shrubs; and lo! another +vista, if possible, just a degree more silent--more secluded--more +solitary--beneath the mid-day night of woods! To shoot thee there--would +be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of +an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortunate for thee--folded up there, as +thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone--that at this moment we +have no firearms--for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that very +pool, and this--O Heron--is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to +be in utter solitude--no sportsman but thyself in the chasm--for the +otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with +bitten shoulder seldom lies here--that epicure's tasted prey. Yet within +ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon +thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy +watchful sense--for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or +fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that there is not +only humanity--but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and +possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious, solemn, +and sacred light--and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and +ancient in thy look--and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the +very elements admire and reverence--the waters wetting them not--nor the +winds ruffling--and moreover we love thee--Heron--for the sake of that +old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A +Ruin nameless, traditionless--sole, undisputed property of Oblivion! + +Hurra!--Heron--hurra! why, that was an awkward tumble--and very nearly +had we hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie? +A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy +life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits--but thy nerves must be +sorely shaken--and what an account of this adventure will certainly be +shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs! Not, even +wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit +this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb +creatures--and rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than +seek for fish in this man-monster-haunted pool. Farewell! farewell! + +Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly +known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the +garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander, +and nine goslings--about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not +sickened and died of Nostalgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of +their native Tweed--and a brace of perch, now nothing but prickle. But +the lochs--the hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's eye and our +mind's ear,--heaven and earth! the bogs are black with duck, teal, and +widgeon--up there "comes for food or play" to the holla of the winds, a +wedge of wild geese, piercing the marbled heavens with clamour--and lo! +in the very centre of the mediterranean, the Royal Family of the Swans! +Up springs the silver sea-trout in the sunshine--see Sir Humphrey!--a +salmon--a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea! + +For how many admirable articles are there themes in the above short +paragraph! Duck, teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans! And first, duck, +teal, and widgeon. There they are, all collected together, without +regard to party politics, in their very best attire, as thick as the +citizens of Edinburgh, their wives, sweethearts, and children, on the +Calton Hill, on the first day of the King's visit to Scotland. As thick, +but not so steady--for what swimming about in circles--what ducking and +diving is there!--all the while accompanied with a sort of low, thick, +gurgling, not unsweet, nor unmusical quackery, the expression of the +intense joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh! Muckle-mou'd Meg! neither +thou nor the "Lang Gun" are of any avail here--for that old drake, who, +together with his shadow, on which he seems to be sitting, is almost as +big as a boat in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, near as he +seems to be in the deception of the clear frosty air, is yet better than +three hundred yards from the shore--and, at safe distance, cocks his eye +at the fowler. There is no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how +tempting in its unapproachable reeds and rushes, and hut-crested +knoll--a hut built perhaps by some fowler, in the olden time--yon +central Isle! But be still as a shadow--for lo! a batch of +Whig-seceders, paddling all by themselves towards that creek--and as +surely as our name is Christopher, in another quarter of an hour they +will consist of killed, wounded, and missing. On our belly--with +unhatted head just peering over the knowe--and Muckle mou'd Meg slowly +and softly stretched out on the rest, so as not to rustle a +windle-strae, we lie motionless as a maukin, till the coterie collects +together for simultaneous dive down to the aquatic plants and insects of +the fast-shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the turn with their +tails, a single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs +about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden disturbance, is +afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood. + +Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro--who +with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever +and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged +by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, +and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down +the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his +tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily +disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back +and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, +to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if +she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards +heaven--then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more +gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back +delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky +lines--precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling +art--next--nobly done, glorious Fro--that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, +with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest +waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the +indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings--and now, if +we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name--finally, that +exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately +pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to +a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means +and appliances to boot, carved finely--most finely--by razor-like knife, +in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide--tasted by a tongue +and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning +rose--swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its +intense delight--and received into a stomach yawning with greed and +gratitude,--Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the +apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this +feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short +quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium! + +How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy head +above the foam, his gathered prey seized--all four--by their limber +necks, and brightening, like a bunch of flowers, as they glitter towards +the shore! With one bold body-shake, felt to the point, of each +particular hair, he scatters the water from his coat like mist, +reminding one of that glorious line in Shakespeare, + + "Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane," + +advancing with sinewy legs seemingly lengthened by the drenching flood, +and dripping tail stretched out in all its broad longitude, with hair +almost like white hanging plumes--magnificent as tail of the Desert-Born +at the head of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Half-way his master +meets his beloved Fro on the slope; and first proudly and haughtily +pausing to mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemeth one whom nature, +in his boldest and brightest bearing, hath yet made a slave--he lays the +offering at our feet, and having felt on his capacious forehead the +approving pressure of our hand, + + "While, like the murmur of a dream, + He hears us breathe his name," + +he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel of transport, and in many +a widening circle pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with +whirlwind speed; till, as if utterly joy-exhausted, he brings his +snow-white bulk into dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment +illuminated by a burst of sunshine! + +Not now--as fades upon our pen the solemn light of the dying day--shall +we dare to decide, whether or not Nature--O most matchless creature of +thy kind!--gave thee, or gave thee not, the gift of an immortal +soul!--Better such creed--fond and foolish though it may be--yet +scarcely unscriptural, for in each word of Scripture there are many +meanings, even when each sacred syllable is darkest to be read,--better +such creed than that of the atheist or sceptic, distracted ever in his +seemingly sullen apathy, by the dim, dark doom of dust. Better that Fro +should live, than that Newton should die--for ever. What though the +benevolent Howard devoted his days to visit the dungeon's gloom, and by +intercession with princes, to set the prisoners free from the low +damp-dripping stone roof of the deep-dug cell beneath the foundation +rocks of the citadel, to the high dewdropping vault of heaven, too, too +dazzlingly illumined by the lamp of the insufferable sun! There reason +triumphed--those were the works of glorified humanity. But thou--a +creature of mere instinct--according to Descartes, a machine, an +automaton--hadst yet a constant light of thought and of affection in +thine eyes; nor wert thou without some glimmering and mysterious +notions--and what more have we ourselves?--of life and of death! Why +fear to say that thou wert divinely commissioned and inspired--on that +most dismal and shrieking hour, when little Harry Seymour, that bright +English boy, "whom all that looked on loved," entangled among the cruel +chains of those fair water-lilies, all so innocently yet so murderously +floating round him, was, by all standing or running about there with +clenched hands, or kneeling on the sod--given up to inextricable death? +We were not present to save the dear boy, who had been delivered to our +care as to that of an elder brother, by the noble lady who, in her deep +widow's weeds, kissed her sole darling's sunny head, and disappeared. We +were not present--or by all that is holiest in heaven or on earth--our +arms had been soon around thy neck, when thou wert seemingly about to +perish! + +But a poor dumb despised dog--nothing, as some say, but animated +dust--was there,--and without shout or signal--for all the Christian +creatures were alike helpless in their despair--shot swift as a sunbeam +over the deep, and by those golden tresses, sinking and brightening +through the wave, brought the noble child ashore, and stood over him, as +if in joy and sorrow, lying too like death on the sand! And when little +Harry opened his glazed eyes, and looked bewildered on all the faces +around--and then fainted--and revived and fainted again--till at last he +came to dim recollection of this world on the bosom of the physician +brought thither with incomprehensible speed from his dwelling afar +off--thou didst lick his cold white hands and blue face, with a whine +that struck awful pity into all hearts, and thou didst follow him--one +of the group--as he was borne along--and frisking and gambolling no more +all that day, gently didst thou lay thyself down at the feet of his +little bed, and watch there unsleeping all night long! For the boy knew +that God had employed one of his lowly creatures to save him--and +beseeched that he might lie there to be looked at by the light of the +taper, till he himself, as the pains went away, might fall asleep! And +we, the watchers by his bedside, heard him in his dreams mentioning the +creature's name in his prayers. + +Yet at times--O Fro--thou wert a sad dog indeed--neither to bind nor to +hold--for thy blood was soon set aboil, and thou--like Julius Caesar--and +Demetrius Poliorcetes--and Alexander the Great--and many other ancient +and modern kings and heroes--thou wert the slave of thy passions. No +Scipio wert thou with a Spanish captive. Often--in spite of threatening +eye and uplifted thong--uplifted only, for thou went'st unflogged to thy +grave--didst thou disappear for days at a time--as if lost or dead. +Rumours of thee were brought to the kirk by shepherds from the remotest +hills in the parish--most confused and contradictory--but, when +collected and compared, all agreeing in this--that thou wert living, and +lifelike, and life-imparting, and after a season from thy travels to +return; and return thou still didst--wearied often and woe-begone--purpled +thy snow-white curling--and thy broad breast torn, not disfigured, by +honourable wounds. For never yet saw we a fighter like thee. Up on thy +hind-legs in a moment, like a growling Polar monster, with thy fore-paws +round thy foeman's neck, bull-dog, collie, mastiff, or greyhound, and +down with him in a moment, with as much ease as Cass, in the wrestling +ring at Carlisle, would throw a Bagman, and then woe to the throat of +the downfallen, for thy jaws were shark-like as they opened and shut +with their terrific tusks, grinding through skin and sinew to the spine. + +Once, and once only--bullied out of all endurance by a half-drunken +carrier--did we consent to let thee engage in a pitched battle with a +mastiff victorious in fifty fights--a famous shanker--and a throttler +beyond all compare. It was indeed a bloody business--now growling along +the glaur of the road--a hairy hurricane--now snorting in the +suffocating ditch--now fair play on the clean and clear crown of the +causey--now rolling over and over through a chance-open white little +gate, into a cottage-garden--now separated by choking them both with a +cord--now brought out again with savage and fiery eyes to the scratch on +a green plat round the signboard-swinging tree in the middle of the +village--auld women in their mutches crying out, "Shame! whare's the +minister?"--young women, with combs in their pretty heads, blinking with +pale and almost weeping faces from low-lintelled doors--children +crowding for sight and safety on the louping-on-stane--and loud cries +ever and anon at each turn and eddy of the fight, of "Well done, Fro! +well done, Fro!--see how he worries his windpipe--well done, Fro!" for +Fro was the delight and glory of the whole parish, and the honour of all +its inhabitants, male and female, was felt to be staked on the +issue--while at intervals was heard the harsh hoarse voice of the +carrier and his compeers, cursing and swearing in triumph in a +many-oathed language peculiar to the race that drive the broad-wheeled +waggons with the high canvass roofs, as the might of Teeger prevailed, +and the indomitable Fro seemed to be on his last legs beneath a grip of +the jugular, and then stretched motionless and passive--in defeat or +death. A mere _ruse_ to recover wind. Like unshorn Sampson starting from +his sleep, and snapping like fired flax the vain bands of the +Philistines, Fro whammled Teeger off, and twisting round his head in +spite of the grip on the jugular, the skin stretching and giving way in +a ghastly but unfelt wound, he suddenly seized with all his tusks his +antagonist's eye, and bit it clean out of the socket. A yowl of +unendurable pain--spouting of blood--sickness--swooning--tumbling +over--and death. His last fight is over! His remaining eye glazed--his +protruded tongue bitten in anguish by his own grinding teeth--his massy +hind-legs stretched out with a kick like a horse--his short tail +stiffens--he is laid out a grim corpse--flung into a cart tied behind +the waggon--and off to the tanyard. + +No shouts of victory--but stern, sullen, half-ashamed silence--as of +guilty things after the perpetration of a misdeed. Still glaring +savagely, ere yet the wrath of fight has subsided in his heart, and +going and returning to the bloody place, uncertain whether or not his +enemy were about to return, Fro finally lies down at some distance, and +with bloody flews keeps licking his bloody legs, and with long darting +tongue cleansing the mire from his neck, breast, side, and back--a +sanguinary spectacle! He seems almost insensible to our caresses, and +there is something almost like upbraiding in his victorious eyes. Now +that his veins are cooling, he begins to feel the pain of his +wounds--many on, and close to vital parts. Most agonising of all--all +his four shanks are tusk-pierced, and, in less than ten minutes, he +limps away to his kennel, lame as if riddled by shot-- + + "Heu quantum mutatus ab illo + Hectore!" + +gore-besmeared and dirt-draggled--an hour ago serenely bright as the +lily in June, or the April snow. The huge waggon moves away out of the +clachan without its master, who, ferocious from the death of the other +brute he loved, dares the whole school to combat. Off fly a dozen +jackets--and a devil's dozen of striplings from twelve past to going +sixteen--firmly wedged together like the Macedonian Phalanx--are yelling +for the fray. There is such another shrieking of women as at the taking +of Troy. But + + "The Prince of Mearns stept forth before the crowd, + And, Carter, challenged you to single fight!" + +Bob Howie, who never yet feared the face of clay, and had too great a +heart to suffer mere children to combat the strongest and most unhappy +man in the whole country--stripped to the buff; and there he stands, +with + + "An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;" + +shoulders like Atlas--breast like Hercules--and arms like Vulcan. The +heart of Benjamin the waggoner dies within him--he accepts the challenge +for a future day--and retreating backwards to his clothes, receives a +right-hander as from a sledge-hammer on the temple, that fells him like +an ox. The other carters all close in, but are sent spinning in all +directions as from the sails of a windmill. Ever as each successive lout +seeks the earth, we savage schoolboys rush in upon him in twos, and +threes, and fours, basting and battering him as he bawls; at this very +crisis--so fate ordained--are seen hurrying down the hill from the +south, leaving their wives, sweethearts, and asses in the rear, with +coal-black hair and sparkling eyes, brown brany legs, and clenched iron +fists at the end of long arms, swinging flail-like at all times, and +never more than now, ready for the fray, a gang of Gypsies! +while--beautiful coincidence!--up the hill from the north came on, at +double-quick time, an awkward squad of as grim Milesians as ever buried +a pike in a Protestant. Nor question nor reply; but in a moment a +general melee. Men at work in the hay-fields, who would not leave their +work for a dog-fight, fling down scythe and rake, and over the hedges +into the high-road, a stalwart reinforcement. Weavers leap from their +treddles--doff their blue aprons, and out into the air. The red-cowled +tailor pops his head through a skylight, and next moment is in the +street. The butcher strips his long light-blue linen coat, to engage a +Paddy; and the smith, ready for action--for the huge arms of Burniwind +are always bare--with a hand-ower-hip delivery, makes the head of the +king of the gypsies ring like an anvil. There has been no marshalling of +forces--yet lo! as if formed in two regular lines by the Adjutant +himself after the first tuilzie, stand the carters, the gypsies, and the +Irishmen, opposed to Bob Howie, the butcher, the smith, the tailor, the +weaver, the haymakers, and the boys from the manse--the latter drawn up +cautiously, but not cowardly, in the rear. What a twinkling of fists and +shillelas! what bashed and bloody noses! cut blubber lips--cheekbones +out of all proportion to the rest of the face, and, through sudden black +and blue tumefactions, men's changed into pigs' eyes! And now there is +also rugging of caps and mutches and hair, "femineo ululatu," for the +Egyptian Amazons bear down like furies on the glee'd widow that keeps +the change-house, half-witted Shoosy that sells yellow sand, and Davie +Donald's dun daughter, commonly called Spunkie. What shrieking and +tossing of arms, round the whole length and breadth of the village! +Where is Simon Andrew the constable? Where is auld Robert Maxwell the +ruling elder? What can have become of Laird Warnock, whose word is law? +And what can the Minister be about, can anybody tell, that he does not +come flying from the manse to save the lives of his parishioners from +cannibals, and gypsies, and Eerish, murdering their way to the gallows? + +How--why--or when--that bloody battle ceased to be, was never distinctly +known either then or since; but, like everything else, it had an +end--and even now we have a confused dream of the spot at its +termination--naked men lying on their backs in the mire, all drenched in +blood--with women, some old and ugly, with shrivelled witch-like hag +breasts, others young, and darkly, swarthily, blackly beautiful, with +budding or new-blown bosoms unkerchiefed in the collyshangie--perilous +to see--leaning over them: and these were the Egyptians! Men in brown +shirts, gore-spotted, with green bandages round their broken heads, +laughing, and joking, and jeering, and singing, and shouting, though +desperately mauled and mangled--while Scottish wives, and widows, and +maids, could not help crying out in sympathy, "Oh! but they're bonny +men--what a pity they should aye be sae fond o' fechting, and a' manner +o' mischief!"--and these were the Irishmen! Retired and apart, hangs the +weaver, with his head over a wall, dog-sick, and bocking in strong +convulsions; some haymakers are washing their cut faces in the well; the +butcher, bloody as a bit of his own beef, walks silent into the +shambles; the smith, whose grimy face hides its pummelling, goes off +grinning a ghastly smile in the hands of his scolding, yet not unloving +wife; the tailor, gay as a flea, and hot as his own goose, to show how +much more he has given than received, offers to leap any man on the +ground, hop-step-and-jump, for a mutchkin--while Bob Howie walks about, +without a visible wound, except the mark of bloody knuckles on his +brawny breast, with arms a-kimbo, seaman-fashion--for Bob had been at +sea--and as soon as the whisky comes, hands it about at his own expense, +caulker after caulker, to the vanquished--for Bob was as generous as +brave; had no spite at the gypsies; and as for Irishmen, why they were +ranting, roving, red-hot, dare-devil boys, just like himself; and after +the fight, he would have gone with them to Purgatory, or a few steps +further down the hill. All the battle through, we manse-boys had fought, +it may be said, behind the shadow of him our hero; and in warding off +mischief from us, he received not a few heavy body-blows from King +Carew, a descendant of Bamfylde Moore, and some crown-cracks from the +shillelas of the Connaught Rangers. + +Down comes a sudden thunder-plump, making the road a river--and to the +whiff o' lightning, all in the shape of man, woman, and child, are under +roof-cover. The afternoon soon clears up, and the haymakers leave the +clanking empty gill or half-mutchkin stoup for the field, to see what +the rain has done--the forge begins again to roar--the sound of the +flying shuttle tells that the weaver is again on his treddles; the +tailor hoists up his little window in the thatch, in that close +confinement, to enjoy the cauler air--the tinklers go to encamp on the +common--"the air is balm"--insects, drooping from eave and tree, "show +to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold"--though the season of +bird-singing be over and gone, there is a pleasant chirping hereabouts, +thereabouts, everywhere; the old blind beggar, dog-led, goes from door +to door, unconscious that such a stramash has ever been--and dancing +round our champion, away we schoolboys all fly with him to swim in the +Brother Loch, taking our fishing-rods with us, for one clap of thunder +will not frighten the trouts; and about the middle or end of July, we +have known great labbers, twenty inches long, play wallop between our +very feet, in the warm shallow water, within a yard of the edge, to the +yellow-bodied, tinsey-tailed, black half-heckle, with brown mallard +wing, a mere midge, but once fixed in lip or tongue, "inextricable as +the gored lion's bite." + +But ever after that Passage in the life of Fro, his were, on the whole, +years of peace. Every season seemed to strengthen his sagacity, and to +unfold his wonderful instincts. Most assuredly he knew all the simpler +parts of speech--all the household words in the Scottish language. He +was, in all our pastimes, as much one of ourselves, as if, instead of +being a Pagan with four feet, he had been a Christian with two. As for +temper, we trace the sweetness of our own to his; an angry word from one +he loved, he forgot in half a minute, offering his lion-like paw; yet +there were particular people he could not abide, nor from their hands +would he have accepted a roast potato out of the dripping-pan, and in +this he resembled his master. He knew the Sabbath-day as well as the +sexton--and never was known to bark till the Monday morning when the +cock crew; and then he would give a long musical yowl, as if his breast +were relieved from silence. If ever, in this cold, changeful, inconstant +world, there was a friendship that might be called sincere, it was that +which, half a century ago and upwards, subsisted between Christopher +North and John Fro. We never had a quarrel in all our lives--and within +these two months we made a pilgrimage to his grave. He was buried--not +by our hands, but by the hands of one whose tender and manly heart loved +the old, blind, deaf, staggering creature to the very last--for such in +his fourteenth year he truly was--a sad and sorry sight to see, to them +who remembered 'the glory of his stately and majestic years. One day he +crawled with a moan-like whine to our brother's feet, and expired. +Reader, young, bright, and beautiful though thou be--remember all flesh +is dust! + +This is an episode--a tale, in itself complete, yet growing out of, and +appertaining to, the main plot of Epic or Article. You will recollect we +were speaking of ducks, teals, and widgeons; and we come now to the next +clause of the verse--wild geese and swans. + +Some people's geese are all swans; but so far from that being the case +with ours--sad and sorry are we to say it--now all our swans are geese. +But in our buoyant boyhood, all God's creatures were to our eyes just as +God made them; and there was ever--especially birds--a tinge of beauty +over them all. What an inconceivable difference--distance--to the +imagination, between the nature of a tame and a wild goose! Aloft in +heaven, themselves in night invisible, the gabble of a cloud of wild +geese is sublime. Whence comes it--whither goes it--for what end, and by +what power impelled? Reason sees not into the darkness of instinct--and +therefore the awestruck heart of the night-wandering boy beats to hear +the league-long gabble that probably has winged its wedge-like way from +the lakes, and marshes, and dreary morasses of Siberia, from Lapland, or +Iceland, or the unfrequented and unknown northern regions of +America--regions set apart, quoth Bewick we believe, for summer +residences and breeding-places, and where they are amply provided with a +variety of food, a large portion of which must consist of the larvae of +gnats, and myriads of insects, there fostered by the unsetting sun! Now +they are gabbling good Gaelic over a Highland night-moor. Perhaps in +another hour the descending cloud will be covering the wide waters at +the head of the wild Loch Maree--or, silent and asleep, the whole host +be riding at anchor around Lomond's Isles! + +But 'tis now mid-day--and lo! in that mediterranean--a flock of wild +Swans! Have they dropt down from the ether into the water almost as pure +as ether, without having once folded their wings, since they rose aloft +to shun the insupportable northern snows hundreds of leagues beyond the +storm-swept Orcades? To look at the quiet creatures, you might think +that they had never left the circle of that little loch. There they hang +on their shadows, even as if asleep in the sunshine; and now stretching +out their long wings--how apt for flight from clime to clime!--joyously +they beat the liquid radiance, till to the loud flapping high rises the +mist, and wide spreads the foam, almost sufficient for a rainbow. Safe +are they from all birds of prey. The Osprey dashes down on the teal, or +sea-trout, swimming within or below their shadow. The great Erne, or +Sea-eagle, pounces on the mallard, as he mounts from the bulrushes +before the wild swans sailing, with all wings hoisted, like a fleet--but +osprey nor eagle dares to try his talons on that stately bird--for he is +bold in his beauty, and formidable as he is fair; the pinions that swim +and soar can also smite; and though the one be a lover of war, the other +of peace, yet of them it may be said, + + "The eagle he is lord above, + The swan is lord below!" + +To have shot such a creature--so large--so white--so high-soaring--and +on the winds of midnight wafted from so far--a creature that seemed not +merely a stranger in that loch, but belonging to some mysterious land in +another hemisphere, whose coast ships with frozen rigging have been +known to visit, driving under bare poles through a month's +snow-storms--to have shot such a creature was an era in our imagination, +from which, had nature been more prodigal, we might have sprung up a +poet. Once, and but once, we were involved in the glory of that event. +The creature had been in a dream of some river or lake in +Kamtschatka--or ideally listening, + + "Across the waves' tumultuous roar, + The wolf's long howl from Oonalashka's shore," + +when, guided by our good genius and our brightest star, we suddenly saw +him sitting asleep in all his state, within gunshot, in a bay of the +moonlight Loch! We had nearly fainted--died on the very spot--and why +were we not entitled to have died as well as any other passionate +spirit, whom joy ever divorced from life? We blew his black bill into +pieces--not a feather on his head but was touched; and like a little +white-sailed pleasure-boat caught in a whirlwind, the wild swan spun +round, and then lay motionless on the water, as if all her masts had +gone by the board. We were all alone that night--not even Fro was with +us; we had reasons for being alone, for we wished not that there should +be any footfall but our own round that mountain-hut. Could we swim? Ay, +like the wild swan himself, through surge or breaker. But now the loch +was still as the sky, and twenty strokes carried us close to the +glorious creature, which, grasped by both hands, and supporting us as it +was trailed beneath our breast, while we floated rather than swam +ashore, we felt to be in verity our--Prey! We trembled with a sort of +fear, to behold him lying indeed dead on the sward. The moon--the many +stars, here and there one wondrously large and lustrous--the hushed +glittering loch--the hills, though somewhat dimmed, green all winter +through, with here and there a patch of snow on their summits in the +blue sky, on which lay a few fleecy clouds--the mighty foreign bird, +whose plumage we had never hoped to touch but in a dream, lying like the +ghost of something that ought not to have been destroyed--the scene was +altogether such as made our wild young heart quake, and almost repent of +having killed a creature so surpassingly beautiful. But that was a +fleeting fancy--and over the wide moors we went, like an American Indian +laden with game, journeying to his wigwam over the wilderness. As we +whitened towards the village in the light of morning, the earlier +labourers held up their hands in wonder what and who we might be; and +Fro, who had missed his master, and was lying awake for him on the +mount, came bounding along, nor could refrain the bark of delighted +passion as his nose nuzzled in the soft down of the bosom of the +creature whom he remembered to have sometimes seen floating too far off +in the lake, or far above our reach cleaving the firmament. + + + + +CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. + +FYTTE THIRD. + + +O Muckle-mou'd Meg! and can it be that thou art numbered among forgotten +things--unexistences! + + "Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course, + With rocks, and stones, and trees!" + +What would we not now give for a sight--a kiss--of thy dear lips! Lips +which we remember once to have put to our own, even when thy beloved +barrel was double-loaded! Now we sigh to think on what then made us +shudder! Oh! that thy butt were but now resting on our shoulder! Alas! +for ever discharged! Burst and rent asunder, art thou now lying buried +in a peat-moss? Did some vulgar villain of a village Vulcan convert +thee, name and nature, into nails? Some dark-visaged Douglas of a +henroost-robbing Egyptian, solder thee into a pan? Oh! that our passion +could dig down unto thee in the bowels of the earth--and with loud +lamenting elegies, and louder hymns of gratulation, restore thee, +buttless, lockless, vizyless, burst, rent, torn, and twisted though thou +be'st, to the light of day, and of the world-rejoicing Sun! Then would +we adorn thee with evergreen wreaths of the laurel and the ivy--and hang +thee up, in memory and in monument of all the bright, dim, still, stormy +days of our boyhood--when gloom itself was glory--and when--But + + "Be hush'd my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns, + When the faint and the feeble deplore." + +Cassandra--Corinna--Sappho--Lucretia--Cleopatra--Tighe--De Stael--in +their beauty or in their genius, are, with millions on millions of the +fair-faced or bright-souled, nothing but dust and ashes; and as they +are, so shall Baillie, and Grant, and Hemans, and Landon be--and why +vainly yearn "with love and longings infinite," to save from doom of +perishable nature--of all created things, but one alone--Muckle-mou'd +Meg! + +After a storm comes a calm; and we hasten to give the sporting world the +concluding account of our education. In the moorland parish--God bless +it--in which we had the inestimable advantage of passing our +boyhood--there' were a good many falcons--of course the kite or +glead--the buzzard--the sparrowhawk--the marsh harrier--that imp the +merlin--and, rare bird and beautiful! there, on a cliff which, alas! a +crutched man must climb no more, did the Peregrine build her nest. You +must not wonder at this, for the parish was an extensive one even for +Scotland--half Highland half Lowland--and had not only "muirs and mosses +many o," but numerous hills, not a few mountains, some most +extraordinary cliffs, considerable store of woods, and one, indeed, that +might well be called the Forest. + +Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead through thy own sweet stormy skies, +Auld Scotland! and as sternly and grimly thou look'st far over the +hushed or howling seas, remember thee--till all thy moors and mosses +quake at thy heart, as if swallowing up an invading army--a fate that +oft befell thy foes of yore--remember thee, in mist-shrouded dream, and +cloud-born vision, of the long line of kings, and heroes, and sages, and +bards, whose hallowed bones sleep in pine-darkened tombs among the +mountain heather, by the side of rivers, and lochs, and arms of +ocean--their spirits yet seen in lofty superstition, sailing or sitting +on the swift or settled tempest. Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead, Auld +Scotland! and sing aloud to all the nations of the earth, with thy voice +of cliffs, and caves, and caverns, + + "Wha daur meddle wi' me?" + +What! some small, puny, piteous windpipes are heard cheeping against +thee from the Cockneys--like ragged chickens agape in the pip. How the +feeble and fearful creatures would crawl on their hands and knees, faint +and giddy, and shrieking out for help to the heather stalks, if forced +to face one of thy cliffs, and foot its flinty bosom! How would the +depths of their long ears, cotton-stuffed in vain, ache to the +spray-thunder of thy cataracts! Sick, sick would be their stomachs, +storm-swept in a six-oared cutter into the jaws of Staffa! That sight +is sufficient to set the most saturnine on the guffaw--the Barry +Cornwall himself, crossing a chasm a hundred yards deep, + + "On the uncertain footing of a spar," + +on a tree felled where it stood, centuries ago, by steel or storm, into +a ledgeless bridge, oft sounding and shaking to the hunter's feet in +chase of the red-deer! The Cockneys do not like us Scotchmen--because of +our high cheek-bones. They are sometimes very high indeed, very coarse, +and very ugly, and give a Scotchman a grim and gaunt look, assuredly not +to be sneezed at, with any hope of impunity, on a dark day and in a +lonesome place, by the most heroic chief of the most heroic clan in all +the level land of Lud, travelling all by himself in a horse and gig, and +with a black boy in a cockaded glazed hat, through the Heelands o' +Scotland, passing of course, at the very least, for a captain of +Hussars! Then Scotchmen canna keep their backs straught, it seems, and +are always booin' and booin' afore a great man. Cannot they, indeed? Do +they, indeed? Ascend with that Scottish shepherd yon mountain's +breast--swim with him that mountain loch--a bottle of Glenlivet, who +first stands in shallow water, on the Oak Isle--and whose back will be +straughtest, that of the Caledonian or the Cockney? The little Luddite +will be puking among the heather, about some five hundred feet above the +level of the sea--higher for the first time in his life than St Paul's, +and nearer than he ever will again be, either in the spirit or the +flesh, to heaven. The little Luddite will be puking in the hitherto +unpolluted loch, after some seven strokes or so, with a strong Scottish +weed twisted like an eel round its thigh, and shrieking out for the +nearest resuscitating machine in a country, where, alas! there is no +Humane Society. The back of the shepherd--even in presence of that +"great man"--will be as straught as--do not tremble, Cockney--this +Crutch. Conspicuous from afar like a cairn, from the inn-door at +Arrochar, in an hour he will be turning up his little finger so--on the +Cobler's head; or, in twenty minutes, gliding like a swan, or shooting +like a salmon, his back being still straught--leaving Luss, he will be +shaking the dewdrops from his brawny body on the silver sand of Inch +Morren. + +And happy were we, Christopher North, happy were we in the parish in +which Fate delivered us up to Nature, that, under her tuition our +destinies might be fulfilled. A parish! Why it was in itself a +kingdom--a world. Thirty miles long by twenty at the broadest, and five +at the narrowest; and is not that a kingdom--is not that a world worthy +of any monarch that ever wore a crown? Was it level? Yes, league-long +levels were in it of greensward, hard as the sand of the sea-shore, yet +springy and elastic, fit training-ground for Childers, or Eclipse, or +Hambletonian, or Smolensko, or for a charge of cavalry in some great +pitched battle, while artillery might keep playing against artillery +from innumerous affronting hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs were +there, which extorted a panegyric from the roving Irishman in his +richest brogue--bogs in which forests had of old been buried, and armies +with all their banners. Was it hilly? Ay, there the white sheep nibbled, +and the black cattle grazed; there they baa'd and they lowed upon a +thousand hills--a crowd of cones, all green as emerald. Was it +mountainous? Give answer from afar, ye mist-shrouded summits, and ye +clouds cloven by the eagle's wing! But whether ye be indeed mountains, +or whether ye be clouds, who can tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that +long-lingering sunset, that drenches heaven and earth in one +indistinguishable glory, setting the West on fire, as if the final +conflagration were begun! Was it woody? Hush, hush, and you will hear a +pine-cone drop in the central silence of a forest--a silent and solitary +wilderness--in which you may wander a whole day long, unaccompanied but +by the cushat, the corby, the falcon, the roe, and they are all shy of +human feet, and, like thoughts, pass away in a moment; so if you long +for less fleeting farewells from the native dwellers in the wood, lo! +the bright brown queen of the butterflies, gay and gaudy in her +glancings through the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring bird-like over +the pools in the glade; and if your ear desire music, the robin and the +wren may haply trill you a few notes among the briery rocks, or the bold +blackbird open wide his yellow bill in his holly-tree, and set the +squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his ringing roundelay. Any +rivers? one--to whom a thousand torrents are tributary--as he himself is +tributary to the sea. Any lochs? how many we know not--for we never +counted them twice alike--omitting perhaps some forgotten tarns, or +counting twice over some one of our more darling waters, worthy to dash +their waves against the sides of ships--alone wanting to the +magnificence of those inland seas! Yes, it was as level, as boggy, as +hilly, as mountainous, as woody, as lochy, and as rivery a parish, as +ever laughed to scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical Survey. + +Was not that a noble parish for apprenticeship in sports and pastimes of +a great master? No need of any teacher. On the wings of joy we were +borne over the bosom of nature, and learnt all things worthy and needful +to be learned, by instinct first, and afterwards by reason. To look at a +wild creature--winged with feathers, or mere feet--and not desire to +destroy or capture it--is impossible to passion--to imagination--to +fancy. Thus had we longed to feel and handle the glossy plumage of the +beaked birds--the wide-winged Birds of Prey--before our finger had ever +touched a trigger. Their various flight, in various weather, we had +watched and noted with something even of the eye of a naturalist--the +wonder of a poet; for among the brood of boys there are hundreds and +thousands of poets who never see manhood--the poetry dying away--the boy +growing up into mere prose;--yet to some even of the paragraphs of these +Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few sparks of the sacred light are yet +alive within us; and sad to our old ears would be the sound of "Put out +the light, and then--put out the light!" Thus were we impelled, even +when a mere child, far away from the manse, for miles, into the moors +and woods. Once it was feared that poor wee Kit was lost; for having set +off all by himself, at sunrise, to draw a night-line from the distant +Black Loch, and look at a trap set for a glead, a mist overtook him on +the moor on his homeward way, with an eel as long as himself hanging +over his shoulder, and held him prisoner for many hours within its +shifting walls, frail indeed, and opposing no resistance to the hand, +yet impenetrable to the feet of fear as the stone dungeon's thraldom. If +the mist had remained, that would have been nothing; only a still cold +wet seat on a stone; but as "a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of +curb and rein," so a Scotch mist becomes a shower--and a shower a +flood--and a flood a storm--and a storm a tempest--and a tempest thunder +and lightning--and thunder and lightning heavenquake and +earthquake--till the heart of poor wee Kit quaked, and almost died +within him in the desert. In this age of Confessions, need we be +ashamed to own, in the face of the whole world, that we sat us down and +cried! The small brown Moorland bird, as dry as a toast, hopped out of +his heather-hole, and cheerfully cheeped comfort. With crest just a +thought lowered by the rain, the green-backed, white-breasted peaseweep, +walked close by us in the mist; and sight of wonder, that made even in +that quandary by the quagmire our heart beat with joy--lo! never seen +before, and seldom since, three wee peaseweeps, not three days old, +little bigger than shrew-mice, all covered with blackish down, +interspersed with long white hair, running after their mother! But the +large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, restless even in the most utter +solitude, soon spied us glowering at her, and her young ones, through +our tears; and not for a moment doubting--Heaven forgive her for the +shrewd but cruel suspicion!--that we were Lord Eglinton's +gamekeeper--with a sudden shrill cry that thrilled to the marrow in our +cold backbone--flapped and fluttered herself away into the mist, while +the little black bits of down disappeared, like devils, into the moss. +The croaking of the frogs grew terrible. And worse and worse, close at +hand, seeking his lost cows through the mist, the bellow of the +notorious red bull! We began saying our prayers; and just then the sun +forced himself out into the open day, and, like the sudden opening of +the shutters of a room, the whole world was filled with light. The frogs +seemed to sink among the powheads--as for the red bull who had tossed +the tinker, he was cantering away, with his tail towards us, to a lot of +cows on the hill; and hark--a long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo! Rab +Roger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest lass, from the manse, in +search of our dead body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Leezy kisses us +from the one to the other--wrings the rain out of our long yellow +hair--(a pretty contrast to the small grey sprig now on the crown of our +pericranium, and the thin tail acock behind)--and by-and-by stepping +into Hazel-Deanhead for a drap and a "chitterin' piece," by the time we +reach the manse we are as dry as a whistle--take our scold and our +pawmies from the minister--and, by way of punishment and penance, after +a little hot whisky-toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of bun, are +bundled off to bed in the daytime! + +Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded gun was in our hand--and often +guided the city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the plover, the +moorfowl, and the falcon. The falcon! yes--in the higher region of +clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a stripling--and how fast +had we so shot up you may know, by taking notice of the schoolboy on the +play-green, and two years afterwards, discovering, perhaps, that he is +that fine tall ensign carrying the colours among the light-bobs of the +regiment, to the sound of clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum, +marching into the city a thousand strong. + +We used in early boyhood, deceived by some uncertainty in size, not to +distinguish between a kite and a buzzard, which was very stupid, and +unlike us--more like Poietes in Salmonia. The flight of the buzzard, as +may be seen in Selby, is slow--and except during the season of +incubation, when it often soars to a considerable height, it seldom +remains long on the wing. It is indeed a heavy, inactive bird, both in +disposition and appearance, and is generally seen perched upon some old +and decayed tree, such being its favourite haunt. Him we soon thought +little or nothing about--and the last one we shot, it was, we remember, +just as he was coming out of the deserted nest of a crow, which he had +taken possession of out of pure laziness; and we killed him for not +building a house of his own in a country where there was no want of +sticks. But the kite or glead, as the same distinguished ornithologist +rightly says, is proverbial for the ease and gracefulness of its flight, +which generally consists of large and sweeping circles, performed with a +motionless wing, or at least with a slight and almost imperceptible +stroke of its pinions, and at very distant intervals. In this manner, +and directing its course by its tail, which acts as a rudder, whose +slightest motion produces effect, it frequently soars to such a height +as to become almost invisible to the human eye. Him we loved to slay, as +a bird worthy of our barrel. Him and her have we watched for days, like +a lynx, till we were led, almost as if by an instinct, to their nest in +the heart of the forest--a nest lined with wool, hair, and other soft +materials, in the fork of some large tree. They will not, of course, +utterly forsake their nest, when they have young, fire at them as you +will, though they become more wary, and seem as if they heard a leaf +fall, so suddenly will they start and soar to heaven. We remember, from +an ambuscade in a briery dell in the forest, shooting one flying +overhead to its nest; and, on going up to him as he lay on his back, +with clenched talons and fierce eyes, absolutely shrieking and yelling +with fear, and rage, and pain, we intended to spare his life, and only +take him prisoner, when we beheld beside him on the sod, a chicken from +the brood of famous ginger piles, then, all but his small self, +following the feet of their clucking mother at the manse! With visage +all inflamed, we gave him the butt on his double organ of +destructiveness, then only known to us by the popular name of "back o' +the head," exclaiming + + "Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas + Immolat"-- + +Quivered every feather, from beak to tail and talon, in his last +convulsion, + + "Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras!" + +In the season of love what combats have we been witness +to--Umpire--between birds of prey! The Female Falcon, she sat aloof like +a sultana, in her soft, sleek, glossy plumes, the iris in her eye of +wilder, more piercing, fiery, cruel, fascinating, and maddening lustre, +than ever lit the face of the haughtiest human queen, adored by princes +on her throne of diamonds. And now her whole plumage shivers--and is +ruffled--for her own Gentle Peregrine appears, and they two will enjoy +their dalliance on the edge of the cliff-chasm--and the Bride shall +become a wife in that stormy sunshine on the loftiest precipice of all +these our Alps. But a sudden sugh sweeps down from heaven, and a rival +Hawk comes rushing in his rage from his widowed eyry, and will win and +wear this his second selected bride--for her sake, tearing, or to be +torn, to pieces. Both struck down from heaven, fall a hundred fathom to +the heather, talon-locked, in the mutual gripe of death. Fair play, +gentlemen, and attend to the Umpire. It is, we understand, to be an +up-and-down fight. Allow us to disentangle you--and without giving +advantage to either--elbow-room to both. Neither of you ever saw a human +face so near before--nor ever were captive in a human hand. Both fasten +their momentarily frightened eyes on us, and, holding back their heads, +emit a wild ringing cry. But now they catch sight of each other, and in +an instant are one bunch of torn, bloody plumes. Perhaps their wings are +broken, and they can soar no more--so up we fling them both into the +air--and wheeling each within a short circle, clash again go both birds +together, and the talons keep tearing throats till they die. Let them +die, then, for both are for ever disabled to enjoy their lady-love. She, +like some peerless flower in the days of chivalry at a fatal tournament, +seeing her rival lovers dying for her sake, nor ever to wear her glove +or scarf in the front of battle, rising to leave her canopy in tears of +grief and pride--even like such Angelica, the Falcon unfolds her wings, +and flies slowly away from her dying ravishers, to bewail her virginity +on the mountains. "O, Frailty! thy name is woman!" A third Lover is +already on the wing, more fortunate than his preceding peers--and +Angelica is won, wooed, and sitting, about to lay an egg in an old eyry, +soon repaired and furbished up for the honey-week, with a number of +small birds lying on the edge of the hymeneal couch, with which, when +wearied with love, and yawp with hunger, Angelica may cram her maw till +she be ready to burst, by her bridegroom's breast. + +Forgotten all human dwellings, and all the thoughts and feelings that +abide by firesides, and doorways, and rooms, and roofs--delightful was +it, during the long long midsummer holiday, to lie all alone, on the +greensward of some moor-surrounded mount, not far from the foot of some +range of cliffs, and with our face up to the sky, wait, unwearying, till +a speck was seen to cross the blue cloudless lift, and steadying itself +after a minute's quivering into motionless rest, as if hung suspended +there by the counteracting attraction of heaven and earth, known to be a +Falcon! Balanced far above its prey, and, soon as the right moment came, +ready to pounce down, and fly away with the treasure in its talons to +its crying eyry! If no such speck were for hours visible in the ether, +doubtless dream upon dream, rising unbidden, and all of their own wild +accord, congenial with the wilderness, did, like phantasmagoria, pass to +and fro, backwards and forwards, along the darkened curtain of our +imagination, all the lights of reason being extinguished or removed! In +that trance, not unheard, although scarcely noticed, was the cry of the +curlew, the murmur of the little moorland burn, or the din, almost like +dashing, of the far-off loch. 'Twas thus that the senses, in their most +languid state, ministered to the fancy, and fed her for a future day, +when all the imagery then received so imperfectly, and in broken +fragments, into her mysterious keeping, was to arise in orderly array, +and to form a world more lovely and more romantic even than the reality, +which then lay hushed or whispering, glittering or gloomy, in the +outward air. For the senses hear and see all things in their seeming +slumbers, from all the impulses that come to them in solitude gaining +more, far more, than they have lost! When we are awake, or half awake, +or almost sunk into a sleep, they are ceaselessly gathering materials +for the thinking and feeling soul--and it is hers, in a deep delight +formed of memory and imagination, to put them together by a divine +plastic power, in which she is almost, as it were, a very creator, till +she exult to look on beauty and on grandeur such as this earth and these +heavens never saw, products of her own immortal and immaterial energies, +and BEING once, to BE for ever, when the universe, with all its suns and +systems, is no more! + +But oftener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the +cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, +ever hungry except when asleep. Left to themselves, when the old birds +are hunting, an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear +the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be, +fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down +tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects, +who likewise all live upon prey; for example. Ants of Carrion. Get you +behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide +scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost +a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against +the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from the frost-riven breast +of the precipice. Wait there, though it should be for hours--but it will +not be for hours; for both the old hawks are circling the sky, one over +the marsh and one over the wood. She comes--she comes--the female +Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her mate; and while he is plain in his +dress, as a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and gaudy as a Demirep +dressed for the pit of the Opera--deep and broad her bosom, with an air +of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a serpent's. But now she is a +mother, and plays a mother's part--greedier, even than for herself, for +her greedy young. The lightning flashes from the cave-mouth, and she +comes tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through the dwarf bushes on +the cliff-face, perpendicular and plum-down, within three yards of her +murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest this day--no--nor all +night long: for a father's is not as a mother's love. Your only chance +of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed circuit round about all the +moors within half a league; and possibly you may see him sitting on some +cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid to fly either hither or thither, +perplexed by the sudden death he saw appearing among the unaccountable +smoke, scenting it yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of +your approach. Hazard a long shot--for you are right behind him--and a +slug may hit him on the head, and, following the feathers, split his +skull-cap and scatter his brains. 'Tis done--and the eyry is orphan'd. +Let the small brown moorland birds twitter Io Paean, as they hang +balanced on the bulrushes--let the stone-chat glance less fearfully +within shelter of the old grey cairn--let the cushat coo his joyous +gratitude in the wood--and the lark soar up to heaven, afraid no more of +a demon descending from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, let them +die of rage and hunger--for there must always be pain in the world; and +'tis well when its endurance by the savage is the cause of pleasure to +the sweet--when the gore-yearning cry of the cruel is drowned in the +song of the kind at feed or play--and the tribes of the peace-loving +rejoice in the despair and death of the robbers and shedders of blood! + +Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all his days shot an Eagle. That +royal race seems nearly extinct in Scotland. Gaze as you will over the +wide circumference of a Highland heaven, calm as the bride's dream of +love, or disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision of a storm, and +all spring and summer long you may not chance to see the shadow of an +Eagle in the sun. The old kings of the air are sometimes yet seen by the +shepherds on cliff or beneath cloud; but their offspring are rarely +allowed to get full-fledged in spite of the rifle always lying loaded in +the shieling. But in the days of our boyhood there were many glorious +things on earth and air that now no more seem to exist, and among these +were the Eagles. One pair had from time immemorial built on the +Echo-cliff, and you could see with a telescope the eyry, with the rim of +its circumference, six feet in diameter, strewn with partridges, +moorfowl, and leverets--their feathers and their skeletons. But the +Echo-cliff was inaccessible. + + "Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud, + And mists that spread the flying shroud, + And sunbeams, and the flying blast, + That if it could, would hurry past, + But that enormous barrier binds it fast." + +No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand feet of the lower +earth; yet how often must they have stooped down on lamb and leveret, +and struck the cushat in her very yew-tree in the centre of the wood! +Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the waning moon--at +mid-day, in the night of sun-hiding tempests--or afar off, in even more +solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, +they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles, + + "Placed far amid the melancholy main," + +or vast inland glens, where not a summer shieling smiles beneath the +region of eternal snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in flesh, +and bone, and blood, just like the veriest poultry that die of croup and +consumption on the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness blinds the +eye that God framed to pierce the seas, and weakens the wing that +dallies with the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain is the doctrine +of the divine right of kings. He is hawked at by the mousing owl, whose +instinct instructs him that these talons have lost their grasp and these +pinions their deathblow. The eagle lies for weeks famished in his eyry, +and, hunger-driven over the ledge, leaves it to ascend no more. He is +dethroned, and wasted to mere bones--a bunch of feathers--his flight is +now slower than that of the buzzard--he floats himself along now with +difficulty from knoll to knoll, pursued by the shrieking magpies, +buffeted by the corby, and lying on his back, like a recreant, before +the beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was terrified to hop round the +carcass till the king of the air was satiated, and gave his permission +to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he himself had scorned. Yet he +is a noble aim to the fowler still; you break a wing and a leg, but fear +to touch him with your hand; Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons +constricted in the death-pang; and holding him up, you wonder that such +an anatomy--for his weight is not more than three pounds--could drive +his claws through that shaggy hide till blood sprung to the +blow--inextricable but to yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to +heal, for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying bird of prey. + +Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where each stone in the desert was +sublime, unassociated though it was with dreams of memory, in its own +simple native power over the human heart! Each sudden breath of wind +passed by us like the voice of a spirit. There were strange meanings in +the clouds--often so like human forms and faces threatening us off, or +beckoning us on, with long black arms, back into the long-withdrawing +wilderness of heaven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, that we had +not been all alone in the desert--that there had been another heart, +whose beatings might have kept time with our own, that we might have +gathered courage in the silent and sullen gloom from the light in a +brother's eye--the smile on a brother's countenance. And often had we +such a Friend in these our far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, +by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage of the old pine-woods. A +Friend from whom "we had received his heart, and given him back our +own,"--such a friendship as the most fortunate and the most happy--and +at that time we were both--are sometimes permitted by Providence, with +all the passionate devotion of young and untamed imagination, to enjoy, +during a bright dreamy world of which that friendship is as the Polar +star. Emilius Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy when we were but +a child--when we were but a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the shadow +of his arm--happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He +was the protector--the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we +bounded with wilder glee--at our studies we sat with intenser +earnestness, by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those +glorious sunsets, and imbued our young spirit with the love and worship +of nature. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was +no idle ceremony to be hastily gone through--that we might lay down our +head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep, but a command of God, +which a response from nature summoned the humble heart to obey. He it +was who for ever had at command wit for the sportive, wisdom for the +serious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry music of his +lips--they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes; and then, all at +once, when the one changed its measures, and the other gathered, as it +were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, +and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit felt to be +indeed divine! It seemed as if we knew but the words of language--that +he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read +together were, every page, and every sentence of every page, all covered +over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, +unintelligible or with imperfect meanings. Whether we perused with him a +volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and the +sky, or the volume revealed from heaven, next day we always knew and +felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we +grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and +religious air, with all our finer affections towards other human beings, +all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, +or with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent fancy to embrace +the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of +pleasure or pain--of joy or grief--of fear or hope--had our heart to +withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within +our bosom, with all its imperfections--may we venture to say, with all +its virtues. A repented folly--a confessed fault--a sin for which we +were truly contrite--a vice flung from us with loathing and with +shame--in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and +his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in +the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school +were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a +flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal +land. In spite of that difference in our years--or oh! say rather +because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and +the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and +younger brother, in the sunlight and moonlight solitudes! Woods--into +whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his +company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and +there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts--in whose +lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by +ourselves have faced the spray--in his presence, dinn'd with a merry +music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling +up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily +overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as +we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm +of both blue depths--how magnificent the white-crested waves tumbling +beneath the black thunder-cloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed +on it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of some sudden +storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, that +seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods to our ear, +because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at +midnight, when not one star was in the sky. With him we first followed +the Falcon in her flight--he showed us on the Echo-cliff the Eagle's +eyry. To the thicket he led us where lay couched the lovely-spotted Doe, +or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two +fawns at her side. But for him we should not then have seen the antlers +of the red-deer, for the Forest was indeed a most savage place, and +haunted--such was the superstition at which they who scorned it +trembled--haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had +murdered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little mountain well that +ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all +those still shadowy solitudes! Into what depths of human nature did he +teach our wondering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to become of us, we +sometimes thought in sadness that all at once made our spirits +sink--like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by the fear of some +unwonted shadow from above--what was to become of us when the mandate +should arrive for him to leave the Manse for ever, and sail away in a +ship to India never more to return! Ever as that dreaded day drew +nearer, more frequent was the haze in our eyes; and in our blindness, we +knew not that such tears ought to have been far more rueful still, for +that he then lay under orders for a longer and more lamentable voyage--a +voyage over a narrow strait to the Eternal shore. All--all at once he +drooped; on one fatal morning the dread decay began; with no +forewarning, the springs on which his being had so lightly--so +proudly--so grandly moved--gave way. Between one Sabbath and another his +bright eyes darkened--and while all the people were assembled at the +sacrament, the soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. It was +indeed a dreadful death, serene and sainted though it were; and not a +hall--not a house--not a hut--not a shieling within all the circle of +those wide mountains, that did not on that night mourn as if it had lost +a son. All the vast parish attended his funeral--Lowlanders and +Highlanders in their own garb of grief. And have time and tempest now +blackened the white marble of that monument--is that inscription now +hard to be read--the name of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration--nor +haply one surviving who ever saw the light of the countenance of him +there interred! Forgotten as if he had never been! for few were that +glorious orphan's kindred--and they lived in a foreign land--forgotten +but by one heart, faithful through all the chances and changes of this +restless world! And therein enshrined among all its holiest +remembrances, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it too, like +his, shall be but dust and ashes! + +Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting one another--in absence or in +death. Yet forgetting is not just the very word; call it rather a +reconcilement to doom and destiny--in thus obeying a benign law of +nature that soon streams sunshine over the shadows of the grave. Not +otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent +spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight; and thoughts +delightful still, thoughts of the faces and the voices of the dead, +perish not, lying sometimes in slumber--sometimes in sleep. It belongs +not to the blessed season and genius of youth, to hug to its heart +useless and unavailing griefs. Images of the well-beloved, when they +themselves are in the mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, +through the meditative hush of solitude. But our main business--our +prime joys and our prime sorrows--ought to be, must be, with the living. +Duty demands it; and Love, who would pine to death over the bones of the +dead, soon fastens upon other objects with eyes and voices to smile and +whisper an answer to all his vows. So was it with us. Ere the midsummer +sun had withered the flowers that spring had sprinkled over our +Godfrey's grave, youth vindicated its own right to happiness; and we +felt that we did wrong to visit too often that corner in the kirkyard. +No fears had we of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams we saw +him--most often all alive as ever--sometimes a phantom away from that +grave! If the morning light was frequently hard to be endured, bursting +suddenly upon us along with the feeling that he was dead, it more +frequently cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth +a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we +found ourselves angling down the river, or along the loch--once more +following the flight of the Falcon along the woods--eying the Eagle on +the Echo-cliff. Days passed by, without so much as one thought of +Emilius Godfrey--pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our +books intently--just as if he had never been! But often and often, too, +we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards +us--his very figure--we could not be deceived; but the love-raised ghost +disappeared on a sudden--the grief-woven spectre melted into the mist. +The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to +grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature +became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and +fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from +the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their +way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God. + +Then this was to be our last year in the parish--now dear to us as our +birthplace; nay, itself our very birthplace--for in it from the darkness +of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of +cloud and mountain, we felt that most probably never more should we +return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did +ourselves, had chalked out a future life for young Christopher North--a +life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name. +Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of +passion, to make the most--the best--of the few months that remained to +us, of that our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled +by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the world, all +alike--young and old--must obey. Our books were flung aside--nor did +our old master and minister frown--for he grudged not to the boy he +loved the remnant of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's +rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye--not with our voice--one long +holiday, throughout that our last autumn, on to the pale farewell +blossoms of the Christmas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the loch +or river; but we had not known thoroughly our own soul--for now we +angled less passionately--less perseveringly than was our wont of +yore--sitting in a pensive, a melancholy, a miserable dream, by the +dashing waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our gun we plunged earlier +in the morning into the forest, and we returned later at eve--but less +earnest--less eager were we to hear the cushat's moan from his +yew-tree--to see the hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft on the +sky. A thousand dead thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the +woods--and we sometimes did wring our hands in an agony of grief, to +know that our eyes should not behold the birch-tree brightening there +with another spring. + +Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling was felt to be a +farewell; there was something mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces +of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to +whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil guile; we +regarded the solemn toil-and-care-worn countenances of the old with a +profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our +more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the +woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting +now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from +the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle +with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom +failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. +They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the +insolences of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had +been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had +shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had +been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young +we might sometimes have been, for boyhood is soon heated, and boils +before a defying eye; but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we +revered the head of old age. + +And many at last were the kind--some the sad farewells, ere long +whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for ever +silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard--its +blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to +Thee--O palest Phantom--clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost +risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from +the skies to bless--unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist +of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot +choose but weep, with the self-same vision that often glided before us +long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound of our voice would pause +for a little while, and then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, +floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its +plumes on a knoll far up an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched +that face, pale though it be--lifelike is the waving of those gentle +hands--and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure +from lips hushed by the burial mould! Restored by the power of love, she +stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her +golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under +which the child had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a +moment the blue light in her dewy eyes was dimmed--and never again did +she behold either flower or star. Yet all the images of all the things +she had loved remained in her memory, clear and distinct as the things +themselves before unextinguished eyes; and ere three summers had flown +over her head--which, like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in +heaven's gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness +higher and higher in the light--she could trip her singing way through +the wild wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor +erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses +peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to +give themselves into her fingers; and 'twas thought they hung longer +unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink +the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though +her garment touched the broom-stalk on which they sang. The cushat, as +she thrid her way through the wood, continued to croon in her darksome +tree--and the lark, although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by +her presence into a new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as +if it were his first matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth and air +manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Wilderness--and as for human +beings, she was named, in their pity, their wonder, and their delight, +the Blind Beauty of the Moor! + +She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And +now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten +the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden--and he was poor. Of +all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is--Charity. No +manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven--for the mouths of the +hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among +the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each +neighbour's house--neighbour though miles afar--as the sacred duty came +round--and the unrepining poor sent the grateful child away with their +prayers. + +One evening, returning to the hut with her usual song, she danced up to +her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she +shrieked--if she fainted--there was but one Ear that heard, one Eye that +saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud +unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, +but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she +came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound of our +voice, fell down with clasped hands at our feet--"My father's dead!" Had +the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of mortality? For +people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little while there was +a group round us, and we bore her back again to her dwelling in our +arms. As for us, we had been on our way to bid the fair creature and her +father farewell. How could she have lived--an utter orphan--in such a +world! The holy power that is in Innocence would for ever have remained +with her; but Innocence longs to be away, when her sister Joy has +departed; and 'tis sorrowful to see the one on earth, when the other has +gone to Heaven! This sorrow none of us had long to see; for though a +flower, when withered at the root, and doomed ere eve to perish, may yet +look to the careless eye the same as when it blossomed in its +pride--yet its leaves, still green, are not as once they were--its +bloom, though fair, is faded--and at set of sun, the dews shall find it +in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere Sabbath came, the orphan +child was dead. Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her birth had +been the humblest of the humble; and though all in life had loved her, +it was thought best that none should be asked to the funeral of her and +her father, but two or three friends; the old clergyman himself walked +at the head of the father's coffin--we at the head of the +daughter's--for this was granted unto our exceeding love;--and thus +passed away for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor! + +Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us +over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our +pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic. +Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen--let +us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-cliff, and with our +rifle--'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey--let us stalk the +red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick, as now they +lie on the Atholl Braes; they were still a rare sight--and often and +often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single +glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true +angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has +reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea--so we, +a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as +the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the +possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and +strongest is self-fed passion springing in spite of circumstance. When +blows the warm showery south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow +sides at every dropping of the fly on the curling water--and the angler +is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once--twice--thrice--during a +long blustering day--the sullen plunge of a salmon is sufficient for +that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever +on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is +never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in the Great +Glen. A loud, wild, wrathful, and savage cry from some huge animal made +our heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our forehead in sweat. We looked +up--and a red-deer--a stag of ten--the king of the forest--stood with +all his antlers, snuffing the wind, but yet blind to our figure +overshadowed by a rock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart--and leaping up +far higher than our head, he tumbled in terrific death, and lay +stone-still before our starting eyes amid the rustling of the +strong-bented heather! There we stood surveying him for a long +triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes--and ghastlier his long +bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of +his antlers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in +death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the +north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again, +with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a +distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-waggon forced its way through the +bogs and over the braes--and on our return into the inhabited country, +we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing +over the Prey; for not for many years--never since the funeral of the +old lord--had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along +the heather. + +Fifty years and more--and oh! my weary soul! half a century took a long +time to die away in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms +through which were afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged +raptures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed +halcyons to rest--though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but +a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs, +the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and +the clouds! Fifty years and more are gone--and this is the Twelfth of +August Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all the Highland mountains +have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's +joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our +feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully these +fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast! +intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now +all a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up among the +rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition it is +to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty +cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan now in their variegated summer-dress, seen +even among the unmelted snows. The scene shiftsand high up on the heath +above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braemar, the Thane--God bless +him--has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unerring +rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's Oak. Never shall Eld deaden +our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men any more than with +their highest raptures, their profoundest griefs. Blessings on the head +of every true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor shall we take +it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he +may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a +rainy day, to the peat-reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, +by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid +conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a +haunch of the red-deer. + +Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle--or a female, fair as +the Falcon--a male, stern as an old Stag--or a female, soft as a young +Doe--we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article--and to +look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now +come to the close of his Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen--out of +one into another--and from which he has now been revived by the +application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think +that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking +common in sleep, there has been no method in our madness, no _lucidus +ordo_ in our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit--our +thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to +the most approved principles of association--and a fine proportion has +been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble +tree, which--although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown +its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further +gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the +umbrage--is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature +working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an +old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Woe and shame to the +sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let +the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find +shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age. + + + + +TALE OF EXPIATION. + + +Margaret Burnside was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest +people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child; and as they +had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about +the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left +friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom +wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling +among hard-working folk, towards objects out of the narrow circle of +their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong +excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the +lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian +benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost +destitution--and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate +with the tears shed over their parents' graves. They are taken by the +hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection, +and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers +and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of +comfort falls upon them during the gloom of grief, and attends them all +their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of +affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretchedness with +which all have become familiar, no one very tenderly pities; and thus +the orphan, reconciling herself to the extreme hardships of her +condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both +happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant pressure +of her lot, becomes poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates +like an almost worthless weed that is carelessly trodden on by every +foot, or if by nature born a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all +her days leads the life not so much of a servant as of a slave. + +Such, till she was twelve years old, had been the fate of Margaret +Burnside. Of a slender form and weak constitution, she had never been +able for much work; and thus from one discontented and harsh master and +mistress to another, she had been transferred from house to +house--always the poorest--till she came to be looked on as an +encumbrance rather than a help in any family, and thought hardly worth +her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes herding the kine. It was +supposed that she was in a consumption--and as the shadow of death +seemed to lie on the neglected creature's face, a feeling something like +love was awakened towards her in the heart of pity, for which she showed +her gratitude by still attending to all household tasks with an alacrity +beyond her strength. Few doubted that she was dying--and it was plain +that she thought so herself; for the Bible, which, in her +friendlessness, she had always read more than other children, who were +too happy to reflect often on the Word of that Being from whom their +happiness flowed, was now, when leisure permitted, seldom or never out +of her hands; and in lonely places, where there was no human ear to +hearken, did the dying girl often support her heart, when quaking in +natural fears of the grave, by singing to herself hymns and psalms. But +her hour was not yet come--though by the inscrutable decrees of +Providence doomed to be hideous with almost inexpiable guilt. As for +herself--she was innocent as the linnet that sang beside her in the +broom, and innocent was she to be up to the last throbbings of her +religious heart. When the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the +orphan seemed to see in the holy words, brightening through the +radiance, assurances of forgiveness of all her sins--small sins +indeed--yet to her humble and contrite heart exceeding great--and to be +pardoned only by the intercession of Him who died for us on the tree. +Often, when clouds were in the sky, and blackness covered the Book, hope +died away from the discoloured page--and the lonely creature wept and +sobbed over the doom denounced on all who sin, and repent not--whether +in deed or in thought. And thus religion became within her an awful +thing--till, in her resignation, she feared to die. But look on that +flower by the hill-side path, withered, as it seems, beyond the power of +sun and air and dew and rain to restore it to life. Next day, you happen +to return to the place, its leaves are of a dazzling green, its +blossoms of a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. Nature, as +if kindling towards her in sudden love, not only restored her in a few +weeks to life--but to perfect health; and ere long she, whom few had +looked at, and for whom still fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the +fairest girl in all the parish--while she continued to sit, as she had +always done from very childhood, on the _poor's form_ in the lobby of +the kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a manner, in one so +poorly attired and so meanly placed, attracted the eyes of the young +Ladies in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside was taken under their +especial protection--sent for two years to a superior school, where she +was taught all things useful for persons in humble life--and while yet +scarcely fifteen, returning to her native parish, was appointed teacher +of a small school of her own, to which were sent all the girls who could +be spared from home, from those of parents poor as her own had been, up +to those of the farmers and small proprietors, who knew the blessings of +a good education--and that without it, the minister may preach in vain. +And thus Margaret Burnside grew and blossomed like the lily of the +field--and every eye blessed her--and she drew her breath in gratitude, +piety, and peace. + +Thus a few happy and useful years passed by--and it was forgotten by +all--but herself--that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. But to be +without one near and dear blood-relative in all the world, must often, +even to the happy heart of youthful innocence, be more than a pensive--a +painful thought; and therefore, though Margaret Burnside was always +cheerful among her little scholars, yet in the retirement of her own +room (a pretty parlour, with a window looking into a flower-garden), and +on her walks among the braes, her mien was somewhat melancholy, and her +eyes wore that touching expression, which seems doubtfully to +denote--neither joy nor sadness--but a habit of soul which, in its +tranquillity, still partakes of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often +on past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to indulge in dreams of +future repose. That profound orphan-feeling imbued her whole character; +and sometimes when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon +her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber--and wept. + +Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at +Moorside, the highest hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father +had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was grey, +his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were +dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower--indeed his wife had never +been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his +youth and prime of manhood; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he +had been looked at with no very friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his +character had preceded his arrival there--and in that peaceful pastoral +parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any +good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and +religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the +best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions +faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of +dislike, or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity +which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at +first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously +exhibited themselves in fiery outbreaks, advancing age had gradually +subdued; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and industrious man; +affected, if he followed it not in sincerity, even an austerely +religious life; and as he possessed more than common sagacity and +intelligence, he had acquired, at last, if not won, a certain ascendancy +in the parish, even over many whose hearts never opened nor warmed +towards him--so that he was now an elder of the kirk--and, as the most +unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, a just steward to the poor. His +grey hairs were not honoured, but it would not be too much to say that +they were respected. Many who had doubted him before came to think they +had done him injustice, and sought to wipe away their fault by regarding +him with esteem, and showing themselves willing to interchange all +neighbourly kindnesses and services with all the family at Moorside. His +son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and too much addicted to the +fascinating pastimes of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons of +labour, and rarely long pursued against the law without vitiating the +whole character, was a favourite with all the parish. Singularly +handsome, and with manners above his birth, Ludovic was welcome +wherever he went, both with young and old. No merry-making could deserve +the name without him; and at all meetings for the display of feats of +strength and agility, far and wide through more counties than one he was +the champion. Nor had he received a mean education. All that the parish +schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having been the darling companion +of all the gentlemen's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his mind had +kept pace with theirs, and from them he had caught unconsciously that +demeanour so far superior to what could have been expected from one in +his humble condition, but which, at the same time, seemed so congenial +with his happy nature as to be readily acknowledged to be one of its +original gifts. Of his sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she +was the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and that all who saw their +friendship felt that it was just. The small parentless granddaughter was +also dear to Margaret--more than perhaps her heart knew, because that, +like herself, she was an orphan. But the creature was also a merry and a +madcap child, and her freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, as +she tossed her head in untamable glee, and went dancing and singing, +like a bird on the boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange +sympathy entirely won the heart of her who, throughout all her own +childhood, had been familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of tears. +And thus did Margaret love her, it might be said, even with a very +mother's love. She generally passed her free Saturday afternoons at +Moorside, and often slept there all night with little Ann in her bosom. +At such times Ludovic was never from home, and many a Sabbath he walked +with her to the kirk--all the family together--and _once_ by themselves +for miles along the moor--a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which returned +upon him in his agony on his dying day. + +No one said, no one thought that Ludovic and Margaret were lovers--nor +were they, though well worthy indeed of each other's love; for the +orphan's whole heart was filled and satisfied with a sense of duty, and +all its affections were centred in her school, where all eyes blessed +her, and where she had been placed for the good of all those gladsome +creatures, by them who had rescued her from the penury that kills the +soul, and whose gracious bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In her +prayers she beseeched God to bless them rather than the wretch on her +knees--their images, their names, were ever before her eyes and on her +ear; and next to that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, and +comes from the footstool of God into the humble, lowly, and contrite +heart, was to that orphan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the bliss +of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to her was a brother, and no more; a +name sacred as that of sister, by which she always called her Alice, and +was so called in return. But to Ludovic, who had a soul of fire, +Margaret was dearer far than ever sister was to the brother whom, at the +sacrifice of her own life, she might have rescued from death. Go where +he might, a phantom was at his side--a pale fair face for ever fixed its +melancholy eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal even when they +faintly smiled; and once he awoke at midnight, when all the house were +asleep, crying, with shrieks, "O God of mercy! Margaret is murdered!" +Mysterious passion of Love! that darkens its own dreams of delight with +unimaginable horrors! Shall we call such dire bewilderment the +superstition of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the prophetic +soul! + +From what seemingly insignificant sources--and by means of what humble +instruments--may this life's best happiness be diffused over the +households of industrious men! Here was the orphan daughter of forgotten +paupers, both dead ere she could speak; herself, during all her +melancholy childhood, a pauper even more enslaved than ever they had +been--one of the most neglected and unvalued of all God's +creatures--who, had she then died, would have been buried in some +nettled nook of the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost by one +single tear--suddenly brought out from the cold and cruel shade in which +she had been withering away, by the interposition of human but angelic +hands, into the heaven's most gracious sunshine, where all at once her +beauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for so many years had been even +begrudgingly fed on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury ungrateful +for all her weak but zealous efforts to please by doing her best, in +sickness and sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and in all +weathers, however rough and severe--was now raised to the rank of a +moral, intellectual, and religious being, and presided over, tended, and +instructed many little ones, far far happier in their childhood than it +had been her lot to be, and all growing up beneath her now untroubled +eyes, in innocence, love, and joy inspired into their hearts by her, +their young and happy benefactress. Not a human dwelling in all the +parish, that had not reason to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She +taught them to be pleasant in their manners, neat in their persons, +rational in their minds, pure in their hearts, and industrious in all +their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, all angry fits, and all +idle dispositions--the besetting vices and sins of the children of the +poor, whose home-education is often so miserably, and almost necessarily +neglected--did this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of meekness +never ruffled, and tenderness never troubled, in a few months subdue and +overcome--till her school-room, every day in the week, was, in its +cheerfulness, sacred as a Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve with +the hum of perpetual happiness. The effects were soon felt in every +house. All floors were tidier, and order and regularity enlivened every +hearth. It was the pride of her scholars to get their own little gardens +behind their parents' huts to bloom like that of the Brae--and, in +imitation of that flowery porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the +wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every Sabbath forenoon waited for +her at the gate--and walked, with her at their head, into the House of +God--a beautiful procession to all their parents' eyes--one by one +dropping away into their own seats, as the band moved along the little +lobby, and the minister, sitting in the pulpit all the while, looked +solemnly down upon the fair flock--the shepherd of their souls! + +It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was not in the kirk. The +congregation had risen to join in prayer, when the great door was thrown +open, and a woman, apparelled as for the house of worship, but wild and +ghastly in her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil spirits, burst +in upon the service, and, with uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God +to forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the foulest and most +unnatural murder had been done, and that her own eyes had seen the +corpse of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a pool of blood! The +congregation gave one groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the +kirk had been toppling over their heads. All cheeks waxed white, women +fainted, and the firmest heart quaked with terror and pity, as once and +again the affrighted witness, in the same words, described the horrid +spectacle, and then rushed out into the open air, followed by hundreds, +who for some minutes had been palsy-stricken; and now the kirkyard was +all in a tumult round the body of her who lay in a swoon. In the midst +of that dreadful ferment, there were voices crying aloud that the poor +woman was mad, and that such horror could not be beneath the sun; for +such a perpetration on the Sabbath-day, and first heard of just as the +prayers of His people were about to ascend to the Father of all mercies, +shocked belief, and doubt struggled with despair as in the helpless +shudderings of some dream of blood. The crowd were at last prevailed on +by their pastor to disperse, and sit down on the tombstones, and water +being sprinkled over the face of her who still lay in that mortal swoon, +and the air suffered to circulate freely round her, she again opened her +glassy eyes, and raising herself on her elbow, stared on the multitude, +all gathered there so wan and silent, and shrieked out, "The Day of +Judgment!--the Day of Judgment!" + +The aged minister raised her on her feet, and led her to a grave, on +which she sat down, and hid her face on his knees. "O that I should have +lived to see the day--but dreadful are the decrees of the Most High--and +she whom we all loved has been cruelly murdered! Carry me with you, +people, and I will show you where lies her corpse." + +"Where--where is Ludovic Adamson?" cried a hoarse voice which none there +had ever heard before; and all eyes were turned in one direction; but +none knew who had spoken, and all again was hush. Then all at once a +hundred voices repeated the same words, "Where--where is Ludovic +Adamson?" and there was no reply. Then, indeed, was the kirkyard in an +angry and a wrathful ferment, and men looked far into each other's eyes +for confirmation of their suspicions. And there was whispering about +things, that, though in themselves light as air, seemed now charged with +hideous import; and then arose sacred appeals to Heaven's eternal +justice, horridly mingled with oaths and curses; and all the crowd, +springing to their feet, pronounced, "that no other but he could be the +murderer." + +It was remembered now, that for months past Margaret Burnside had often +looked melancholy--that her visits had been less frequent to Moorside; +and one person in the crowd said, that a few weeks ago she had come upon +them suddenly in a retired place, when Margaret was weeping bitterly, +and Ludovic tossing his arms, seemingly in wrath and distraction. All +agreed that of late he had led a disturbed and reckless life--and that +something dark and suspicious had hung about him, wherever he went, as +if he were haunted by an evil conscience. But did not strange men +sometimes pass through the Moor--squalid mendicants, robber-like, from +the far-off city--one by one, yet seemingly belonging to the same +gang--with bludgeons in their hands--half-naked, and often drunken in +their hunger, as at the doors of lonesome houses they demanded alms; or +more like footpads than beggars, with stern gestures, rising up from the +ditches on the wayside, stopped the frightened women and children going +upon errands, and thanklessly received pence from the poor? One of them +must have been the murderer! But then, again, the whole tide of +suspicion would set in upon Ludovic--her lover; for the darker and more +dreadful the guilt, the more welcome is it to the fears of the +imagination when its waking dreams are floating in blood. + +A tall figure came forward from the porch, and all was silence when the +congregation beheld the Father of the suspected criminal. He stood still +as a tree in a calm day--trunk, limbs, moved not--and his grey head was +uncovered. He then stretched out his arm, not in an imploring, but in a +commanding attitude, and essayed to speak; but his white lips quivered, +and his tongue refused its office. At last, almost fiercely, he uttered, +"Who dares denounce my son?" and like the growling thunder the crowd +cried, "All--all--he is the murderer!" Some said that the old man +smiled; but it could have been but a convulsion of the features--outraged +nature's wrung-out and writhing expression of disdain, to show how a +father's love brooks the cruelty of foolish falsehood and injustice. + +Men, women, and children--all whom grief and horror had not made +helpless--moved away towards the Moor--the woman who had seen the sight +leading the way; for now her whole strength had returned to her, and she +was drawn and driven by an irresistible passion to look again at what +had almost destroyed her judgment. Now they were miles from the kirk, +and over some brushwood, at the edge of a morass some distance from the +common footpath, crows were seen diving and careering in the air, and a +raven, flapping suddenly out of the covert, sailed away with a savage +croak along a range of cliffs. The whole multitude stood stock-still at +that carrion-sound. The guide said shudderingly, in a low hurried voice, +"See, see--that is her mantle"--and there indeed Margaret lay, all in a +heap, maimed, mangled, murdered, with a hundred gashes. The corpse +seemed as if it had been baked in frost, and was imbedded in coagulated +blood. Shreds and patches of her dress, torn away from her bosom, +bestrewed the bushes--for many yards round about, there had been the +trampling of feet, and a long lock of hair that had been torn from her +temples, with the dews yet unmelted on it, was lying upon a plant of +broom, a little way from the corpse. The first to lift the body from the +horrid bed was Gilbert Adamson. He had been long familiar with death in +all its ghastliness, and all had now looked to him--forgetting for the +moment that he was the father of the murderer--to perform the task from +which they recoiled in horror. Resting on one knee, he placed the corpse +on the other--and who could have believed, that even the most violent +and cruel death could have wrought such a change on a face once so +beautiful! All was distortion--and terrible it was to see the dim glazed +eyes, fixedly open, and the orbs insensible to the strong sun that smote +her face white as snow among the streaks as if left by bloody fingers! +Her throat was all discoloured--and a silk handkerchief twisted into a +cord, that had manifestly been used in the murder, was of a redder hue +than when it had veiled her breast. No one knows what horror his eyes +are able to look on, till they are tried. A circle of stupefied gazers +was drawn by a horrid fascination closer and closer round the +corpse--and women stood there holding children by the hands, and fainted +not, but observed the sight, and shuddered without shrieking, and stood +there all dumb as ghosts. But the body was now borne along by many +hands--at first none knew in what direction, till many voices muttered, +"To Moorside--to Moorside"--and in an hour it was laid on the bed in +which Margaret Burnside had so often slept with her beloved little Ann +in her bosom. + +The hand of some one had thrown a cloth over the corpse. The room was +filled with people--but all their power and capacity of horror had been +exhausted--and the silence was now almost like that which attends a +natural death, when all the neighbours are assembled for the funeral. +Alice, with little Ann beside her, kneeled at the bed, nor feared to lay +her head close to the covered corpse--sobbing out syllables that showed +how passionately she prayed--and that she and her little niece--and, oh! +for that unhappy father--were delivering themselves up into the hands of +God. That father knelt not--neither did he sit down--nor move--nor +groan--but stood at the foot of the bed, with arms folded almost +sternly--and with his eyes fixed on the sheet, in which there seemed to +be neither ruth nor dread--but only an austere composure, which, were it +indeed but resignation to that dismal decree of Providence, had been +most sublime--but who can see into the heart of a man either righteous +or wicked, and know what may be passing there, breathed from the gates +of heaven or of hell! + +Soon as the body had been found, shepherds and herdsmen, fleet of foot +as the deer, had set off to scour the country far and wide, hill and +glen, mountain and morass, moor and wood, for the murderer. If he be on +the face of the earth, and not self-plunged in despairing suicide into +some quagmire, he will be found--for all the population of many +districts are now afoot, and precipices are clomb till now brushed but +by the falcons. A figure, like that of a man, is seen by some of the +hunters from a hill-top, lying among the stones by the side of a +solitary loch. They separate, and descend upon him, and then, gathering +in, they behold the man whom they seek--Ludovic Adamson, the murderer. + +His face is pale and haggard, yet flushed as if by a fever centred in +his heart. That is no dress for the Sabbath-day--soiled and +savage-looking, and giving to the eyes that search an assurance of +guilt. He starts to his feet, as they think, like some wild beast +surprised in his lair, and gathering itself up to fight or fly. +But--strange enormity--a Bible is in his hand! And the shepherd who +first seized him, taking the book out of his grasp, looks into the page, +and reads, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." +On a leaf is written, in her own well-known hand, "The gift of Margaret +Burnside!" Not a word is said by his captors--they offer no needless +violence--no indignities--but answer all inquiries of surprise and +astonishment (O! can one so young be so hardened in wickedness!) by a +stern silence and upbraiding eyes, that like daggers must stab his +heart. At last he walks doggedly and sullenly along, and refuses to +speak; yet his tread is firm--there is no want of composure in his face, +now that the first passion of fear or anger has left it; and now that +they have the murderer in their clutch, some begin almost to pity him, +and others to believe, or at least to hope, that he may be innocent. As +yet they have said not a word of the crime of which they accuse him; but +let him try to master the expression of his voice and his eyes as he +may, guilt is in those stealthy glances--guilt is in those reckless +tones. And why does he seek to hide his right hand in his bosom? And +whatever he may affect to say--they ask him not--most certainly that +stain on his shirt-collar is blood. But now they are at Moorside. + +There is still a great crowd all round about the house--in the +garden--and at the door--and a troubled cry announces that the criminal +has been taken, and is close at hand. His father meets him at the gate; +and, kneeling down, holds up his clasped hands, and says, "My son, if +thou art guilty, confess, and die." The criminal angrily waves his +father aside, and walks towards the door. "Fools! fools! what mean ye by +this? What crime has been committed? And how dare ye to think me the +criminal? Am I like a murderer?"--"We never spoke to him of the +murder--we never spoke to him of the murder!" cried one of the men who +now held him by the arm; and all assembled then exclaimed, "Guilty, +guilty--that one word will hang him! O, pity, pity, for his father and +poor sister--this will break their hearts!" Appalled, yet firm of foot, +the prisoner forced his way into the house; and turning, in his +confusion, into the chamber on the left, there he beheld the corpse of +the murdered on the bed--for the sheet had been removed--as yet not laid +out, and disfigured and deformed just as she had been found on the moor, +in the same misshapen heap of death! One long insane glare--one shriek, +as if all his heartstrings at once had burst--and then down fell the +strong man on the floor like lead. One trial was past which no human +hardihood could endure--another, and yet another, awaits him; but them +he will bear as the guilty brave have often borne them, and the most +searching eye shall not see him quail at the bar or on the scaffold. + +They lifted the stricken wretch from the floor, placed him in a chair, +and held him upright, till he should revive from the fit. And he soon +did revive; for health flowed in all his veins, and he had the strength +of a giant. But when his senses returned, there was none to pity him; +for the shock had given an expression of guilty horror to all his looks, +and, like a man walking in his sleep under the temptation of some +dreadful dream, he moved with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at +the corpse, gabbled in hideous laughter, and then wept and tore his hair +like a distracted woman or a child. Then he stooped down as he would +kiss the face, but staggered back, and, covering his eyes with his +hands, uttered such a groan as is sometimes heard rending the sinner's +breast when the avenging Furies are upon him in his dreams. All who +heard it felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce cry through the +room of, "Make him touch the body, and if he be the murderer, it will +bleed!"--"Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," said his father; +"bleed afresh it will not, for thou art innocent; and savage though now +they be who once were proud to be thy friends, even they will believe +thee guiltless when the corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, and +not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But his son spake not a word, nor +did he seem to know that his father had spoken; but he suffered himself +to be led passively towards the bed. One of the bystanders took his hand +and placed it on the naked breast, when out of the corners of the +teeth-clenched mouth, and out of the swollen nostrils, two or three +blood-drops visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout declared the +sacred faith of all the crowd in the dreadful ordeal. "What body is +this? 'tis all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with an idiot +vacancy on the faces that surrounded him. But now the sheriff of the +county entered the room, along with some officers of justice, and he was +spared any further shocks from that old saving superstition. His wrists +soon after were manacled. These were all the words he had uttered since +he recovered from the fit; and he seemed now in a state of stupor. + +Ludovic Adamson, after examination of witnesses who crowded against him +from many unexpected quarters, was committed that very Sabbath night to +prison on a charge of murder. On the Tuesday following, the remains of +Margaret Burnside were interred. All the parish were at the funeral. In +Scotland it is not customary for females to join in the last simple +ceremonies of death. But in this case they did; and all her scholars, in +the same white dresses in which they used to walk with her at their head +into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed the bier. Alice and little Ann were +there, nearest the coffin, and the father of him who had wrought all +this woe was one of its supporters. The head of the murdered girl +rested, it might be said, on his shoulder--but none can know the +strength which God gives to his servants--and all present felt for him, +as he walked steadily under that dismal burden, a pity, and even an +affection, which they had been unable to yield to him ere he had been so +sorely tried. The Ladies from the Castle were among the other mourners, +and stood by the open grave. A sunnier day had never shone from heaven, +and that very grave itself partook of the brightness, as the +coffin--with the gilt letters, "Margaret Burnside, Aged 18"--was let +down, and in the darkness below disappeared. No flowers were sprinkled +there, nor afterwards planted on the turf--vain offerings, of unavailing +sorrow! But in that nook--beside the bodies of her poor parents--she was +left for the grass to grow over her, as over the other humble dead; and +nothing but the very simplest headstone was placed there, with a +sentence from Scripture below the name. There was less weeping, less +sobbing, than at many other funerals; for as sure as Mercy ruled the +skies, all believed that she was there--all knew it, just as if the +gates of heaven had opened and showed her a white-robed spirit at the +right hand of the throne. And why should any rueful lamentation have +been wailed over the senseless dust? But on the way home over the hills, +and in the hush of evening beside their hearths, and in the stillness of +night on their beds--all--young and old--all did nothing but weep. + +For weeks--such was the pity, grief, and awe inspired by this portentous +crime and lamentable calamity, that all the domestic ongoings in all the +houses far and wide, were melancholy and mournful, as if the country had +been fearing a visitation of the plague. Sin, it was felt, had brought +not only sorrow on the parish, but shame that ages would not wipe away; +and strangers, as they travelled through the moor, would point the place +where the foulest murder had been committed in all the annals of crime. +As for the family at Moorside, the daughter had their boundless +compassion, though no eye had seen her since the funeral; but people, in +speaking of the father, would still shake their heads, and put their +fingers to their lips, and say to one another in whispers, that Gilbert +Adamson had once been a bold, bad man--that his religion, in spite of +all his repulsive austerity, wore not the aspect of truth--and that, had +he held a stricter and a stronger hand on the errors of his misguided +son, this foul deed had not been perpetrated, nor that wretched sinner's +soul given to perdition. Yet others had gentler and humaner thoughts. +They remembered him walking along God-supported beneath the bier--and at +the mouth of the grave--and feared to look on that head--formerly +grizzled, but now quite grey--when on the very first Sabbath after the +murder he took his place in the elders' seat, and was able to stand up, +along with the rest of the congregation, when the minister prayed for +peace to his soul, and hoped for the deliverance out of jeopardy of him +now lying in bonds. A low Amen went all round the kirk at these words; +for the most hopeless called to mind that maxim of law, equity, and +justice--that every man under accusation of crime should be held +innocent till he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribunal might +condemn him, and yet might he stand acquitted before the tribunal of +God. + +There were various accounts of the behaviour of the prisoner. Some said +that he was desperately hardened--others, sunk in sullen apathy and +indifference--and one or two persons belonging to the parish who had +seen him declared that he seemed to care not for himself, but to be +plunged in profound melancholy for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose +name he involuntarily mentioned, and then bowed his head on his knees +and wept. His guilt he neither admitted at that interview, nor denied; +but he confessed that some circumstances bore hard against him, and that +he was prepared for the event of his trial--condemnation and death. "But +if you are not guilty, Ludovic, _who can be the murderer_? Not the +slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any other person--and did +not, alas! the body bleed when"--The unhappy wretch sprang up from the +bed, it was said, at these words, and hurried like a madman back and +forward along the stone floor of his cell. "Yea--yea!" at last he cried, +"the mouth and nostrils of my Margaret did indeed bleed when they +pressed down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's truth!" "God's +truth?"--"Yes--God's truth, I saw first one drop, and then another, +trickle towards me--and I prayed to our Saviour to wipe them off before +other eyes might behold the dreadful witnesses against me; but at that +hour Heaven was most unmerciful--for those two small drops--as all of +you saw--soon became a very stream--and all her face, neck, and +breast--you saw it as well as I miserable--were at last drenched in +blood. Then I may have confessed that I was guilty--did I, or did I not, +confess it? Tell me--for I remember nothing distinctly;--but if I +did--the judgment of offended Heaven, then punishing me for my sins, had +made me worse than mad--and so had all your abhorrent eyes; and men, if +I did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove me to it--and your +cruelty--which was great; for no pity had any one for me that day, +though Margaret Burnside lay before me a murdered corpse--and a hoarse +whisper came to my ear urging me to confess--I well believe from no +human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who, at that hour, was suffered +to leave the pit to ensnare my soul." Such was said to have been the +main sense of what he uttered in the presence of two or three who had +formerly been among his most intimate friends, and who knew not, on +leaving his cell and coming into the open air, whether to think him +innocent or guilty. As long as they thought they saw his eyes regarding +them, and that they heard his voice speaking, they believed him +innocent; but when the expression of the tone of his voice, and of the +look of his eyes--which they had felt belonged to innocence--died away +from their memory--then arose against him the strong, strange, +circumstantial evidence, which, wisely or unwisely, lawyers and judges +have said _cannot lie_--and then, in their hearts, one and all of them +pronounced him guilty. + +But had not his father often visited the prisoner's cell? Once--and once +only; for in obedience to his son's passionate prayer, beseeching +him--if there were any mercy left either on earth or in heaven--never +more to enter that dungeon, the miserable parent had not again entered +the prison; but he had been seen one morning at dawn, by one who knew +his person, walking round and round the walls, staring up at the black +building in distraction, especially at one small grated window in the +north tower--and it is most probable that he had been pacing his rounds +there during all the night. Nobody could conjecture, however dimly, what +was the meaning of his banishment from his son's cell. Gilbert Adamson, +so stern to others, even to his own only daughter, had been always but +too indulgent to his Ludovic--and had that lost wretch's guilt, so +exceeding great, changed his heart into stone, and made the sight of his +old father's grey hairs hateful to his eyes? But then the jailor, who +had heard him imploring--beseeching--commanding his father to remain, +till after the trial, at Moorside, said, that all the while the prisoner +sobbed and wept like a child; and that when he unlocked the door of the +cell, to let the old man out, it was a hard thing to tear away the arms +and hands of Ludovic from his knees, while the father sat like a stone +image on the bed, and kept his tearless eyes fixed sternly upon the +wall, as if not a soul had been present, and he himself had been a +criminal condemned next day to die. + +The father had obeyed, _religiously_, that miserable injunction, and +from religion it seemed he had found comfort. For Sabbath after Sabbath +he was at the kirk--he stood, as he had been wont to do for years, at +the poor's plate, and returned grave salutations to those who dropt +their mite into the small sacred treasury--his eyes calmly, and even +critically, regarded the pastor during prayer and sermon--and his deep +bass voice was heard, as usual, through all the house of God, in the +Psalms. On week-days he was seen by passers-by to drive his flocks +afield, and to overlook his sheep on the hill-pastures, or in the +pen-fold; and as it was still spring, and seed-time had been late this +season, he was observed holding the plough, as of yore; nor had his +skill deserted him--for the furrows were as straight as if drawn by a +rule on paper--and soon bright and beautiful was the braird on all the +low lands of his farm. The Comforter was with him, and, sorely as he had +been tried, his heart was not yet wholly broken; and it was believed +that, for years, he might outlive the blow that at first had seemed more +than a mortal man might bear and be! Yet that his woe, though hidden, +was dismal, all ere long knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his +face--cheeks shrunk and fallen; brow not so much furrowed as scarred; +eyes quenched; hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had torn +it away in handfuls during the solitude of midnight--and now absolutely +as white as snow; and over the whole man an indescribable ancientness +far beyond his years--though they were many, and most of them had been +passed in torrid climes--all showed how grief has its agonies as +destructive as those of guilt, and those the most wasting when they work +in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved by the shedding of one single +tear--when the very soul turns dry as dust, and life is imprisoned, +rather than mingled, in the decaying--the mouldering body! + +The Day of Trial came, and all labour was suspended in the parish, as if +it had been a mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this remote +district poured into the circuit-town, and besieged the court-house. +Horsemen were in readiness, soon as the verdict should be returned, to +carry the intelligence--of life or death--to all those glens. A few +words will suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the evidence, and +its issue. The prisoner, who stood at the bar in black, appeared--though +miserably changed from a man of great muscular power and activity, a +magnificent man, into a tall thin shadow--perfectly unappalled; but in a +face so white, and wasted, and woe-begone, the most profound +physiognomist could read not one faintest symptom either of hope or +fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. He hardly seemed to belong +to this world, and stood fearfully and ghastlily conspicuous between the +officers of justice, above all the crowd that devoured him with their +eyes, all leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound of his voice, +when to the indictment he should plead "Not Guilty." These words he did +utter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, and then was suffered +to sit down, which he did in a manner destitute of all emotion. During +all the many long hours of his trial, he never moved head, limbs, or +body, except once, when he drank some water, which he had not asked for, +but which was given to him by a friend. The evidence was entirely +circumstantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, and of many of the +very slightest sort, which, taken singly, seemed to mean nothing, but +which, when considered all together, seemed to mean something against +him--how much or how little, there were among the agitated audience many +differing opinions. But slight as they were, either singly or together, +they told fearfully against the prisoner, when connected with the fatal +few which no ingenuity could ever explain away; and though ingenuity did +all it could do, when wielded by eloquence of the highest order--and as +the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a rustle and a buzz through +the court, and a communication of looks and whispers, that seemed to +denote that there were hopes of his acquittal--yet, if such hopes there +were, they were deadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, logical +address to the jury by the counsel for the crown, and destroyed by the +judge's charge, which amounted almost to a demonstration of guilt, and +concluded with a confession due to his oath and conscience, that he saw +not how the jury could do their duty to their Creator and their +fellow-creatures, but by returning _one_ verdict. They retired to +consider it; and, during a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on a +deathlike Image. + +It had appeared in evidence, that the murder had been committed, at +least all the gashes inflicted--for there were also finger-marks of +strangulation--with a bill-hook, such as foresters use in lopping trees; +and several witnesses swore that the bill-hook which was shown them, +stained with blood, and with hair sticking on the haft, belonged to +Ludovic Adamson. It was also given in evidence--though some doubts +rested on the nature of the precise words--that on that day, in the room +with the corpse, he had given a wild and incoherent denial to the +question then put to him in the din, "What he had done with the +bill-hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession since the spring +before; but it had been found, after several weeks' search, in a hag in +the moss, in the direction that he would have most probably taken--had +he been the murderer--when flying from the spot to the loch where he was +seized. The shoes which he had on when taken, fitted the footmarks on +the ground, not far from the place of the murder, but not so perfectly +as another pair which were found in the house. But that other pair, it +was proved, belonged to the old man; and therefore the correspondence +between the footmarks and the prisoner's shoes, though not perfect, was +a circumstance of much suspicion. But a far stronger fact, in this part +of the evidence, was sworn to against the prisoner. Though there was no +blood on his shoes, when apprehended his legs were bare--though that +circumstance, strange as it may seem, had never been noticed till he was +on the way to prison! His stockings had been next day found lying on the +sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly after having been washed, +and laid out to dry in the sun. At mention of this circumstance a cold +shudder ran through the court; but neither that, nor indeed any other +circumstance in the evidence--not even the account of the appearance +which the murdered body exhibited when found on the moor, or when +afterwards laid on the bed--extorted from the prisoner one groan--one +sigh--or touched the imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. It +was proved, that when searched--in prison, and not before (for the +agitation that reigned over all assembled in the room at Moorside that +dreadful day, had confounded even those accustomed to deal with +suspected criminals)--there were found in his pocket a small French gold +watch, and also a gold brooch, which the Ladies of the Castle had given +to Margaret Burnside. On these being taken from him, he had said +nothing, but looked aghast. A piece of torn and bloody paper, which had +been picked up near the body, was sworn to be in his handwriting; and +though the meaning of the words--yet legible--was obscure, they seemed +to express a request that Margaret would meet him on the moor on that +Saturday afternoon she was murdered. The words "Saturday"--"meet +me"--"last time"--were not indistinct, and the paper was of the same +quality and colour with some found in a drawer in his bedroom at +Moorside. It was proved that he had been drinking with some dissolute +persons--poachers and the like--in a public-house in a neighbouring +parish all Saturday, till well on in the afternoon, when he left them in +a state of intoxication--and was then seen running along the hill-side +in the direction of the moor. Where he passed the night between the +Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give no account, except once when +unasked, and as if speaking to himself, he was overheard by the jailor +to mutter, "Oh! that fatal night--that fatal night!" And then, when +suddenly interrogated, "Where were you?" he answered, "Asleep on the +hill;" and immediately relapsed into a state of mental abstraction. +These were the chief circumstances against him, which his counsel had +striven to explain away. That most eloquent person dwelt with affecting +earnestness on the wickedness of putting any evil construction on the +distracted behaviour of the wretched man when brought without warning +upon the sudden sight of the mangled corpse of the beautiful girl, whom +all allowed he had most passionately and tenderly loved; and he strove +to prove--as he did prove to the conviction of many--that such behaviour +was incompatible with such guilt, and almost of itself established his +innocence. All that was sworn to _against_ him, as having passed in that +dreadful room, was in truth _for_ him--unless all our knowledge of the +best and of the worst of human nature were not, as folly, to be given to +the winds. He beseeched the jury, therefore, to look at all the other +circumstances that did indeed seem to bear hard upon the prisoner, in +the light of his innocence, and not of his guilt, and that they would +all fade into nothing. What mattered his possession of the watch and +other trinkets? Lovers as they were, might not the unhappy girl have +given them to him for temporary keepsakes? Or might he not have taken +them from her in some playful mood, or received them--(and the brooch +was cracked, and the mainspring of the watch broken, though the glass +was whole)--to get them repaired in the town, which he often visited, +and she never? Could human credulity for one moment believe, that such a +man as the prisoner at the bar had been sworn to be by a host of +witnesses--and especially by that witness, who, with such overwhelming +solemnity, had declared he loved him as his own son, and would have been +proud if Heaven had given him such a son--he who had baptised him, and +known him well ever since a child--that such a man could _rob_ the body +of her whom he had violated and murdered? If, under the instigation of +the devil, he had violated and murdered her, and for a moment were made +the hideous supposition, did vast hell hold that demon whose voice would +have tempted the violator and murderer--suppose him both--yea, that man +at the bar--sworn to by all the parish, if need were, as a man of +tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded--in the lust of lucre, +consequent on the satiating of another lust--to rob his victim of a few +trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination into the realms of wildest +wickedness, and yet they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for a +moment the union of such appalling and such paltry guilt, _in that man_ +who now trembled not before them, but who seemed cut off from all the +sensibilities of this life by the scythe of Misery that had shorn him +down! But why try to recount, however feebly, the line of defence taken +by the speaker, who on that day seemed all but inspired? The sea may +overturn rocks, or fire consume them till they split in pieces; but a +crisis there sometimes is in man's destiny, which all the powers ever +lodged in the lips of man, were they touched with a coal from heaven, +cannot avert, and when even he who strives to save, feels and knows that +he is striving all in vain--ay, vain as a worm--to arrest the tread of +Fate about to trample down its victim into the dust. All hoped--many +almost believed--that the prisoner would be acquitted--that a verdict of +"Not Proven," at least, if not of "Not Guilty," would be returned; but +_they_ had not been sworn to do justice before man and before God--and, +if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their +hearts--flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that +bar presented--a man already seeming to belong unto the dead! + +In about a quarter of an hour the jury returned to the box--and the +verdict, having been sealed with black wax, was handed up to the Judge, +who read, "We unanimously find the prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to +receive sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in the court during the +Judge's solemn and affecting address to the criminal--except those of +the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the doom. "Your body will be hung +in chains on the moor--on a gibbet erected on the spot where you +murdered the victim of your unhallowed lust, and there will your bones +bleach in the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the insects and the +birds of the air have devoured your flesh; and in all future times, the +spot on which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you perpetrated that +double crime, at which all humanity shudders, will be looked on from +afar by the traveller passing through that lonesome wild with a sacred +horror!" Here the voice of the Judge faltered, and he covered his face +with his hands; but the prisoner stood unmoved in figure, and in face +untroubled and when all was closed, was removed from the bar, the same +ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seemingly unconscious of what had +passed, or even of his own existence. + +Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell! "Once +more only--only once more let me see him before I die!" were his words +to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when +a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom +now all the world had forsaken. As free from sin himself as might be +mortal and fallen man--mortal because fallen--he knew from Scripture and +from nature, that in "the lowest deep there is still a lower deep" in +wickedness, into which all of woman born may fall, unless held back by +the arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must serve steadfastly in +holiness and truth. He knew, too, from the same source, that man cannot +sin beyond the reach of God's mercy--if the worst of all imaginable +sinners seek, in a Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through the +Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily--and nightly--he visited that cell; nor +did he fear to touch the hand, now wasted to the bone, which, at the +temptation of the Prince of the Air--who is mysteriously suffered to +enter in at the gates of every human heart that is guarded not by the +flaming sword of God's own Seraphim--was lately drenched in the blood of +the most innocent creature that ever looked on the day. Yet a sore trial +it was to his Christianity to find the criminal so obdurate. He would +make no confession. Yet said that it was fit--that it was far best he +should die--that he deserved death! But ever when the deed without a +name was alluded to, his tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an +impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen to conscience and +confess--he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear +bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease--cease to torment me, or you +will drive me to deny my God!" + +No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been +missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning--(where he had been all +night never was known, though it was afterwards rumoured that one like +him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of +the murder)--wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round +and round about, like a man stricken with blindness, and vainly seeking +to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and +he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some +disjointed syllables, which he did continually, without one moment's +cessation, one unintelligible and most rueful moan! The figure of his +daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes--blind and dumb he sat +where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his +shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs--though +stone-blind at least to all real things--beneath them flashing fire. He +had borne up bravely--almost to the last--but had some tongue syllabled +his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten +him? + +Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none; for the +old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most +confident trust of his son's acquittal. Nothing had ever served to shake +his conviction of his innocence--though he had always forborne speaking +about the circumstances of the murder--and had communicated to nobody +any of the grounds on which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless; +and though a trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lips, when he +used to say to the silent neighbours, "We shall soon see him back at +Moorside." Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and his trust in +God that that innocence would be established and set free, been so +sacred, that the blow, when it did come, struck him like a hammer, and +felled him to the ground, from which he had risen with a riven brain? In +whatever way the shock had been given, it had been terrible; for old +Gilbert Adamson was now a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in +Moorside--not keepers from a mad-house, for his daughter could not +afford such tendence--but two of her brother's friends, who sat up with +him alternately, night and day, while the arms of the old man, in his +distraction, had to be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an +end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; +and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the +neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it, and an asylum for +them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties; +and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away +by violence, she was suffered to remain with him who knew her not, but +who often--it was said--stared distractedly upon her, as if she had been +some fiend sent in upon his insanity from the place of punishment. Weeks +passed on, and still she was there--hiding herself at times from those +terrifying eyes; and from her watching corner, waiting from morn till +night, and from night till morn--for she seldom lay down to sleep, and +had never undressed herself since that fatal sentence--for some moment +of exhausted horror, when she might steal out, and carry some slight +gleam of comfort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or the gloom in +which the brain of her father swam through a dream of blood. But there +were no lucid intervals; and ever as she moved towards him, like a +pitying angel, did he furiously rage against her, as if she had been a +fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, had lived to see the +murdered corpse of her dearest friend--murdered by her own only brother, +whom, in secret, that murdered maiden had most tenderly loved--that +murderous brother loaded with prison-chains, and condemned to the gibbet +for inexpiable and unpardonable crimes--her father raving like a demon, +self-murderous were his hands but free, nor visited by one glimpse of +mercy from Him who rules the skies--after having borne more than, as she +meekly said, had ever poor girl borne, she took to her bed quite +heart-broken, and, the night before the day of execution, died. As for +poor little Ann, she had been wiled away some weeks before; and in the +blessed thoughtlessness of childhood, was not without hours of happiness +among her playmates on the braes. + +The Morning of that Day arose, and the Moor was all blackened with +people round the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, with its horrid +arms, out of the ground during the night. No sound of axes or hammers +had been heard clinking during the dark hours--nothing had been seen +passing along the road; for the windows of all the houses from which +anything could have been seen, had been shut fast against all horrid +sights--and the horses' hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled that +had brought that hideous Framework to the Moor. But there it now +stood--a dreadful Tree! The sun moved higher and higher up the sky, and +all the eyes of that congregation were at once turned towards the east, +for a dull sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling feet, seemed +shaking the Moor in that direction; and lo! surrounded with armed men on +horseback, and environed with halberds, came on a cart, in which three +persons seemed to be sitting, he in the middle all dressed in white--the +death-clothes of the murderer--the unpitying shedder of most innocent +blood. + +There was no bell to toll there--but at the very moment he was ascending +the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hundreds of people +all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his +eyes, and said, "O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou his blessed Son, who +died to save sinners! accept this sacrifice!" + +Not one in all that immense crowd could have known that that white +apparition was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been almost +jet-black, was now white as his face--as his figure, dressed, as it +seemed, for the grave. Are they going to execute the murderer in his +shroud? Stone-blind, and stone-deaf, there he stood--yet had he, without +help, walked up the steps of the scaffold. A hymn of several voices +arose--the man of God close beside the criminal, with the Bible in his +uplifted hands; but those bloodless lips had no motion--with him this +world was not, though yet he was in life--in life, and no more! And was +this the man who, a few months ago, flinging the fear of death from him, +as a flash of sunshine flings aside the shades, had descended into that +pit which an hour before had been bellowing, as the foul vapours +exploded like cannons, and brought up the bodies of them who had +perished in the womb of the earth? Was this he who once leapt into the +devouring fire, and reappeared, after all had given over for lost the +glorious boy, with an infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to +eddy back, that they might scathe not the head of the deliverer, and a +shower of blessings fell upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, +and made the heart of the widow to sing for joy? It is he. And now the +executioner pulls down the cord from the beam, and fastens it round the +criminal's neck. His face is already covered, and that fatal +handkerchief is in his hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, and one +multitudinous sob convulses the air;--when wild outcries, and shrieks, +and yells, are at that moment heard from the distant gloom of the glen +that opens up to Moorside, and three figures, one far in advance of the +others, come flying, as on the wings of the wind, towards the gibbet. +Hundreds started to their feet, and "'Tis the maniac--'tis the lunatic!" +was the cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hill-side, that seemed +hardly accessible but to the goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few +desperate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected he would have been +dashed in pieces, alighted unstunned upon the level greensward; and now, +far ahead of his keepers, with incredible swiftness neared the +scaffold--and, the dense crowd making a lane for him in their fear and +astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the horrid platform, and, +grasping his son in his arms, howled dreadfully over him; and then with +a loud voice cried, "Saved--saved--saved!" + +So sudden had been that wild rush, that all the officers of justice--the +very executioner--stood aghast; and now the prisoner's neck is free from +that accursed cord--his face is once more visible without that hideous +shroud--and he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. "Seize him--seize +him!" and he was seized--but no maniac, no lunatic, was the father now; +for during the night, and during the dawn, and during the morn, and on +to mid-day--on to the HOUR OF ONE--when all rueful preparations were to +be completed--had Providence been clearing and calming the tumult in +that troubled brain; and as the cottage clock struck ONE, memory +brightened at the chime into a perfect knowledge of the past, and +prophetic imagination saw the future lowering upon the dismal present. +All night long, with the cunning of a madman--for all night long he had +still been mad--the miserable old man had been disengaging his hands +from the manacles, and that done, springing like a wild beast from his +cage, he flew out of the open door, nor could a horse's speed on that +fearful road have overtaken him before he reached the scaffold. + +No need was there to hold the miserable man. He who had been so furious +in his manacles at Moorside, seemed now, to the people at a distance, +calm as when he used to sit in the elders' seat beneath the pulpit in +that small kirk. But they who were on or near the scaffold saw something +horrid in the fixedness of his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, ye +fools!" he muttered to some of the mean wretches of the law, who still +had him in their clutch--and tossing his hands on high, cried with a +loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens! and hear, O Earth! I am the +Violator--I am the Murderer!" + +The moor groaned as in earthquake--and then all that congregation bowed +their heads with a rustling noise, like a wood smitten by the wind. Had +they heard aright the unimaginable confession? His head had long been +grey--he had reached the term allotted to man's mortal life here +below--threescore and ten. Morning and evening, never had the Bible been +out of his hands at the hour set apart for family worship. And who so +eloquent as he in expounding its most dreadful mysteries? The +unregenerate heart of man, he had ever said--in scriptural phrase--was +"desperately wicked." Desperately wicked indeed! And now again he tossed +his arms wrathfully--so the wild motion looked--in the wrathful skies. +"I ravished--I murdered her--ye know it, ye evil spirits in the depths +of hell!" Consternation now fell on the minds of all--and the truth was +clear as light--and all eyes knew at once that now indeed they looked on +the murderer. The dreadful delusion under which all their understandings +had been brought by the power of circumstances, was by that voice +destroyed--the obduracy of him who had been about to die was now seen to +have been the most heroic virtue--the self-sacrifice of a son, to save a +father from ignominy and death. + +"O monster, beyond the reach of redemption! and the very day after the +murder, while the corpse was lying in blood on the Moor, he was with us +in the House of God! Tear him in pieces--rend him limb from limb--tear +him into a thousand pieces!"--"The Evil One had power given him to +prevail against me, and I fell under the temptation. It was so written +in the Book of Predestination, and the deed lies at the door of +God!"--"Tear the blasphemer into pieces! Let the scaffold drink his +blood!"--"So let it be, if it be so written, good people! Satan never +left me since the murder till this day--he sat by my side in the +kirk--when I was ploughing in the field--there--ever as I came back from +the other end of the furrow--he stood on the head-rig in the shape of a +black shadow. But now I see him not--he has returned to his den in the +pit. I cannot imagine what I have been doing, or what has been done to +me, all the time between the day of trial and this of execution. Was I +mad? No matter. But you shall not hang Ludovic--he, poor boy, is +innocent;--here, look at him--here--I tell you again--is the Violator +and the Murderer!" + +But shall the men in authority dare to stay the execution at a maniac's +words? If they dare not--that multitude will, now all rising together +like the waves of the sea. "Cut the cords asunder that bind our +Ludovic's arms"--a thousand voices cried; and the murderer, unclasping a +knife, that, all unknown to his keepers, he had worn in his breast when +a maniac, sheared them asunder as the sickle shears the corn. But his +son stirred not--and on being lifted _up_ by his father, gave not so +much as a groan. His heart had burst--and he was dead. No one touched +the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down--not to pray, but to look into +his son's eyes--and to examine his lips--and to feel his left +breast--and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to +assure himself--and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field +after hush of the noise of battle--that this was death. He rose; and +standing forward on the edge of the scaffold, said, with a voice that +shook not, deep, strong, hollow, and hoarse--"Good people! I am +_likewise_ now the murderer of my daughter and of my son! and of +myself!" Next moment, the knife was in his heart--and he fell down a +corpse on the corpse of his Ludovic. All round the sultry horizon the +black clouds had for hours been gathering--and now came the thunder and +the lightning--and the storm. Again the whole multitude prostrated +themselves on the moor--and the Pastor, bending over the dead bodies, +said, + + "THIS IS EXPIATION!" + + + + +MORNING MONOLOGUE. + + +"Knowledge is Power." So is Talent--so is Genius--so is Virtue. Which is +the greatest? It might seem hard to tell; but united they go forth +conquering and to conquer. Nor is that union rare. Kindred in nature, +they love to dwell together in the same "palace of the soul." Remember +Milton. But too often they are disunited; and then, though still Powers, +they are but feeble, and their defeats are frequent as their triumphs. +What! is it so even with Virtue? It is, and it is not. Virtue may reign +without the support of Talent and Genius; but her counsellor is +Conscience, and what is Conscience but Reason rich by birthright in +knowledge directly derived from the heaven of heavens beyond all the +stars? + +And may Genius and Talent indeed be, conceive, and execute, without the +support of Virtue? You will find that question answered in the following +lines by Charles Grant, which deserve the name of philosophical +poetry:-- + + "Talents, 'tis true, quick, various, bright, has God + To Virtue oft denied, on Vice bestow'd; + Just as fond Nature lovelier colours brings + To deck the insect's than the eagle's wings. + But then of man the high-born nobler part, + The ethereal energies that touch the heart, + Creative Fancy, labouring Thought intense, + Imagination's wild magnificence, + And all the dread sublimities of Song-- + These, Virtue! these, to thee alone belong." + +Such is the natural constitution of humanity; and in the happiest state +of social life, all its noblest Faculties would bear legitimate sway, +each in its own province, within the spirit's ample domains. There, +Genius would be honoured; and Poetry another name for religion. But to +such a state there can, under the most favouring skies, be no more than +an approximation; and the time never was when Virtue suffered no +persecution, Honour no shame, Genius no neglect, nor fetters were not +imposed by tyrannous power on the feet of the free. The age of Homer, +the age of Solon, the age of Pericles, the age of Numa, the age of +Augustus, the age of Alfred, the age of Leo, the age of Elizabeth, the +age of Anne, the age of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron, have they not been +all bright and great ages? Yet had they been faithfully chronicled, over +the misery and madness of how many despairing spirits fraught with +heavenly fire, might we not have been called to pour forth our +unavailing indignations and griefs! + +Under despotic governments, again, such as have sunk deep their roots +into Oriental soils, and beneath Oriental skies prosperously expanded +their long-enduring umbrage, where might is right, and submission +virtue, noble-minded men--for sake of that peace which is ever dearest +to the human heart, and if it descend not a glad and gracious gift from +Heaven, will yet not ungratefully be accepted when breathed somewhat +sadly from the quieted bosom of earth by tyranny saved from +trouble--have submitted, almost without mourning, to sing "many a lovely +lay," that perished like the flowers around them, in praise of the Power +at whose footstool they "stooped their anointed heads as low as death." +Even then has Genius been honoured, because though it ceased to be +august, still it was beautiful; it seemed to change fetters of iron into +bands of roses, and to halo with a glory the brows of slaves. The +wine-cup mantled in its light; and Love forgot in the bower Poetry built +for bliss, that the bride might be torn from the bridegroom's bosom on +her bridal night by a tyrant's lust. Even there Genius was happy, and +diffused happiness; at its bidding was heard pipe, tabor, and dulcimer; +and to its lips "warbling melody" life floated by, in the midst of all +oppression, a not undelightful dream! + +But how has it been with us in our Green Island of the West? Some people +are afraid of revolutions. Heaven pity them! we have had a hundred since +the Roman bridged our rivers, and led his highways over our mountains. +And what the worse have we been of being thus revolved? We are no +radicals; but we dearly love a revolution--like that of the stars. No +two nights are the heavens the same--all the luminaries are revolving +to the music of their own spheres. Look, we beseech you, on that +new-risen star. He is elected by universal suffrage--a glorious +representative of a million lesser lights; and on dissolution of _that_ +Parliament--how silent but how eloquent!--he is sure of his return. Why, +we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen below--it is no +longer called Reform--were it to fling up to free light from fettered +darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole +world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. But +we look abroad and see strutting to and fro the sons of little men blown +up with vanity, in a land where tradition not yet old tells of a race of +giants. We are ashamed of ourselves to think we feared the throes of the +times, seeing not portentous but pitiable births. Brush these away; and +let us think of the great dead--let us look on the great living--and, +strong in memory and hope, be confident in the cause of Freedom. "Great +men _have been_ among us--better none;" and can it be said that _now_ +there is "a want of books and men," or that those we have are mere +dwarfs and duodecimos? Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and +enterprise, no passion in the character of our country? Has not wide +over earth + + "England sent her men, of men the chief, + To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree?" + +Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the Queen, kindled America into +life, and raised up in the New World a power to balance the Old, star +steadying star in their unconflicting courses? You can scarce see her +shores for ships; her inland groves are crested with towers and temples; +and mists brooding at intervals over her far-extended plains, tell of +towns and cities, their hum unheard by the gazer from her glorious +hills. Of such a land it would need a gifted eye to look into all that +is passing within the mighty heart; but it needs no gifted eye, no +gifted ear, to see and hear there the glare and the groaning of great +anguish, as of lurid breakers tumbling in and out of the caves of the +sea. But is it or is it not a land where all the faculties of the soul +are free as they ever were since the Fall? Grant that there are +tremendous abuses in all departments of public and private life; that +rulers and legislators have often been as deaf to the "still small +voice" as to the cry of the million; that they whom they have ruled, +and for whom they have legislated often so unwisely or wickedly, have +been as often untrue to themselves, and in self-imposed idolatry + + "Have bow'd their knees + To despicable gods." + +Yet base, blind, and deaf (and better dumb) must be he who would deny, +that here Genius has had, and now has, her noblest triumphs; that Poetry +has here kindled purer fires on loftier altars than ever sent up their +incense to Grecian skies; that Philosophy has sounded depths in which +her torch was not extinguished, but, though bright, could pierce not the +"heart of the mystery" into which it sent some strong illuminations; +that Virtue here has had chosen champions victorious in their martyrdom; +and Religion her ministers and her servants not unworthy of her whose +title is from heaven. + +Causes there have been, are, and ever will be, why often, even here, the +very highest faculties "rot in cold obstruction." But in all the +ordinary affairs of life, have not the best the best chance to win the +day? Who, in general, achieve competence, wealth, splendour, +magnificence, in their condition as citizens? The feeble, the ignorant, +and the base, or the strong, the instructed, and the bold? Would you, at +the offstart, back mediocrity with alien influence, against high talent +with none but its own--the native "might that slumbers in a peasant's +arm," or, nobler far, that which neither sleeps nor slumbers in a +peasant's heart? There is something abhorrent from every sentiment in +man's breast to see, as we too often do, imbecility advanced to high +places by the mere accident of high birth. But how our hearts warm +within us to behold the base born, if in Britain we may use the word, by +virtue of their own irresistible energies, taking precedence, rightful +and gladly-granted, of the blood of kings! Yet we have heard it +whispered, insinuated, surmised, spoken, vociferated, howled, and roared +in a voice of small-beer-souring thunder, that Church and State, Army +and Navy, are all officered by the influence of the Back-stairs--that +few or none but blockheads, by means of brass only, mount from the Bar +which they have disturbed to that Bench which they disgrace; and that +mankind intrust the cure of all diseases their flesh is heir to, to the +exclusive care of every here and there a handful of old women. + +Whether overstocked or not, 'twould be hard to say, but all professions +are full--from that of Peer to that of Beggar. To live is the most many +of us can do. Why then complain? Men should not complain when it is +their duty as men to work. Silence need not be sullen--but better +sullenness than all this outrageous outcry, as if words the winds +scatter, were to drop into the soil and grow up grain. Processions! is +this a time for full-grown men in holiday shows to play the part of +children? If they desire advancement, let them, like their betters, turn +to and work. All men worth mentioning in this country belong to the +working classes. What seated Thurlow, and Wedderburne, and Scott, and +Erskine, and Copley, and Brougham on the woolsack? Work. What made +Wellington? For seven years war all over Spain, and finally at +Waterloo--work--bloody and glorious work. + +Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. Let the few sluggards that +possess but cannot enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures and +sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such creatures disturb the +equanimity of the magnanimous working-classes of England? True to +themselves in life's great relations, they need not grudge, for a little +while longer, the paupers a few paltry pence out of their earnings; for +they know a sure and silent deathblow has been struck against that order +of things by the sense of the land, and that all who receive wages must +henceforth give work. All along that has been the rule--these are the +exceptions; or say, that has been the law--these are its revolutions. +Let there be high rewards, and none grudge them--in honour and gold--for +high work. And men of high talents--never extinct--will reach up their +hands and seize them, amidst the acclamations of a people who have ever +taken pride in a great ambition. If the competition is to be in future +more open than ever, to know it is so will rejoice the souls of all who +are not slaves. But clear the course! Let not the crowd rush in--for by +doing so, they will bring down the racers, and be themselves trampled to +death. + +Now we say that the race is--if not always--ninety-nine times in a +hundred--to the swift, and the battle to the strong. We may have been +fortunate in our naval and military friends; but we cannot charge our +memory with a single consummate ass holding a distinguished rank in +either service. That such consummate asses are in both, we have been +credibly informed, and believe it; and we have sometimes almost imagined +that we heard their bray at no great distance, and the flapping of their +ears. Poor creatures enough do rise by seniority or purchase, or if +anybody know how else, we do not; and such will be the case to the end +of the chapter of human accidents. But merit not only makes the man, but +the officer on shore and at sea. They are as noble and discontented a +set of fellows all, as ever boarded or stormed; and they will continue +so, not till some change in the Admiralty, or at the Horse-guards, for +Sir James Graham does his duty, and so does Lord Hill; but till a change +in humanity, for 'tis no more than Adam did, and we attribute whatever +may be amiss or awry, chiefly to the Fall. Let the Radicals set poor +human nature on her legs again, and what would become of _them_? In the +French service there is no rising at all, it seems, but by merit; but +there is also much running away; not in a disgraceful style, for our +natural enemies and artificial friends are a brave race, but in mere +indignation and disgust to see troops so shamefully ill-officered as +ours, which it would be a disgrace to look in the face on the field, +either in column or line. Therefore they never stand a charge, but are +off in legions of honour, eagles and all, before troops that have been +so uniformly flogged from time immemorial, as to have no other name but +raw lobsters, led on by officers all shivering or benumbed under the +"cold shade of aristocracy," like Picton and Pack. + +We once thought of going ourselves to the English Bar, but were +dissuaded from doing so by some judicious friends, who assured us we +should only be throwing away our great talents and unexampled eloquence; +for that success depended solely on interest, and we had none we knew +of, either in high places or in low, and had then never seen an +attorney. We wept for the fate of many dear friends in wigs, and made a +pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On our return from Palestine and other foreign +parts, behold them all bending under briefs, bound by retaining fees, +or, like game-hawks, wheeling in airy circuits over the rural provinces, +and pouncing down on their prey, away to their eyries with talonfuls, +which they devoured at their luxurious leisure, untroubled by any callow +young! They now compose the Bench. + +Ere we set off for Salem, we had thoughts of entering the Church, and of +becoming Bishops. But it was necessary, we were told, first to be tutor +to a lord. That, in our pride, we could not stomach; but if ours had not +been the sin by which Satan fell, where now had been the excellent +Howley? All our habits in youth led us to associate much with intending +divines. A few of them are still curates; but 'twere vain to try to +count the vicars, rectors, canons, deans, archdeacons, and bishops, with +whom, when we were all undergraduates together at Oxford, we used to do +nothing but read Greek all day, and Latin all night. Yet you hear +nothing but abuse of such a Church! and are told to look at the +Dissenters. We do look at them, and an uglier set we never saw; not one +in a hundred, in his grimness, a gentleman. Not a single scholar have +they got to show; and now that Hall is mute, not one orator. Their +divinity is of the dust--and their discourses dry bones. Down with the +old Universities--up with new. The old are not yet down, but the new are +up; and how dazzling the contrast, even to the purblind! You may hew +down trees, but not towers; and Granta and Rhedicyna will show their +temples to the sun, ages after such structures shall have become +hospitals. They enlighten the land. Beloved are they by all the +gentlemen of England. Even the plucked think of them with tears of +filial reverence, and having renewed their plumage, clap their wings, +and crow defiance to all their foes. A man, you say, can get there no +education to fit him for life. Bah! Tell that to the marines. Now and +then one meets a man eminent in a liberal profession, who has not been +at any place that could easily be called a College. But the great +streams of talent in England keep perpetually flowing from the gates of +her glorious Universities--and he who would deny it in any mixed company +of leading men in London, would only have to open his eyes in the hush +that rebuked his folly, to see that he was a Cockney, clever enough, +perhaps, in his own small way, and the author of some sonnets, but even +to his own feelings painfully out of place among men who had not studied +at the Surrey. + +We cannot say that we have any fears, this fine clear September morning, +for the Church of England in England. In Ireland, deserted and betrayed, +it has received a dilapidating shock. Fain would seven millions of "the +finest people on the earth," and likewise the most infatuated, who are +so proud of the verdure of their isle that they love to make "the green +one red," see the entire edifice overthrown, not one stone left upon +another, and its very name smothered in a smoky cloud of ascending dust. +They have told us so in yells, over which has still been heard "the +wolf's long howl," the savage cry of the O'Connell. And Ministers who +pretend to be Protestants, and in reform have not yet declared against +the Reformation, have tamely yielded, recreants from the truth, to +brawlers who would pull down her holiest altars, and given up "pure +religion, breathing household laws," a sacrifice to superstition. But +there is a power enshrined in England which no Government dare seek to +desecrate--in the hearts of the good and wise, grateful to an +establishment that has guarded Christianity from corruption, and is +venerated by all the most enlightened spirits who conscientiously +worship without its pale, and know that in the peaceful shadow of its +strength repose their own humbler and untroubled altars. + +We have been taking a cheerful--a hopeful view of our surrounding world, +as it is enclosed within these our seas, whose ideal murmur seemed a +while to breathe in unison with our Monologue. We have been believing +that in this our native land, the road of merit is the road to +success--say happiness. And is not the law the same in the world of +Literature and the Fine Arts? Give a great genius anything like fair +play, and he will gain glory--nay, bread. True, he may be before his +age, and may have to create his worshippers. But how few such! And is it +a disgrace to an age to produce a genius whose grandeur it cannot all at +once comprehend? The works of genius are surely not often +incomprehensible to the highest contemporary minds, and if they win +their admiration, pity not the poor Poet. But pray syllable the living +Poet's name who has had reason to complain of having fallen on evil +days, or who is with "darkness and with danger compassed round." From +humblest birthplaces in the obscurest nooks frequently have we seen + + "The fulgent head + Star-bright appear;" + +from unsuspected rest among the water-lilies of the mountain mere, the +snow-white swan in full plumage soar into the sky. Hush! no nonsense +about Wordsworth. "Far-off his coming shone;" and what if for a while +men knew not whether 'twas some mirage-glimmer, or the dawning of a new +"orb of song!" + +We have heard rather too much even from that great poet about the +deafness and blindness of the present time. No Time but the future, he +avers, has ears or eyes for divine music and light. Was Homer in his own +day obscure, or Shakespeare? But Heaven forbid we should force the bard +into an argument; we allow him to sit undisturbed by us in the bower +nature delighted to build for him, with small help from his own hands, +at the dim end of that alley green, among lake-murmur and +mountain-shadow, for ever haunted by ennobling visions. But we love and +respect Present Time--partly, we confess, because he has shown some +little kindly feeling for ourselves, whereas we fear Future Time may +forget us among many others of his worthy father's friends, and the name +of Christopher North + + "Die on his ears a faint unheeded sound." + +But Present Time has not been unjust to William Wordsworth. Some small +temporalities were so; imps running about the feet of Present Time, and +sometimes making him stumble: but on raising his eyes from the ground, +he saw something shining like an Apparition on the mountain-top, and he +hailed, and with a friendly voice, the advent of another true Poet of +nature and of man. + +We must know how to read that prophet, before we preach from any text in +his book of revelations. + + "We poets in our youth begin in gladness, + But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." + +Why spoke he thus? Because a deep darkness had fallen upon him all alone +in a mountain-cave, and he quaked before the mystery of man's troubled +life. + + "He thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, + The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride; + Of him who walk'd in glory and in joy, + Following his plough upon the mountain-side!" + +and if they died miserably, "How may I perish!" But they wanted wisdom. +Therefore the marvellous boy drank one bowl drugged with sudden, and +the glorious ploughman many bowls drugged with lingering death. If we +must weep over the woes of Genius, let us know for whom we may rightly +shed our tears. With one drop of ink you may write the names of all + + "The mighty Poets in their misery dead." + +Wordsworth wrote those lines, as we said, in the inspiration of a +profound but not permanent melancholy; and they must not be profaned by +being used as a quotation in defence of accusations against human +society, which, in some lips, become accusations against Providence. The +mighty Poets have been not only wiser but happier than they knew; and +what glory from heaven and earth was poured over their inward life, up +to the very moment it darkened away into the gloom of the grave! + +Many a sad and serious hour have we read d'Israeli, and many a lesson +may all lovers of literature learn from his well-instructed books. But +from the unhappy stories therein so feelingly and eloquently narrated, +has many "a famous ape" drawn conclusions the very reverse of those +which he himself leaves to be drawn by all minds possessed of any +philosophy. Melancholy the moral of these moving tales; but we must look +for it, not into the society that surrounds us, though on it too we must +keep a watchful, and, in spite of all its sins, a not irreverent eye, +but into our own hearts. There lies the source of evil which some evil +power perhaps without us stirs up till it wells over in misery. Then +fiercely turns the wretch first against "the world and the world's law," +both sometimes iniquitous, and last of all against the rebellious spirit +in his own breast, but for whose own innate corruption his moral being +would have been victorious against all outward assaults, violent or +insidious, "and to the end persisting safe arrived." + +Many men of genius have died without their fame, and for their fate we +may surely mourn without calumniating our kind. It was their lot to die. +Such was the will of God. Many such have come and gone, ere they knew +themselves what they were; their brothers and sisters and friends knew +it not; knew it not their fathers and their mothers; nor the village +maidens on whose bosoms they laid their dying heads. Many, conscious of +the divine flame, and visited by mysterious stirrings that would not let +them rest, have like vernal wildflowers withered, or been cut down like +young trees in the season of leaf and blossom. Of this our mortal life +what are these but beautiful evanishings! Such was our young Scottish +Poet, Michael Bruce--a fine scholar, who taught a little wayside school, +and died, a mere lad, of consumption. Loch Leven Castle, where Mary +Stuart was imprisoned, looks not more melancholy among the dim waters +for her than for its own Poet's sake! The linnet, in its joy among the +yellow broom, sings not more sweetly than did he in his sadness, sitting +beside his unopened grave, "one song that will not die," though the +dirge but draw now and then a tear from some simple heart. + + "Now spring returns--but not to me returns + The vernal joy my better years have known; + Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns, + And all the joys of life with health are flown." + +To young Genius to die is often a great gain. The green leaf was almost +hidden in blossoms, and the tree put forth beautiful promise. Cold winds +blew, and clouds intercepted the sunshine; but it felt the dews of +heaven, and kept flourishing fair even in the moonlight, deriving sweet +sustenance from the stars. But would all those blossoms have been fruit? +Many would have formed, but more perhaps dropt in unperceived decay, and +the tree which "all eyes that looked on loved," might not have been the +pride of the garden. Death could not permit the chance of such +disappointment, stepped kindly in, and left the spring-dream "sweet but +mournful to the soul," among its half-fancied memories. Such was the +fate, perhaps, of Henry Kirke White. His fine moral and intellectual +being was not left to pine away neglected; and if, in gratitude and +ambition, twin-births in that noble heart, he laid down his life for +sake of the lore he loved, let us lament the dead with no passionate +ejaculations over injustice by none committed, console ourselves with +the thought, in noways unkind to his merits, that he died in a mild +bright spring that might have been succeeded by no very glorious summer; +and that, fading away as he did among the tears of the good and great, +his memory has been embalmed, not only in his own gentle inspirations, +but in the immortal eulogy of Southey. But, alas! many thus endowed by +nature "have waged with fortune an unequal war;" and pining away in +poverty and disappointment, have died broken-hearted--and been +buried--some in unhonoured, some even in unwept graves! And how many +have had a far more dismal lot, because their life was not so innocent! +The children of misfortune, but of error too--of frailty, vice, and sin. +Once gone astray, with much to tempt them on, and no voice, no hand, to +draw them back, theirs has been at first a flowery descent to death, but +soon sorely beset with thorns, lacerating the friendless wretches, till, +with shame and remorse their sole attendants, they have tottered into +uncoffined holes and found peace. + +With sorrows and sufferings like these, it would be hardly fair to blame +society at large for having little or no sympathy; for they are, in the +most affecting cases, borne in silence, and are unknown even to the +generous and humane in their own neighbourhood, who might have done +something or much to afford encouragement or relief. Nor has Charity +always neglected those who so well deserved her open hand, and in their +virtuous poverty might, without abatement of honourable pride in +themselves, have accepted silent succour to silent distress. Pity that +her blessings should be so often intercepted by worthless applicants, on +their way, it may be said, to the magnanimous who have not applied at +all, but spoken to her heart in a silent language, which was not meant +even to express the penury it betrayed. But we shall never believe that +dew twice blessed seldom descends, in such a land as ours, on the noble +young head that else had sunk like a chance flower in some dank shade, +left to wither among weeds. We almost venture to say, that much of such +unpitied, because often unsuspected suffering, cannot cease to be +without a change in the moral government of the world. + +Nor has Genius a right to claim from Conscience what is due but to +Virtue. None who love humanity can wish to speak harshly of its mere +frailties or errors--but none who revere morality can allow privilege to +its sins. All who sin suffer, with or without genius; and we are nowhere +taught in the New Testament, that remorse in its agony, and penitence in +its sorrow, visit men's imaginations only; but whatever way they enter, +their rueful dwelling is in the heart. Poets shed no bitterer tears than +ordinary men; and Fonblanque finely showed us, in one of his late little +essays, clear as wells and deep as tarns, that so far from there being +anything in the constitution of genius naturally kindred either to vice +or misery, it is framed of light and love and happiness, and that its +sins and sufferings come not from the spirit but from the flesh. Yet is +its flesh as firm as, and perhaps somewhat finer than, that of the +common clay; but still it is clay--for all men are dust. + +But what if they who, on the ground of genius, claim exemption from our +blame, and inclusion within our sympathies, even when seen suffering +from their own sins, have no genius at all, but are mere ordinary men, +and but for the fumes of some physical excitement, which they mistake +for the airs of inspiration, are absolutely stupider than people +generally go, and even without any tolerable abilities for alphabetical +education? Many such run versifying about, and will not try to settle +down into any easy sedentary trade, till, getting thirsty through +perpetual perspiration, they take to drinking, come to you with +subscription-papers for poetry, with a cock in their eye that tells of +low tippling-houses, and, accepting your half-crown, slander you when +melting it in the purling purlieus of their own donkey-browsed +Parnassus. + +Can this age be fairly charged--we speak of England and Scotland--with a +shameful indifference--or worse--a cruel scorn--or worse still--a +barbarous persecution of young persons of humble birth, in whom there +may appear a promise of talent, or of genius? Many are the scholars in +whom their early benefactors have had reason to be proud of themselves, +while they have been happy to send their sons to be instructed in the +noblest lore, by men whose boyhood they had rescued from the darkness of +despair, and clothed it with the warmth and light of hope. And were we +to speak of endowments in schools and colleges, in which so many fine +scholars have been brought up from among the humbler classes, who but +for them had been bred to some mean handicraft, we should show better +reason still for believing that moral and intellectual worth is not +overlooked, or left to pine neglected in obscure places, as it is too +much the fashion with a certain set of discontented declaimers to give +out; but that in no other country has such provision been made for the +meritorious children of the enlightened poor as in England. But we fear +that the talent and the genius which, according to them, have been so +often left or sent to beggary, to the great reproach even of our +national character, have not been of a kind which a thoughtful humanity +would in its benefactions have recognised; for it looks not with very +hopeful eyes on mere irregular sallies of fancy, least of all when +spurning prudence and propriety, and symptomatic of a mental +constitution easily excited, but averse to labour, and insensible to the +delight labour brings with it, when the faculties are all devoted in +steadfastness of purpose to the acquisition of knowledge and the +attainment of truth. + +'Tis not easy to know, seeing it is so difficult to define it, whether +this or that youth who thinks he has genius, has it or not: the only +proof he may have given of it is perhaps a few copies of verses, which +breathe the animal gladness of young life, and are tinged with tints of +the beautiful, which joy itself, more imaginative than it ever again +will be, steals from the sunset; but sound sense, and judgment, and +taste which is sense and judgment of all finest feelings and thoughts, +and the love of light dawning on the intellect, and ability to gather +into knowledge facts near and from afar, till the mind sees systems, and +in them understands the phenomena which, when looked at singly, +perplexed the pleasure of the sight--these, and aptitudes and capacities +and powers such as these, are indeed of promise, and more than promise; +they are already performance, and justify in minds thus gifted, and in +those who watch their workings, hopes of a wiser and happier future when +the boy shall be a man. + +Perhaps too much honour, rather than too little, has been shown by this +age to mediocre poetry and other works of fiction. A few gleams of +genius have given some writers of little worth a considerable +reputation; and great waxed the pride of poetasters. But true poetry +burst in beauty over the land, and we became intolerant of "false +glitter." Fresh sprang its flowers from the "daedal earth," or seemed, +they were so surpassingly beautiful, as if spring had indeed descended +from heaven, "veiled in a shower of shadowing roses," and no longer +could we suffer young gentlemen and ladies, treading among the +profusion, to gather the glorious scatterings, and weaving them into +fantastic or even tasteful garlands, to present them to us, as if they +had been raised from the seed of their own genius, and entitled +therefore "to bear their name in the wild woods." This flower-gathering, +pretty pastime though it be, and altogether innocent, fell into +disrepute; and then all such florists began to complain of being +neglected, or despised, or persecuted, and their friends to lament over +their fate, the fate of all genius, "in amorous ditties all a summer's +day." + +Besides the living poets of highest rank, are there not many whose +claims to join the sacred band have been allowed, because their lips, +too, have sometimes been touched with a fire from heaven? Second-rate +indeed! Ay, well for those who are third, fourth, or fifth rate--knowing +where sit Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Round about Parnassus run +_many_ parallel roads, with forests of "cedar and branching palm" +between, overshadowing the sunshine on each magnificent level with a +sense of something more sublime still nearer the forked summit; and each +band, so that they be not ambitious overmuch, in their own region may +wander or repose in grateful bliss. Thousands look up with envy from +"the low-lying fields of the beautiful land" immediately without the +line that goes wavingly asweep round the base of the holy mountain, +separating it from the common earth. What clamour and what din from the +excluded crowd! Many are heard there to whom nature has been kind, but +they have not yet learned "to know themselves," or they would retire, +but not afar off, and in silence adore. And so they do ere long, and are +happy in the sight of "the beauty still more beauteous" revealed to +their fine perceptions, though to them was not given the faculty that by +combining in spiritual passion creates. But what has thither brought the +self-deceived, who will not be convinced of their delusion, even were +Homer or Milton's very self to frown on them with eyes no longer dim, +but angry in their brightness like lowering stars? + +But we must beware--perhaps too late--of growing unintelligible, and ask +you, in plainer terms, if you do not think that by far the greatest +number of all those who raise an outcry against the injustice of the +world to men of genius, are persons of the meanest abilities, who have +all their lives been foolishly fighting with their stars? Their demons +have not whispered to them "have a taste," but "you have genius," and +the world gives the demons the lie. Thence anger, spite, rancour, and +envy eat their hearts, and they "rail against the Lord's anointed." They +set up idols of clay, and fall down and worship them--or idols of brass, +more worthless than clay; or they perversely, and in hatred, not in +love, pretend reverence for the Fair and Good, because, forsooth, placed +by man's ingratitude too far in the shade, whereas man's pity has, in +deep compassion, removed the objects of their love, because of their +imperfections not blameless, back in among that veiling shade, that +their beauty might still be visible while their deformities were hidden +in "a dim religious light." + +Let none of the sons or daughters of genius hearken to such outcry but +with contempt--and at all times with suspicion, when they find +themselves the objects of such lamentations. The world is not--at least +does not wish to be an unkind, ungenerous, and unjust world. Many who +think themselves neglected, are far more thought of than they suppose; +just as many who imagine the world ringing with their name, are in the +world's ears nearly anonymous. Only one edition or two of your poems +have sold--but is it not pretty well that five hundred or a thousand +copies have been read, or glanced over, or looked at, or skimmed, or +skipped, or fondled, or petted, or tossed aside "between malice and true +love," by ten times that number of your fellow-creatures, not one of +whom ever saw your face; while many millions of men, nearly your equals, +and not a few millions your superiors far, have contentedly dropt into +the grave, at the close of a long life, without having once "invoked the +Muse," and who would have laughed in your face had you talked to them, +even in their greatest glee, about their genius? + +There is a glen in the Highlands (dearly beloved Southrons, call on us, +on your way through Edinburgh, and we shall delight to instruct you how +to walk our mountains) called Glencro--very unlike Glenco. A good road +winds up the steep ascent, and at the summit there is a stone seat on +which you read "_Rest and be thankful_." You do so--and are not a little +proud--if pedestrians--of your achievement. Looking up, you see cliffs +high above your head (not the Cobbler), and in the clear sky, as far +above them, a balanced bird. You envy him his seemingly motionless +wings, and wonder at his air-supporters. Down he darts, or aside he +shoots, or right up he soars, and you wish you were an Eagle. You have +reached Rest-and-be-thankful, yet rest you will not, and thankful you +will not be, and you scorn the mean inscription, which many a worthier +wayfarer has blessed, while sitting on that stone he has said, "give us +this day our daily bread," eat his crust, and then walked away contented +down to Cairndow. Just so has it been with you sitting at your appointed +place--pretty high up--on the road to the summit of the Biforked Hill. +You look up and see Byron--there "sitting where you may not soar,"--and +wish you were a great Poet. But you are no more a great Poet than an +Eagle eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip--and will not +rest-and-be-thankful that you are a man and a Christian. Nay, you are +more, an author of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed to be +excellent, better far than the best paragraph in this our Morning +Monologue. But you are sick of walking, and nothing will satisfy you but +to fly. Be contented, as we are, with feet, and weep not for wings; and +let us take comfort together from a cheering quotation from the +philosophic Gray-- + + "For they that creep and they that fly, + Just end where they began!" + + + + +THE FIELD OF FLOWERS. + + +A May-morning on Ulswater and the banks of Ulswater--commingled earth +and heaven! Spring is many-coloured as Autumn; but now Joy scatters the +hues daily brightening into greener life, then Melancholy dropt them +daily dimming into yellower death. The fear of Winter then--but now the +hope of Summer; and Nature rings with hymns hailing the visible advent +of the perfect year. If for a moment the woods are silent, it is but to +burst forth anew into louder song. The rain is over and gone--but the +showery sky speaks in the streams on a hundred hills; and the wide +mountain gloom opens its heart to the sunshine that on many a dripping +precipice burns like fire. Nothing seems inanimate. The very clouds and +their shadows look alive--the trees, never dead, are wide-awakened from +their sleep--families of flowers are frequenting all the dewy +places--old walls are splendid with the light of lichens--and +birch-crowned cliffs up among the coves send down their fine fragrance +to the Lake on every bolder breath that whitens with breaking wavelets +the blue of its breezy bosom. Nor mute the voice of man. The shepherd is +whooping on the hill--the ploughman calling to his team somewhere among +the furrows in some small late field, won from the woods; and you hear +the laughter, and the echoes of the laughter--one sound--of children +busied in half-work half-play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the +occupation of young rustic life? 'Tis no Arcadia--no golden age. But a +lovelier scene--in the midst of all its grandeur--is not in merry and +majestic England; nor did the hills of this earth ever circumscribe a +pleasanter dwelling for a nobler peasantry, than these Cumbrian ranges +of rocks and pastures, where the raven croaks in his own region, +unregarded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How beautiful the Church +Tower! + +On a knoll not far from the shore, and not high above the water, yet by +an especial felicity of place gently commanding all that reach of the +Lake with all its ranges of mountains--every single tree, every grove, +and all the woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene at the bidding +of the Spirit of Beauty--reclined two Figures--the one almost rustic, +but venerable in the simplicity of old age--the other no longer young, +but still in the prime of life--and though plainly apparelled, with form +and bearing such as are pointed out in cities, because belonging to +distinguished men. The old man behaved towards him with deference, but +not humility; and between them two--in many things unlike--it was clear +even from their silence that there was friendship. + +A little way off, and sometimes almost running, now up and now down the +slopes and hollows, was a girl about eight years old--whether beautiful +or not you could not know, for her face was either half-hidden in golden +hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her brow, it was so bright in +the sunshine that you saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now she was +chasing the butterflies, not to hurt them, but to get a nearer sight of +their delicate gauze wings--the first that had come--she wondered +whence--to waver and wanton for a little while in the spring sunshine, +and then, she felt, as wondrously, one and all, as by consent, to +vanish. And now she stooped as if to pull some little wildflower, her +hand for a moment withheld by a loving sense of its loveliness, but ever +and anon adding some new colour to the blended bloom intended to gladden +her father's eyes--though the happy child knew full well, and sometimes +wept to know, that she herself had his entire heart. Yet gliding, or +tripping, or dancing along, she touched not with fairy foot one white +clover-flower on which she saw working the silent bee. Her father looked +too often sad, and she feared--though what it was, she imagined not even +in dreams--that some great misery must have befallen him before they +came to live in the glen. And such, too, she had heard from a chance +whisper, was the belief of their neighbours. But momentary the shadows +on the light of childhood! Nor was she insensible to her own beauty, +that with the innocence it enshrined combined to make her happy; and +first met her own eyes every morning, when most beautiful, awakening +from the hushed awe of her prayers. She was clad in russet like a +cottager's child; but her air spoke of finer breeding than may be met +with among those mountains--though natural grace accompanies there many +a maiden going with her pitcher to the well--and gentle blood and old +flows there in the veins of now humble men--who, but for the decay of +families once high, might have lived in halls, now dilapidated, and +scarcely distinguished through masses of ivy from the circumjacent +rocks! + +The child stole close behind her father, and kissing his cheek, said, +"Were there ever such lovely flowers seen in Ulswater before, father? I +do not believe that they will ever die." And she put them in his breast. +Not a smile came to his countenance--no look of love--no faint +recognition--no gratitude for the gift which at other times might haply +have drawn a tear. She stood abashed in the sternness of his eyes, +which, though fixed on her, seemed to see her not; and feeling that her +glee was mistimed--for with such gloom she was not unfamiliar--the child +felt as if her own happiness had been sin, and, retiring into a glade +among the broom, sat down and wept. + +"Poor wretch, better far that she never had been born." + +The old man looked on his friend with compassion, but with no surprise; +and only said, "God will dry up her tears." + +These few simple words, uttered in a solemn voice, but without one tone +of reproach, seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, who first +looking towards the spot where his child was sobbing to herself, though +he heard it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejaculated for her sake +a broken prayer. He then would have fain called her to him; but he was +ashamed that even she should see him in such a passion of grief--and the +old man went to her of his own accord, and bade her, as from her father, +again to take her pastime among the flowers. Soon was she dancing in her +happiness as before; and, that her father might hear she was obeying +him, singing a song. + +"For five years every Sabbath have I attended divine service in your +chapel--yet dare I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed for +faith--nor, wretch that I am, am I an unbeliever. But I fear to fling +myself at the foot of the cross. God be merciful to me a sinner!" + +The old man opened not his lips; for he felt that there was about to be +made some confession. Yet he doubted not that the sufferer had been more +sinned against than sinning; for the goodness of the stranger--so called +still after five years' residence among the mountains--was known in many +a vale--and the Pastor knew that charity covereth a multitude of +sins--and even as a moral virtue prepares the heart for heaven. So +sacred a thing is solace in this woeful world. + +"We have walked together, many hundred times, for great part of a day, +by ourselves two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, and yet never +once from my lips escaped one word about my fates or fortunes--so frozen +was the secret in my heart. Often have I heard the sound of your voice, +as if it were that of the idle wind; and often the words I did hear +seemed, in the confusion, to have no relation to us, to be strange +syllablings in the wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil spirit +instigating me to self-destruction." + +"I saw that your life was oppressed by some perpetual burden; but God +darkened not your mind while your heart was disturbed so grievously; and +well pleased were we all to think, that in caring so kindly for the +griefs of others, you might come at last to forget your own; or if that +were impossible, to feel, that with the alleviations of time, and +sympathy, and religion, yours was no more than the common lot of +sorrow." + +They rose--and continued to walk in silence--but not apart--up and down +that small sylvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her +father's distraction--no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as +mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time--and pretended +to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears. + +"That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not--perhaps +in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a +lovelier child was never seen than that wretch--God bless her--how +beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness singing over her +flowers! Just such another must her mother have been at her age. She is +now an outcast--and an adulteress." + +The Pastor turned away his face, for in the silence he heard groans, and +the hollow voice again spoke.-- + +"Through many dismal days and nights have I striven to forgive her, but +never for many hours together have I been enabled to repent my curse. +For on my knees I implored God to curse her--her head--her eyes--her +breast--her body--mind, heart, and soul--and that she might go down a +loathsome leper to the grave." + +"Remember what He said to the woman--'Go, and sin no more!'" + +"The words have haunted me all up and down the hills--His words and +mine; but mine have always sounded liker justice at last--for my nature +was created human--and human are all the passions that pronounced that +holy or unholy curse!" + +"Yet you would not curse her now--were she lying here at your feet--or +if you were standing by her deathbed?" + +"Lying here at my feet! Even here--on this very spot--not blasted, but +green through all the year--within the shelter of these two rocks--she +did lie at my feet in her beauty--and as I thought her innocence--my own +happy bride! Hither I brought her to be blest--and blest I was even up +to the measure of my misery. This world is hell to me now--but then it +was heaven!" + +"These awful names are of the mysteries beyond the grave." + +"Hear me and judge. She was an orphan; all her father's and mother's +relations were dead, but a few who were very poor. I married her, and +secured her life against this heartless and wicked world. That child was +born--and while it grew like a flower--she left it--and its father--me +who loved her beyond light and life, and would have given up both for +her sake." + +"And have not yet found heart to forgive her--miserable as she needs +must be--seeing she has been a great sinner!" + +"Who forgives? The father his profligate son, or disobedient daughter? +No; he disinherits his firstborn, and suffers him to perish, perhaps by +an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days +in penury--a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent; +he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on +the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have +taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But +she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overflow with heaven. Had +God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But with her +own hand which I had clasped at the altar--and with our Lucy at her +knees--she gave me that loathsome draught of shame and sorrow:--I drank +it to the dregs--and it is burning all through my being--now--as if it +had been hell-fire from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel. +In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see +the verse--and then shall I know that Christianity is an imposture; for +the voice of God within me--the conscience which is His still small +voice--commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse--never +to forgive her, and her wickedness--not even if we should see each +other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment." + +His countenance grew ghastly--and staggering to a stone, he sat down and +eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about +in his sleep. His face was like ashes--and he gasped like one about to +fall into a fit. "Bring me water"--and the old man motioned on the +child, who, giving ear to him for a moment, flew away to the Lakeside +with an urn she had brought with her for flowers; and held it to her +father's lips. His eyes saw it not;--there was her sweet pale face all +wet with tears, almost touching his own--her innocent mouth breathing +that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the +bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom--and kissed her dewy +eyes--and begged her to cease her sobbing--to smile--to laugh--to +sing--to dance away into the sunshine--_to be happy!_ And Lucy afraid, +not of her father, but of his kindness--for the simple creature was not +able to understand his wild utterance of blessings--returned to the +glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern, +kept her eyes on her father, and left her flowers to fade unheeded +beside her empty urn. + +"Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! That child was just three years +old the very day it was forsaken--she abandoned it and me on its +birthday! Twice had that day been observed by us--as the sweetest--the +most sacred of holidays; and now that it had again come round--but I not +present--for I was on foreign service--thus did she observe it--and +disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into +action--and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent +prayers; for love made me religious--and for their sakes I feared +though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the +field of battle--and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but +I saw them as distinctly as in a dream--the mother lying with her child +in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that vision mockery enough to drive +me mad? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herself--and I kissed +it and pressed it to my heart; for no black seal was there--and I knew +that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the +words--and then they began to blacken into ghastly characters--till at +last I gathered from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and +shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollution. + +"A friend was with me, and I gave it to him to read--for in my anguish +at first I felt no shame--and I watched his face as he read it, that I +might see corroboration of the incredible truth, which continued to look +like falsehood, even while it pierced my heart with agonising pangs. 'It +may be a forgery,' was all he could utter--after long agitation; but the +shape of each letter was too familiar to my eyes--the way in which the +paper was folded--and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have passed, +for the room grew dark--and I asked him to leave me for the night. He +kissed my forehead--for we had been as brothers. I saw him next +morning--dead--cut nearly in two--yet had he left a paper for me, +written an hour before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that +oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and +blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave! + +"And has the time indeed come that I can thus speak calmly of all that +horror? The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all +night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long +friendship--and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse. +Momentary starts of affection seized me--but I cared little or nothing +for the death of him, the tender and the true, the gentle and the brave, +the pious and the noble-hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel +and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion dead--dead to all the +sanctities of nature--for her, and for her alone, I suffered all +ghastliest agonies--nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the +conviction that she was worthless; for desperately wicked as she had +shown herself to be--oh! crowding came back upon me all our hours of +happiness--all her sweet smiles--all her loving looks--all her +affectionate words--all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses; and the +loss of all that bliss--the change of it all into strange, sudden, +shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was +delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with +phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of +sleep! + +"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak +from great loss of blood--and the blow so stunned me that I had not +strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages--for +nobody watched me--and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of +life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to +recover, another passion took possession of me--and I vowed that there +should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was +known through the whole army. Not a tent--not a hut--in which my name +was not bandied about--a jest in the mouths of profligate +poltroons--pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had +commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I +looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion +or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces +arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my +way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music +as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle--as they had +often done with me at their head--all sternly silent before an +approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me, +smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour +had been the idol I worshipped--alas! too, too passionately far--and now +I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes--and heard as if a +legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a +confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called +me--me, despicable in my own esteem--scorned, insulted, forsaken--me, +who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it--a +wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left +her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and, +opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without +remorse--nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband--not even +for sake of that child whom I knew she loved--for no hypocrite was she +there; and oh! lost creature though she was--even now I wonder over that +unaccountable desertion--and much she must have suffered from the image +of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly +happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her +hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I +frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will +come to hate me--oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, +gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her--nor +she with sorrow. Yet--even her how often have I made weep! All the +unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but +leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that +always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there--only +brighter--all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my +unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to +think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of +mercy! what if she were to die!" + +"She will not die--she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many +happy years--my son--are yet in store even for you--sorely as you have +been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure +for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You +prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life--and has He +not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not +then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it +produce there resignation--if need be, contrition--and, above all, +forgiveness." + +"Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in +mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined +foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he +would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his +blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or +flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed +my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his +blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let +it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and +hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon +woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his +heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution +dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of +the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered +over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;--there he was +before me--in all that beauty by women so beloved--graceful as Apollo; +and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his +name, he saluted me--_her husband_--on the field,--and let the wind play +with his raven tresses--his curled love-locks--and then presented +himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot +him through the heart." + +The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder--yet they had +come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had +gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an +avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted +demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His +eyes retained their savage glare--his teeth were clenched--and he +feasted on his crime. + +"Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged +friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable +conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed +great--but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son! +you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven." + +"Who dares to condemn the deed? He deserved death--and whence was doom +to come but from me the Avenger? I took his life--but once I saved it. I +bore him from the battlements of a fort stormed in vain--after we had +all been blown up by the springing of a mine; and from bayonets that had +drunk my blood as well as his--and his widowed mother blessed me as the +saviour of her son. I told my wife to receive him as a brother--and for +my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. Who shall speak of +temptation--or frailty--or infatuation to me? Let the fools hold their +peace. His wounds became dearer to her abandoned heart than mine had +ever been; yet had her cheek lain many a night on the scars that seamed +this breast--for I was not backward in battle, and our place was in the +van. I was no coward, that she who loved heroism in him should have +dishonoured her husband. True, he was younger by some years than me--and +God had given him pernicious beauty--and she was young, too--oh! the +brightest of all mortal creatures the day she became my bride--nor less +bright with that baby at her bosom--a matron in girlhood's resplendent +spring! Is youth a plea for wickedness? And was I old? I, who, in spite +of all I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling as to a +furnace; but cut off for ever by her crime from fame and glory--and from +a soldier in his proud career, covered with honour in the eyes of all my +countrymen, changed in an hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. My +name has been borne by a race of heroes--the blood in my veins has +flowed down a long line of illustrious ancestors--and here am I now--a +hidden disguised hypocrite--dwelling among peasants--and afraid--ay, +afraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely from the ground even +among the solitudes of the mountains, lest some wandering stranger +should recognise me, and see the brand of ignominy her hand and +his--accursed both--burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this bosom--but +tell me if it was in disgust with these my scars?" + +And as he bared it, distractedly, that noble chest was seen indeed +disfigured with many a gash--on which a wife might well have rested her +head with gratitude not less devout because of a lofty pride mingling +with life-deep affection. But the burst of passion was gone by--and, +covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child. + +"Oh! cruel--cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to +her--for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory--not +an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains, +her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with +curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes--beautiful as on our +marriage-day--all in purest white--adorned with flowers--it wreathes its +arms around my neck--and offers its mouth to my kisses--and then all at +once is changed into a leering wretch, retaining a likeness of my +bride--then into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead--dead of cold and +hunger: she whom I cherished in all luxury--whose delicate frame seemed +to bring round itself all the purest air and sweetest sunshine--she may +have expired in the very mire--and her body been huddled into some hole +called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen to her! +Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who +support hated and hateful life by prostitution? Black was her crime; yet +hardly did she deserve to be one of that howling crew--she whose voice +was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent--for up to +the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been +hers;--then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where +she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness +be lightened--let me see into its heart--and know but the meaning of her +guilt--and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and +night, it has troubled and confounded me--and from blind and baffled +wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through +which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find--and nothing is left +me but to tear my hair out by handfuls--as, like a madman, I have +done--to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon +her the curse of God. O wicked--most wicked! Yet He who judges the +hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand +times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the +moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back--I know not +whether of a good or evil spirit--and bade me leave her to her fate. But +she must be dead--and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too +sternly--from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly +expressed to you but parts of my miserable being--and if I could lay it +all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn--for my +worst passions only have now found utterance--all my better feelings +will not return nor abide for words--even I myself have forgotten them; +but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the +Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on +his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man +encouraged him not to despair--it needed but a motion of his hand to +bring the child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her +father's heart. The forgiveness was felt to be holy in that embrace. + +The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were +sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed +something like a rainbow--and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and +in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock, +and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat +suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a +promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a +crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind +coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly along, when a +sudden squall struck the sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and +went down. No shrieks were heard--and the boatman swam ashore; but a +figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared--and starting from +his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after +desperate exertions brought the drowned creature to the side--a female +meanly attired--seemingly a stranger--and so attenuated that it was +plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus +perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was grey--but +the face, though withered, was not old--and as she lay on the +greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine. + +He stood over her awhile--as if struck motionless--and then kneeling +beside the body, kissed its lips and eyes--and said only, "It is Lucy!" + +The old man was close by--and so was that child. They too knelt--and the +passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of +death--ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is +forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom--wasted to the bone--in the +idle thought that she might yet breathe--and a paper dropt out into his +hand, which he read aloud to himself--unconscious that any one was near. +"I am fast dying--and desire to die at your feet. Perhaps you will spurn +me--it is right you should; but you will see how sorrow has killed the +wicked wretch who was once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude +for five years, and have suffered great hardships. I think I am a +penitent--and have been told by religious persons that I may hope for +pardon from Heaven! Oh! that you would forgive me too! and let me have +one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers--perhaps +you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where +we passed a summer day the week of our marriage." + +"Not thus could I have kissed thy lips--Lucy--had they been red with +life. White are they--and white must they long have been! No pollution +on them--nor on that poor bosom now. Contrite tears had long since +washed out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines--and in them a +humble heart said nothing but God's truth. Child--behold your mother. +Art thou afraid to touch the dead?" + +"No--father--I am not afraid to kiss her lips--as you did now. +Sometimes, when you thought me asleep, I have heard you praying for my +mother." + +"Oh! child! cease--cease--or my heart will burst." + +People began to gather about the body--but awe kept them aloof; and as +for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would +have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So +the groups remained for a while at a distance--even the old pastor went +a good many paces apart; and under the shadow of that tree the father +and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit +beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep. + +That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived +long among them--had adopted many of their customs--and was even as one +of themselves--so it seemed--in the familiar intercourse of man with +man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was +entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that +then there needed to be neither concealment nor avowal of the truth. So +in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers; a bier had +been prepared: and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the +Father of little Lucy holding her hand, silently directed the procession +towards his own house--out of the FIELD OF FLOWERS. + + + + +COTTAGES. + + +Have you any intention, dear reader, of building a house in the country? +If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage. +We presume that you are obliged to live, one half of the year at least, +in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and +your establishment? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house +in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Abercromby Place, or Queen Street. The +said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might +expect in the City of Palaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold +some ten score of modern Athenians--your dining-room might feast one +half of the contributors to _Blackwood's Magazine_--your "placens uxor" +has her boudoir--your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her +music-room--your boys their own studio--the governess her retreat--and +the tutor his den--the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her +own sanctum--the butler bargains for his dim apartment--and the four +maids must have their front area-window. In short, from cellarage to +garret all is complete, and Number Forty-two is really a splendid +mansion. + +Now, dear reader, far be it from us to question the propriety or +prudence of such an establishment. Your house was not built for +nothing--it was no easy thing to get the painters out--the furnishing +thereof was no trifle--the feu-duty is really unreasonable--and taxes +are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles of free trade, and the +universal prosperity of the country. Servants are wasteful, and their +wages absurd--and the whole style of living, with long-necked bottles, +most extravagant. But still we do not object to your establishment--far +from it, we admire it much; nor is there a single house in town where we +make ourselves more agreeable to a late hour, or that we leave with a +greater quantity of wine of a good quality under our girdle. Few things +would give us more temporary uneasiness, than to hear of any +embarrassment in your money concerns. We are not people to forget good +fare, we assure you; and long and far may all shapes of sorrow keep +aloof from the hospitable board, whether illuminated by gas, oil, or +mutton. + +But what we were going to say is this--that the head of such a house +ought not to live, when ruralising, in a Cottage. He ought to be +consistent. Nothing so beautiful as consistency. What then is so absurd +as to cram yourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, and your scarcely +less numerous menials, into a concern called a Cottage? The ordinary +heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees above that of a brown study, +during the month of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage. Then the +smell of the kitchen! How it aggravates the sultry closeness! A strange, +compounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. +It is at the worst during the latter part of the forenoon, when +everything has been got into preparation for cookery. There is then +nothing savoury about the smell--it is dull, dead--almost catacombish. A +small back-kitchen has it in its power to destroy the sweetness of any +Cottage. Add a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of the eternal +clashing of pots, pans, plates, trenchers, and general crockery, we now +say nothing; indeed, the sound somewhat relieves the smell, and the ear +comes occasionally in to the aid of the nose. Such noises are windfalls; +but not so the scolding of cook and butler--at first low and tetchy, +with pauses--then sharp, but still interrupted--by-and-by, loud and +ready in reply--finally a discordant gabble of vulgar fury, like maniacs +quarrelling in Bedlam. Hear it you must--you and all the strangers. To +explain it away is impossible; and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone, +or Megaera, will come flying into the parlour with a bloody cleaver, +dripping with the butler's brains. During the time of the quarrel the +spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the five-year-old +black-face burnt on one side to a cinder.--"To dinner with what appetite +you may." + +It would be quite unpardonable to forget one especial smell which +irretrievably ruined our happiness during a whole summer--the smell of +a dead rat. The accursed vermin died somewhere in the Cottage; but +whether beneath a floor, within lath and plaster, or in roof, baffled +the conjectures of the most sagacious. The whole family used to walk +about the Cottage for hours every day, snuffing on a travel of +discovery; and we distinctly remember the face of one elderly +maiden-lady at the moment she thought she had traced the source of the +fumee to the wall behind a window-shutter. But even at the very same +instant we ourselves had proclaimed it with open nostril from a press in +an opposite corner. Terriers were procured--but the dog Billy himself +would have been at fault. To pull down the whole Cottage would have been +difficult--at least to build it up again would have been so; so we had +to submit. Custom, they say, is second nature, but not when a dead rat +is in the house. No, none can ever become accustomed to that; yet good +springs out of evil--for the live rats could not endure it, and +emigrated to a friend's house, about a mile off, who has never had a +sound night's rest from that day. We have not revisited our Cottage for +several years; but time does wonders, and we were lately told by a +person of some veracity that the smell was then nearly gone; but our +informant is a gentleman of blunted olfactory nerves, having been +engaged from seventeen to seventy in a soap-work. + +Smoke too. More especially that mysterious and infernal sort, called +back-smoke! The old proverb, "No smoke without fire," is a base lie. We +have seen smoke without fire in every room in a most delightful Cottage +we inhabited during the dog-days. The moment you rushed for refuge even +into a closet, you were blinded and stifled; nor shall we ever forget +our horror on being within an ace of smotheration in the cellar. At +last, we groped our way into the kitchen. Neither cook nor jack was +visible. We heard, indeed, a whirring and revolving noise--and then +suddenly Girzie swearing through the mist. Yet all this while people +were admiring our Cottage from a distance, and especially this self-same +accursed back-smoke, some portions of which had made an excursion up the +chimneys, and was wavering away in a spiral form to the sky, in a style +captivating to Mr Price on the Picturesque. + +No doubt, there are many things very romantic about a Cottage. +Creepers, for example. Why, sir, these creepers are the most mischievous +nuisance that can afflict a family. There is no occasion for mentioning +names, but--devil take all parasites. Some of the rogues will actually +grow a couple of inches upon you in one day's time; and when all other +honest plants are asleep, the creepers are hard at it all night long, +stretching out their toes and their fingers, and catching an +inextricable hold of every wall they can reach, till, finally, you see +them thrusting their impudent heads through the very slates. Then, like +other low-bred creatures, they are covered with vermin. All manner of +moths--the most grievous grubs--slimy slugs--spiders spinning toils to +ensnare the caterpillar--earwigs and slaters, that would raise the gorge +of a country curate--wood-lice--the slaver of gowk's-spittle--midges-- +jocks-with-the-many-legs; in short, the whole plague of insects infest +that--Virgin's bower. Open the lattice for half an hour, and you find +yourself in an entomological museum. Then there are no pins fixing down +the specimens. All these beetles are alive, more especially the enormous +blackguard crawling behind your ear. A moth plumps into your tumbler of +cold negus, and goes whirling round in meal, till he makes absolute +porritch. As you open your mouth in amazement, the large blue-bottle +fly, having made his escape from the spiders, and seeing that not a +moment is to be lost, precipitates himself head-foremost down your +throat, and is felt, after a few ineffectual struggles, settling in +despair at the very bottom of your stomach. Still, no person will be so +unreasonable as to deny that creepers on a Cottage are most beautiful. +For the sake of their beauty, some little sacrifice must be made of +one's comforts, especially as it is only for one half of the year, and +last really was a most delightful summer. + +How truly romantic is a thatch roof! The eaves how commodious for +sparrows! What a paradise for rats and mice! What a comfortable colony +of vermin! They all bore their own tunnels in every direction, and the +whole interior becomes a Cretan labyrinth. Frush, frush becomes the +whole cover in a few seasons; and not a bird can open his wing, not a +rat switch his tail, without scattering the straw like chaff. Eternal +repairs! Look when you will, and half-a-dozen thatchers are riding on +the rigging; of all operatives the most inoperative. Then there is +always one of the number descending the ladder for a horn of ale. +Without warning, the straw is all used up; and no more fit for the +purpose can be got within twenty miles. They hint heather--and you sigh +for slate--the beautiful sky-blue, sea-green, Ballachulish slate! But +the summer is nearly over and gone, and you must be flitting back to the +city; so you let the job stand over to spring, and the soaking rains and +snows of a long winter search the Cottage to its heart's-core, and every +floor is ere long laden with a crop of fungi--the bed-posts are +ornamented curiously with lichens, and mosses bathe the walls with their +various and inimitable lustre. + +Everything is romantic that is pastoral--and what more pastoral than +sheep? Accordingly, living in a Cottage, you kill your own mutton. Great +lubberly Leicesters or Southdowns are not worth the mastication, so you +keep the small black-face. Stone walls are ugly things, you think, near +a Cottage, so you have rails or hurdles. Day and night are the small +black-face, out of pure spite, bouncing through or over all impediments, +after an adventurous leader, and, despising the daisied turf, keep +nibbling away at all your rare flowering shrubs, till your avenue is a +desolation. Every twig has its little ball of wool, and it is a rare +time for the nest-makers. You purchase a collie, but he compromises the +affair with the fleecy nation, and contents himself with barking all +night long at the moon, if there happen to be one--if not, at the +firmament of his kennel. You are too humane to hang or drown Luath, so +you give him to a friend. But Luath is in love with the cook, and pays +her nightly visits. Afraid of being entrapped should he step into the +kennel, he takes up his station, after supper, on a knoll within +ear-range, and pointing his snout to the stars, joins the music of the +spheres, and is himself a perfect Sirius. The gardener at last gets +orders to shoot him--and the gun being somewhat rusty, bursts and blows +off his left hand--so that Andrew Fairservice retires on a pension. + +Of all breeds of cattle we most admire the Alderney. They are slim, +delicate, wild-deer-looking creatures, that give an air to a Cottage. +But they are most capricious milkers. Of course you make your own +butter; that is to say, with the addition of a dozen purchased pounds +weekly, you are not very often out of that commodity. Then, once or +twice in a summer, they suddenly lose their temper, and chase the +governess and your daughters over the edge of a gravel-pit. Nothing they +like so much as the tender sprouts of cauliflower, nor do they abhor +green pease. The garden-hedge is of privet--a pretty fence, and fast +growing, but not formidable to a four-year-old. On going to eat a few +gooseberries by sunrise, you start a covey of cows, that in their alarm +plunge into the hot-bed with a smash, as if all the glass in the island +had been broken--and rushing out at the gate at the critical instant +little Tommy is tottering in, they leave the heir-apparent, scarcely +deserving that name, half hidden in the border. There is no sale for +such outlandish animals in the home-market, and it is not Martinmas, so +you must make a present of them to the president or five silver-cupman +of an agricultural society, and you receive in return a sorry red round, +desperately saltpetred, at Christmas. + +What is a Cottage in the country, unless "your banks are all furnished +with bees, whose murmurs invite one to sleep?" There the hives stand, +like four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row. Not a more harmless insect +in all this world than a bee. Wasps are devils incarnate, but bees are +fleshly sprites, as amiable as industrious. You are strolling along in +delightful mental vacuity, looking at a poem of Barry Cornwall's, when +smack comes an infuriated honey-maker against your eyelid, and plunges +into you the fortieth part of an inch of sting saturated in venom. The +wretch clings to your lid like a burr, and it feels as if he had a +million claws to hold him on while he is darting his weapon into your +eyeball. Your banks are indeed well furnished with bees, but their +murmurs do not invite you to sleep; on the contrary, away you fly like a +madman, bolt into your wife's room, and roar out for the recipe. The +whole of one side of your face is most absurdly swollen, while the other +is _in statu quo_. One eye is dwindled away to almost nothing, and is +peering forth from its rainbow-coloured envelope, while the other is +open as day to melting charity, and shining over a cheek of the purest +crimson. Infatuated man! Why could you not purchase your honey? Jemmy +Thomson, the poet, would have let you have it, from Habbie's Howe, the +true Pentland elixir, for five shillings the pint; for during this +season both the heather and the clover were prolific of the honey-dew, +and the Skeps rejoiced over all Scotland on a thousand hills. + +We could tell many stories about bees, but that would be leading us away +from the main argument. We remember reading in an American newspaper, +some years ago, that the United States lost one of their most upright +and erudite judges by bees, which stung him to death in a wood while he +was going the circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in the same +newspaper, "We are afraid we have lost another judge by bees;" and then +followed a somewhat frightful description of the assassination of +another American Blackstone by the same insects. We could not fail to +sympathise with both sufferers; for in the summer of the famous comet we +ourselves had nearly shared the same fate. Our Newfoundlander upset a +hive in his vagaries--and the whole swarm unjustly attacked us. The buzz +was an absolute roar--and for the first time in our lives we were under +a cloud. Such buzzing in our hair! and of what avail were +fifty-times-washed nankeen breeches against the Polish Lancers? With our +trusty crutch we made thousands bite the dust--but the wounded and dying +crawled up our legs, and stung us cruelly over the lower regions. At +last we took to flight, and found shelter in the ice-house. But it +seemed as if a new hive had been disturbed in that cool grotto. Again we +sallied out, stripping off garment after garment, till, _in puris +naturalibus_, we leaped into a window, which happened to be that of the +drawing-room, where a large party of ladies and gentlemen were awaiting +the dinner-bell--but fancy must dream the rest. + +We now offer a set of _Blackwood's Magazine_ to any scientific character +who will answer this seemingly simple question--what is Damp? +Quicksilver is a joke to it, for getting into or out of any place. +Capricious as damp is, it is faithful in its affection to all Cottages +ornees. What more pleasant than a bow-window? You had better, however, +not sit with your back against the wall, for it is as blue and ropy as +that of a charnel-house. Probably the wall is tastily papered--a +vine-leaf pattern perhaps--or something spriggy--or in the aviary +line--or, mayhap, haymakers, or shepherds piping in the dale. But all +distinctions are levelled in the mould--Phyllis has a black patch over +her eye, and Strephon seems to be playing on a pair of bellows. Damp +delights to descend chimneys, and is one of smoke's most powerful +auxiliaries. It is a thousand pities you hung up--just in that unlucky +spot--Grecian Williams's Thebes--for now one of the finest water-colour +paintings in the world is not worth six-and-eightpence. There is no +living in the country without a library. Take down, with all due +caution, that enormous tome, the _Excursion_, and let us hear something +of the Pedlar. There is an end to the invention of printing. Lo and +behold, blank verse indeed! You cannot help turning over twenty leaves +at once, for they are all amalgamated in must and mouldiness. Lord Byron +himself is no better than an Egyptian mummy; and the Great Unknown +addresses you in hieroglyphics. + +We have heard different opinions maintained on the subject of damp +sheets. For our own part, we always wish to feel the difference between +sheets and cerements. We hate everything clammy. It is awkward, on +leaping out of bed to admire the moon, to drag along with you, glued +round your body and members, the whole paraphernalia of the couch. It +can never be good for rheumatism--problematical even for fever. Now, be +candid--did you ever sleep in perfectly dry sheets in a Cottage ornee? +You would not like to say "No, never," in the morning--privately, to +host or hostess. But confess publicly, and trace your approaching +retirement from all the troubles of this life, to the dimity-curtained +cubiculum on Tweedside. + +We know of few events so restorative as the arrival of a coachful of +one's friends, if the house be roomy. But if everything there be on a +small scale, how tremendous a sudden importation of live cattle! The +children are all trundled away out of the Cottage, and their room given +up to the young ladies, with all its enigmatical and emblematical +wall-tracery. The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a shake-down. +My lady's maid must positively pass the night in the butler's pantry, +and the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. Where the old +gentleman and his spouse have been disposed of, remains as controversial +a point as the authorship of Junius; but next morning at the +breakfast-table, it appears that all have survived the night, and the +hospitable hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, that small as +the Cottage appears, it has wonderful accommodation, and could have +easily admitted half-a-dozen more patients. The visitors politely +request to be favoured with a plan of so very commodious a Cottage, but +silently swear never again to sleep in a house of one story, till life's +brief tale be told. + +But not one half the comforts of a Cottage have yet been enumerated--nor +shall they be by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to add, that the +strange coachman had been persuaded to put up his horses in the +outhouses, instead of taking them to an excellent inn about two miles +off. The old black long-tailed steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for +nearly twenty years, had been lodged in what was called the Stable, and +the horse behind had been introduced into the byre. As bad luck would +have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty was in his stall; and without +the slightest provocation, he had, during the night-watches, so handled +his heels against Mr Fox, that he had not left the senior a leg to stand +upon, while he had bit a lump out of the buttocks of Mr Pitt little less +than an orange. A cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an assault on +the roadster, and tore up his flank with her crooked horn as clean as if +it had been a ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with post-horses; +and although Mr Dick be at once one of the most skilful and most +moderate of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of autumn was +necessarily as long as that of a proctor. Mr Fox gave up the ghost--Mr +Pitt was put on the superannuated list--and Joseph Hume, the hack, was +sent to the dogs. + +To this condition, then, we must come at last, that if you build at all +in the country, it must be a mansion three stories high, at the +lowest--large airy rooms--roof of slates and lead--and walls of the +freestone or the Roman cement. No small black-faces, no Alderneys, no +beehives. Buy all your vivres, and live like a gentleman. Seldom or +never be without a houseful of company. If you manage your family +matters properly, you may have your time nearly as much at your own +disposal as if you were the greatest of hunkses, and never gave but +unavoidable dinners. Let the breakfast-gong sound at ten o'clock--quite +soon enough. The young people will have been romping about the parlours +or the purlieus for a couple of hours--and will all make their +appearance in the beauty of high health and high spirits. Chat away as +long as need be, after muffins and mutton-ham, in small groups on sofas +and settees, and then slip you away to your library, to add a chapter to +your novel, or your history, or to any other task that is to make you +immortal. Let gigs and curricles draw up in the circle, and the wooing +and betrothed wheel away across a few parishes. Let the pedestrians +saunter off into the woods or to the hill-side--the anglers be off to +loch or river. No great harm even in a game or two at billiards--if such +be of any the cue--sagacious spinsters of a certain age, staid dowagers, +and bachelors of sedentary habits, may have recourse, without blame, to +the chess or backgammon board. At two lunch--and at six the dinner-gong +will bring the whole flock together, all dressed--mind that--all +dressed, for slovenliness is an abomination. Let no elderly gentleman, +however bilious and rich, seek to monopolise a young lady--but study the +nature of things. Champagne, of course, and if not all the delicacies, +at least all the substantialities, of the season. Join the ladies in +about two hours--a little elevated or so--almost imperceptibly--but +still a little elevated or so; then music--whispering in corners--if +moonlight and stars, then an hour's out-of-door study of astronomy--no +very regular supper--but an appearance of plates and tumblers, and to +bed, to happy dreams and slumbers light, at the witching hour. Let no +gentleman or lady snore, if it can be avoided, lest they annoy the +crickets; and if you hear any extraordinary noise round and round about +the mansion, be not alarmed, for why should not the owls choose their +own hour of revelry? + +Fond as we are of the country, we would not, had we our option, live +there all the year round. We should just wish to linger into the winter +about as far as the middle of December--then to a city--say at once +Edinburgh. There is as good skating-ground, and as good curling-ground, +at Lochend and Duddingston, as anywhere in all Scotland--nor is there +anywhere else better beef and greens. There is no perfection anywhere, +but Edinburgh society is excellent. We are certainly agreeable citizens; +with just a sufficient spice of party spirit to season the feast of +reason and the flow of soul, and to prevent society from becoming +drowsily unanimous. Without the fillip of a little scandal, honest +people would fall asleep; and surely it is far preferable to that to +abuse one's friends with moderation. Even Literature and the Belles +Lettres are not entirely useless; and our Human Life would not be so +delightful as that of Mr Rogers, without a few occasional Noctes +Ambrosianae. + +But the title of our article recalls our wandering thoughts, and our +talk must be of Cottages. Now, think not, beloved reader, that we care +not for Cottages, for that would indeed be a gross mistake. But our very +affections are philosophical; our sympathies have all their source in +reason; and our admiration is always built on the foundation of truth. +Taste, and feeling, and thought, and experience, and knowledge of this +life's concerns, are all indispensable to the true delights the +imagination experiences in beholding a beautiful _bona fide_ Cottage. It +must be the dwelling of the poor; and it is that which gives it its +whole character. By the poor, we mean not paupers, beggars; but families +who, to eat, must work, and who, by working, may still be able to eat. +Plain, coarse, not scanty, but unsuperfluous fare is theirs from +year's-end to year's-end, excepting some decent and grateful change on +chance holidays of nature's own appointment--a wedding or a christening, +or a funeral. Yes, a funeral; for when this mortal coil is shuffled off, +why should the hundreds of people that come trooping over muirs and +mosses to see the body deposited, walk so many miles, and lose a whole +day's work, without a dinner? And if there be a dinner, should it not be +a good one? And if a good one, will the company not be social? But this +is a subject for a future paper, nor need such paper be of other than a +cheerful character. Poverty, then, is the builder and beautifier of all +huts and cottages. But the views of honest poverty are always hopeful +and prospective. Strength of muscle and strength of mind form a truly +Holy Alliance; and the future brightens before the steadfast eyes of +trust. Therefore, when a house is built in the valley, or on the +hill-side--be it that of the poorest cottar--there is some little room, +or nook, or spare place, which hope consecrates to the future. Better +times may come--a shilling or two may be added to the week's +wages--parsimony may accumulate a small capital in the Savings-bank +sufficient to purchase an old eight-day clock, a chest of drawers for +the wife, a curtained bed for the lumber-place, which a little labour +will convert into a bedroom. It is not to be thought that the +pasture-fields become every year greener, and the cornfields every +harvest more yellow--that the hedgerows grow to thicker fragrance, and +the birch-tree waves its tresses higher in the air, and expands its +white-rinded stem almost to the bulk of a tree of the forest--and yet +that there shall be no visible progress from good to better in the +dwelling of those whose hands and hearts thus cultivate the soil into +rejoicing beauty. As the whole land prospers, so does each individual +dwelling. Every ten years, the observing eye sees a new expression on +the face of the silent earth; the law of labour is no melancholy lot; +for to industry the yoke is easy, and content is its own exceeding great +reward. + +Therefore, it does our heart good to look on a Cottage. Here the +objections to straw-roofs have no application. A few sparrows chirping +and fluttering in the eaves can do no great harm, and they serve to +amuse the children. The very baby in the cradle, when all the family are +in the fields, mother and all, hears the cheerful twitter, and is +reconciled to solitude. The quantity of corn that a few sparrows can +eat--greedy creatures as they are--cannot be very deadly; and it is +chiefly in the winter-time that they attack the stacks, when there is +much excuse to be made on the plea of hunger. As to the destruction of a +little thatch, why, there is not a boy about the house, above ten years, +who is not a thatcher, and there is no expense in such repairs. Let the +honeysuckle, too, steal up the wall, and even blind unchecked a corner +of the kitchen-window. Its fragrance will often cheer unconsciously the +labourer's heart, as, in the mid-day hour of rest, he sits dandling his +child on his knee, or converses with the passing pedlar. Let the +moss-rose tree flourish, that its bright blush-balls may dazzle in the +kirk the eyes of the lover of fair Helen Irwin, as they rise and fall +with every movement of a bosom yet happy in its virgin innocence. Nature +does not spread in vain her flowers in flush and fragrance over every +obscure nook of earth. Simple and pure is the delight they inspire. Not +to the poet's eye alone is their language addressed. The beautiful +symbols are understood by lowliest minds; and while the philosophical +Wordsworth speaks of the meanest flower that blows giving a joy too deep +for tears, so do all mankind feel the exquisite truth of Burns's more +simple address to the mountain-daisy which his ploughshare had upturned. +The one touches sympathies too profound to be general--the other speaks +as a son of the soil affected by the fate of the most familiar flower +that springs from the bosom of our common dust. + +Generally speaking, there has been a spirit of improvement at work, +during these last twenty years, upon all the Cottages in Scotland. The +villages are certainly much neater and cleaner than formerly, and in +very few respects, if any, positively offensive. Perhaps none of them +have--nor ever will have--the exquisite trimness, the habitual and +hereditary rustic elegance, of the best villages of England. There, even +the idle and worthless have an instinctive love of what is decent, and +orderly, and pretty in their habitations. The very drunkard must have a +well-sanded floor, a clean-swept hearth, clear-polished furniture, and +uncobwebbed walls to the room in which he quaffs, guzzles, and smokes +himself into stupidity. His wife may be a scold, but seldom a +slattern--his children ill taught, but well apparelled. Much of this is +observable even among the worst of the class; and, no doubt, such things +must also have their effect in tempering and restraining excesses. +Whereas, on the other hand, the house of a well-behaved, well-doing +English villager is a perfect model of comfort and propriety. In +Scotland, the houses of the dissolute are always dens of dirt, and +disorder, and distraction. All ordinary goings-on are inextricably +confused--meals eaten in different nooks, and at no regular +hour--nothing in its right place or time--the whole abode as if on the +eve of a flitting; while, with few exceptions, even in the dwellings of +the best families in the village, one may detect occasional +forgetfulness of trifling matters, that, if remembered, would be found +greatly conducive to comfort--occasional insensibilities to what would +be graceful in their condition, and might be secured at little expense +and less trouble--occasional blindness to minute deformities that mar +the aspect of the household, and which an awakened eye would sweep away +as absolute nuisances. Perhaps the very depth of their affections--the +solemnity of their religious thoughts--and the reflective spirit in +which they carry on the warfare of life--hide from them the perception +of what, after all, is of such very inferior moment, and even create a +sort of austerity of character which makes them disregard, too much, +trifles that appear to have no influence or connection with the essence +of weal or woe. Yet if there be any truth in this, it affords, we +confess, an explanation rather than a justification. + +Our business at present, however, is rather with single Cottages than +with villages. We Scottish people have, for some years past, been doing +all we could to make ourselves ridiculous, by claiming for our capital +the name of Modern Athens, and talking all manner of nonsense about a +city which stands nobly on its own proper foundation; while we have kept +our mouths comparatively shut about the beauty of our hills and vales, +and the rational happiness that everywhere overflows our native land. +Our character is to be found in the country; and therefore, gentle +reader, behold along with us a specimen of Scottish scenery. It is not +above some four miles long--its breadth somewhere about a third of its +length; a fair oblong, sheltered and secluded by a line of varied +eminences, on some of which lies the power of cultivation, and over +others the vivid verdure peculiar to a pastoral region; while, telling +of disturbed times past for ever, stand yonder the ruins of an old +fortalice or keep, picturesque in its deserted decay. The plough has +stopped at the edge of the profitable and beautiful coppice-woods, and +encircled the tall elm-grove. The rocky pasturage, with its clovery and +daisied turf, is alive with sheep and cattle--its briery knolls with +birds--its broom and whins with bees--and its wimpling burn with trouts +and minnows glancing through the shallows, or leaping among the cloud of +injects that glitter over its pools. Here and there a cottage--not above +twenty in all--one low down in the holm, another on a cliff beside the +waterfall: that is the mill--another breaking the horizon in its more +ambitious station--and another far up at the hill-foot, where there is +not a single tree, only shrubs and brackens. On a bleak day, there is +but little beauty in such a glen; but when the sun is cloudless, and all +the light serene, it is a place where poet or painter may see visions +and dream dreams, of the very age of gold. At such seasons, there is a +home-felt feeling of humble reality, blending with the emotions of +imagination. In such places, the low-born high-souled poets of old +breathed forth their songs, and hymns, and elegies--the undying lyrical +poetry of the heart of Scotland. + +Take the remotest Cottage first in order, HILLFOOT, and hear who are its +inmates--the Schoolmaster and his spouse. The schoolhouse stands on a +little unappropriated piece of ground--at least it seems to be so--quite +at the head of the glen; for there the hills sink down on each side, and +afford an easy access to the seat of learning from two neighbouring +vales, both in the same parish. Perhaps fifty scholars are there +taught--and with their small fees, and his small salary, Allan Easton is +contented. Allan was originally intended for the Church; but some +peccadilloes obstructed his progress with the Presbytery, and he never +was a preacher. That disappointment of all his hopes was for many years +grievously felt, and somewhat soured his mind with the world. It is +often impossible to recover one single false step in the slippery road +of life--and Allan Easton, year after year, saw himself falling farther +and farther into the rear of almost all his contemporaries. One became a +minister, and got a manse, with a stipend of twenty chalders; another +grew into an East India Nabob; one married the laird's widow, and kept a +pack of hounds--another expanded into a colonel--one cleared a plum by a +cotton-mill--another became the Croesus of a bank--while Allan, who +had beat them all hollow at all the classes, wore second-hand clothes, +and lived on the same fare with the poorest hind in the parish. He had +married, rather too late, the partner of his frailties--and after many +trials, and, as he thought, not a few persecutions, he got settled at +last, when his head, not very old, was getting grey, and his face +somewhat wrinkled. His wife, during his worst poverty, had gone again +into service, the lot, indeed, to which she had been born; and Allan had +struggled and starved upon private teaching. His appointment to the +parish school had, therefore, been to them both a blessed elevation. The +office was respectable--and loftier ambition had long been dead. Now +they are old people--considerably upwards of sixty--and twenty years' +professional life have converted Allan Easton, once the wild and +eccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, and pedantic pedagogue. +All his scholars love him, for even in the discharge of such very humble +duties, talents make themselves felt and respected; and the kindness of +an affectionate and once sorely wounded, but now healed heart, is never +lost upon the susceptible imaginations of the young. Allan has sometimes +sent out no contemptible scholars, as scholars go in Scotland, to the +universities; and his heart has warmed within him when he has read +their names, in the newspaper from the manse, in the list of successful +competitors for prizes. During vacation-time, Allan and his spouse leave +their cottage locked up, and disappear, none know exactly whither, on +visits to an old friend or two, who have not altogether forgotten them +in their obscurity. During the rest of the year, his only out-of-doors +amusement is an afternoon's angling, an art in which it is universally +allowed he excels all mortal men, both in river and loch; and often, +during the long winter nights, when the shepherd is walking by his +dwelling, to visit his "ain lassie," down the burn, he hears Allan's +fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, some one of those Scottish +melodies, that we know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, but +soothing to every heart that has been at all acquainted with grief. +Rumour says too, but rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that the +Schoolmaster, when he meets with pleasant company, either at home or a +friend's house, is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then the +memories of other days crowd upon his brain, and loosen his tongue into +eloquence. Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon her husband on all +such occasions; but Allan braves its glances, and is forgiven. + +We see only the uncertain glimmer of their dwelling through the +low-lying mist; and therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were +clearly before our eyes. But should you ever chance to angle your way up +to HILLFOOT, admire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the jargonelle +pear-tree on the southern gable. The climate is somewhat high, but it is +not cold; and, except when the spring-frosts come late and sharp, there +do all blossoms and fruits abound, on every shrub and tree native to +Scotland. You will hardly know how to distinguish--or rather, to speak +in clerkly phrase, to analyse the sound prevalent over the fields and +air; for it is made up of that of the burn, of bees, of old Susan's +wheel, and the hum of the busy school. But now it is the play-hour, and +Allan Easton comes into his kitchen for his frugal dinner. Brush up your +Latin, and out with a few of the largest trouts in your pannier. Susan +fries them in fresh butter and oatmeal--the greyhaired pedagogue asks a +blessing--and a merrier man, within the limits of becoming mirth, you +never passed an hour's talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and Susan +his spouse. + +You look as if you wished to ask who inhabits the Cottage--on the left +hand yonder--that stares upon us with four front windows, and pricks up +its ears like a new-started hare? Why, sir, that was once a +Shooting-box. It was built about twenty years ago, by a sporting +gentleman of two excellent double-barrelled guns, and three stanch +pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of +August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among +the hills from sunrise to sunset. He has been long dead and buried; and +the Box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let +furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an +escutcheon. Picturesque people say it ruins the whole beauty of the +glen; but we must not think so, for it is not in the power of the +ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a +purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contrivance. The window-shutters +have been closed for several years, and the chimneys look as if they had +breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddy, and the ground +shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a barrel to +catch the rain-drippings from the slate-eaves. If it be indeed haunted, +pity the poor ghost! You may have it on a lease, short or long, for +merely paying the taxes. Every year it costs some pounds in +advertisements. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By name, +WINDY-KNOWE. + +Nay, let us not fear to sketch the character of its last inhabitant, for +we desire but to speak the truth. Drunkard, stand forward, that we may +have a look at you, and draw your picture. There he stands! The mouth of +the drunkard, you may observe, contracts a singularly sensitive +appearance--seemingly red and rawish; and he is perpetually licking or +smacking his lips, as if his palate were dry and adust. His is a thirst +that water will not quench. He might as well drink air. His whole being +burns for a dram. The whole world is contracted into a caulker. He would +sell his soul in such extremity, were the black bottle denied him, for a +gulp. Not to save his soul from eternal fire, would he, or rather could +he, if left alone with it, refrain from pulling out the plug, and +sucking away at destruction. What a snout he turns up to the morning +air, inflamed, pimpled, snubby, and snorty, and with a nob at the end +on't like one carved out of a stick by the knife of a schoolboy--rough +and hot to the very eye--a nose which, rather than pull, you would +submit even to be in some degree insulted. A perpetual cough harasses +and exhausts him, and a perpetual expectoration. How his hand trembles! +It is an effort even to sign his name: one of his sides is certainly not +by any means as sound as the other; there has been a touch of palsy +there; and the next hint will draw down his chin to his collar-bone, and +convert him, a month before dissolution, into a slavering idiot. There +is no occupation, small or great, insignificant or important, to which +he can turn, for any length of time, his hand, his heart, or his head. +He cannot angle--for his fingers refuse to tie a knot, much more to busk +a fly. The glimmer and the glow of the stream would make his brain +dizzy--to wet his feet now would, he fears, be death. Yet he thinks that +he will go out--during that sunny blink of a showery day--and try the +well-known pool in which he used to bathe in boyhood, with the long, +matted, green-trailing water-plants depending on the slippery rocks, and +the water-ousel gliding from beneath the arch that hides her "procreant +cradle," and then sinking like a stone suddenly in the limpid stream. He +sits down on the bank, and fumbling in his pouch for his pocket-book, +brings out, instead, a pocket-pistol. Turning his fiery face towards the +mild, blue, vernal sky, he pours the gurgling brandy down his +throat--first one dose, and then another--till, in an hour, stupefied +and dazed, he sees not the silvery crimson-spotted trouts, shooting, and +leaping, and tumbling, and plunging in deep and shallow; a day on which, +with one of Captain Colley's March-Browns, in an hour we could fill our +pannier. Or, if it be autumn or winter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice +at once gruff and feeble, an old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the +partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right and left, in +potato or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble--but now his sight is dim +and wavering, and his touch trembles on the trigger. The covey whirrs +off, unharmed in a single feather--and poor Ponto, remembering better +days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's heel, and +will range no more. Out, as usual, comes the brandy-bottle--he is still +a good shot when his mouth is the mark; and having emptied the fatal +flask, he staggers homewards, with the muzzles of his double-barrel +frequently pointed to his ear, both being on full cock, and his brains +not blown out only by a miracle. He tries to read the newspaper--just +arrived--but cannot find his spectacles. Then, by way of variety, he +attempts a tune on the fiddle; but the bridge is broken, and her side +cracked, and the bass-string snapped--and she is restored to her peg +among the cobwebs. In comes a red-headed, stockingless lass, with her +carrots in papers, and lays the cloth for dinner--salt beef and greens. +But the Major's stomach scunners at the Skye-stot--his eyes roll eagerly +for the hot-water--and in a couple of hours he is dead-drunk in his +chair, or stoitering and staggering, in aimless dalliance with the +scullion, among the pots and pans of an ever-disorderly and dirty +kitchen. Mean people, in shabby sporting velveteen dresses, rise up, as +he enters, from the dresser, covered with cans, jugs, and quaichs, and +take off their rusty and greasy napless hats to the Major; and, to +conclude the day worthily and consistently, he squelches himself down +among the reprobate crew, takes his turn at smutty jest and smuttier +song, which drive even the jades out of the kitchen--falls back +insensible, exposed to gross and indecent practical jokes from the +vilest of the unhanged--and finally is carried to bed on a hand-barrow, +with hanging head and heels, like a calf across a butcher's cart, and, +with glazed eyes and lolling tongue, is tumbled upon the quilt--if ever +to awake it is extremely doubtful; but if awake he do, it is to the same +wretched round of brutal degradation--a career, of which the inevitable +close is an unfriended deathbed and a pauper's grave. O hero! six feet +high, and once with a brawn like Hercules--in the prime of life +too--well born and well bred--once bearing the king's commission--and on +that glorious morn, now forgotten or bitterly remembered, thanked on the +field of battle by Picton, though he of the fighting division was a hero +of few words--is that a death worthy of a man--a soldier--and a +Christian? A dram-drinker! Faugh! faugh! Look over--lean over that +stile, where a pig lies wallowing in mire--and a voice, faint and +feeble, and far off, as if it came from some dim and remote world within +your lost soul, will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly one, +agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring across the husk-trough, +is, as a physical, moral, and intellectual being, superior to you, late +Major in his Majesty's ---- regiment of foot, now dram-drinker, +drunkard, and dotard, and self-doomed to a disgraceful and disgusting +death ere you shall have completed your thirtieth year. What a changed +being from that day when you carried the colours, and were found, the +bravest of the brave, and the most beautiful of the beautiful, with the +glorious tatters wrapped round your body all drenched in blood, your +hand grasping the broken sabre, and two grim Frenchmen lying hacked and +hewed at your feet! Your father and your mother saw your name in the +"Great Lord's" Despatch; and it was as much as he could do to keep her +from falling on the floor, for "her joy was like a deep affright!" Both +are dead now; and better so, for the sight of that blotched face and +those glazed eyes, now and then glittering in fitful frenzy, would have +killed them both, nor, after such a spectacle, could their old bones +have rested in the grave. + +Alas, Scotland--ay, well-educated, moral, religious Scotland can show, +in the bosom of her bonny banks and braes, cases worse than this; at +which, if there be tears in heaven, the angels weep. Look at that +greyheaded man, of threescore and upwards, sitting by the wayside! He +was once an Elder of the Kirk, and a pious man he was, if ever piety +adorned the temples--"the lyart haffets, wearing thin and bare," of a +Scottish peasant. What eye beheld the many hundred steps, that one by +one, with imperceptible gradation, led him down--down--down to the +lowest depths of shame, suffering, and ruin! For years before it was +bruited abroad through the parish that Gabriel Mason was addicted to +drink, his wife used to sit weeping alone in the spence when her sons +and daughters were out at their work in the fields, and the infatuated +man, fierce in the excitement of raw ardent spirits, kept causelessly +raging and storming through every nook of that once so peaceful +tenement, which for many happy years had never been disturbed by the +loud voice of anger or reproach. His eyes were seldom turned on his +unhappy wife except with a sullen scowl, or fiery wrath; but when they +did look on her with kindness, there was also a rueful self-upbraiding +in their expression, on account of his cruelty; and at sight of such +transitory tenderness, her heart would overflow with forgiving +affection, and her sunk eyes with unendurable tears. But neither +domestic sin nor domestic sorrow will conceal from the eyes and the ears +of men; and at last Gabriel Mason's name was a byword in the mouth of +the scoffer. One Sabbath he entered the kirk in a state of miserable +abandonment, and from that day he was no longer an elder. To regain his +character seemed to him, in his desperation, beyond the power of man, +and against the decree of God. So he delivered himself up, like a slave, +to that one appetite, and in a few years his whole household had gone to +destruction. His wife was a matron, almost in the prime of life, when +she died; but as she kept wearing away to the other world, her face told +that she felt her years had been too many in this. Her eldest son, +unable, in pride and shame, to lift up his eyes at kirk or market, went +away to the city, and enlisted into a regiment about to embark on +foreign service. His two sisters went to take farewell of him, but never +returned; one, it is said, having died of a fever in the Infirmary--just +as if she had been a pauper; and the other--for the sight of sin, and +sorrow, and shame, and suffering, is ruinous to the soul--gave herself +up, in her beauty, an easy prey to a destroyer, and doubtless has run +her course of agonies, and is now at peace. The rest of the family dropt +down, one by one, out of sight, into inferior situations in far-off +places; but there was a curse, it was thought, hanging over the family, +and of none of them did ever a favourable report come to their native +parish; while he, the infatuated sinner, whose vice seemed to have +worked all the woe, remained in the chains of his tyrannical passion, +nor seemed ever, for more than the short term of a day, to cease hugging +them to his heart. Semblance of all that is most venerable in the +character of Scotland's peasantry! Image of a perfect patriarch, walking +out to meditate at eventide! What a noble forehead! Features how high, +dignified, and composed! There, sitting in the shade of that old wayside +tree, he seems some religious Missionary, travelling to and fro over the +face of the earth, seeking out sin and sorrow, that he may tame them +under the word of God, and change their very being into piety and peace. +Call him not a hoary hypocrite, for he cannot help that noble--that +venerable--that apostolic aspect--that dignified figure, as if bent +gently by Time, loth to touch it with too heavy a hand--that holy +sprinkling over his furrowed temples of the silver-soft, and the +snow-white hair--these are the gifts of gracious Nature all--and Nature +will not reclaim them, but in the tomb. That is Gabriel Mason--the +Drunkard! And in an hour you may, if your eyes can bear the sight, see +and hear him staggering up and down the village, cursing, swearing, +preaching, praying--stoned by blackguard boys and girls, who hound all +the dogs and curs at his heels, till, taking refuge in the smithy or the +pot-house, he becomes the sport of grown clowns, and, after much idiot +laughter, ruefully mingled with sighs, and groans, and tears, he is +suffered to mount upon a table, and urged, perhaps, by reckless folly to +give out a text from the Bible, which is nearly all engraven on his +memory--so much and so many other things effaced for ever--and there, +like a wild Itinerant, he stammers forth unintentional blasphemy, till +the liquor he has been allowed or instigated to swallow smites him +suddenly senseless, and, falling down, he is huddled off into a corner +of some lumber-room; and left to sleep--better far for such a wretch +were it to death. + +Let us descend, then, from that most inclement front, into the lown +boundaries of the HOLM. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the +peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With +its outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is +composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine +at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a +glorious dunghill (O, breathe not the name!) that will cover every field +with luxuriant harvests--twelve bolls of oats to the acre. There the +cattle--oxen yet "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," +will, in a few months, eat themselves up, on straw and turnip, into +obesity. There turkeys walk demure--there geese waddle, and there the +feathery-legged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly +aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, that squire of dames, crowing to +his partlets. There a cloud of pigeons often descends among the corny +chaff, and then whirrs off to the uplands. No chained mastiff looking +grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of cheerful and sagacious +collies are seen sitting on their hurdies, or "worrying ither in +diversion." A shaggy colt or two, and a brood mare, with a spice of +blood, and a foal at her heels, know their shed, and evidently are +favourites with the family. Out comes the master, a rosy-cheeked carle, +upwards of six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a blue bonnet and +velveteen breeches--a man not to be jostled on the crown o' the causey, +and a match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, or gypsy from Yetholm. +But let us into the kitchen. There's the wife--a bit tidy body--and +pretty withal--more authoritative in her quiet demeanour than the most +tyrannical mere housekeeper that ever thumped a servant lass with the +beetle. These three are her daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest, +seemingly older than her mother--for she is somewhat hard-favoured, and +strong red hair dangling over a squint eye is apt to give an expression +of advanced years, even to a youthful virgin. Vaccination was not known +in Girzie's babyhood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned +creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. She is what is delicately +called a strapper, rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of an +Aurora about the ankles. She makes her way, in all household affairs, +through every impediment, and will obviously prove, whenever the +experiment is made, a most excellent wife. Mysie, the second daughter, +is more composed, more genteel, and sits sewing--with her a favourite +occupation, for she has very neat hands; and is, in fact, the milliner +and mantua-maker for all the house. She could no more lift that enormous +pan of boiling water off the fire than she could fly, which in the grasp +of Girzie is safely landed on the hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a +pensive look, as if in love--and we have heard that she is betrothed to +young Mr Rentoul, the divinity student, who lately made a speech before +the Anti-patronage Society, and therefore may reasonably expect very +soon to get a kirk. But look--there comes dancing in from the ewe-bughts +the bright-eyed Bessy, the flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl +in Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd of the Gentle Shepherd himself! O +that we were a poet, to sing the innocence of her budding breast! +But--heaven preserve us!--what is the angelic creature about? Making +rumbledethumps! Now she pounds the potatoes and cabbages as with pestle +and mortar! Ever and anon licking the butter off her fingers, and then +dashing in the salt! Methinks her laugh is out of all bounds loud--and, +unless my eyes deceived me, that stout lout whispered in her delicate +ear some coarse jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up into her not +undelighted countenance. Heavens and earth!--perhaps an assignation in +the barn, or byre, or bush aboon Traquair. But the long dresser is set +out with dinner--the gudeman's bonnet is reverently laid aside--and if +any stomach assembled there be now empty, it is not likely, judging from +appearances, that it will be in that state again before next +Sabbath--and it is now but the middle of the week. Was it not my Lord +Byron who liked not to see women eat? Poo--poo--nonsense! We like to see +them not only eat--but devour. Not a set of teeth round that +kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too, in +spite of syboes, sweet as dawn-dew--the whole female frame full of +health, freshness, spirit, and animation! Away all delicate wooers, +thrice-high-fantastical! The diet is wholesome--and the sleep will be +sound; therefore eat away, Bessy--nor fear to laugh, although your +pretty mouth be full--for we are no poet to madden into misanthropy at +your mastication; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate, +to us these lips are roses still; "thy eyes are lode-stars, and thy +breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom! +No--no--no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood +unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the +sweet hour of prime. And then mayest thou plight thy troth--in all the +warmth of innocence--to some ardent yet thoughtful youth, who will carry +his bride exultingly to his own low-roofed home--toil for her and the +children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold--and sit +with her in the kirk, when long years have gone by, a comely matron, +attended by daughters acknowledged to be fair--but neither so fair, nor +so good, nor so pious, as their mother. + +What a contrast to the jocund Holm is the ROWAN-TREE-HUT--so still, and +seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low, +that you might pass it without observing its turf-roof. There live old +Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has +borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not much under +sixty. That poor creature is bed-ridden and helpless, and has to be fed +almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white +pony--well named Samson--that she drives three times a-week, all the +year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of +articles to nearly twenty different families, living miles apart. Every +other day in the week--for there is but one Sabbath either to herself or +Samson--she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the +roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red +petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is almost frightful, +with a formidable beard, and a rough voice--and violent gestures, +encouraging the overladen enemy of the Philistines. But as soon as she +enters her hut, she is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her +daughter's bedside. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, and she +hears, during the dead of the night, her daughter's slightest moan. Her +voice is not rough at all when the poor old creature is saying her +prayers; nor, we may be well assured, is its lowest whisper unheard in +heaven. + +Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern side of the vale, and they +have fixed themselves on the Cottage of the SEVEN OAKS. The grove is a +noble one; and, indeed, those are the only timber-trees in the valley. +There is a tradition belonging to the grove, but we shall tell it some +other time; now, we have to do with that mean-looking Cottage, all +unworthy of such magnificent shelter. With its ragged thatch it has a +cold cheerless look--almost a look of indigence. The walls are sordid in +the streaked ochre-wash--a wisp of straw supplies the place of a broken +pane--the door seems as if it were inhospitable--and every object about +is in untended disorder. The green pool in front, with its floating +straws and feathers, and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and needless; +the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open at the roots; the few garments +spread upon them seem to have stiffened in the weather, forgotten by the +persons who placed them there; and half-starved young cattle are +straying about in what once was a garden. Wretched sight it is; for that +dwelling, although never beautiful, was once the tidiest and best-kept +in all the district. But what has misery to do with the comfort of its +habitation? + +The owner of that house was once a man well to do in the world; but he +minded this world's goods more than it was fitting to do, and made +Mammon his god. Abilities he possessed far beyond the common run of men, +and he applied them all, with all the energy of a strong mind, to the +accumulation of wealth. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate +end; and he despised a bargain unless he outwitted his neighbour. +Without any acts of downright knavery, he was not an honest man--hard to +the poor--and a tyrannical master. He sought to wring from the very soil +more than it could produce; his servants, among whom were his wife and +daughter, he kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to twilight; and +was a forestaller and a regrater--a character which, when Political +Economy was unknown, was of all the most odious in the judgment of +simple husbandmen. His spirits rose with the price of meal, and every +handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like a tax. What could the +Bible teach to such a man? What good could he derive from the calm air +of the house of worship? He sent his only son to the city, with +injunctions instilled into him to make the most of all transactions, at +every hazard but that of his money; and the consequence was, in a few +years, shame, ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, imprisoned, +dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a vulgar seducer; and being +driven from her father's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless misery, +to a life of prostitution. His wife, heartbroken by cruelty and +affliction, was never afterwards altogether in her right mind, and now +sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders off to distant places, lone +houses and villages, almost in the condition of an idiot--wild-eyed, +loose-haired, and dressed like a very beggar. Speculation after +speculation failed--with farmyard crowded with old stacks, he had to +curse three successive plentiful harvests--and his mailing was now +destitute. The unhappy man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity; +and, when his brain was inflamed with liquor, a dangerous madman. He is +now a sort of cattle-dealer--buys and sells miserable horses--and at +fairs associates with knaves and reprobates, knowing that no honest man +will deal with him except in pity or derision. He has more than once +attempted to commit suicide; but palsy has stricken him--and in a few +weeks he will totter into the grave. + +There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you see the smoke--even the +chimney-top, but you could not see the Cottage itself, unless you were +within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is it with knolls and small +green eminences, in a den of its own, a shoot or scion from the main +stem of the valley. It is called THE BROOM, and there is something +singular, and not uninteresting, in the history of its owner. He married +very early in life, indeed when quite a boy, which is not, by the way, +very unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, prudent and calculating as +is their general character. David Drysdale, before he was thirty years +of age, had a family of seven children, and a pretty family they were as +might be seen in all the parish. His life was in theirs, and his mind +never wandered far from his fireside. His wife was of a consumptive +family, and that insidious and fatal disease never showed in her a +single symptom during ten years of marriage; but one cold evening awoke +it at her very heart, and in less than two months it hurried her into +the grave. Poor creature, such a spectre! When her husband used to carry +her, for the sake of a little temporary relief, from chair to couch, and +from her couch back again to her bed, twenty times in a day, he hardly +could help weeping, with all his consideration, to feel her frame as +light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man said, that in all his +practice he never had known soul and body keep together in such utter +attenuation. But her soul was as clear as ever while racking pain was in +her fleshless bones. Even he, her loving husband, was relieved from woe +when she expired; for no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the +misery of groans from one so patient and so resigned. Perhaps +consumption is infectious--so, at least, it seemed here; for first one +child began to droop, and then another--the elder ones first; and, +within the two following years, there were almost as many funerals from +this one house as from all the others in the parish. Yes--they all +died--of the whole family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were thought +to have pined away in a sort of fearful foreboding--and a fever took off +a third--but four certainly died of the same hereditary complaint with +the mother; and now not a voice was heard in the house. He did not +desert the Broom; and the farm-work was still carried on, nobody could +tell how. The servants, to be sure, knew their duty, and often performed +it without orders. Sometimes the master put his hand to the plough, but +oftener he led the life of a shepherd, and was by himself among the +hills. He never smiled--and at every meal he still sat like a man about +to be led out to die. But what will not retire away--recede--disappear +from the vision of the souls of us mortals! Tenacious as we are of our +griefs, even more than of our joys, both elude our grasp. We gaze after +them with longing or self-upbraiding aspirations for their return; but +they are shadows, and like shadows vanish. Then human duties, lowly +though they may be, have their sanative and salutary influence on our +whole frame of being. Without their performance conscience cannot be +still; with it, conscience brings peace in extremity of evil. Then +occupation kills grief, and industry abates passion. No balm for sorrow +like the sweat of the brow poured into the furrows of the earth, in the +open air, and beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths were felt by +the childless widower, long before they were understood by him; and when +two years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost despairingly, by--he +began at times to feel something like happiness again when sitting among +his friends in the kirk, or at their firesides, or in the labours of the +field, or even on the market-day, among this world's concerns. Thus, +they who knew him and his sufferings were pleased to recognise what +might be called resignation and its grave tranquillity; while strangers +discerned in him nothing more than a staid and solemn demeanour, which +might be natural to many a man never severely tried, and offering no +interruption to the cheerfulness that pervaded their ordinary life. + +He had a cousin a few years younger than himself, who had also married +when a girl, and when little more than a girl had been left a widow. Her +parents were both dead, and she had lived for a good many years as an +upper servant, or rather companion and friend, in the house of a +relation. As cousins, they had all their lives been familiar and +affectionate, and Alice Gray had frequently lived for months at a time +at the Broom, taking care of the children, and in all respects one of +the family. Their conditions were now almost equally desolate, and a +deep sympathy made them now more firmly attached than they ever could +have been in better days. Still, nothing at all resembling love was in +either of their hearts, nor did the thought of marriage ever pass across +their imaginations. They found, however, increasing satisfaction in each +other's company; and looks and words of sad and sober endearment +gradually bound them together in affection stronger far than either +could have believed. Their friends saw and spoke of the attachment, and +of its probable result, long before they were aware of its full nature; +and nobody was surprised, but, on the contrary, all were well pleased, +when it was understood that they were to be man and wife. There was +something almost mournful in their marriage--no rejoicing--no +merry-making--but yet visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, and +peace. An air of cheerfulness was not long of investing the melancholy +Broom--the very swallows twittered more gladly from the window-corners, +and there was joy in the cooing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The +farm awoke through all its fields, and the farm-servants once more sang +and whistled at their work. The wandering beggar, who remembered the +charity of other years, looked with no cold expression on her who now +dealt out his dole; and as his old eyes were dimmed for the sake of +those who were gone, gave a fervent blessing on the new mistress of the +house, and prayed that she might long be spared. The neighbours, even +they who had best loved the dead, came in with cheerful countenances, +and acknowledged in their hearts, that since change is the law of life, +there was no one, far or near, whom they could have borne to see sitting +in that chair but Alice Gray. The husband knew their feelings from their +looks, and his fireside blazed once more with a cheerful lustre. + +O, gentle reader, young perhaps, and inexperienced of this world, wonder +not at this so great change! The heart is full, perhaps, of a pure and +holy affection, nor can it die, even for an hour of sleep. May it never +die but in the grave! Yet die it may, and leave thee blameless. The time +may come when that bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, with all its +heaving beauty, one single passionate or adoring sigh. Those eyes, that +now stream agitation and bliss into thy throbbing heart, may, on some +not very distant day, be cold to thy imagination as the distant and +unheeded stars. That voice, now thrilling through every nerve, may fall +on thy ear a disregarded sound. Other hopes, other fears, other +troubles, may possess thee wholly--and that more than angel of Heaven +seem to fade away into a shape of earth's most common clay. But here +there was no change--no forgetfulness--no oblivion--no faithlessness to +a holy trust. The melancholy man often saw his Hannah, and all his seven +sweet children--now fair in life--now pale in death. Sometimes, perhaps, +the sight, the sound--their smiles and their voices--disturbed him, till +his heart quaked within him, and he wished that he too was dead. But God +it was who had removed them from our earth--and was it possible to +doubt that they were all in blessedness? Shed your tears over change +from virtue to vice, happiness to misery; but weep not for those still, +sad, mysterious processes by which gracious Nature alleviates the +afflictions of our mortal lot, and enables us to endure the life which +the Lord our God hath given us. Ere long husband and wife could bear to +speak of those who were now no more seen; when the phantoms rose before +them in the silence of the night, they all wore pleasant and approving +countenances, and the beautiful family often came from Heaven to visit +their father in his dreams. He did not wish, much less hope, in this +life, for such happiness as had once been his--nor did Alice Gray, even +for one hour, imagine that such happiness it was in her power to bestow. +They knew each other's hearts--what they had suffered and survived; and, +since the meridian of life and joy was gone, they were contented with +the pensive twilight. + +Look, there is a pretty Cottage--by name LEASIDE--one that might almost +do for a painter--just sufficiently shaded by trees, and showing a new +aspect every step you take, and each new aspect beautiful. There is, it +is true, neither moss, nor lichens, nor weather-stains on the roof--but +all is smooth, neat, trim, deep thatch, from rigging to eaves, with a +picturesque elevated window covered with the same material, and all the +walls white as snow. The whole building is at all times as fresh as if +just washed by a vernal shower. Competence breathes from every lattice, +and that porch has been reared more for ornament than defence, although, +no doubt, it is useful both in March and November winds. Every field +about it is like a garden, and yet the garden is brightly conspicuous +amidst all the surrounding cultivation. The hedgerows are all clipped, +for they have grown there for many and many a year; and the shears were +necessary to keep them down from shutting out the vista of the lovely +vale. That is the dwelling of Adam Airlie the Elder. Happy old man! This +life has gone uniformly well with him and his; yet, had it been +otherwise, there is a power in his spirit that would have sustained the +severest inflictions of Providence. His gratitude to God is something +solemn and awful, and ever accompanied with a profound sense of his +utter unworthiness of all the long-continued mercies vouchsafed to his +family. His own happiness, prolonged to a great age, has not closed +within his heart one source of pity or affection for his brethren of +mankind. In his own guiltless conscience, guiltless before man, he yet +feels incessantly the frailties of his nature, and is meek, humble, and +penitent as the greatest sinner. He, his wife, an old faithful +female-servant, and an occasional granddaughter, now form the whole +household. His three sons have all prospered in the world. The eldest +went abroad when a mere boy, and many fears went with him--a bold, +adventurous, and somewhat reckless creature. But consideration came to +him in a foreign climate, and tamed down his ardent mind to a +thoughtful, not a selfish prudence. Twenty years he lived in India--and +what a blessed day was the day of his return! Yet in the prime of life, +by disease unbroken, and with a heart full to overflowing with all its +old sacred affections, he came back to his father's lowly cottage, and +wept as he crossed the threshold. His parents needed not any of his +wealth; but they were blamelessly proud, nevertheless, of his honest +acquisitions--proud when he became a landholder in his native parish, +and employed the sons of his old companions, and some of his old +companions themselves, in the building of his unostentatious mansion, or +in cultivating the wild but not unlovely moor, which was dear to him for +the sake of the countless remembrances that clothed the bare banks of +its lochs, and murmured in the little stream that ran among the pastoral +braes. The new mansion is a couple of miles from his parental Cottage; +but not a week, indeed seldom half that time, elapses, without a visit +to that dear dwelling. They likewise not unfrequently visit him--for his +wife is dear to them as a daughter of their own; and the ancient couple +delight in the noise and laughter of his pretty flock. Yet the son +understands perfectly well that the aged people love best their own +roof--and that its familiar quiet is every day dearer to their +habituated affections. Therefore he makes no parade of filial +tenderness--forces nothing new upon them--is glad to see the +uninterrupted tenor of their humble happiness; and if they are proud of +him, which all the parish knows, so is there not a child within its +bounds that does not know that Mr Airlie, the rich gentleman from India, +loves his poor father and mother as tenderly as if he had never left +their roof; and is prouder of them, too, than if they were clothed in +fine raiment, and fared sumptuously every day. Mr Airlie of the Mount +has his own seat in the gallery of the Kirk--his father, as an Elder, +sits below the pulpit--but occasionally the pious and proud son joins +his mother in the pew, where he and his brothers sat long ago; and every +Sabbath one or other of his children takes its place beside the +venerated matron. The old man generally leaves the churchyard leaning on +his Gilbert's arm--and although the sight has long been so common as to +draw no attention, yet no doubt there is always an under and unconscious +pleasure in many a mind witnessing the sacredness of the bond of blood. +Now and then the old matron is prevailed upon, when the weather is bad +and roads miry, to take a seat home in the carriage--but the Elder +always prefers walking thither with his son, and he is stout and hale, +although upwards of threescore and ten years. + +Walter, the second son, is now a captain in the navy, having served for +years before the mast. His mind is in his profession, and he is +perpetually complaining of being unemployed--a ship--a ship, is still +the burden of his song. But when at home--which he often is for weeks +together--he attaches himself to all the ongoings of rural life, as +devotedly as if a plougher of the soil instead of the sea. His mother +wonders, with tears in her eyes, why, having a competency, he should +still wish to provoke the dangers of the deep; and beseeches him +sometimes to become a farmer in his native vale. And perhaps more +improbable things have happened; for the captain, it is said, has fallen +desperately in love with the daughter of the clergyman of a neighbouring +parish, and the doctor will not give his consent to the marriage, unless +he promise to live, if allowed, on shore. The political state of Europe +certainly seems at present favourable to the consummation of the wishes +of all parties. + +Of David, the third son, who has not heard, that has heard anything of +the pulpit eloquence of Scotland?--Should his life be spared, there can +be no doubt that he will one day or other be Moderator of the General +Assembly, perhaps Professor of Divinity in a College. Be that as it may, +a better Christian never expounded the truths of the gospel, although +some folks pretend to say that he is not evangelical. He is, however, +beloved by the poor--the orphan and the widow; and his ministrations, +powerful in the kirk to a devoutly listening congregation, are so too at +the sick-bed, when only two or three are gathered around it, and when +the dying man feels how a fellow-creature can, by scriptural aids, +strengthen his trust in the mercy of his Maker. + +Every year, on the birthday of each of their sons, the old people hold a +festival--in May, in August, and at Christmas. The sailor alone looks +disconsolate as a bachelor, but that reproach will be wiped away before +autumn; and should God grant the cottagers a few more years, some new +faces will yet smile upon the holidays; and there is in their unwithered +hearts warm love enough for all that may join the party. We too--yes, +gentle reader--we too shall be there--as we have often been during the +last ten years--and you yourself will judge, from all you know of us, +whether or no we have a heart to understand and enjoy such rare +felicity. + +But let us be off to the mountains, and endeavour to interest our +beloved reader in a Highland Cottage--in any one, taken at hap-hazard, +from a hundred. You have been roaming all day among the mountains, and +perhaps seen no house except at a dwindling distance. Probably you have +wished not to see any house, but a ruined shieling--a deserted hut--or +an unroofed and dilapidated shed for the outlying cattle of some remote +farm. But now the sun has inflamed all the western heaven, and darkness +will soon descend. There is now a muteness more stern and solemn than +during unfaded daylight. List--the faint, far-off, subterranean sound of +the bagpipe! Some old soldier, probably, playing a gathering or a +coronach. The narrow dell widens and widens into a great glen, in which +you just discern the blue gleam of a loch. The martial music is more +distinctly heard--loud, fitful, fierce, like the trampling of men in +battle. Where is the piper? In a cave, or within the Fairies' Knowe? At +the door of a hut. His eyes were extinguished by ophthalmia, and there +he sits, fronting the sunlight, stone-blind. Long silver hair flows down +his broad shoulders, and you perceive that, when he rises, he will rear +up a stately bulk. The music stops, and you hear the bleating of goats. +There they come, prancing down the rocks, and stare upon the stranger. +The old soldier turns himself towards the voice of the Sassenach, and, +with the bold courtesy of the camp, bids him enter the hut. One +minute's view has sufficed to imprint the scene for ever on the +memory--a hut whose turf walls and roof are incorporated with the living +mountain, and seem not the work of man's hand, but the casual +architecture of some convulsion--the tumbling down of fragments from the +mountain-side by raging torrents, or a partial earthquake; for all the +scenery about is torn to pieces--like the scattering of some wide ruin. +The imagination dreams of the earliest days of our race, when men +harboured, like the other creatures, in places provided by nature. But +even here, there are visible traces of cultivation working in the spirit +of a mountainous region--a few glades of the purest verdure opened out +among the tall brackens, with a birch-tree or two dropped just where the +eye of taste could have wished, had the painter planted the sapling, +instead of the winds of heaven having wafted thither the seed--a small +croft of barley, surrounded by a cairn-like wall made up of stones +cleared from the soil, and a patch of potato ground, neat almost as the +garden that shows in a nook its fruit-bushes and a few flowers. All the +blasts that ever blew must be unavailing against the briery rock that +shelters the hut from the airt of storms; and the smoke may rise under +its lee, unwavering on the windiest day. There is sweetness in all the +air, and the glen is noiseless, except with the uncertain murmur of the +now unswollen waterfalls. That is the croak of the raven sitting on his +cliff half-way up Ben-Oura; and hark, the last belling of the red-deer, +as the herd lies down in the mist among the last ridge of heather, +blending with the shrubless stones, rocks, and cliffs that girdle the +upper regions of the vast mountain. + +Within the dimness of the hut you hear greetings in the Gaelic tongue, +in a female voice; and when the eye has by-and-by become able to endure +the smoke, it discerns the household--the veteran's ancient dame--a +young man that may be his son, or rather his grandson, but whom you soon +know to be neither, with black matted locks, the keen eye, and the light +limbs of the hunter--a young woman, his wife, suckling a child, and yet +with a girlish look, as if but one year before her silken snood had been +untied--and a lassie of ten years, who had brought home the goats, and +now sits timidly in a nook eyeing the stranger. The low growl of the +huge brindled stag-hound had been hushed by a word on your first +entrance, and the noble animal watches his master's eye, which he obeys +in his freedom throughout all the forest-chase. A napkin is taken out of +an old worm-eaten chest, and spread over a strangely-carved table, that +seems to have belonged once to a place of pride; and the hungry and +thirsty stranger scarcely knows which most to admire, the broad bannocks +of barley-meal and the huge roll of butter, or the giant bottle, whose +mouth exhales the strong savour of conquering Glenlivet. The board is +spread--why not fall to and eat? First be thanks given to the Lord God +Almighty. The blind man holds up his hand and prays in a low chanting +voice, and then breaks bread for the lips of the stranger. On such an +occasion is felt the sanctity of the meal shared by human beings brought +accidentally together--the salt is sacred--and the hearth an altar. + +No great travellers are we, yet have we seen something of this habitable +globe. The Highlands of Scotland is but a small region, nor is its +interior by any means so remote as the interior of Africa. Yet 'tis +remote. The life of that very blind veteran might, in better hands than +ours, make an interesting history. In his youth he had been a +shepherd--a herdsman--a hunter--something even of a poet. For thirty +years he had been a soldier--in many climates and many conflicts. Since +first he bloodied his bayonet, how many of his comrades had been buried +in heaps! Flung into trenches dug on the field of battle! How many +famous captains had shone in the blaze of their fame--faded into the +light of common day--died in obscurity, and been utterly forgotten! What +fierce passions must have agitated the frame of that now calm old man! +On what dreadful scenes, when forts and towns were taken by storm, must +those eyes, now withered into nothing, have glared with all the fury of +man's most wrathful soul! Now peace is with him for evermore. Nothing to +speak of the din of battle, but his own pipes wailing or raging among +the hollow of the mountains. In relation to his campaigning career, his +present life is as the life of another state. The pageantry of war has +all rolled off and away for ever; all its actions but phantoms now of a +dimly-remembered dream. He thinks of his former self, as sergeant in the +Black Watch, and almost imagines he beholds another man. In his long, +long blindness, he has created another world to himself out of new +voices--the voices of new generations, and of torrents thundering all +year long round about his hut. Almost all the savage has been tamed +within him, and an awful religion falls deeper and deeper upon him, as +he knows how he is nearing the grave. Often his whole mind is dim, for +he is exceedingly old, and then he sees only fragments of his youthful +life--the last forty years are as if they had never been--and he hears +shouts and huzzas, that half a century ago rent the air with victory. He +can still chant, in a hoarse broken voice, battle-hymns and dirges; and +thus, strangely forgetful and strangely tenacious of the past, linked to +this life by ties that only the mountaineer can know, and yet feeling +himself on the brink of the next, Old Blind Donald Roy, the Giant of the +Hut of the Three Torrents, will not scruple to quaff the "strong +waters," till his mind is awakened--brightened--dimmed--darkened--and +seemingly extinguished--till the sunrise again smites him, as he lies in +a heap among the heather; and then he lifts up, unashamed and +remorseless, that head, which, with its long quiet hairs, a painter +might choose for the image of a saint about to become a martyr. + +We leave old Donald asleep, and go with his son-in-law, Lewis of the +light-foot, and Maida the stag-hound, surnamed the Throttler, + + "Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod, + To his hills that encircle the sea." + +We have been ascending mountain-range after mountain-range, before +sunrise; and lo! night is gone, and nature rejoices in the day through +all her solitudes. Still as death, yet as life cheerful--and unspeakable +grandeur in the sudden revelation. Where is the wild-deer herd?--where, +ask the keen eyes of Maida, is the forest of antlers!--Lewis of the +light-foot bounds before, with his long gun pointing towards the mists +now gathered up to the summits of Benevis. + +Nightfall--and we are once more at the Hut of the Three Torrents. Small +Amy is grown familiar now, and, almost without being asked, sings us the +choicest of her Gaelic airs--a few too of Lowland melody: all merry, yet +all sad--if in smiles begun, ending in a shower--or at least a tender +mist of tears. Heardst thou ever such a syren as this Celtic child? Did +we not always tell you that fairies were indeed realities of the +twilight or moonlight world? And she is their Queen. Hark! what thunders +of applause! The waterfall at the head of the great Corrie thunders +_encore_ with a hundred echoes. But the songs are over, and the small +singer gone to her heather-bed. There is a Highland moon!--The shield of +an unfallen archangel. There are not many stars--but those two--ay, that +One, is sufficient to sustain the glory of the night. Be not alarmed at +that low, wide, solemn, and melancholy sound. Runlets, torrents, rivers, +lochs, and seas--reeds, heather, forests, caves, and cliffs, all are +sound, sounding together a choral anthem. + +Gracious heavens! what mistakes people have fallen into when writing +about Solitude! A man leaves a town for a few months, and goes with his +wife and family, and a travelling library, into some solitary glen. +Friends are perpetually visiting him from afar, or the neighbouring +gentry leaving their cards, while his servant-boy rides daily to the +post-village for his letters and newspapers. And call you that solitude? +The whole world is with you, morning, noon, and night. But go by +yourself, without book or friend, and live a month in this hut at the +head of Glenevis. Go at dawn among the cliffs of yonder pine-forest, and +wait there till night hangs her moon-lamp in heaven. Commune with your +own soul, and be still. Let the images of departed years rise, +phantom-like, of their own awful accord from the darkness of your +memory, and pass away into the wood-gloom or the mountain-mist. Will +conscience dread such spectres? Will you quake before them, and bow down +your head on the mossy root of some old oak, and sob in the stern +silence of the haunted place? Thoughts, feelings, passions, spectral +deeds, will come rushing around your lair, as with the sound of the +wings of innumerous birds--ay, many of them, like birds of prey, to gnaw +your very heart. How many duties undischarged! How many opportunities +neglected! How many pleasures devoured! How many sins hugged! How many +wickednesses perpetrated! The desert looks more grim--the heaven +lowers--and the sun, like God's own eye, stares in upon your conscience! + +But such is not the solitude of our beautiful young shepherd-girl of the +Hut of the Three Torrents. Her soul is as clear, as calm as the pool +pictured at times by the floating clouds that let fall their shadows +through among the overhanging birch-trees. What harm could she ever do? +What harm could she ever think? She may have wept--for there is sorrow +without sin; may have wept even at her prayers--for there is penitence +free from guilt, and innocence itself often kneels in contrition. Down +the long glen she accompanies the stream to the house of God--sings her +psalms--and returns wearied to her heather-bed. She is, indeed, a +solitary child; the eagle, and the raven, and the red-deer see that she +is so--and echo knows it when from her airy cliff she repeats the happy +creature's song. Her world is within this one glen. In this one glen she +may live all her days--be wooed, won, wedded, buried. Buried--said we? +Oh, why think of burial when gazing on that resplendent head? +Interminable tracts of the shining day await her, the lonely darling of +nature; nor dare Time ever eclipse the lustre of those wild-beaming +eyes! Her beauty shall be immortal, like that of her country's fairies. +So, Flower of the Wilderness, we wave towards thee a joyful--though an +everlasting farewell. + +Where are we now? There is not on this round green earth a lovelier Loch +than Achray. About a mile above Loch Vennachar, and as we approach the +Brigg of Turk, we arrive at the summit of an eminence, whence we descry +the sudden and wide prospect of the windings of the river that issues +from Loch Achray--and the Loch itself reposing--sleeping--dreaming on +its pastoral, its sylvan bed. Achray, being interpreted, signifies the +"Level Field," and gives its name to a delightful farm at the west end. +On "that happy, rural seat of various view," could we lie all day long; +and as all the beauty tends towards the west, each afternoon hour +deepens and also brightens it into mellower splendour. Not to keep +constantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed impossible--yet its still +waters soothe the soul, without holding it away from the woods and +cliffs, that, forming of themselves a perfect picture, are yet all +united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years +have elapsed--at our time of life ten are many--since we passed one +delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden +bridge over the Teith, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness +of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large +enough for a fairy's kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of +Roes--nor need the angler try to penetrate the underwood; for every +shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the +living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the checkered waters. +Safe there are all the little singing-birds from hawk or gled--and it is +indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the +natural woods--and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in +beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his +own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings. + +But let us rise from the greensward, and before we pace along the sweet +shores of Loch Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more than a mile +off, turn away up from the Brigg of Turk into Glenfinlas. A strong +mountain-torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul of Salvator +Rosa, might find studies inexhaustible for years, tumbles on the left of +a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a +numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence, +freshening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual +spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as +you advance, and you come out of that sylvan prison into a plain of +meadows and cornfields, alive with the peaceful dwellings of industrious +men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are +without heather--a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of +brackens, and a little sheep-sheltering grove. Skeletons of old trees of +prodigious size lie covered with mosses and wildflowers, or stand with +their barkless trunks and white limbs unmoved when the tempest blows. +Glenfinlas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but +hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi. + +A more beautiful vale never inspired pastoral poet in Arcadia, nor did +Sicilian shepherds of old ever pipe to each other for prize of oaten +reed, in a lovelier nook than where yonder cottage stands, shaded, but +scarcely sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth not a +cottage--but a very SHIELING, part of the knoll adhering to the side of +the mountain. Not another dwelling--even as small as itself--within a +mile in any direction. Those goats, that seem to walk where there is no +footing along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to be milked at +evening to a house beyond the hill, without any barking dog to set them +home. There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, except one leading +through the coppice-wood to the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs +those shallows, and the heron has them to himself, watching often with +motionless neck all day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and has +been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it +for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a +little smoke hovers over it--very faint if it be smoke at all--and +nothing else tells that within is life. + +It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and +lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir +with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature, +without any extraordinary bereavements, she outlived all the household, +except one, on whom fell the saddest affliction that can befall a human +being--the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her +husband, and all her other children, this son was her support; and there +was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her +natural cheerfulness never forsook her; and although fallen back in the +world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had +known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the widow +and her son were in that shieling as happy as any family in the parish. +He worked at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinning from +morning to night within--a constant occupation, soothing to one before +whose mind past times might otherwise have come too often, and that +creates contentment by its undisturbed sameness and invisible +progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour +or two every night, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept, +too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains +were on--for then he found some ingenious employment within the +shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the +lively or plaintive music of his native hills. Sometimes, in her +gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many +other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in +upon her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more than resignation; nor +was she averse to partake the sociality of the other huts, and sat +sedate among youthful merriment, when summer or winter festival came +round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence. + +But her trials, great as they had been, were not yet over; for this her +only son was laid prostrate by fever--and, when it left his body, he +survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and +intelligent, were now fixed in idiocy, or rolled about unobservant of +all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if +suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of understanding, +in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces +from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech, +all but a moaning as of pain or woe, which none but a mother could bear +to hear without shuddering--but she heard it during night as well as +day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer +was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of; +but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would +enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the +shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so +decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of +which the poor object himself was insensible and unconscious. +Henceforth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard +the torrents roar. She went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath where +the paralytic lay--and there she sung the lonely psalm, and said the +lonely prayer, unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits would have +thought--but it was not so; for in two years there came a meaning to his +eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that +of "Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face +was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see +the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep! Day +after day, the darkness that covered his brain grew less and less +deep--to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son +now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly +and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered +only events and scenes long past and distant--and believed that his +father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon +them by their names to come and kiss him--on them, who had all long been +buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and +remembrance--and he at last said, "Mother! did some accident befall me +yesterday at my work down the glen?--I feel weak, and about to die!" The +shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of +what had happened--and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the +mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been +granted in that one boon--and, when the coffin was borne away from the +shieling, she remained in it with a friend, assured that in this world +there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, +now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she +wishes by her poor neighbours--for to the poor sorrow is a sacred +thing--who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and +cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be +laid down without one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a +Christian's faith. + +The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who +among all the Highland maidens that danced on the greenswards among the +blooming heather on the mountains of Glenetive--who so fair as Flora, +the only daughter of the King's Forester, and grandchild to the Bard +famous for his songs of Fairies in the Hill of Peace, and the +Mermaid-Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far down beneath the +foam-waves of the sea? And who, among all the Highland youth that went +abroad to the bloody wars from the base of Benevis, to compare with +Ranald of the Red-Cliff, whose sires had been soldiers for centuries, in +the days of the dagger and Lochaber axe--stately in his strength amid +the battle as the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the birch-tree, +that whispers with all its leaves to the slightest summer-breath? If +their love was great when often fed at the light of each other's eyes, +what was it when Ranald was far off among the sands of Egypt, and Flora +left an orphan to pine away in her native glen? Beneath the shadow of +the Pyramids he dreamt of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the +dwelling of his love--and she, as she stood by the murmurs of that +sea-loch, longed for the wings of the osprey, that she might flee away +to the war-tents beyond the ocean, and be at rest! + +But years--a few years--long and lingering as they might seem to loving +hearts separated by the roar of seas--yet all too too short when 'tis +thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave--brought +Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas! for the poor +soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed +the trickling tears. Like many another gallant youth, he had lost his +eyesight from the sharp burning sand--and was led to the shieling of his +love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did +his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affecting on the calm +countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak--and his sighs were +deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow +ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in remorse over +some secret crime? + +Happy--completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a +sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside +the bed of one whose hair was getting fast grey, long before its time. +Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to +other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no +hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been +betrothed almost from their childhood, and would she--if he desired +it--fear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever, +in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty +required that the words should come; nor could she sometimes help +wondering, in half-upbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great +affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure--yet not +so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her +native Highlands, were there not worthy families far poorer than they? +But weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald remained in a neighbouring hut, +shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he thought none +were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering +to himself lamentable words--and, blind as his eyes were to all the +objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he +saw visions of woeful events about to befall one whom he loved. + +One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his +sleep--but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake--to the +hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to +speak a few words with him ere he died. They sat down together among the +heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the +morning he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart died within her, +when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had +suffered, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by +in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die. + +And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the bravest of the brave, that thus +shuddered in the fear of death like a felon at the tolling of the great +prison-bell? Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly +superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body +with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and +night the same vision yawned before him--an open grave in the corner of +the hill burial-ground without any kirk. + +Flora knew that his days were indeed numbered; for when had he ever been +afraid of death--and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere +common dream? Soon was she to be all alone in this world; yet when +Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and +there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be +buried in one grave. + +Such were her words to the dying man; and all at once he took her in his +arms, and asked her "If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole +nature seemed to undergo a change under the calm voice of her reply; and +he said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom?" +"Blessed will they be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my +wife--for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in +heaven--thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was +a gentle and gracious summer night--so clear, that the shepherds on the +hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there at +earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among +the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to +heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world. + + + + +AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. + + +Ours is a poetical age; but has it produced one Great Poem? Not one. + +Just look at them for a moment. There is "The Pleasures of Memory"--an +elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does +one's eyes good to gaze on--one's ears good to listen to--one's very +fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove +paper. Never will "The Pleasures of Memory" be forgotten till the world +is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem? About as much so as an +ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple +with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection--in the +shape of a cone--and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a +sky-piercer. You take it at a hop--and pursue your journey. Yet it +endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs and the sunshine, love +the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and +delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature. + +Then there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If +so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most +skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with +the materials of human life--homespun indeed; but though often coarse, +always strong--and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently +exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay--hold up the product +of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers +like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems +to be but of the "hodden grey;" when sunbeam or shadow smites it, and +lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger +ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St Paul's. + +Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No +wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they possess the +sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of +melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys +that are past"--is the text we should choose were we about to preach on +his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit now +breathe over the still receding Past. But time-sanctified are all the +shows that arise before his pensive imagination; and the common light of +day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying +sunset or moonlight, or the new-born dawn. His human sensibilities are +so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so +delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have been dear to +poets--having in them "more than meets the ear"--spiritual breathings +that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, +too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the +"faculty divine," have yet the "vision"--that is, the power of seeing +and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, +bringing them from afar out of the dust and dimness of evanishment. + +Mr Bowles has been a poet for good fifty years; and if his genius do not +burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone--yet we do not say +there is any abatement even of its brightness: it shines with a mellower +and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too +pensive--too melancholy--too pathetic--too woe-begone--in too great +bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sang with a thorn at his +breast--from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by +perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather monotonous, his strains were most +musical as well as melancholy; feeling was often relieved by fancy; and +one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of +moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of +dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Romance." A fine +enthusiasm too was his--in those youthful years--inspired by the poetry +of Greece and Rome; and in some of his happiest inspirations there was a +delightful and original union--to be found nowhere else that we can +remember--of the spirit of that ancient song,--the pure classical +spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus, with that +of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the "clear well of +English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but +his was no affected or pedantic scholarship--intrusive most when least +required; but the growth of a consummate classical education, of which +the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a +pupil of the Wartons--Joe and Tom--God bless their souls!--and his name +may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs--and with Mason's, and +Gray's, and Collins'--academics all; the works of them all showing a +delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own +English nature. Bowles's muse is always loth to forget--wherever she +roam or linger--Winchester and Oxford--the Itchin and the Isis. None +educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, +who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, +and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons +are those alone who pursued their poetical studies--in translations. +They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire. + +But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If he has, publish it, and we shall +make him a Bishop. + +What shall we say of "The Pleasures of Hope?" That the harp from which +that music breathed, was an Aeolian harp placed in the window of a high +hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might +be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a +magnificent aurora-borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic +march--now it swells into a holy hymn--and now it dies away +elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, +dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever +and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night--and +we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so?--In his youth Campbell +lived where "distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and +sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool--the sound as of the wheels +of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam +along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that +unaccountable county Argyllshire. The sea-roar cultivated his naturally +fine musical ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime +Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailors' sweethearts on +the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down +comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells beneath their +footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her +as if she were our own only daughter--filling our life with bliss, and +then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through +those giant woods! As for "Lochiel's Warning," there was heard the voice +of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the +Highland glooms--the Lament wails no more, + + "That man may not hide what God would reveal!" + +The Navy owes much to "Ye Mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed +ships till that strain arose--but ever since in our imagination have +they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that +Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yes--in the face even of the +Metropolitan! + +It was said many long years ago in the _Edinburgh Review_, that none but +maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery +was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner--and Christopher North a +sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he +assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we +always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in +his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are +the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled--and these +qualities shine serenely in "The Pelican Island." In earnestness and +fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in +sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it +moulder--not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so +rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a +fair form laid asleep in immortality--its face wearing, day and night, +summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly--a celestial +smile. That is a true image; but is "The Pelican Island" a Great Poem? +We pause not for a reply. + +Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches--and one of them, +"beautiful exceedingly" withbud, blossom, and fruit of balm and +brightness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, +hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is calm, and +ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the +sunshine, and glows wavingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the +loftiest region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, +perhaps foolish form of expression, employed at present to signify +Song-writing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever warbled, or +chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than +Thomas Moore. True that Robert Burns has indited many songs that slip +into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers +sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect +contentment. Or let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like +listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake, a laverock +in the sky. They sing in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches +them--and so did he; and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not +with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be +in Heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources +of Lyrical Poetry--when he was born a Scottish peasant. Now, Moore is an +Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and +translated--after a fashion--Anacreon. And Moore has lived much in towns +and cities--and in that society which will suffer none else to be called +good. Some advantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did--but then how +many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, +in the bondage of his poverty, was free! You see all that at a single +glance in their poetry. But all in humble life is not high--all in high +life is not low; and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in +hall--in "auld clay-bigging" as in marble palace. Burns sometimes wrote +like a mere boor--Moore has too often written like a mere man of +fashion. But take them both at their best--and both are inimitable. Both +are national poets--and who shall say, that if Moore had been born and +bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of +knowledge, and virtue, and religion as Scotland is--and surely, without +offence, we may say that it never was, and never will be--though we love +the Green Island well--that with his fine fancy, warm heart, and +exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as +Burns; while, take him as he is, who can deny that in richness, in +variety, in grace, and in the power of art, he is superior to the +ploughman. Of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Loves of the Angels," we defy you +to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is +easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a +Great Poem? + +Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here +is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his +profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the +Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. +Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, +moon, and stars, but + + "To murmur by the living brooks + A music sweeter than their own." + +What has been the result? Seven volumes (oh! why not seven more?) of +poetry, as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The +earth--the middle air--the sky--the heaven--the heart, mind, and soul of +man--are "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external +nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth--not even +Thomson; in imbuing her and making her pregnant with spiritualities, +till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she +had ever rejoiced in till such communion--he excels all the brotherhood. +Therein lies his especial glory, and therein the immortal evidences of +the might of his creative imagination. All men at times "muse on nature +with a poet's eye,"--but Wordsworth ever--and his soul has grown more +and more religious from such worship. Every rock is an altar--every +grove a shrine. We fear that there will be sectarians even in this +Natural Religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of +Nature--or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest +"in the metropolitan temple built in the heart of mighty poets." But has +he--even he--ever written a Great Poem? If he has--it is not "The +Excursion." Nay, "The Excursion" is not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, +all swimming in the light of poetry; some of them sweet and simple, some +elegant and graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some of "strength +and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it +has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by +the numerals on the page; and the most, serious apprehensions have been +very generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and +Solitary breathe the vital air, may "The Excursion," stop where it will, +be renewed; and as in its present shape it comprehends but a Three Days' +Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion of three weeks, three months, +or three years, to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life of man is +not always limited to the term of threescore and ten years. What a +Journal might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land +overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, +not a Great Poem--nay, not a Poem at all--nor ever to be so esteemed, +till the principles on which Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are +exploded, and the very names of Art and Science smothered and lost in +the bosom of Nature from which they arose. + +Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and +hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and subjected +for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's +monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren +wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather +feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the +sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight +with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of +flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the +daytime--and people are often ignorant of his place in the firmament. +But he keeps shining away at his leisure, as you would know were he to +suffer eclipse. Perhaps he--the sun--is at no other time a more +delightful luminary than when he is pleased to dispense his influence +through a general haze, or mist--softening all the day till meridian is +almost like the afternoon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, bursts +into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too +become him well--whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all +round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of +temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is it reasonable to find +fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on +the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on +setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles +Coleridge. It is easy to talk--not very difficult to speechify--hard to +speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal +man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world +loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam +and Eve listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the Garden of +Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for a while, +than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stilly sound." +Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too +curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole +just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not + + "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." + +Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagination another--but there +cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most +cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a +divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as +one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honeymoon. Then +his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the +Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows +nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey +Davy--and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leibnitz and +Newton, though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. Besides, he +thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, +in a twinkling--and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows +you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, +till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of +fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the +faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their +functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may +dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent +enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but +think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of +this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in +sweet delirium you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that +has fed since first it lisped on "honey-dew," and by lips that have +"breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic language, which, +all the while that it is English, is as grand as Greek and as soft as +Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is the alchymist that in his +crucible melts down hours to moments--and lo! diamonds sprinkled on a +plate of gold. + +What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like +Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything +else in a style of equal perfection! But pray, how does the man write +poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from +his inspired lips? Read "The Ancient Mariner," "The Nightingale," and +"Genevieve." In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the +sea--in the second, you thrill with the melodies of the woods--in the +third, earth is like heaven;--for you are made to feel that + + "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame!" + +Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem? No; for besides the +Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to +which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But +why should he who loveth to take "the wings of a dove that he may flee +away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at +rest--why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above +this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder? + +Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the +Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into +one class himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that +not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he +elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the +Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest +compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not +to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family +likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less +than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen +miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphilosophical though pensive +Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even +were there no other less patent and material than the Macadamised +turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our +living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of +them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the +different characters, customs, and manners of nations. "Joan of Arc" is +an English and French story--"Thalaba," Arabian--"Kehama," +Indian--"Madoc," Welsh and American--and "Roderick," Spanish and +Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was +a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr Southey has most +successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any +but the highest genius. In "Madoc," and especially in "Roderick," he has +relied on the truth of nature--as it is seen in the history of great +national transactions and events. In "Thalaba" and in "Kehama," though +in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he +follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of +wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power +in such different kinds of Poetry--in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a +Magician. + +It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge +gathered from books--and that we have but to look at the multifarious +accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are +not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there--often the raw +materials--seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into +beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own--and has +shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor +Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travellers. But had he not been a +Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen + + "The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste," + +where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent + + "How happily the years of Thalaba went by!" + +In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the +Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's +Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine +City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial +thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of +Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his Five +Chief Works--with the exception of "Joan of Arc," which was written in +very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthusiasm. +They are one and all National Poems--wonderfully true to the customs and +characters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the +scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises--and the Poet has +entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each +representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab--Madoc a true +Briton--King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a +personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter +confined himself in his poetry to Scotland--except in "Rokeby"--and his +might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and +romances he was at home when abroad--and nowhere else more gloriously +than with Saladin in the Desert. "Lalla Rookh" is full of brilliant +poetry; and one of the series--the "Fire-Worshippers"--is Moore's +highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental--and often in +pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the +East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one +of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is +more potent--and he was privileged to exclaim-- + + "Come, listen to a tale of times of old! + Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed + Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. + Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear + How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread + The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path, + And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew + The bloody altars of idolatry, + And planted on its fanes triumphantly + The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay." + +Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original; +in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of +original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest +and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for +ever from oblivion, embalming them in the spirit of delight and of love. +Fairy Tales, or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the +holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but "Thalaba" and "Kehama" do +so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most +wonderful and wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and talismans +that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest are +ever felt to be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic +affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is +Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether +matron or maid, mother or daughter--in joy or sorrow--as they appear +before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope +and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their +path! We feel, in perusing such pictures--"Purity! thy name is woman!" +and are not these Great Poems? We are silent. But should you answer +"yes," from us in our present mood you shall receive no contradiction. + +The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as +delightful from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the poets of the day +have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national +characters, and events, and actions, and catastrophes. Southey has +heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his +power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal +triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel--and as +long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, +with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy +verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already +often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his +patriotism in his politics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten +her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed +again--it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the +brightest--and the past became the present. We know now the character of +our own people as it showed itself in war and peace--in palace, castle, +hall, hut, hovel, and shieling--through centuries of advancing +civilisation, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld +Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her +inhabitants to call her the Modern Athens. This he has effected by means +of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty +characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or +herself, but the representative--so we offer to prove if you be +sceptical--of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the +Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gypsy, from the Bruce to +the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennison. We shall never say +that Scott is Shakespeare: but we shall say that he has conceived and +created--you know the meaning of these words--as many characters--real +living flesh-and-blood human beings--naturally, truly, and consistently, +as Shakespeare; who, always transcendently great in pictures of the +passions--out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all +rational being--was--nay, do not threaten to murder us--not seldom an +imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir +Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he +had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life--he and Burns +together--and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the +Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while--and shared in the general +and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to +him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing--though more +for Scotland than any other of her poets, except the Ploughman--and that +it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. +Hence the Prose Tales--Novels--and Romances--fresh floods of light +pouring all over Scotland--and occasionally illumining England, France, +and Germany, and even Palestine--whatever land had been ennobled by +Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue. + +Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general, +indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing +centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, +"'mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that +difficultly-distinguished and very debatable district called the +Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining-rod, and the +turf streamed out ghosts--some in woodmen's dresses--most in warrior's +mail: green archers leaped forth with yew-bow and quivers--and giants +stalked shaking spears. The grey chronicler smiled; and, taking up his +pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic +days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew +the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres--not they +indeed--nor phantoms of the brain--but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad +and glorious;--base-born cottage churls of the olden time, because +Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to +its pride did the high-born lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir +Walter is, that he has _harried_ all Scotland. Never was there such a +freebooter. He harries all men's cattle--kills themselves off-hand, and +makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated +all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with +their islands distinct by midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow +gloriously in the gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even see ships, +with all sails set, far at sea. His favourite themes in prose or +numerous verse are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," and their +Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish--of kings that fought for fame or +freedom--of fatal Flodden and bright Bannockburn--of the DELIVERER. If +that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtaeus not +sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, +then, be cognomed by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the North--we +shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter. + +Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question--has he ever +written a Great Poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not; +for he has done this--he has exhibited human life in a greater variety +of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose +name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we +tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest +genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr Faustus. + +"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes--beyond compare. Byron +had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as +they are, occasionally standing prominently and boldly out from the flat +surface of this world; and in general, when his soul was up, he +described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external +world--of nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In +his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do +not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of "Childe +Harold" he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her +shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmness; but simply stating a fact. +He had something else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a +poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his +dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains. +Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a +cento--his model being Wordsworth. His merit, whatever it may be, is +limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is +not merely occasional or verbal; but all the descriptions are conceived +in the spirit of Wordsworth, coloured by it and shaped--from it they +live, and breathe, and have their being; and that so entirely, that had +"The Excursion" and "Lyrical Ballads" never been, neither had any +composition at all resembling, either in conception or execution, the +third canto of "Childe Harold." His soul, however, having been awakened +by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, +nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much fine description +pervades most of his subsequent works. He afterwards made much of what +he saw his own--and even described it after his own fashion; but a +greater in that domain was his instructor and guide--nor in his noblest +efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages, +which he had manifestly set as models before his imagination. With all +the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like +a poet of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of +them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that +burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canto, which is worth, ten +times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; +never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to +soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his +flight--that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently +cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of +perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate +excellence, they are found woefully wanting in the true fire. Many +passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in +thinking--at first--but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend, +not Mr Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True, +they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done +that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had +they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty +well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better +than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most +certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself +pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, +stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must +have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches +fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, +who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe +Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above +mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in +execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his +tales--the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of +Corinth," and so forth--they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate +performances--sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but +displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly +no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a +supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his +smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every +kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect. + +But there is another glory belonging to this age, and almost to this age +alone of our poetry--the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen +it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men; as if there +could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by sex, that they are +infinitely superior; not in understanding, thank Heaven, nor in +intellect, but in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify +and adorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this +delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worthless wretches, +that we wonder how women condescend to allow the world to be carried +on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of +maternal affection, which breathes as strongly in maid as in matron, and +may be beautifully seen in the child fondling its doll in its blissful +bosom. Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that interesting +speculation, suffice it for the present to say, that so far from having +no souls--a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies--women +are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they +alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception +and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetry. We--men we +mean--may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be +inspired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we sometimes--often--are truly so +inspired, and write like gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in +them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all +male rational creatures are, in the long run, vile, corrupt, and +polluted; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the +arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that +was ever iniquitously hanged for murdering what was called her poor +husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind +is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster--so is every +Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father +O'Leary to Dr Doyle. Confessions, indeed! Why, had Joseph himself +confessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's wife, she would +have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous +indignation, and so far from tearing off his garment, would not have +touched it for the whole world. But all women--till men by marriage, or +by something, if that be possible, worse even than marriage, try in vain +to reduce them nearly to their own level--are pure as dewdrops or +moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures +it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image +forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its +glory; and hence, when they write poetry, it is religious, sweet, soft, +solemn, and divine. + +Observe, however--to prevent all mistakes--that we speak but of British +women--and of British women of the present age. Of the German Fair Sex +we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouque +is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any +allusion to Madame Genlis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French +school, who charitably adopted their own natural daughters, while other +less pious ladies, who had become mothers without being wives, sent +theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and +Matrons of this Island--and of this Age; and as it is of poetical genius +that we speak--we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia +Hemans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the +Lovely Norton; while we pronounce several other sweet-sounding Christian +surnames in whispering under-tones of affection, almost as inaudible as +the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening. + +Corinna and Sappho must have been women of transcendant genius so to +move Greece. For though the Greek character was most impressible and +combustible, it was so only to the finest finger and fire. In that +delightful land dunces were all dumb. Where genius alone spoke and sung +poetry, how hard to excel! Corinna and Sappho did excel--the one, it is +said, conquering Pindar--and the other all the world but Phaon. + +But our own Joanna has been visited with a still loftier inspiration. +She has created tragedies which Sophocles--or Euripides--nay, even +Aeschylus himself, might have feared, in competition for the crown. She +is our Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and +Sir Walter truly said--let them who dare deny it--that he saw her Genius +in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna +loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the +tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, passed +among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of +the dark Strathaven Muirs. + +Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" said one philosophical writer. +"This will never do!" It has done--perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of +all tragedy? The Stagyrite has told us--to purify the passions by pity +and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul--till its atmosphere is +like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on +the Passions. And all that Joanna intended--and it was a great intention +greatly effected--was in her Series of Dramas to steady her purposes by +ever keeping one great end in view, of which the perpetual perception +could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic. +One passion was, therefore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each +glorious tragedy--sovereign sometimes by divine right--sometimes an +usurper--generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of +Hate. But in his sister--the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light +sometimes opposed in sublime contrast--and sometimes the light +swallowing up the darkness--or "smoothing its raven down till it +smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave--for the light, +unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count +Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different +the love Basil feels for Victoria from Antony's for Cleopatra! Pure, +deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to +shame, destruction, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up +to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of +glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by +many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, +sometimes a dreadful brotherhood? + +Do you wonder how one mind can have such vivid consciousness of the +feelings of another, while their characters are cast in such different +moulds? It is, indeed, wonderful--but the power is that of sympathy and +genius. The dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all living +things, and whose overflowing tenderness diffuses itself over the beauty +even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his creative hand the +steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood--the lust of crime in +a mind polluted with wickedness--the remorse of acts which could never +pass in thought through his imagination as his own. For, in the act of +imagination he can suppress in his mind its own peculiar feelings--its +good and gracious affections--call up from their hidden places those +elements of our being, of which the seeds were sown in him as in +all--give them unnatural magnitude and power--conceive the disorder of +passions, the perpetration of crimes, the tortures of remorse, or the +scorn of that human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and +blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into +an imaginary and momentary sympathy with the wicked, just as his mind +falls of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose +character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and +workings of his mind in the spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he +knows and understands for himself what passes in the minds of others. +What is done in the highest degree by the highest genius, is done by all +of ourselves in lesser degree, and unconsciously, at every moment in our +intercourse with one another. To this kind of sympathy, so essential to +our knowledge of the human mind, and without which there can be neither +poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a largeness of heart which +willingly yields itself to conceive the feelings and states of others +whose character is utterly unlike its own, and freedom from any +inordinate overpowering passion which quenches in the mind the feelings +of nature it has already known, and places it in habitual enmity to the +affections and happiness of its kind. To paint bad passions is not to +praise them; they alone can paint them well who hate, fear, or pity +them; and therefore Baillie has done so--nay start not--better than +Byron. + +Well may our land be proud of such women. None such ever before adorned +her poetical annals. Glance over that most interesting volume, +"Specimens of British Poetesses," by that amiable, ingenious, and +erudite man, the Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence begins to +break towards the close of the eighteenth century! For ages on ages the +genius of English women had ever and anon been shining forth in song; +but faint though fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisoned in +clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those days bring tears to our eyes +by their simple pathos--for their poetry breathes of their own sorrows, +and shows that they were but too familiar with grief. But their strains +are mere melodies "sweetly played in tune." The deeper harmonies of +poetry seem to have been beyond their reach. The range of their power +was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchilsea--Catherine Phillips, known by +the name of Orinda--and Mrs Anne Killigrew, who, as Dryden says, was +made an angel, "in the last promotion to the skies"--showed, as they +sang on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in heaven. But what +were their hymns to those that are now warbled around us from many +sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but brighter far in their +genius, and more fortunate in its nurture? Poetry from female lips was +then half a wonder, and half a reproach. But now 'tis no longer +rare--not even the highest--yes, the highest--for Innocence and Purity +are of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts and feelings they +inspire, though breathed in words and tones, "gentle and low, an +excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as +the flowers beneath our feet. + +We have not forgotten an order of poets, peculiar, we believe, to our +own enlightened land--a high order of poets sprung from the lower orders +of the people--and not only sprung from them, but bred as well as born +in "the huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their condition by the +light of song. Such glory belongs--we believe--exclusively to this +country and to this age. Mr Southey, who in his own high genius and fame +is never insensible to the virtues of his fellow-men, however humble and +obscure the sphere in which they may move, has sent forth a volume--and +a most interesting one--on the uneducated poets; nor shall we presume to +gainsay one of his benevolent words. But this we do say, that all the +verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all the verse-writers of the +same sort of whom he does not treat, that ever existed on the face of +the earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled bundle of dry leaves or +sticks, compared with these Five--Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield, +and Clare. It must be a strong soil--the soil of this Britain--which +sends up such products; and we must not complain of the clime beneath +which they grow to such height, and bear such fruitage. The spirit of +domestic life must be sound--the natural knowledge of good and evil +high--the religion true--the laws just--and the government, on the +whole, good, methinks, that have all conspired to educate these children +of genius, whose souls Nature had framed of the finer clay. + +Such men seem to us more clearly and certainly men of genius, than many +who, under different circumstances, may have effected higher +achievements. For though they enjoyed in their condition ineffable +blessings to dilate their spirits, and touch them with all tenderest +thoughts, it is not easy to imagine, on the other hand, the deadening or +degrading influences to which by that condition they were inevitably +exposed, and which keep down the heaven-aspiring flame of genius, or +extinguish it wholly, or hold it smouldering under all sorts of rubbish. +Only look at the attempts in verse of the common run of clodhoppers. Buy +a few ballads from the wall or stall--and you groan to think that you +have been born--such is the mess of mire and filth which often, without +the slightest intention of offence, those rural, city, or suburban bards +of the lower orders prepare for boys, virgins, and matrons, who all +devour it greedily, without suspicion. Strange it is that even in that +mural minstrelsy, occasionally occurs a phrase or line, and even stanza, +sweet and simple, and to nature true; but consider it in the light of +poetry read, recited, and sung by the people, and you might well be +appalled by the revelation therein made of the tastes, feelings, and +thoughts of the lower orders. And yet in the midst of all the popularity +of such productions, the best of Burns's poems, his "Cottar's Saturday +Night," and most delicate of his songs, are still more popular, and read +by the same classes with a still greater eagerness of delight. Into this +mystery we shall not now inquire; but we mention it now merely to show +how divine a thing true genius is, which, burning within the bosoms of a +few favourite sons of nature, guards them from all such pollution, lifts +them up above it all, purifies their whole being, and without consuming +their family affections or friendships, or making them unhappy with +their lot, and disgusted with all about them, reveals to them all that +is fair and bright and beautiful in feeling and in imagination, makes +them very poets indeed, and should fortune favour, and chance and +accident, gains for them wide over the world the glory of a poet's name. + +From all such evil influences incident to their condition--and we are +now speaking but of the evil--the Five emerged; and first and +foremost--Burns. Our dearly beloved Thomas Carlyle is reported to have +said at a dinner given to Allan Cunningham in Dumfries, that Burns was +not only one of the greatest of poets, but likewise of philosophers. We +hope not. What he did may be told in one short sentence. His genius +purified and ennobled in his imagination and in his heart the character +and condition of the Scottish peasantry--and reflected them, ideally +true to nature, in the living waters of Song. That is what he did; but +to do that, did not require the highest powers of the poet and the +philosopher. Nay, had he marvellously possessed them, he never would +have written a single line of the poetry of the late Robert Burns. Thank +Heaven for not having made him such a man--but merely the Ayrshire +Ploughman. He was called into existence for a certain work, for the +fulness of time was come--but he was neither a Shakespeare, nor a Scott, +nor a Goethe; and therefore he rejoiced in writing the "Saturday Night," +and "The Twa Dogs," and "The Holy Fair," and "O' a' the Airts the Win' +can blaw," and eke "The Vision." But forbid it, all ye Gracious Powers! +that we should quarrel with Thomas Carlyle--and that, too, for calling +Robert Burns one of the greatest of poets and philosophers. + +Like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, we behold Burns in his golden +prime; and glory gleams from the Peasant's head, far and wide over +Scotland. See the shadow tottering to the tomb! frenzied with fears of a +prison--for some five-pound debt--existing, perhaps, but in his diseased +imagination--for, alas! sorely diseased it was, and he too, at last, +seemed somewhat insane. He escapes that disgrace in the grave. Buried +with his bones be all remembrances of his miseries! But the spirit of +song, which was his true spirit, unpolluted and unfallen, lives, and +breathes, and has its being, in the peasant-life of Scotland; his songs, +which are as household and sheepfold words, consecrated by the charm +that is in all the heart's purest affections, love and pity, and the joy +of grief, shall never decay, till among the people have decayed the +virtues which they celebrate, and by which they were inspired; and +should some dismal change in the skies ever overshadow the sunshine of +our national character, and savage storms end in sullen stillness, which +is moral death, in the poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands will +see how noble was once the degenerated race that may then be looking +down disconsolately on the dim grass of Scotland with the unuplifted +eyes of cowards and slaves. + +The truth ought always to be spoken; and therefore we say that in fancy +James Hogg--in spite of his name and his teeth--was not inferior to +Robert Burns--and why not? The Forest is a better schoolroom for Fancy +than ever Burns studied in; it overflowed with poetical traditions. But +comparisons are always odious; and the great glory of James is, that he +is as unlike Robert as ever one poet was unlike another. + +Among hills that once were a forest, and still bear that name, and by +the side of a river not unknown in song, lying in his plaid on a brae +among the "woolly people," behold that true son of genius--The Ettrick +Shepherd. We are never so happy as when praising James; but pastoral +poets are the most incomprehensible of God's creatures; and here is one +of the best of them all, who confesses the "Chaldee" and denies the +"Noctes!" + +"The Queen's Wake" is a garland of fair forest flowers, bound with a +band of rushes from the moor. It is not a poem--not it--nor was it +intended to be so; you might as well call a bright bouquet of flowers a +flower, which, by the by, we do in Scotland. Some of the ballads are +very beautiful; one or two even splendid; most of them spirited; and the +worst far better than the best that ever was written by any bard in +danger of being a blockhead. "Kilmeny" alone places our (ay, _our_) +Shepherd among the Undying Ones. London soon loses all memory of lions, +let them visit her in the shape of any animal they please. But the Heart +of the Forest never forgets. It knows no such word as absence. The Death +of a Poet there is but the beginning of a Life of Fame. His songs no +more perish than do flowers. There are no Annuals in the Forest. All are +perennial; or if they do indeed die, their fadings away are invisible in +the constant succession--the sweet unbroken series of everlasting bloom. +So will it be in his native haunts with the many songs of the Ettrick +Shepherd. The lochs may be drained--corn may grow where once the Yarrow +flowed--nor is such change much more unlikely than in the olden time +would have been thought the extirpation of all the vast oak-woods, where +the deer trembled to fall into the den of the wolf, and the wild boar +farrowed beneath the eagle's eyrie. All extinct now! But obsolete never +shall be the Shepherd's plaintive or pawky, his melancholy or merry, +lays. The ghost of "Mary Lee" will be seen in the moonlight coming down +the hills; the "Witch of Fife" on the clouds will still bestride her +besom; and the "Gude Grey Cat" will mew in imagination, were even the +last mouse on his last legs, and the feline species swept off by war, +pestilence, and famine, and heard to purr no more! + +It is here where Burns was weakest, that the Shepherd is strongest--the +world of shadows. The airy beings that to the impassioned soul of Burns +seemed cold, bloodless, unattractive, rise up lovely in their own silent +domains, before the dreaming fancy of the tender-hearted Shepherd. The +still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed all +his days, inspired him with ever-brooding visions of Fairy Land, till, +as he lay musing on the brae, the world of shadows seemed, in the clear +depths, a softened reflection of real life, like the hills and heavens +in the water of his native lake. When he speaks of Fairy Land, his +language becomes aerial as the very voice of the fairy people, serenest +images rise up with the music of the verse, and we almost believe in the +being of those unlocalised realms of peace, and of which he sings like a +native minstrel. + +Yes, James--thou wert but a poor shepherd to the last--poor in this +world's goods--though Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie--given +thee by the best of Dukes--with its few laigh sheep-braes--its somewhat +stony hayfield or two--its pasture where Crummie might unhungered +graze--nyuck for the potato's bloomy or ploomy shaws--and path-divided +from the porch the garden, among whose flowers "wee Jamie" played. But +nature had given thee, to console thy heart in all disappointments from +the "false smiling of fortune beguiling," a boon which thou didst hug to +thy heart with transport on the darkest day--the "gift o' genie," and +the power of immortal song. + +And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd been just--been generous--as +she was--or was not--to the Ayrshire peasant?--has she, in her conduct +to him, shown her contrition for her sin--whatever that may have +been--to Burns? It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the feathered +head--and gentility turns away her painted cheek from the Mountain Bard; +but when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever such votaries devoutly +worship? Cold, false, and hollow, ever has been their admiration of +genius--and different, indeed, from their evanescent ejaculations, has +ever been the enduring voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But +Scott, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Byron, and other great bards, +have all loved the Shepherd's lays--and Joanna the palm-crowned, and +Felicia the muse's darling, and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all +the other fair female spirits of song. And in his native land, all +hearts that love her streams, and her hills, and her cottages, and her +kirks, the bee-humming garden and the primrose-circled fold, the white +hawthorn and the green fairy-knowe, all delight in "Kilmeny" and "Mary +Lee," and in many another vision that visited the Shepherd in the +Forest. + +And what can surpass many of the Shepherd's songs? The most undefinable +of all undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are surely--Songs. They +seem to start up indeed from the dew-sprinkled soil of a poet's soul, +like flowers; the first stanza being root, the second leaf, the third +bud, and all the rest blossom, till the song is like a stalk laden with +its own beauty, and laying itself down in languid delight on the soft +bed of moss--song and flower alike having the same "dying fall!" + +A fragment! And the more piteous because a fragment. Go in search of the +pathetic, and you will find it tear-steeped, sigh-breathed, +moan-muttered, and groaned in fragments. The poet seems often struck +dumb by woe--his heart feels that suffering is at its acme--and that he +should break off and away from a sight too sad to be longer looked +on--haply too humiliating to be disclosed. So, too, it sometimes is with +the beautiful. The soul in its delight seeks to escape from the emotion +that oppresses it--is speechless--and the song falls mute. Such is +frequently the character--and the origin of that character--of our auld +Scottish Sangs. In their mournfulness are they not almost like the wail +of some bird distracted on the bush from which its nest has been +harried, and then suddenly flying away for ever into the woods? In their +joyfulness, are they not almost like the hymn of some bird, that +love-stricken suddenly darts from the tree-top down to the caresses that +flutter through the spring? And such, too, are often the airs to which +those dear auld sangs are sung. From excess of feeling--fragmentary; or +of one divine part to which genius may be defied to conceive another, +because but one hour in all time could have given it birth. + +You may call this pure nonsense--but 'tis so pure that you need not fear +to swallow it. All great song-writers, nevertheless, have been great +thieves. Those who had the blessed fate to flourish first--to be born +when "this auld cloak was new,"--the cloak we mean which nature +wears--scrupled not to creep upon her as she lay asleep beneath the +shadow of some single tree among + + "The grace of forest woods decay'd, + And pastoral melancholy," + +and to steal the very pearls out of her hair--out of the silken snood +which enamoured Pan himself had not untied in the Golden Age. Or if she +ventured, as sometimes she did, to walk along the highways of the earth, +they robbed her in the face of day of her dew-wrought reticule--without +hurting, however, the hand from which they brushed that net of gossamer. + +Then came the Silver Age of Song, the age in which we now live--and the +song-singers were thieves still--stealing and robbing from them who had +stolen and robbed of old; yet, how account you for this phenomenon--all +parties remain richer than ever--and Nature, especially, after all this +thieving and robbery, and piracy and plunder, many million times richer +than the day on which she received her dowry, + + "The bridal of the earth and sky;" + +and with "golden store" sufficient in its scatterings to enable all the +sons of genius she will ever bear, to "set up for themselves" in poetry, +accumulating capital upon capital, till each is a Croesus, rejoicing +to lend it out without any other interest than cent per cent, paid in +sighs, smiles, and tears, and without any other security than the +promise of a quiet eye, + + "That broods and sleeps on its own heart!" + +Amongst the most famous thieves in our time have been Rob, James, and +Allan. Burns never saw or heard a jewel or tune of a thought or a +feeling, but he immediately made it his own--that is, stole it. He was +too honest a man to refrain from such thefts. The thoughts and +feelings--to whom by divine right did they belong? To Nature. But Burns +beheld them "waif and stray," and in peril of being lost for ever. He +seized then on those "snatches of old songs," wavering away into the +same oblivion that lies on the graves of the nameless bards who first +gave them being; and now, spiritually interfused with his own lays, they +are secured against decay--and like them immortal. So hath the Shepherd +stolen many of the Flowers of the Forest--whose beauty had breathed +there ever since Flodden's fatal overthrow; but they had been long +fading and pining away in the solitary places, wherein so many of their +kindred had utterly disappeared, and beneath the restoring light of his +genius their bloom and their balm were for ever renewed. But the thief +of all thieves is the Nithsdale and Galloway thief--called by Sir +Walter, most characteristically, "Honest Allan!" Thief and forger as he +is--we often wonder why he is permitted to live. Many is the sweet +stanza he has stolen from Time--that silly old carle who kens not even +his own--many the lifelike line--and many the strange single word that +seems to possess the power of all the parts of speech. And, having +stolen them, to what use did he turn the treasures? Why, unable to give +back every man his own--for they were all dead, buried, and +forgotten--by a potent prayer he evoked from his Pool-Palace, +overshadowed by the Dalswinton woods, the Genius of the Nith, to +preserve the gathered flowers of song for ever unwithered, for that they +all had grown ages ago beneath and around the green shadows of Criffel, +and longed now to be embalmed in the purity of the purest river that +Scotland sees flowing in unsullied silver to the sea. But the Genius of +the Nith--frowning and smiling--as he looked upon his son alternately in +anger, love, and pride--refused the votive offering, and told him to be +gone; for that he--the Genius--was not a Cromek--and could distinguish +with half an eye what belonged to antiquity, from what had undergone, in +Allan's hands, change into "something rich and rare;" and above all, +from what had been blown to life that very year by the breath of Allan's +own genius, love-inspired by "his ain lassie," the "lass that he loe'd +best," springing from seeds itself had sown, and cherished by the dews +of the same gracious skies, that filled with motion and music the +transparency of the river-god's never-failing urn. + +We love Allan's "Maid of Elvar." It beats with a fine, free, bold, and +healthful spirit. Along with the growth of the mutual love of Eustace +and Sybil, he paints peasant-life with a pen that reminds us of the +pencil of Wilkie. He is as familiar with it all as Burns; and Burns +would have perused with tears many of these pictures, even the most +cheerful--for the flood-gates of Robin's heart often suddenly flung +themselves open to a touch, while a rushing gush--wondering gazers knew +not why--bedimmed the lustre of his large black eyes. Allan gives us +descriptions of Washings and Watchings o' claes, as Homer has done +before him in the Odyssey, and that other Allan in the Gentle +Shepherd--of Kirks, and Christenings, and Halloweens, and other +Festivals. Nor has he feared to string his lyre--why should he?--to such +themes as the Cottar's Saturday Night--and the simple ritual of our +faith, sung and said + + "In some small kirk upon the sunny brae, + That stands all by itself on some sweet Sabbath-day." + +Ay, many are the merits of this "Rustic Tale." To appreciate them +properly, we must carry along with us, during the perusal of the poem, a +right understanding and feeling of that pleasant epithet--Rustic. +Rusticity and Urbanity are polar opposites--and there lie between many +million modes of Manners, which you know are Minor Morals. But not to +puzzle a subject in itself sufficiently simple, the same person may be +at once rustic and urbane, and that too, either in his character of man +or of poet, or in his twofold capacity of both; for observe that, though +you may be a man without being a poet, we defy you to be a poet without +being a man. A Rustic is a clodhopper; an Urbane is a paviour. But it is +obvious that the paviour in a field hops the clod; that the clodhopper +in a street paces the pave. At the same time, it is equally obvious that +the paviour, in hopping the clod, performs the feat with a sort of city +smoke, which breathes of bricks; that the clodhopper, in pacing the +pave, overcomes the difficulty with a kind of country air, that is +redolent of broom. Probably, too, Urbanus through a deep fallow is seen +ploughing his way in pumps; Rusticus along the shallow stones is heard +clattering on clogs. But to cease pursuing the subject through all its +variations, suffice it for the present (for we perceive that we must +resume the discussion another time), to say, that Allan Cunningham is a +living example and lively proof of the truth of our Philosophy--it being +universally allowed in the best circles of town and country, that he is +an URBANE RUSTIC. + +Now, that is the man for our love and money, when the work to be done is +a Poem on Scottish Life. + +We can say of Allan what Allan says of Eustace,-- + + "Far from the pasture moor + He comes; the fragrance of the dale and wood + Is scenting all his garments, green and good." + +The rural imagery is fresh and fair; not copied Cockney wise, +from pictures in oil or water-colours--from mezzotintoes or +line-engravings--but from the free open face of day, or the dim retiring +face of eve, or the face, "black but comely," of night--by sunlight or +moonlight, ever Nature. Sometimes he gives us--Studies. Small, sweet, +sunny spots of still or dancing day-stream-gleam--grove-glow-- +sky-glimpse--or cottage-roof, in the deep dell sending up its smoke to +the high heavens. But usually Allan paints with a sweeping pencil. He +lays down his landscapes, stretching wide and far, and fills them with +woods and rivers, hills and mountains, flocks of sheep and herds of +cattle; and of all sights in life and nature, none so dear to his eyes +as the golden grain, ebbing like tide of sea before a close long line of +glancing sickles; no sound so sweet as--rising up into the pure +harvest-air, frost-touched though sunny--beneath the shade of +hedgerow-tree, after their mid-day meal, the song of the jolly reapers. +But are not his pictures sometimes too crowded? No. For there lies the +power of the pen over the pencil. The pencil can do much, the pen +everything; the Painter is imprisoned within a few feet of canvass, the +Poet commands the horizon with an eye that circumnavigates the globe; +even that glorious pageant, a painted Panorama, is circumscribed by +bounds, over which imagination, feeling them all too narrow, is uneasy +till she soars; but the Poet's Panorama is commensurate with the soul's +desires, and may include the Universe. + +This Poem reads as if it had been written during the "dewy hour of +prime." Allan must be an early riser. But, if not so now, some forty +years ago he was up every morning with the lark, + + "Walking to labour by that cheerful song," + +away up the Nith, through the Dalswinton woods; or, for anything we know +to the contrary, intersecting with stone-walls, that wanted not their +scientific coping, the green pastures of Sanquhar. Now he is familiar +with Chantrey's form-full statues; then, with the shapeless cairn on the +moor, the rude headstone on the martyr's grave. And thus it is that the +present has given him power over the past--that a certain grace and +delicacy, inspired by the pursuits of his prime, blend with the creative +dreams that are peopled with the lights and shadows of his youth--that +the spirit of the old ballad breathes still in its strong simplicity +through the composition of his "New Poem"--and that art is seen +harmoniously blending there with nature. + +We have said already that we delight in the story; for it belongs to an +"order of _fables_ grey," which has been ever dear to Poets. Poets have +ever loved to bring into the pleasant places and paths of lowly life, +persons (we eschew all manner of _personages_ and _heroes_ and +_heroines_, especially with the epithet "_our_" prefixed) whose native +lot lay in a higher sphere: for they felt that by such contrast, natural +though rare, a beautiful light was mutually reflected from each +condition, and that sacred revelations were thereby made of human +character, of which all that is pure and profound appertains equally to +all estates of this our mortal being, provided only that happiness knows +from whom it comes, and that misery and misfortune are alleviated by +religion. Thus Electra appears before us at her Father's Tomb, the +virgin-wife of the peasant Auturgus, who reverently abstains from the +intact body of the daughter of the king. Look into Shakespeare. Rosalind +was not so lovable at court as in the woods. Her beauty might have been +more brilliant, and her conversation too, among lords and ladies; but +more touching both, because true to tenderer nature, when we see and +hear her in dialogue with the neat-herdess--ROSALIND and _Audrey_! And +trickles not the tear down thy cheek, fair reader--burns not the heart +within thee, when thou thinkest of Florizel and Perdita on the Farm in +the Forest? + +Nor from those visions need we fear to turn to Sybil Lesley. We see her +in Elvar Tower, a high-born Lady--in Dalgonar Glen, a humble bondmaid. +The change might have been the reverse--as with the lassie beloved by +the Gentle Shepherd. Both are best. The bust that gloriously set off the +burnishing of the rounded silk, not less divinely shrouded its +enchantment beneath the swelling russet. Graceful in bower or hall were +those arms, and delicate those fingers when moving white along the rich +embroidery, or across the strings of the sculptured harp; nor less so +when before the cottage door they woke the homely music of the humming +wheel, or when on the brae beside the Pool, they playfully intertwined +their softness with the new-washed fleeces, or when among the laughing +lasses at the Linn, not loth were they to lay out the coarse linen in +the bleaching sunshine, conspicuous She the while among the rustic +beauties, as was Nausicaa of old among her nymphs at the Fountain. + +We are in love with Sybil Lesley. She is full of _spunk_. That is not a +vulgar word; or if it have been so heretofore, henceforth let it cease +to be so, and be held synonymous with spirit. She shows it in her +defiance of Sir Ralph on the shore of Solway--in her flight from the +Tower of Elvar; and the character she displays then and there, prepares +us for the part she plays in the peasant's cot in the glen of Dalgonar. +We are not surprised to see her take so kindly to the duties of a rustic +service; for we call to mind how she sat among the humble good-folks in +the hall, when Thrift and Waste figured in that rude but wise Morality, +and how the gracious lady showed she sympathised with the cares and +contentments of lowly life. + +England has singled out John Clare from among her humble sons (Ebenezer +Elliott belongs altogether to another order)--as the most conspicuous +for poetical genius, next to Robert Bloomfield. That is a proud +distinction--whatever critics may choose to say; and we cordially +sympathise with the beautiful expression of his gratitude to the Rural +Muse, when he says-- + + "Like as the little lark from off its nest, + Beside the mossy hill, awakes in glee, + To seek the morning's throne, a merry guest-- + So do I seek thy shrine, if that may be, + To win by new attempts another smile from thee." + +Now, England is out of all sight the most beautiful country in the whole +world--Scotland alone excepted--and, thank heaven, they two are one +kingdom--divided by no line, either real or imaginary--united by the +Tweed. We forget at this moment--if ever we knew it--the precise number +of her counties; but we remember that one and all of them--"alike, but +oh! how different"--are fit birthplaces and abodes for poets. Some of +them, we know well, are flat--and we in Scotland, with hills or +mountains for ever before our eyes, are sometimes disposed to find fault +with them on that ground--as if nature were not at liberty to find her +own level. Flat indeed! So is the sea. Wait till you have walked a few +miles in among the Fens--and you will be wafted along like a little +sail-boat, up and down undulations green and gladsome as waves. Think ye +there is no scenery there? Why, you are in the heart of a vast +metropolis!--yet have not the sense to see the silent city of mole-hills +sleeping in the sun. Call that pond a lake--and by a word how is it +transfigured? Now you discern flowers unfolding on its low banks and +braes--and the rustle of the rushes is like that of a tiny forest--how +appropriate to the wild! Gaze--and to your gaze what colouring grows! +Not in green only, or in russet brown, doth nature choose to be +apparelled in this her solitude--nor ever again will you call her dreary +here--for see how every one of those fifty flying showers lightens up +its own line of beauty along the plain--instantaneous as dreams--or +stationary as waking thought--till, ere you are aware that all was +changing, the variety has all melted away into one harmonious glow, +attempered by that rainbow. + +Let these few words suffice to show that we understand and feel the +flattest--dullest--tamest places, as they are most ignorantly +called--that have yet been discovered in England. Not in such did John +Clare abide--but many such he hath traversed; and his studies have been +from childhood upwards among scenes which to ordinary eyes might seem to +afford small scope and few materials for contemplation. But his are not +ordinary eyes--but gifted; and in every nook and corner of his own +county the Northamptonshire Peasant has, during some twoscore years and +more, every spring found without seeking either some lovelier aspect of +"the old familiar faces," or some new faces smiling upon him, as if +mutual recognition kindled joy and amity in their hearts. + +John Clare often reminds us of James Grahame. They are two of our most +artless poets. Their versification is mostly very sweet, though rather +flowing forth according to a certain fine natural sense of melody, than +constructed on any principles of music. So, too, with their imagery, +which seems seldom selected with much care; so that, while it is always +true to nature, and often possesses a charm from its appearing to rise +up of itself, and with little or no effort on the poet's part to form a +picture, it is not unfrequently chargeable with repetition--sometimes, +perhaps, with a sameness which, but for the inherent interest in the +objects themselves, might be felt a little wearisome--there is so much +still life. They are both most affectionately disposed towards all +manner of birds. Grahame's "Birds of Scotland" is a delightful poem; yet +its best passages are not superior to some of Clare's about the same +charming creatures--and they are both ornithologists after Audubon's and +our own heart. Were all that has been well written in English verse +about birds to be gathered together, what a sweet set of volumes it +would make! And how many, think ye--three, six, twelve? That would be +indeed an aviary--the only one we can think of with pleasure--out of the +hedgerows and the woods. Tories as we are, we never see a wild bird on +the wing without inhaling in silence "the Cause of Liberty all over the +world!" We feel then that it is indeed "like the air we breathe--without +it we die." So do they. We have been reading lately, for a leisure hour +or two of an evening--a volume by a worthy German, Doctor Bechstein--on +Cage Birds. The slave-dealer never for a moment suspects the wickedness +of kidnapping young and old--crimping them for life--teaching them to +draw water--and, _oh nefas!_ to sing! He seems to think that only in +confinement do they fulfil the ends of their existence--even the +skylark. Yet he sees them, one and all, subject to the most miserable +diseases--and rotting away within the wires. Why could not the Doctor +have taken a stroll into the country once or twice a-week, and in one +morning or evening hour laid in sufficient music to serve him during the +intervening time, without causing a single bosom to be ruffled for his +sake? Shoot them--spit them--pie them--pickle them--eat them--but +imprison them not; we speak as Conservatives--murder rather than immure +them--for more forgivable far it is to cut short their songs at the +height of glee, than to protract them in a rueful simulation of music, +in which you hear the same sweet notes, but if your heart thinks at all, +"a voice of weeping and of loud lament," all unlike, alas! to the +congratulation that from the free choirs is ringing so exultingly in +their native woods. + +How prettily Clare writes of the "insect youth." + + "These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard, + And happy units of a numerous herd + Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings, + Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings, + How merrily they creep, and run, and fly! + No kin they bear to labour's drudgery, + Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose, + And where they fly for dinner no one knows-- + The dewdrops feed them not--they love the shine + Of noon, whose sons may bring them golden wine. + All day they're playing in their Sunday dress-- + When night repose, for they can do no less; + Then to the heathbell's purple hood they fly, + And like to princes in their slumbers lie, + Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all, + In silken beds and roomy painted hall. + So merrily they spend their summer-day, + Now in the cornfields, now in the new-mown hay. + One almost fancies that such happy things, + With colour'd hoods and richly-burnish'd wings, + Are fairy folk in splendid masquerade + Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid. + Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still, + Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill." + +Time has been--nor yet very long ago--when such unpretending poetry as +this--humble indeed in every sense, but nevertheless the product of +genius which speaks for itself audibly and clearly in lowliest +strains--would not have passed by unheeded or unbeloved; nowadays it +may, to many who hold their heads high, seem of no more worth than an +old song. But as Wordsworth says, + + "Pleasures newly found are sweet, + Though they lie about our feet;" + +and if stately people would but stoop and look about their paths, which, +do not always run along the heights, they would often make discoveries +of what concerned them more than speculations among the stars. + +It is not to be thought, however, that the Northamptonshire Peasant does +not often treat earnestly of the common pleasures and pains, the cares +and occupations, of that condition of life in which he was born, and has +passed all his days. He knows them well, and has illustrated them well, +though seldomer in his later than in his earlier poems; and we cannot +help thinking that he might greatly extend his popularity, which in +England is considerable, by devoting his Rural Muse to subjects lying +within his ken, and of everlasting interest. Bloomfield's reputation +rests on his "Farmer's Boy"--on some exquisite passages in "News from +the Farm"--and on some of the tales and pictures in his "May-day with +the Muses." His smaller poems are very inferior to those of Clare--but +the Northamptonshire Peasant has written nothing in which all honest +English hearts must delight, at all comparable with those truly rural +compositions of the Suffolk shoemaker. It is in his power to do +so--would he but earnestly set himself to the work. He must be more +familiar with all the ongoings of rural life than his compeer could have +been; nor need he fear to tread again the same ground, for it is as new +as if it had never been touched, and will continue to be so till the end +of time. The soil in which the native virtues of the English character +grow, is unexhausted and inexhaustible; let him break it up on any spot +he chooses, and poetry will spring to light like clover from lime. Nor +need he fear being an imitator. His mind is an original one, his most +indifferent verses prove it; for though he must have read much poetry +since his earlier day--doubtless all our best modern poetry--he retains +his own style, which, though it be not marked by any very strong +characteristics, is yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it belongs to +himself, and is a natural gift. Pastorals--eclogues--and idyls--in a +hundred forms--remain to be written by such poets as he and his +brethren; and there can be no doubt at all that, if he will scheme +something of the kind, and begin upon it, without waiting to know fully +or clearly what he may be intending, before three winters, with their +long nights, are gone, he will find himself in possession of more than +mere materials for a volume of poems that will meet with general +acceptation, and give him a permanent place by the side of him he loves +so well--Robert Bloomfield. + +Ebenezer Elliott (of whom more another day)[A] claims with pride to be +the Poet of the Poor--and the poor might well be proud, did they know +it, that they have such a poet. Not a few of them know it now, and many +will know it in future; for a muse of fire like his will yet send its +illumination "into dark deep holds." May it consume all the noxious +vapours that infest such regions--and purify the atmosphere--till the +air breathed there be the breath of life. But the poor have other poets +besides him--Crabbe and Burns. We again mention their names--and no +more. Kindly spirits were they both; but Burns had experienced all his +poetry--and therefore his poetry is an embodiment of national character. +We say it not in disparagement or reproof of Ebenezer--conspicuous over +all--for let all men speak as they think or feel--but how gentle in all +his noblest inspirations was Robin! He did not shun sins or sorrows; but +he told the truth of the poor man's life, when he showed that it was, on +the whole, virtuous and happy--bear witness those immortal strains, "The +Twa Dogs," "The Vision," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the sangs voiced +all braid Scotland thorough by her boys and virgins, say rather her lads +and lasses--while the lark sings aloft and the linnet below, the mavis +in the golden broom accompanying the music in the golden cloud. We +desire--not in wilful delusion, but in earnest hope, in devout +trust--that poetry shall show that the paths of the peasant poor are +paths of pleasantness and peace. If they should seem in that light even +pleasanter and more peaceful than they ever now can be below the sun, +think not that any evil can arise "to mortal man who liveth here by +toil" from such representations--for imagination and reality are not two +different things--they blend in life; but there the darker shadows do +often, alas! prevail--and sometimes may be felt even by the hand; +whereas in poetry the lights are triumphant--and gazing on the glory +men's hearts burn within them--and they carry the joy in among their own +griefs, till despondency gives way to exultation, and the day's darg of +this worky world is lightened by a dawn of dreams. + +[Footnote A: _Professor Wilson's Works_, vol. vi., page 224.] + +This is the effect of all good poetry--according to its power--of the +poetry of Robert Bloomfield as of the poetry of Robert Burns. John +Clare, too, is well entitled to a portion of such praise; and therefore +his name deserves to become a household word in the dwellings of the +rural poor. Living in leisure among the scenes in which he once toiled, +may he once more contemplate them all without disturbance. Having lost +none of his sympathies, he has learnt to refine them all and see into +their source--and wiser in his simplicity than they who were formerly +his yoke-fellows are in theirs, he knows many things well which they +know imperfectly or not at all, and is privileged therein to be their +teacher. Surely in an age when the smallest contribution to science is +duly estimated, and useful knowledge not only held in honour but +diffused, poetry ought not to be despised, more especially when +emanating from them who belong to the very condition which they seek to +illustrate, and whose ambition it is to do justice to its natural +enjoyments and appropriate virtues. In spite of all they have suffered, +and still suffer, the peasantry of England are a race that may be +regarded with better feelings than pride. We look forward confidently to +the time when education--already in much good--and, if the plans of the +wisest counsellors prevail, about to become altogether good--will raise +at once their condition and their character. The Government has its +duties to discharge--clear as day. And what is not in the power of the +gentlemen of England? Let them exert that power to the utmost--and then +indeed they will deserve the noble name of "Aristocracy." We speak not +thus in reproach--for they better deserve that name than the same order +in any other country; but in no other country are such interests given +to that order in trust--and as they attend to that trust is the glory or +the shame, the blessing or the curse, of their high estate. + +But let us retrace our footsteps in moralising mood, not unmixed with +sadness--to the Mausoleum of Burns. Scotland is abused by England for +having starved Burns to death, or for having suffered him to drink +himself to death, out of a cup filled to the brim with bitter +disappointment and black despair. England lies. There is our gage-glove, +let her take it up, and then for mortal combat with sword and +spear--only not on horseback--for, for reasons on which it would be idle +to be more explicit, we always fight now on foot, and have sent our high +horse to graze all the rest of his life on the mountains of the moon. +Well then, Scotland met Burns, on his first sunburst, with one exulting +acclaim. Scotland bought and read his poetry, and Burns, for a poor man, +became rich--rich to his heart's desire--and reached the summit of his +ambition, in the way of this world's life, in a--Farm. Blithe Robin +would have scorned "an awmous" from any hands but from those of nature; +nor in those days needed he help from woman-born. True, that times +began by-and-by to go rather hard with him, and he with them; for his +mode of life was not + + "Such as grave livers do in Scotland use," + +and as we sow we must reap. His day of life began to darken ere +meridian--and the darkness doubtless had brought disturbance before it +had been perceived by any eyes but his own--for people are always +looking to themselves and their own lot; and how much mortal misery may +for years be daily depicted in the face, figure, or manners even of a +friend, without our seeing or suspecting it! Till all at once he makes a +confession, and we then know that he has been long numbered among the +most wretched of the wretched--the slave of his own sins and sorrows--or +thralled beneath those of another, to whom fate may have given sovereign +power over his whole life. Well, then--or rather ill, then--Burns +behaved as most men do in misery,--and the farm going to ruin--that is, +crop and stock to pay the rent--he desired to be, and was made--an +Exciseman. And for that--you ninny--you are whinnying scornfully at +Scotland! Many a better man than yourself--beg your pardon--has been, +and is now, an Exciseman. Nay, to be plain with you--we doubt if your +education has been sufficiently intellectual for an Exciseman. We never +heard it said of you, + + "And even the story ran that he could gauge." + +Burns then was made what he desired to be--what he was fit for, though +you are not--and what was in itself respectable--an Exciseman. His +salary was not so large certainly as that of the Bishop of Durham--or +even of London--but it was certainly larger than that of many a curate +at that time doing perhaps double or treble duty in those dioceses, +without much audible complaint on their part, or outcry from Scotland +against blind and brutal English bishops, or against beggarly England, +for starving her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or erudition +adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, it is true, at the age of +thirty-seven; on the same day died an English curate we could name, a +surpassing scholar, and of stainless virtue, blind, palsied, "old and +miserably poor"--without as much money as would bury him; and no wonder, +for he never had the salary of a Scotch Exciseman. + +Two blacks--nay twenty--won't make a white. True--but one black is as +black as another--and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse +with impunity the Northern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us +knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield? He was +not in genius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns--but he was +beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen +produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker +that ever handled an awl. The "Farmer's Boy" is a wonderful poem--and +will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield +in comfort, and scatter flowers along the smooth and sunny path that led +him to the grave? No. He had given him by some minister or other, we +believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other--most +uncongenial with all his nature and all his habits--of which the shabby +salary was insufficient to purchase for his family even the bare +necessaries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a +sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be +made by narrowest circumstances--and all the while Englishmen were +scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that +at his own earnest desire made Burns an Exciseman. Nay, when Southey, +late in Bloomfield's life, and when it was drawing mournfully to a +close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five +pounds, how many purse-strings were untied? how much fine gold was +poured out for the indigent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles the +sum out of sight--for it was not sufficient to have bought the +manumission of an old negro slave. + +It was no easy matter to deal rightly with such a man as Burns. In those +disturbed and distracted times, still more difficult was it to carry +into execution any designs for his good--and much was there even to +excuse his countrymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil +eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, +indeed, would it have been to make him happy--but he was as much +forgotten as if he had been dead; and when he died--did England mourn +over him--or, after having denied him bread, give him so much as a +stone? No. He dropt into the grave with no other lament we ever heard of +but a few copies of poorish verses in some of the Annuals, and seldom +or never now does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie! well may the +white rose blush red--and the red rose turn pale. Let England then leave +Scotland to her shame about Burns; and, thinking of her own treatment of +Bloomfield, cover her own face with both her hands, and confess that it +was pitiful. At least, if she will not hang down her head in humiliation +for her own neglect of her own "poetic child," let her not hold it high +over Scotland for the neglect of hers--palliated as that neglect was by +many things--and since, in some measure, expiated by a whole nation's +tears shed over her great poet's grave. + +What! not a word for Allan Ramsay? Theocritus was a pleasant Pastoral, +and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls together +are not equal in worth to the "Gentle Shepherd." Habbie's Howe is a +hallowed place now among the green airy Pentlands. Sacred for ever the +solitary murmur of that waterfa'! + + "A flowerie howm, between twa verdant braes, + Where lassies use to wash and bleach their claes; + A trotting burnie, wimpling through the ground, + Its channel pebbles, shining, smooth, and round: + Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear, + 'Twill please your eye, then gratify your ear; + While Jenny what she wishes discommends, + And Meg, with better sense, true love defends!" + +"About them and siclike" is the whole poem. Yet "faithful love shall +memorise the song." Without any scenery but that of rafters, which +overhead fancy may suppose a grove, 'tis even yet sometimes acted by +rustics in the barn, though nothing on this earth will ever persuade a +low-born Scottish lass to take a part in a play; while delightful is +felt, even by the lords and ladies of the land, the simple Drama of +humble life; and we ourselves have seen a high-born maiden look +"beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the +kirtle of a Shepherdess. + +We have been gradually growing national overmuch, and are about to grow +even more so, therefore ask you to what era, pray, did Thomson belong? +To none. Thomson had no precursor--and till Cowper no follower. He +effulged all at once sunlike--like Scotland's storm-loving, +mist-enamoured sun, which till you have seen on a day of thunder, you +cannot be said ever to have seen the sun. Cowper followed Thomson merely +in time. We should have had "The Task," even had we never had "The +Seasons." These two were "heralds of a mighty train ensuing;" add them, +then, to the worthies of our own age, and they belong to it--and all the +rest of the poetry of the modern world--to which add that of the +ancient--if multiplied by ten in quantity--and by twenty in +quality--would not so variously, so vigorously, and so truly image the +form and pressure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all--Nature. +Are then "The Seasons" and "The Task" Great Poems? Yes.--Why? What! Do +you need to be told that that Poem must be great, which was the first to +paint the rolling mystery of the year, and to show that all its Seasons +are but the varied God? The idea was original and sublime; and the +fulfilment thereof so complete, that some six thousand years having +elapsed between the creation of the world and of that poem, some sixty +thousand, we prophesy, will elapse between the appearance of that poem +and the publication of another equally great, on a subject external to +the mind, equally magnificent. We further presume, that you hold sacred +the "hearth." Now, in "The Task," the "hearth" is the heart of the poem, +just as it is of a happy house. No other poem is so full of domestic +happiness--humble and high; none is so breathed over by the spirit of +the Christian religion. + +Poetry, which, though not dead, had long been sleeping in Scotland, was +restored to waking life by THOMSON. His genius was national; and so, +too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his +genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and +passionate, and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its +power lay in the heart. "The Castle of Indolence" is distinguished by +purer taste and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that +poem is but the vision of a dream. "The Seasons" are glorious realities; +and the charm of the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its truth. +But what mean we by saying that "The Seasons" are a national +subject?--do we assert that they are solely Scottish? That would be too +bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made +them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, to +the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set in Scottish heavens; his +"deep-fermenting tempests are brewed in grim evening" Scottish skies; +Scottish is his thunder of cloud and cataract; his "vapours, and snows, +and storms" are Scottish; and, strange as the assertion would have +sounded in the ears of Samuel Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their +sugh, and their roar; nor less their stillness, more awful amidst the +vast multitude of steady stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are +swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of his native land was in his +heart when he cried in the solitude-- + + "Hail, kindred glooms! congenial horrors, hail!" + +The genius of HOME was national--and so, too, was the subject of his +justly famous Tragedy of "Douglas." He had studied the old Ballads; +their simplicities were sweet to him as wallflowers on ruins. On the +story of Gill Morice, who was an Earl's son, he founded the Tragedy, +which surely no Scottish eyes ever witnessed without tears. Are not +these most Scottish lines?-- + + "Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom + Accords with my soul's sadness!" + +And these even more so,-- + + "Red came the river down, and loud and oft + The angry Spirit of the water shriek'd!" + +The Scottish Tragedian in an evil hour crossed the Tweed, riding on +horseback all the way to London. His genius got Anglified, took a +consumption, and perished in the prime of life. But nearly half a +century afterwards, on seeing the Siddons in _Lady Randolph_, and +hearing her low, deep, wild, woe-begone voice exclaim, "My beautiful! my +brave!" "the aged harper's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again +lighted up for a moment with the fires of genius--say rather for a +moment bedewed with the tears of sensibility re-awakened from decay and +dotage. + +The genius of Beattie was national, and so was the subject of his +charming song--"The Minstrel." For what is its design? He tells us, to +trace the progress of a poetical genius born in a rude age, from the +first dawning of reason and fancy, till that period at which he may be +supposed capable of appearing in the world as a Scottish Minstrel; that +is, as an itinerant poet and musician--a character which, according to +the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred. + + "There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell, + A shepherd swain, a man of low degree; + Whose sires perchance in Fairyland might dwell, + Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady; + But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie; + A nation famed for song and beauty's charms; + Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free; + Patient of toil, serene amid alarms; + Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms. + + The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made, + On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock; + The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd: + An honest heart was almost all his stock; + His drink the living waters from the rock; + The milky dams supplied his board, and lent + Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock; + And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, + Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they went." + +Did patriotism ever inspire genius with sentiment more Scottish than +_that_? Did imagination ever create scenery more Scottish, Manners, +Morals, Life? + + "Lo! where the stripling rapt in wonder roves + Beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine; + And sees, on high, amidst th' encircling groves + From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine: + While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join, + And echo swells the chorus to the skies!" + +Beattie chants there like a man who had been at the Linn of Dee. He wore +a wig, it is true; but at times, when the fit was on him, he wrote like +the unshorn Apollo. + +The genius of Grahame was national, and so too was the subject of his +first and best poem--"The Sabbath." + + "How still the morning of the hallow'd day!" + +is a line that could have been uttered only by a holy Scottish heart. +For we alone know what is indeed Sabbath silence--an earnest of +everlasting rest. To our hearts, the very birds of Scotland sing holily +on that day. A sacred smile is on the dewy flowers. The lilies look +whiter in their loveliness; the blush-rose reddens in the sun with a +diviner dye; and with a more celestial scent the hoary hawthorn sweetens +the wilderness. Sorely disturbed of yore, over the glens and hills of +Scotland, was the Day of Peace! + + "O, the great goodness of the _Saints of Old_!" + +the Covenanters. Listen to the Sabbath bard,-- + + "With them each day was holy; but that morn + On which the angel said, 'See where the Lord + Was laid,' joyous arose; to die that day + Was bliss. Long ere the dawn by devious ways, + O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought + The upland muirs, where rivers, there but brooks, + Dispart to different seas. Fast by such brooks + A little glen is sometimes scoop'd, a plat + With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem + Amid the heathery wild, that all around + Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these, + Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foil'd + A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws. + There, leaning on his spear (one of the array + Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose + On England's banner, and had powerless struck + The infatuate monarch, and his wavering host!) + The lyart veteran heard the word of God + By Cameron thunder'd, or by Renwick pour'd + In gentle stream; then rose the song, the loud + Acclaim of praise. The wheeling plover ceased + Her plaint; the solitary place was glad; + And on the distant cairn the watcher's ear + Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note. + But years more gloomy follow'd; and no more + The assembled people dared, in face of day, + To worship God, or even at the dead + Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce, + And thunder-peals compell'd the men of blood + To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly + The scatter'd few would meet, in some deep dell + By rocks o'ercanopied, to hear the voice, + Their faithful pastor's voice. He by the gleam + Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book, + And words of comfort spake; over their souls + His accents soothing came, as to her young + The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of eve, + She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed + By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads + Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast + They cherish'd cower amid the purple bloom." + +Not a few other sweet singers or strong, native to this nook of our +isle, might we now in these humble pages lovingly commemorate; and "four +shall we mention, dearer than the rest," for sake of that virtue, among +many virtues, which we have been lauding all along, their +nationality;--These are AIRD and MOTHERWELL (of whom another hour), MOIR +and POLLOK. + +Of Moir, our own "delightful Delta," as we love to call him--and the +epithet now by right appertains to his name--we shall now say simply +this, that he has produced many original pieces which will possess a +permanent place in the poetry of Scotland. Delicacy and grace +characterise his happiest compositions; some of them are beautiful in a +cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy; and others +breathe the simplest and purest pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast +or inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times his pen drops touches +of light on minute objects, that till then had slumbered in the shade, +but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, as component and +characteristic parts of our lowland landscapes. Let others labour away +at long poems, and for their pains get neglect or oblivion; Moir is seen +as he is in many short ones, which the Scottish Muses may "not willingly +let die." And that must be a pleasant thought when it touches the heart +of the mildest and most modest of men, as he sits by his family-fire, +beside those most dear to him, after a day past in smoothing, by his +skill, the bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness to health, in +alleviating sufferings that cannot be cured, or in mitigating the pangs +of death. + +Pollok had great original genius strong in a sacred sense of religion. +Such of his short compositions as we have seen, written in early youth, +were but mere copies of verses, and gave little or no promise of power. +But his soul was working in the green moorland solitudes round about his +father's house, in the wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and +Mearns, separated by thee, O Yearn! sweetest of pastoral streams that +murmur through the west, asunder those broomy and birken banks and +trees, where the grey-linties sing, is formed the clear junction of the +rills, issuing, the one from the hill-spring above the Black-waterfall, +and the other from the Brother-loch. The poet in prime of youth (he died +in his twenty-seventh year) embarked on a high and adventurous emprise, +and voyaged the illimitable Deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in +a holy pride felt them to be broad, as they hovered over the dark abyss. +"The Course of Time," for so young a man, was a vast achievement. The +book he loved best was the Bible, and his style is often Scriptural. Of +our poets, he had studied, we believe, but Milton, Young, and Byron. He +had much to learn in composition; and, had he lived, he would have +looked almost with humiliation on much that is at present eulogised by +his devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is there, though often +dimly developed, and many passages there are, and long ones too, that +heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine enthusiasm. + + "His ears he closed, to listen to the strains + That Sion's bards did consecrate of old, + And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon." + +Let us fly again to England, and leaving for another hour Shelley and +Hunt and Keats, and Croly and Milman and Heber, and Sterling and Milnes +and Tennyson, with some younger aspirants of our own day; and Gray, +Collins, and Goldsmith, and lesser stars of that constellation, let us +alight on the verge of that famous era when the throne was occupied by +Dryden, and then by Pope--searching still for a Great Poem. Did either +of them ever write one? No--never. Sir Walter says finely of glorious +John, + + "And Dryden in immortal strain, + Had raised the Table Round again, + But that a ribald King and Court, + Bade him play on to make them sport, + The world defrauded of the high design, + Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line." + +But why, we ask, did Dryden suffer a ribald king and court to debase and +degrade him, and strangle his immortal strain? Because he was poor! But +could he not have died of cold, thirst, and hunger--of starvation? Have +not millions of men and women done so, rather than sacrifice their +conscience? And shall we grant to a great poet that indulgence which +many a humble hind would have flung with scorn in our teeth, and rather +than have availed himself of it, faced the fagot, or the halter, or the +stake set within the sea-flood? But it is satisfactory to know that +Dryden, though still glorious John, was not a Great Poet. He was seldom +visited by the pathetic or the sublime--else had his genius held fast +its integrity--been ribald to no ribald--and indignantly kicked to the +devil both court and king. But what a master of reasoning in verse! And +of verse what a volume of fire! "The long-resounding march and energy +divine." Pope, again, with the common frailties of humanity, was an +ethereal creature--and played on his own harp with finest taste, and +wonderful execution. We doubt, indeed, if such a finished style has ever +been heard since from any one of the King Apollo's musicians. His +versification may be monotonous, but without a sweet and potent charm +only to ears of leather. That his poetry has no passion is the creed of +critics "of Cambyses' vein;" "Heloise" and "The Unfortunate Lady" have +made the world's heart to throb. As for Imagination, we shall continue +till such time as that Faculty has been distinguished from Fancy, to see +it shining in "The Rape of the Lock," with a lambent lustre; if high +intellect be not dominant in his "Epistles" and his "Essay on Man," you +will look for it in vain in the nineteenth century; all other Satires +seem complimentary to their victims when read after "The Dunciad"--and +could a man, whose heart was not heroic, have given us another Iliad, +which, all unlike as it is to the Greek, may be read with transport, +even after Homer's? + +We have not yet, it would seem, found the object of our search--a Great +Poem. Let us extend our quest into the Elizabethan age. We are at once +sucked into the theatre. With the whole drama of that age we are +conversant and familiar; but whether we understand it or not, is another +question. It aspires to give representations of Human Life in all its +infinite varieties, and inconsistencies, and conflicts, and turmoils +produced by the Passions. Time and space are not suffered to interpose +their unities between the Poet and his vast design, who, provided he can +satisfy the spectators by the pageant of their own passions moving +across the stage, may exhibit there whatever he wills from life, death, +or the grave. 'Tis a sublime conception--and sometimes has given rise to +sublime performance; but has been crowned with full success in no hands +but those of Shakespeare. Great as was the genius of many of the +dramatists of that age, not one of them has produced a Great Tragedy. A +Great Tragedy indeed! What! without harmony or proportion in the +plan--with all puzzling perplexities and inextricable entanglements in +the plot--and with disgust and horror in the catastrophe? As for the +characters, male and female--saw ye ever such a set of swaggerers and +rantipoles as they often are in one act--Methodist preachers and demure +young women at a love-feast in another--absolute heroes and heroines of +high calibre in a third--and so on, changing and shifting name and +nature, according to the laws of the Romantic Drama forsooth--but in +hideous violation of the laws of nature--till the curtain falls over a +heap of bodies huddled together, without regard to age or sex, as if +they had been overtaken in liquor. We admit that there is gross +exaggeration in the picture; but there is always truth in a tolerable +caricature--and this is one of a tragedy of Webster, Ford, or Massinger. + +It is satisfactory to know that the good sense, and good feeling, and +good taste of the people of England, will not submit to be belaboured by +editors and critics into unqualified admiration of such enormities. The +Old English Drama lies buried in the dust with all its tragedies. Never +more will they move across the stage. Scholars read them, and often with +delight, admiration, and wonder; for genius is a strange spirit, and has +begotten strange children on the body of the Tragic Muse. In the closet +it is pleasant to peruse the countenances, at once divine, human, and +brutal, of the incomprehensible monsters--to scan their forms, powerful +though misshapen--to watch their movements, vigorous though +distorted--and to hold up one's hands in amazement on hearing them not +seldom discourse most excellent music. But we should shudder to see them +on the stage enacting the parts of men and women--and call for the +manager. All has been done for the least deformed of the tragedies of +the Old English Drama that humanity could do, enlightened by the +Christian religion; but nature has risen up to vindicate herself against +such misrepresentations as they afford; and sometimes finds it all she +can do to stomach Shakespeare. + +But the monstrosities we have mentioned are not the worst to be found in +the Old English Drama. Others there are that, till civilised Christendom +fall back into barbarous Heathendom, must for ever be unendurable to +human ears, whether long or short--we mean the obscenities. That sin is +banished for ever from our literature. The poet who might dare to commit +it, would be immediately hooted out of society, and sent to roost in +barns among the owls. But the Old English Drama is stuffed with +ineffable pollutions; and full of passages that the street-walker would +be ashamed to read in the stews. We have not seen that volume of the +Family Dramatists which contains Massinger. But if made fit for female +reading, his plays must be mutilated and mangled out of all likeness to +the original wholes. To free them even from the grossest impurities, +without destroying their very life, is impossible; and it would be far +better to make a selection of fine passages, after the manner of Lamb's +Specimens--but with a severer eye--than to attempt in vain to preserve +their character as plays, and at the same time to expunge all that is +too disgusting, perhaps, to be dangerous to boys and virgins. Full-grown +men may read what they choose--perhaps without suffering from it; but +the modesty of the young clear eye must not be profaned--and we cannot, +for our own part, imagine a _Family_ Old English Dramatist. + +And here again bursts upon us the glory of the Greek Drama. The +Athenians were as wicked, as licentious, as polluted, and much more so, +we hope, than ever were the English; but they debased not with their +gross vices their glorious tragedies. Nature in her higher moods alone, +and most majestic aspects, trod their stage. Buffoons, and ribalds, and +zanies, and "rude indecent clowns," were confined to comedies; and even +there they too were idealised, and resembled not the obscene samples +that so often sicken us in the midst of "the acting of a dreadful thing" +in our old theatre. They knew that "with other ministrations, thou, O +Nature!" teachest thy handmaid Art to soothe the souls of thy +congregated children--congregated to behold her noble goings-on, and to +rise up and depart elevated by the transcendent pageant. The Tragic muse +was in those days a Priestess--tragedies were religious ceremonies; for +all the ancestral stories they celebrated were under consecration--the +spirit of the ages of heroes and demigods descended over the vast +amphitheatre; and thus were Aeschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, the +guardians of the national character, which, we all know, was, in spite +of all it suffered under, for ever passionately enamoured of all the +forms of greatness. + +Forgive us--spirit of Shakespeare! that seem'st to animate that +high-brow'd bust--if indeed we have offered any show of irreverence to +thy name and nature; for now, in the noiselessness of midnight, to our +awed but loving hearts do both appear divine! Forgive us--we beseech +thee--that on going to bed--which we are just about to do--we may be +able to compose ourselves to sleep--and dream of Miranda and Imogen, and +Desdemona and Cordelia. Father revered of that holy family! by the +strong light in the eyes of Innocence we beseech thee to forgive +us!--Ha! what old ghost art thou--clothed in the weeds of more than +mortal misery--mad, mad, mad--come and gone--was it Lear? + +We have found then, it seems--at last--the object of our search--a Great +Poem--ay--four Great Poems--"Lear"--"Hamlet"--"Othello"--"Macbeth." And +was the revealer of those high mysteries in his youth a deer-stealer in +the parks of Warwickshire, a linkboy in London streets? And died he +before his grand climacteric in a dimmish sort of a middle-sized +tenement in Stratford-on-Avon, of a surfeit from an overdose of +home-brewed humming ale? Such is the tradition. + +Had we a daughter--an only daughter--we should wish her to be like + + "Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb." + +In that one line has Wordsworth done an unappreciable service to +Spenser. He has improved upon a picture in "The Fairy Queen"--making +"the beauty still more beauteous," by a single touch of a pencil dipped +in moonlight, or in sunlight tender as Luna's smiles. Through Spenser's +many nine-lined stanzas the lovely lady glides along her own world--and +our eyes follow in delight the sinless wanderer. In Wordsworth's one +single celestial line we behold her neither in time nor space--an +immortal omnipresent idea at one gaze occupying the soul. + +And is not "The Fairy Queen" a Great Poem? Like "The Excursion," it is +at all events a long one--"slow to begin, and never ending." That fire +was a fortunate one in which so many books of it were burnt. If no such +fortunate fire ever took place, then let us trust that the moths +drillingly devoured the manuscript--and that 'tis all safe. Purgatorial +pains--unless indeed they should prove eternal--are insufficient +punishment for the impious man who invented Allegory. If you have got +anything to say, sir, out with it--in one or other of the many forms of +speech employed naturally by creatures to whom God has given the gift of +"discourse of reason." But beware of misspending your life in perversely +attempting to make shadow substance, and substance shadow. Wonderful +analogies there are among all created things, material and +immaterial--and millions so fine that Poets alone discern them--and +sometimes succeed in showing them in words. Most spiritual region of +poetry--and to be visited at rare times and seasons--nor all life long +ought bard there to abide. For a while let the veil of Allegory be drawn +before the face of Truth, that the light of its beauty may shine through +it with a softened charm--dim and drear--like the moon gradually +obscuring in its own halo on a dewy night. Such air-woven veil of +Allegory is no human invention. The soul brought it with her when + + "Trailing clouds of glory she did come + From heaven, which is her home." + +Sometimes, now and then, in moods strange and high--obey the bidding of +the soul--and allegorise; but live not all life-long in an +Allegory--even as Spenser did--Spenser the divine; for with all his +heavenly genius--and brighter visions never met mortal eyes than +his--what is he but a "dreamer among men," and what may save that +wondrous poem from the doom of oblivion? + +To this conclusion must we come at last--that in the English language +there is but one Great Poem. What! Not "Lear," Hamlet, "Othello," +"Macbeth?"--"PARADISE LOST." + + + + +INCH-CRUIN. + + +Oh! for the plumes and pinions of the poised Eagle, that we might now +hang over Loch Lomond and all her isles! From what point of the compass +would we come on our rushing vans? Up from Leven-banks, or down from +Glenfalloch, or over the hill of Luss, or down to Rowardennan; and then +up and away, as the chance currents in the sky might lead, with the +Glory of Scotland, blue, bright, and breaking into foam, thousands on +thousands of feet below, with every Island distinct in the peculiar +beauty of its own youthful or ancient woods? For remember, that with the +eagle's wing we must also have the eagle's eye; and all the while our +own soul to look with such lens and such iris, and with its own endless +visions to invest the pinnacles of all the far-down ruins of church or +castle, encompassed with the umbrage of undying oaks. + +We should as soon think of penning a critique on "Milton's Paradise +Lost" as on Loch Lomond. People there are in the world, doubtless, who +think them both too long; but to our minds, neither the one nor the +other exceeds the due measure by a leaf or a league. Toil may, if it so +pleaseth you, think it, in a mist, a Mediterranean Sea. For then you +behold many miles of tumbling waves, with no land beyond; and were a +ship to rise up in full sail, she would seem voyaging on to some distant +shore. Or you may look on it as a great arm only of the ocean, stretched +out into the mountainous mainland. Or say, rather, some river of the +first order, that shows to the sun Islands never ceasing to adorn his +course for a thousand leagues, in another day, about to be lost in the +dominion of the sea. Or rather look on it as it is, as Loch Lomond, the +Loch of a hundred Isles--of shores laden with all kinds of beauty, +throughout the infinite succession of bays and harbours--huts and +houses sprinkled over the sides of its green hills, that ever and anon +send up a wider smoke from villages clustering round the church-tower +beneath the wooded rocks--halls half-hidden in groves, for centuries the +residence of families proud of their Gaelic blood--forest that, however +wide be the fall beneath the axe when their hour is come, yet, far as +the eye can reach, go circling round the mountain's base, inhabited by +the roe and the red-deer;--but we have got into a sentence that +threatens to be without end--a dim, dreary, sentence, in the middle of +which the very writer himself gets afraid of ghosts, and fervently prays +for the period when he shall be again chatting with the reader on a +shady seat, under his own paragraph and his own pear-tree. + +Oh! for our admirable friend Mr Smith of Jordanhill's matchless cutter, +to glide through among the glittering archipelago! But we must be +contented with a somewhat clumsy four-oared barge, wide and deep enough +for a cattle ferry-boat. This morning's sunrise found us at the mouth of +the Goblin's Cave on Loch Katrine, and among Lomond's lovely isles shall +sunset leave us among the last glimmer of the softened gold. To which of +all those lovely isles shall we drift before the wind on the small +heaving and breaking waves? To Inch-Murrin, where the fallow-deer +repose--or to the yew-shaded Inch-Caillach, the cemetery of +Clan-Alpin--the Holy Isle of Nuns? One hushing afternoon hour may yet be +ours on the waters--another of the slowly-walking twilight--that time +which the gazing spirit is too wrapt to measure, while "sinks the +Day-star in the ocean's bed"--and so on to midnight, the reign of +silence and shadow, the resplendent Diana with her hair-halo, and all +her star-nymphs, rejoicing round their Queen. Let the names of all +objects be forgotten--and imagination roam over the works of nature, as +if they lay in their primeval majesty, without one trace of man's +dominion. Slow-sailing Heron, that cloudlike seekest thy nest on yonder +lofty mass of pines--to us thy flight seems the very symbol of a long +lone life of peace. As thou foldest thy wide wings on the topmost bough, +beneath thee tower the unguarded Ruins, where many generations sleep. +Onwards thou floatest like a dream, nor changest thy gradually +descending course for the Eagle, that, far above thy line of travel, +comes rushing unwearied from his prey in distant Isles of the sea. The +Osprey! off--off--to Inch-Loning--or the dark cliffs of Glenfalloch, +many leagues away, which he will reach almost like a thought! Close your +eyes but for a moment--and when you look again, where is the +Cloud-Cleaver now? Gone in the sunshine, and haply seated in his eyrie +on Ben Lomond's head. + +But amidst all this splendour and magnificence, our eyes are drawn +against our will, and by a sort of sad fascination which we cannot +resist, along the glittering and dancing waves, towards the melancholy +shores of Inch-Cruin, the Island of the Afflicted. Beautiful is it by +nature, with its bays, and fields, and woods, as any isle that sees its +shadow in the deeps; but human sorrows have steeped it in eternal gloom, +and terribly is it haunted to our imagination. Here no woodman's hut +peeps from the glade--here are not seen the branching antlers of the +deer moving among the boughs that stir not--no place of peace is this +where the world-wearied hermit sits penitent in his cell, and prepares +his soul for Heaven. Its inhabitants are a woeful people, and all its +various charms are hidden from their eyes, or seen in ghastly +transfiguration; for here, beneath the yew-tree's shade, sit moping, or +roam about with rueful lamentation, the soul-distracted and the insane! +Ay--these sweet and pleasant murmurs break round a Lunatic Asylum! And +the shadows that are now and then seen among the umbrage are laughing or +weeping in the eclipse of reason, and may never know again aught of the +real character of this world, to which, exiled as they are from it, they +are yet bound by the ties of a common nature that, though sorely +deranged, are not wholly broken, and still separate them by an awful +depth of darkness from the beasts that perish. + +Thither love, yielding reluctantly at last to despair, has consented +that the object on which all its wise solicitudes had for years been +unavailably bestowed both night and day, should be rowed over, perhaps +at midnight, and when asleep, and left there with beings like itself, +all dimly conscious of their doom. To many such the change may often +bring little or no heed--for outward things may have ceased to impress, +and they may be living in their own rueful world, different from all +that we hear or behold. To some it may seem that they have been +spirited away to another state of existence--beautiful, indeed, and fair +to see, with all those lovely trees and shadows of trees; but still a +miserable, a most miserable place, without one face they ever saw +before, and haunted by glaring eyes that shoot forth fear, suspicion, +and hatred. Others, again, there are, who know well the misty head of +Ben Lomond, which, with joyful pleasure-parties set free from the city, +they had in other years exultingly scaled, and looked down, perhaps, in +a solemn pause of their youthful ecstasy, on the far-off and melancholy +Inch-Cruin! Thankful are they for such a haven at last--for they are +remote from the disturbance of the incomprehensible life that bewildered +them, and from the pity of familiar faces that was more than could be +borne. + +So let us float upon our oars behind the shadow of this rock, nor +approach nearer the sacred retreat of misery. Let us not gaze too +intently into the glades, for we might see some figure there who wished +to be seen nevermore, and recognise in the hurrying shadow the living +remains of a friend. How profound the hush! No sigh--no groan--no +shriek--no voice--no tossing of arms--no restless chafing of feet! God +in mercy has for a while calmed the congregation of the afflicted, and +the Isle is overspread with a sweet Sabbath-silence. What medicine for +them like the breath of heaven--the dew--the sunshine--and the murmur of +the wave! Nature herself is their kind physician, and sometimes not +unfrequently brings them by her holy skill back to the world of clear +intelligence and serene affection. They listen calmly to the blessed +sound of the oar that brings a visit of friends--to sojourn with them +for a day--or to take them away to another retirement, where they, in +restored reason, may sit around the board, nor fear to meditate during +the midnight watches on the dream, which, although dispelled, may in all +its ghastliness return. There was a glorious burst of sunshine! And of +all the Lomond Isles, what one rises up in the sudden illumination so +bright as Inch-Cruin? + +Methinks we see sitting in his narrow and low-roofed cell, careless of +food, dress, sleep, or shelter alike, him who in the opulent mart of +commerce was one of the most opulent, and devoted heart and soul to show +and magnificence. His house was like a palace with its pictured and +mirrored walls, and the nights wore away to dance, revelry, and song. +Fortune poured riches at his feet, which he had only to gather up; and +every enterprise in which he took part prospered beyond the reach of +imagination. But all at once--as if lightning had struck the dome of his +prosperity, and earthquake let down its foundations, it sank, crackled, +and disappeared--and the man of a million was a houseless, infamous, and +bankrupt beggar. In one day his proud face changed into the ghastly +smiling of an idiot--he dragged his limbs in paralysis--and slavered out +unmeaning words foreign to all the pursuits in which his active +intellect had for many years been plunged. All his relations--to whom it +was known he had never shown kindness--were persons in humble condition. +Ruined creditors we do not expect to be very pitiful, and people asked +what was to become of him till he died. A poor creature, whom he had +seduced and abandoned to want, but who had succeeded to a small property +on the death of a distant relation, remembered her first, her only love, +when all the rest of the world were willing to forget him; and she it +was who had him conveyed thither, herself sitting in the boat with her +arm round the unconscious idiot, who now vegetates on the charity of her +whom he betrayed. For fifteen years he has continued to exist in the +same state, and you may pronounce his name on the busy Exchange of the +city where he flourished and fell, and haply the person you speak to +shall have entirely forgotten it. + +The evils genius sometimes brings to its possessor have often been said +and sung, perhaps with exaggerations, but not always without truth. It +is found frequently apart from prudence and principle; and in a world +constituted like ours, how can it fail to reap a harvest of misery or +death? A fine genius, and even a high, had been bestowed on One who is +now an inmate of that cottage-cell, peering between these two rocks. At +College he outstripped all his compeers by powers equally versatile and +profound--the first both in intellect and in imagination. He was a poor +man's son--the only son of a working carpenter--and his father intended +him for the church. But the youth soon felt that to him the trammels of +a strict faith would be unbearable, and he lived on from year to year, +uncertain what profession to choose. Meanwhile his friends, all inferior +to him in talents and acquirements, followed the plain, open, and +beaten path, that leads sooner or later to respectability and +independence. He was left alone in his genius, useless, although +admired--while those who had looked in high hopes on his early career, +began to have their fears that they might never be realised. His first +attempts to attract the notice of the public, although not absolute +failures--for some of his compositions, both in prose and verse, were +indeed beautiful--were not triumphantly successful, and he began to +taste the bitterness of disappointed ambition. His wit and colloquial +talents carried him into the society of the dissipated and the +licentious; and, before he was aware of the fact, he had got the +character of all others the most humiliating--that of a man who knew not +how to estimate his own worth, nor to preserve it from pollution. He +found himself silently and gradually excluded from the higher circle +which he had once adorned, and sunk inextricably into a lower grade of +social life. His whole habits became loose and irregular; his studies +were pursued but by fits and starts; his knowledge, instead of keeping +pace with that of the times, became clouded and obscure, and even +diminished; his dress was meaner; his manners hurried, and reckless, and +wild, and ere long he became a slave to drunkenness, and then to every +low and degrading vice. + +His father died, it was said, of a broken heart--for to him his son had +been all in all, and the unhappy youth felt that the death lay at his +door. At last, shunned by most--tolerated but by a few for the sake of +other times--domiciled in the haunts of infamy--loaded with a heap of +paltry debts, and pursued by the hounds of the law, the fear of a prison +drove him mad, and his whole mind was utterly and hopelessly overthrown. +A few of the friends of his boyhood raised a subscription in his +behoof--and within the gloom of these woods he has been shrouded for +many years, but not unvisited once or twice a summer by some one, who +knew, loved, and admired him in the morning of that genius that long +before its meridian brightness had been so fatally eclipsed. + +And can it be in cold and unimpassioned words like these that we thus +speak of Thee and thy doom, thou Soul of fire, and once the brightest of +the free, privileged by nature to walk along the mountain-ranges, and +mix their spirits with the stars! Can it be that all thy glorious +aspirations, by thyself forgotten, have no dwelling-place in the memory +of one who loved thee so well, and had his deepest affection so +profoundly returned! Thine was a heart once tremblingly alive to all the +noblest and finest sympathies of our nature, and the humblest human +sensibilities became beautiful when tinged by the light of thy +imagination. Thy genius invested the most ordinary objects with a charm +not their own; and the vision it created thy lips were eloquent to +disclose. What although thy poor old father died, because by thy hand +all his hopes were shivered, and for thy sake poverty stripped even the +coverlet from his dying-bed--yet we feel as if some dreadful destiny, +rather than thy own crime, blinded thee to his fast decay, and closed +thine ears in deafness to his beseeching prayer. Oh! charge not to +creatures such as we all the fearful consequences of our misconduct and +evil ways! We break hearts we would die to heal--and hurry on towards +the grave those whom to save we would leap into the devouring fire. Many +wondered in their anger that thou couldst be so callous to the old man's +grief--and couldst walk tearless at his coffin. The very night of the +day he was buried thou wert among thy wild companions, in a house of +infamy, close to the wall of the churchyard. Was not that enough to tell +us all that disease was in thy brain, and that reason, struggling with +insanity, had changed sorrow to despair. But perfect forgiveness-- +forgiveness made tender by profoundest pity--was finally extended to +thee by all thy friends--frail and erring like thyself in many things, +although not so fatally misled and lost, because in the mystery of +Providence not so irresistibly tried. It seemed as if thou hadst +offended the Guardian Genius, who, according to the old philosophy which +thou knewest so well, is given to every human being at his birth; and +that then the angel left thy side, and Satan strove to drag thee to +perdition. And hath any peace come to thee--a youth no more--but in what +might have been the prime of manhood, bent down, they say, to the +ground, with a head all floating with silver hairs--hath any peace come +to thy distracted soul in these woods, over which there now seems again +to brood a holy horror? Yes--thy fine dark eyes are not wholly without +intelligence as they look on the sun, moon, and stars; although all +their courses seem now confused to thy imagination, once regular and +ordered in their magnificence before that intellect which science +claimed as her own. The harmonies of nature are not all lost on thy ear, +poured forth throughout all seasons, over the world of sound and sight. +Glimpses of beauty startle thee as thou wanderest along the shores of +thy prison-isle; and that fine poetical genius, not yet extinguished +altogether, although faint and flickering, gives vent to something like +snatches of songs, and broken elegies, that seem to wail over the ruins +of thy own soul! Such peace as ever visits them afflicted as thou art, +be with thee in cell or on shore; nor lost to Heaven will be the wild +moanings of--to us--thy unintelligible prayers! + +But hark to the spirit-stirring voice of the bugle scaling the sky, and +leaping up and down in echoes among the distant mountains! Such a strain +animates the voltigeur, skirmishing in front of the line of battle, or +sending flashes of sudden death from the woods. Alas for him who now +deludes his yet high heart with a few notes of the music that so often +was accompanied by his sword waving on to glory! Unappalled was he ever +in the whizzing and hissing fire--nor did his bold broad breast ever +shrink from the bayonet, that with the finished fencer's art he has +often turned aside when red with death. In many of the pitched battles +of the Spanish campaigns his plume was conspicuous over the dark green +lines, that, breaking asunder in fragments like those of the flowing +sea, only to re-advance over the bloody fields, cleared the ground that +was to be debated between the great armaments. Yet in all such desperate +service he never received one single wound. But on a mid-day march, as +he was gaily singing a love-song, the sun smote him to the very brain, +and from that moment his right hand grasped the sword no more. + +Not on the face of all the earth--or of all the sea--is there a spot of +profounder peace than that isle that has long been his abode. But to him +all the scene is alive with the pomp of war. Every far-off precipice is +a fort, that has its own Spanish name--and the cloud above seems to his +eyes the tricolor, or the flag of his own victorious country. War, that +dread game that nations play at, is now to the poor insane soldier a +mere child's pastime, from which sometimes he himself will turn with a +sigh or a smile. For sense assails him in his delirium, for a moment and +no more; and he feels that he is far away, and for ever, from all his +companions in glory, in an asylum that must be left but for the grave! +Perhaps in such moments he may have remembered the night, when at +Badajos he led the forlorn hope; but even forlorn hope now hath he none, +and he sinks away back into his delusions, at which even his brother +sufferers smile--so foolish does the restless campaigner seem to these +men of peace! + +Lo! a white ghost-like figure, slowly issuing from the trees, and +sitting herself down on a stone, with face fixed on the waters! Now she +is so perfectly still, that had we not seen her motion thither, she and +the rock would have seemed but one! Somewhat fantastically dressed, even +in her apparent despair. Were we close to her, we should see a face yet +beautiful, beneath hair white as snow. Her voice too, but seldom heard, +is still sweet and low; and sometimes, when all are asleep, or at least +silent, she begins at midnight to sing! She yet touches the guitar--an +instrument in fashion in Scotland when she led the fashion--with +infinite grace and delicacy--and the songs she loves best are those in a +foreign tongue. For more than thirty years hath the unfortunate lady +come to the water's edge daily, and hour after hour continue to sit +motionless on that self-same stone, looking down into the loch. Her +story is now almost like a dim tradition from other ages, and the +history of those who come here often fades away into nothing. Everywhere +else they are forgotten--here there are none who can remember. Who once +so beautiful as the "Fair Portuguese?" It was said at that time that she +was a Nun--but the sacred veil was drawn aside by the hand of love, and +she came to Scotland with her deliverer! Yes, her deliverer! He +delivered her from the gloom--often the peaceful gloom that hovers round +the altar of Superstition--and after a few years of love and life and +joy--she sat where you now see her sitting, and the world she had +adorned moved on in brightness and in music as before! Since there has +to her been so much suffering--was there on her part no sin? No--all +believed her to be guiltless, except one, whose jealousy would have seen +falsehood lurking in an angel's eyes; but she was utterly deserted; and +being in a strange country, worse than an orphan, her mind gave way; for +say not--oh say not--that innocence can always stand against shame and +despair! The hymns she sings at midnight are hymns to the Virgin; but +all her songs are songs about love, and chivalry, and knights that went +crusading to the Holy Land. He who brought her from another sanctuary +into the one now before us, has been dead many years. He perished in +shipwreck--and 'tis thought that she sits there gazing down into the +loch, as on the place where he sank or was buried; for when told that he +was drowned, she shrieked, and made the sign of the cross--and since +that long-ago day that stone has in all weathers been her constant seat. + +Away we go westwards--like fire-worshippers devoutly gazing on the +setting sun. And another isle seems to shoot across our path, separated +suddenly, as if by magic, from the mainland. How beautiful, with its +many crescents, the low-lying shores, carrying here and there a single +tree quite into the water, and with verdant shallows guarding the lonely +seclusion even from the keel of canoe! Round and round we row, but not a +single landing-place. Shall we take each of us a fair burthen in his +arms, and bear it to that knoll, whispering and quivering through the +twilight with a few birches whose stems glitter like silver pillars in +the shade? No--let us not disturb the silent people, now donning their +green array for nightly revelries. It is the "Isle of Fairies," and on +that knoll hath the fishermen often seen their Queen sitting on a +throne, surrounded by myriads of creatures no taller than harebells; one +splash of the oar--and all is vanished. There, it is said, lives among +the Folk of Peace, the fair child, who, many years ago, disappeared from +her parents' shieling at Inversnayde, and whom they vainly wept over as +dead. One evening she had floated away by herself in a small boat--while +her parents heard, without fear, the clank--duller and duller--of the +oars, no longer visible in the distant moonshine. In an hour the +returning vessel touched the beech--but no child was to be seen--and +they listened in vain for the music of the happy creature's songs. For +weeks the loch rolled and roared like the sea--nor was the body found +anywhere lying on the shore. Long, long afterwards, some little white +bones were interred in Christian burial, for the parents believed them +to be the remains of their child--all that had been left by the bill of +the raven. But not so thought many dwellers along the mountain-shores--for +had not her very voice been often heard by the shepherds, when the +unseen flight of Fairies sailed singing along up the solitary +Glenfalloch, away over the moors of Tynedrum, and down to the sweet +Dalmally, where the shadow of Cruachan darkens the old ruins of +melancholy Kilchurn. The lost child's parents died in their old age--but +she, 'tis said, is unchanged in shape and features--the same fair thing +she was the evening that she disappeared, only a shade of sadness is on +her pale face, as if she were pining for the sound of human voices, and +the gleam of the peat-fire of the shieling. Ever, when the Fairy-court +is seen for a moment beneath the glimpses of the moon, she is sitting by +the side of the gracious Queen. Words of might there are, that if +whispered at right season, would yet recall her from the shadowy world, +to which she has been spirited away; but small sentinels stand at their +stations all round the isle, and at nearing of human breath, a shrill +warning is given from sedge and water-lily, and like dewdrops melt away +the phantoms, while, mixed with peals of little laughter, overhead is +heard the winnowing of wings. For the hollow of the earth, and the +hollow of the air, is their Invisible Kingdom; and when they touch the +herbage or flowers of this earth of ours, whose lonely places they love, +then only are they revealed to human eyes--at all times else to our +senses unexistent as dreams! + + + + +A DAY AT WINDERMERE. + + +Old and gouty, we are confined to our chair; and occasionally, during an +hour of rainless sunshine, are wheeled by female hands along the +gravel-walks of our Policy, an unrepining and philosophical +valetudinarian. Even the Crutch is laid up in ordinary, and is encircled +with cobwebs. A monstrous spider has there set up his rest; and our +still study ever and anon hearkens to the shrill buzz of some poor fly +expiring between those formidable forceps--just as so many human +ephemerals have breathed their last beneath the bite of his indulgent +master. 'Tis pleasure to look at Domitian--so we love to call +him--sallying from the centre against a wearied wasp, lying, like a +silkworm, circumvoluted in the inextricable toils, and then seizing the +sinner by the nape of the neck, like Christopher with a Cockney, to see +the emperor haul him away into the charnel-house. But we have often less +savage recreations--such as watching our bee-hives when about to send +forth colonies--feeding our pigeons, a purple people that dazzle the +daylight--gathering roses as they choke our small chariot-wheels with +their golden orbs--eating grapes out of vine-leaf-draperied baskets, +beautifying beneath the gentle fingers of the Gentle into fairy network +graceful as the gossamer--drinking elder-flower frontignac from +invisible glasses, so transparent in its yellowness seems the liquid +radiance--at one moment eyeing a page of "Paradise Lost," and at another +of "Paradise Regained;" for what else is the face of her who often +visiteth our Eden, and whose coming and whose going is ever like a +heavenly dream? Then laying back our head upon the cushion of our +triumphal car, and with half-shut eyes, subsiding slowly into haunted +sleep or slumber, with our fine features up to heaven, a saint-like +image, such as Raphael loved to paint, or Flaxman to imbue with the +soul of stillness in the life-hushed marble. Such, dearest reader, are +some of our pastimes--and so do we contrive to close our ears to the +sound of the scythe of Saturn, ceaselessly sweeping over the earth, and +leaving, at every stride of the mower, a swathe more rueful than ever +after a night of shipwreck did strew with ghastliness a lee sea-shore! + +Thus do we make a virtue of necessity--and thus contentment wreathes +with silk and velvet the prisoner's chains. Once were we--long, long +ago--restless as a sunbeam on the restless wave--rapid as a river that +seems enraged with all impediments, but all the while in passionate love + + "Doth make sweet music with th' enamell'd stones"-- + +strong as a steed let loose from Arab's tent in the oasis to slake his +thirst at the desert well--fierce in our harmless joy as a red-deer +belling on the hills--tameless as the eagle sporting in the storm--gay +as the "dolphin on a tropic sea"--"mad as young bulls"--and wild as a +whole wilderness of adolescent lions. But now--alas! and alack-a-day! +the sunbeam is but a patch of sober verdure--the river is changed into a +canal--the "desert-born" is foundered--the red-deer is slow as an old +ram--the eagle has forsook his cliff and his clouds, and hops among the +gooseberry bushes--the dolphin has degenerated into a land +tortoise--without danger now might a very child take the bull by the +horns--and though something of a lion still, our roar is, like that of +the nightingale, "most musical, most melancholy"--and, as we attempt to +shake our mane, your grandmother--fair peruser--cannot choose but weep. + +It speaks folios in favour of our philanthropy, to know that, in our own +imprisonment, we love to see all life free as air. Would that by a word +of ours we could clothe all human shoulders with wings! Would that by a +word of ours we could plume all human spirits with thoughts strong as +the eagle's pinions, that they might winnow their way into the empyrean! +Tories! Yes! we are Tories. Our faith is in the Divine right of +kings--but easy, my boys, easy--all free men are kings, and they hold +their empire from heaven. That is our political--philosophical--moral-- +religious creed. In its spirit we have lived--and in its spirit we hope +to die--not on the scaffold like Sidney--no--no--no--not by any manner +of means like Sidney on the scaffold--but like ourselves, on a +hair-mattress above a feather-bed, our head decently sunk in three +pillows and one bolster, and our frame stretched out unagitatedly +beneath a white counterpane. But meanwhile--though almost as +unlocomotive as the dead in body--there is perpetual motion in our +minds. Sleep is one thing, and stagnation is another--as is well known +to all eyes that have ever seen, by moonlight and midnight, the face of +Christopher North, or of Windermere. + +Windermere! Why, at this blessed moment we behold the beauty of all its +intermingling isles. There they are--all gazing down on their own +reflected loveliness in the magic mirror of the airlike water, just as +many a holy time we have seen them all agaze, when, with suspended oar +and suspended breath--no sound but a ripple on the Naiad's bow, and a +beating at our own heart--motionless in our own motionless bark--we +seemed to float midway down that beautiful abyss between the heaven +above and the heaven below, on some strange terrestrial scene composed +of trees and the shadows of trees, by the imagination made +indistinguishable to the eye, and as delight deepened into dreams, all +lost at last, clouds, groves, water, air, sky, in their various and +profound confusion of supernatural peace. But a sea-born breeze is on +Bowness Bay; all at once the lake is blue as the sky: and that +evanescent world is felt to have been but a vision. Like swans that had +been asleep in the airless sunshine, lo! where from every shady nook +appear the white-sailed pinnaces; for on merry Windermere--you must +know--every breezy hour has its own Regatta. + +But intending to be useful, we are becoming ornamental; of us it must +not be said, that + + "Pure description holds the place of sense"-- + +therefore, let us be simple but not silly, as plain as is possible +without being prosy, as instructive as is consistent with being +entertaining, a cheerful companion and a trusty guide. + +We shall suppose that you have left Kendal, and are on your way to +Bowness. Forget, as much as may be, all worldly cares and anxieties, and +let your hearts be open and free to all genial impulses about to be +breathed into them from the beautiful and sublime in nature. There is +no need of that foolish state of feeling called enthusiasm. You have but +to be happy; and by-and-by your happiness will grow into delight. The +blue mountains already set your imaginations at work; among those clouds +and mists you fancy many a magnificent precipice--and in the valleys +that sleep below, you image to yourselves the scenery of rivers and +lakes. The landscape immediately around gradually grows more and more +picturesque and romantic; and you feel that you are on the very borders +of Fairyland. The first smile of Windermere salutes your impatient eyes, +and sinks silently into your heart. You know not how beautiful it may +be--nor yet in what the beauty consists; but your finest sensibilities +to nature are touched--and a tinge of poetry, as from a rainbow, +overspreads that cluster of islands that seems to woo you to their still +retreats. And now + + "Wooded Winandermere, the river-lake," + +with all its bays and promontories, lies in the morning light serene as +a Sabbath, and cheerful as a Holiday; and you feel that there is +loveliness on this earth more exquisite and perfect than ever visited +your slumbers even in the glimpses of a dream. The first sight of such a +scene will be unforgotten to your dying day--for such passive +impressions are deeper than we can explain--our whole spiritual being is +suddenly awakened to receive them--and associations, swift as light, are +gathered into one Emotion of Beauty which shall be imperishable, and +which, often as memory recalls that moment, grows into genius, and vents +itself in appropriate expressions, each in itself a picture. Thus may +one moment minister to years; and the life-wearied heart of old age by +one delightful remembrance be restored to primal joy--the glory of the +past brought beamingly upon the faded present--and the world that is +obscurely passing away from our eyes re-illumined with the visions of +its early morn. The shows of nature are indeed evanescent, but their +spiritual influences are immortal; and from that grove now glowing in +the sunlight may your heart derive a delight that shall utterly perish +but in the grave. + +But now you are in the White Lion, and our advice to you--perhaps +unnecessary--is immediately to order breakfast. There are many +parlours--some with a charming prospect, and some without any prospect +at all; but remember that there are other people in the world besides +yourselves--and therefore, into whatever parlour you may be shown by a +pretty maid, be contented, and lose no time in addressing yourselves to +your repast. That over, be in no hurry to get on the Lake. Perhaps all +the boats are engaged--and Billy Balmer is at the Waterhead. So stroll +into the churchyard, and take a glance over the graves. Close to the +oriel-window of the church is one tomb over which one might meditate +half an autumnal day. Enter the church, and you will feel the beauty of +these fine lines in "The Excursion"-- + + "Not raised in nice proportions was the pile, + But large and massy; for duration built; + With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld + By naked rafters intricately cross'd + Like leafless underboughs, 'mid some thick grove, + All wither'd by the depth of shade above!" + +Go down to the low terrace-walk along the Bay. The Bay is in itself a +Lake, at all times cheerful with its scattered fleet, at anchor or under +weigh--its villas and cottages, each rejoicing in its garden or +orchard--its meadows mellowing to the reedy margin of the pellucid +water--its heath-covered boathouses--its own portion of the Isle called +Beautiful--and beyond that sylvan haunt, the sweet Furness Fells, with +gentle outline undulating in the sky, and among its spiral larches +showing, here and there, groves and copses of the old unviolated woods. +Yes, Bowness Bay is in itself a Lake; but how finely does it blend away, +through its screens of oak and sycamore trees, into a larger +Lake--another, yet the same--on whose blue bosom you see bearing down to +windward--for the morning breeze is born--many a tiny sail. It has the +appearance of a race. Yes--it is a race; and the Liverpoolian, as of +yore, is eating them all out of the wind, and without another tack will +make her anchorage. But hark--Music! 'Tis the Bowness Band playing "See +the conquering Hero comes!"--and our old friend has carried away the +gold cup from all competitors. + +Now turn your faces up the hill above the village school. That green +mount is what is called a--Station. The villagers are admiring a grove +of parasols, while you--the party--are admiring the village--with its +irregular roofs--white, blue, grey, green, brown, and black +walls--fruit-laden trees so yellow--its central church-tower--and +environing groves variously burnished by autumn. Saw ye ever banks and +braes and knolls so beautifully bedropt with human dwellings? There is +no solitude about Windermere. Shame on human nature were Paradise +uninhabited! Here, in amicable neighbourhood, are halls and huts--here +rises through groves the dome of the rich man's mansion--and there the +low roof of the poor man's cottage beneath its one single sycamore! Here +are hundreds of small properties hereditary in the same families for +hundreds of years--and never, never, O Westmoreland! may thy race of +_statesmen_ be extinct--nor the virtues that ennoble their humble +households! See, suddenly brought forth by sunshine from among the old +woods--and then sinking away into her usual unobtrusive serenity--the +lake-loving Rayrig, almost level, so it seems, with the water, yet +smiling over her own quiet bay from the grove-shelter of her pastoral +mound. Within her walls may peace ever dwell with piety--and the light +of science long blend with the lustre of the domestic hearth! Thence to +Calgarth is all one forest--yet glade-broken, and enlivened by open +uplands; so that the roamer, while he expects a night of umbrage, often +finds himself in the open day, beneath the bright blue bow of heaven +haply without a cloud. The eye travels delighted over the multitudinous +tree-tops--often dense as one single tree--till it rests, in sublime +satisfaction, on the far-off mountains, that lose not a woody character +till the tree-sprinkled pastures roughen into rocks--and rocks tower +into precipices where the falcons breed. But the lake will not suffer +the eye long to wander among the distant glooms. She wins us wholly to +herself--and restlessly and passionately for a while, but calmly and +affectionately at last, the heart embraces all her beauty, and wishes +that the vision might endure for ever, and that here our tents were +pitched--to be struck no more during our earthly pilgrimage. Imagination +lapses into a thousand moods. O for a fairy pinnace to glide and float +for aye over those golden waves! A hermit-cell on sweet Lady-Holm! A +sylvan shieling on Loughrig side! A nest in that nameless dell, which +sees but one small slip of heaven, and longs at night for the +reascending visit of its few loving stars! A dwelling open to all the +skyey influence on the mountain-brow, the darling of the rising or the +setting sun, and often seen by eyes in the lower world glittering +through the rainbow! + +All this seems a very imperfect picture indeed, or panorama of +Windermere, from the hill behind the school-house in the village of +Bowness. So, to put a stop to such nonsense, let us descend to the White +Lion--and inquire about Billy Balmer. Honest Billy has arrived from +Waterhead--seems tolerably steady--Mr Ullock's boats may be trusted--so +let us take a voyage of discovery on the lake. Let those who have reason +to think that they have been born to die a different death from +drowning, hoist a sail. We to-day shall feather an oar. Billy takes the +stroke--Mr William Garnet's at the helm--and "row, vassals, row, for the +pride of the Lowlands," is the choral song that accompanies the Naiad +out of the bay, and round the north end of the Isle called Beautiful, +under the wave-darkening umbrage of that ancient oak. And now we are in +the lovely straits between that Island and the mainland of Furness +Fells. The village has disappeared, but not melted away; for hark! the +Church-tower tolls ten--and see the sun is high in heaven. High, but not +hot--for the first September frosts chilled the rosy fingers of the morn +as she bathed them in the dews, and the air is cool as a cucumber. Cool +but bland--and as clear and transparent as a fine eye lighted up by a +good conscience. There were breezes in Bowness Bay--but here there are +none--or, if there be, they but whisper aloft in the tree-tops, and +ruffle not the water, which is calm as Louisa's breast. The small isles +here are but few in number--yet the best arithmetician of the party +cannot count them--in confusion so rich and rare do they blend their +shadows with those of the groves on the Isle called Beautiful, and on +the Furness Fells. A tide imperceptible to the eye drifts us on among +and above those beautiful reflections--that downward world of hanging +dreams! and ever and anon we beckon unto Billy gently to dip his oar, +that we may see a world destroyed and recreated in one moment of time. +Yes, Billy! thou art a poet--and canst work more wonders with thine oar +than could he with his pen who painted "heavenly Una with her milk-white +lamb," wandering by herself in Fairyland. How is it, pray, that our +souls are satiated with such beauty as this? Is it because 'tis +unsubstantial all--senseless, though fair--and in its evanescence +unsuited to the sympathies that yearn for the permanencies of breathing +life? Dreams are delightful only as delusions within the delusion of +this our mortal waking existence--one touch of what we call reality +dissolves them all; blissful though they may have been, we care not when +the bubble bursts--nay, we are glad again to return to our own natural +world, care-haunted though in its happiest moods it be--glad as if we +had escaped from glamoury; and, oh! beyond expression sweet it is once +more to drink the light of living eyes--the music of living lips--after +that preternatural hush that steeps the shadowy realms of the +imagination, whether stretching along a sunset-heaven or the mystical +imagery of earth and sky floating in the lustre of lake or sea. + +Therefore "row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Lowlands;" and as +rowing is a thirsty exercise, let us land at the Ferry, and each man +refresh himself with a horn of ale. + +There is not a prettier place on all Windermere than the Ferry-House, or +one better adapted for a honey-moon. You can hand your bride into a boat +almost out of the parlour window, and be off among the islands in a +moment, or into nook or bay where no prying eye, even through telescope +(a most unwarrantable instrument), can overlook your happiness; or you +can secrete yourselves, like buck and doe, among the lady-fern on +Furness Fells, where not a sunbeam can intrude on your sacred privacy, +and where you may melt down hours to moments, in chaste connubial bliss, +brightening futurity with plans of domestic enjoyment, like long lines +of lustre streaming across the lake. But at present, let us visit the +fort-looking building among the cliffs called The Station, and see how +Windermere looks as we front the east. Why, you would not know it to be +the same lake. The Isle called Beautiful, which heretofore had scarcely +seemed an isle, appearing to belong to one or other shore of the +mainland, from this point of view is an isle indeed, loading the lake +with a weight of beauty, and giving it an ineffable character of +richness which nowhere else does it possess; while the other lesser +isles, dropt "in nature's careless haste" between it and the Furness +Fells, connect it still with those lovely shores from which it floats a +short way apart, without being disunited--one spirit blending the whole +together within the compass of a fledgling's flight. Beyond these + + "Sister isles, that smile + Together like a happy family + Of beauty and of love," + +the eye meets the Rayrig woods, with but a gleam of water between, only +visible in sunshine, and is gently conducted by them up the hills of +Applethwaite, diversified with cultivated enclosures, "all green as +emerald" to their very summits, with all their pastoral and arable +grounds besprinkled with stately single trees, copses, or groves. On the +nearer side of these hills is seen, stretching far off to other lofty +regions--Hill-bell and High-street conspicuous over the rest--the long +vale of Troutbeck, with its picturesque cottages, in "numbers without +number numberless," and all its sable pines and sycamores--on the +further side, that most sylvan of all sylvan mountains, where lately the +Hemans warbled her native wood-notes wild in her poetic bower, fitly +called Dove-nest, and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and Rydal Head, +magnificent giants looking westward to the Langdale Pikes (here unseen), + + "The last that parley with the setting sun." + +Immediately in front, the hills are low and lovely, sloping with gentle +undulations down to the lake, here grove-girdled along all its shores. +The elm-grove that overshadows the Parsonage is especially +conspicuous--stately and solemn in a green old age--and though now +silent, in spring and early summer clamorous with rooks in love or +alarm, an ancient family, and not to be expelled from their hereditary +seats. Following the line of shore to the right, and turning your eyes +unwillingly away from the bright and breezy Belfield, they fall on the +elegant architecture of Storr's Hall, gleaming from a glade in the thick +woods, and still looking southward they see a serene series of the same +forest scenery, along the heights of Gillhead and Gummer's-How, till +Windermere is lost, apparently narrowed into a river, beyond Townhead +and Fellfoot, where the prospect is closed by a beaconed eminence +clothed with shadowy trees to the very base of the Tower. The points and +promontories jutting into the lake from these and the opposite +shores--which are of a humbler, though not tame character--are all +placed most felicitously; and as the lights and shadows keep shifting on +the water, assume endless varieties of relative position to the eye, so +that often during one short hour you might think you had been gazing on +Windermere with a kaleidoscopical eye, that had seemed to create the +beauty which in good truth is floating there for ever on the bosom of +nature. + +That description, perhaps, is not so very much amiss; but should you +think otherwise, be so good as give us a better: meanwhile let us +descend from The Station--and its stained windows--stained into setting +sunlight--frost and snow--the purpling autumn--and the first faint +vernal green--and re-embark at the Ferry-House pier. Berkshire Island is +fair--but we have always looked at it with an evil eye since unable to +weather it in our old schooner, one day when the Victory, on the same +tack, shot by us to windward like a salmon. But now we are half-way +between Storr's Point and Rawlinson's Nab--so, my dear Garnet, down with +the helm and let us put about (who is that catching crabs?) for a fine +front view of the Grecian edifice. It does honour to the genius of +Gandy--and say what people choose of a classic clime, the light of a +Westmoreland sky falls beautifully on that marble-like stone, which, +whether the heavens be in gloom or glory, "shines well where it stands," +and flings across the lake a majestic shadow. Methought there passed +along the lawn the image of one now in his tomb! The memory of that +bright day returns, when Windermere glittered with all her sails in +honour of the great Northern Minstrel, and of him the Eloquent, whose +lips are now mute in the dust. Methinks we see his smile benign--that we +hear his voice silver-sweet! + + "But away with melancholy, + Nor doleful changes ring"-- + +as such thoughts came like shadows, like shadows let them depart--and +spite of that which happeneth to all men--"this one day we give to +merriment." Pull, Billy, pull--or we will turn you round--and in that +case there is no refreshment nearer than Newby-bridge. The Naiad feels +the invigorated impulse--and her cut-water murmurs to the tune of six +knots through the tiny cataract foaming round her bows. The woods are +all running down the lake,--and at that rate, by two _post meridiem_ +will be in the sea. + +Commend us--on a tour--to lunch and dinner in one. 'Tis a saving both of +time and money--and of all the dinner-lunches that ever were set upon a +sublunary table, the _facile principes_ are the dinner-lunches you may +devour in the White Lion, Bowness. Take a walk--and a seat on the green +that overlooks the village, almost on a level with the lead-roof of the +venerable church--while Hebe is laying the cloth for a repast fit for +Jove, Juno, and the other heathen gods and goddesses; and if you must +have politics--why, call for the _Standard_ or _Sun_ (Heavens! there is +that hawk already at the _Times_), and devote a few hurried and hungry +minutes to the French Revolution. Why, the Green of all Greens--often +traced by us of yore beneath the midnight moonlight, till a path was +worn along the edge of the low wall, still called "North's Walk"--is +absolutely converted into a reading-room, and our laking party into a +political club. There is Louisa with the _Leeds Intelligencer_--and +Matilda with the _Morning Herald_--and Harriet with that York paper +worth them all put together--for it tells of Priam, and the Cardinal, +and St Nicholas--but, hark! a soft footstep! And then a soft voice--no +dialect or accent pleasanter than the Westmoreland--whispers that the +dinner-lunch is on the table--and no leading article like a cold round +of beef, or a veal pie. Let the Parisians settle their Constitution as +they will--meanwhile let us strengthen ours; and after a single glass of +Madeira--and a horn of home-brewed--let us off on foot--on horseback--in +gig--car and chariot--to Troutbeck. + +It is about a Scottish mile, we should think, from Bowness to Cook's +House--along the turnpike road--half the distance lying embowered in the +Rayrig woods--and half open to lake, cloud, and sky. It is pleasant to +lose sight now and then of the lake along whose banks you are +travelling, especially if during separation you become a Druid. The +water woos you at your return with her bluest smile, and her whitest +murmur. Some of the finest trees in all the Rayrig woods have had the +good sense to grow by the roadside, where they can see all that is +passing--and make their own observations on us deciduous plants. Few of +them seem to be very old--not much older than Christopher North--and, +like him, they wear well, trunk sound to the core, arms with a long +sweep, and head in fine proportions of cerebral development, fortified +against all storms--perfect pictures of oaks in their prime. You may +see one--without looking for it--near a farmhouse called +Miller-ground--himself a grove. His trunk is clothed in a tunic of moss, +which shows the ancient Sylvan to great advantage, and it would be no +easy matter to give him a fall. Should you wish to see Windermere in all +her glory, you have but to enter a gate a few yards on this side of his +shade, and ascend an eminence called by us Greenbank--but you had as +well leave your red mantle in the carriage, for an enormous white, +long-horned Lancashire bull has for some years established his +head-quarters not far off, and you would not wish your wife to become a +widow, with six fatherless children. But the royal road of poetry is +often the most splendid--and by keeping the turnpike, you soon find +yourself on a terrace to which there was nothing to compare in the +hanging gardens of Babylon. There is the widest breadth of water--the +richest foreground of wood--and the most magnificent background of +mountains--not only in Westmoreland but--believe us--in all the world. +That blue roof is Calgarth--and no traveller ever pauses on this brow +without giving it a blessing--for the sake of the illustrious dead; for +there long dwelt in the body Richard Watson, the Defender of the Faith, +and there within the shadow of his memory still dwell those, dearest on +earth to his beatified spirit. So pass along in high and solemn thought, +till you lose sight of Calgarth in the lone road that leads by St +Catharine's, and then relapse into pleasant fancies and picturesque +dreams. This is the best way by far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and +downs in this life were ever more enlivening--not even the ups and downs +of a bird learning to fly. Sheep-fences, six feet high, are admirable +contrivances for shutting out scenery; and by shutting out much scenery, +why, you confer an unappreciable value on the little that remains +visible, and feel as if you could hug it to your heart. But sometimes +one does feel tempted to shove down a few roods of intercepting +stone-wall higher than the horse-hair on a cuirassier's casque--though +sheep should eat the suckers and scions, protected as they there shoot, +at the price of the concealment of the picturesque and the poetical from +beauty-searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is said, which has never +a turning; so this must be a short one, which has a hundred. You have +turned your back on Windermere--and our advice to you is, to keep your +face to the mountains. Troutbeck is a jewel--a diamond of a stream--but +Bobbin Mills have exhausted some of the most lustrous pools, changing +them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Deep dells are his +delight--and he loves the rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded +banks--and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang at intervals over +his winding course, and seem sometimes to block it up; but the miner +works his way out beneath galleries and arches in the living +stone--sometimes silent--sometimes singing--and sometimes roaring like +thunder--till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere he reaches the wooden +bridge in the bonny holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the swan +that sometimes sees his image in his breast, and through alder and +willow banks murmurs away his life in the Lake. + +Yes--that is Troutbeck Chapel--one of the smallest--and to our eyes the +very simplest--of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it be +remembered when more pretending edifices are forgotten--just like some +mild, sensible, but perhaps somewhat too silent person, whose +acquaintanceship--nay, friendship--we feel a wish to cultivate we scarce +know why, except that he is mild, sensible, and silent; whereas we would +not be civil to the _brusque_, upsetting, and loquacious puppy at his +elbow, whose information is as various as it is profound, were one word +or look of courtesy to save him from the flames. For Heaven's sake, +Louisa, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel. There is nothing but a square +tower--a horizontal roof--and some perpendicular walls. The outlines of +the mountains here have no specific character. That bridge is but a poor +feature--and the stream here very commonplace. Put them not on paper. +Yet alive--is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a +soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here--in this +utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil; and as the +bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green +pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled +heart whispers to itself, "this is peace!" + +The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your +Troutbeck _statesmen_, we have heard, are the most litigious--the most +quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath, in all the parish that has +not cost many pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant style is +referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the +Quarter Sessions. No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a +march-wall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a +frost-loosened stone tumble from some _skrees_ down upon a neighbour's +field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many +of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and +ears mainly to fee attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go the +same road--and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields, +will sue for something or another _in forma pauperis_, were it but the +worthless wood and second-hand nails that may be destined for his +coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life--but we must take +pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were +every whit as bad in the time of the patriarchs--else--whence the +satirical sneer, "sham Abraham?" Yonder is the village straggling away +up along the hill-side, till the furthest house seems a rock fallen with +trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in +clusters of twos or threes--with here and there what in Scotland we +should call a _clachan_--many a sma' toun within the ae lang toun; but +where in all braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of +rural dwellings, all dropt down where the Painter and the Poet would +have wished to plant them, on knolls and in dells, and on banks and +braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in +picturesque confusion by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, and by +flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich as those of the Hesperides? + +If you have no objections--our pretty dears--we shall return to Bowness +by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march--so that we may one +and all indulge in our own silent fancies--and let not a word be spoken, +virgins--under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable--till we crown +the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already--and we hear our +musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his +cottage, the head and shoulders of Windermere are seen in their most +majestic shape--and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale +so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland, +gorgeous land," by gazing on which for an hour we shall all become +poets and poetesses. Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same +critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round--and despises the +twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down--from head to +foot--from the Brathay to the Leven--of the proper breadth precisely--to +a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay--on which the birds +love to balance themselves--at low or high water, to be visible longer +or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such +occasions since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our +skiff from the Endeavour, the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be +impaired--so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of +its sylvan shores. True, there are flaws in the diamond--but only when +the squalls come; and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the +first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue as an angel's eyes. Lowood +Bay--we are now embarked in Mr Jackson's prettiest pinnace--when the sun +is westering--which it now is--surpasses all other bays in fresh-water +mediterraneans. Eve loves to see her pensive face reflected in that +serenest mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossible--but sure she +never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in +that truest of all glasses, set in the richest of all frames. Pleased +she retires--with a wavering motion--and casting "many a longing, +lingering look behind," fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods; +while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger--we really know not +which--takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with +her crescent-moon-coronet, wreathed perhaps with a white cloud, and just +over the silver bow the lustre of one large yellow star. + +As none of the party complain of hunger, let us crack among us a single +bottle of our worthy host's choice old Madeira--and then haste in the +barouche (ha! here it is) to Bowness. It is right now to laugh--and +sing--and recite poetry--and talk all manner of nonsense. Didn't ye hear +something crack? Can it be a spring--or merely the axle-tree? Our +clerical friend from Chester assures us 'twas but a string of his +guitar--so no more shrieking--and after coffee we shall have + + "Rise up, rise up, Xarifa, lay your golden cushion down!" + +And then we two, my dear sir, must have a contest at chess--at which, if +you beat us, we shall leave our bed at midnight, and murder you in your +sleep. "But where," murmurs Matilda, "are we going?" To Oresthead, +love--and Elleray--for you must see a sight these sweet eyes of thine +never saw before--a SUNSET. + +We have often wondered if there be in the world one woman indisputably +and undeniably the most beautiful of all women--or if, indeed, our first +mother were "the loveliest of her daughters, Eve." What human female +beauty is all men feel--but few men know--and none can tell--further +than that it is perfect spiritual health, breathingly embodied in +perfect corporeal flesh and blood, according to certain heaven-framed +adaptations of form and hue, that by a familiar yet inscrutable mystery, +to our senses and our souls express sanctity and purity of the immortal +essence enshrined within, by aid of all associated perceptions and +emotions that the heart and the imagination can agglomerate round them, +as instantly and as unhesitatingly as the faculties of thought and +feeling can agglomerate round a lily or a rose, for example, the +perceptions and emotions that make them--by divine right of inalienable +beauty--the Royal Families of Flowers. This definition--or description +rather--of human female beauty, may appear to some, as indeed it appears +to us, something vague; but all profound truths--out of the exact +sciences--are something vague; and it is manifestly the design of a +benign and gracious Providence that they should be so till the end of +time--till mortality puts on immortality--and earth is heaven. +Vagueness, therefore, is no fault in philosophy--any more than in the +dawn of morning, or the gloaming of eve. Enough, if each clause of the +sentence that seeks to elucidate a confessed mystery, has a meaning +harmonious with all the meanings in all the other clauses--and that the +effect of the whole taken together is musical--and a tune. Then it is +Truth. For all Falsehood is dissonant--and verity is consent. It is our +faith, that the souls of some women are angelic--or nearly so--by nature +and the Christian religion; and that the faces and persons of some women +are angelic, or nearly so--whose souls, nevertheless, are seen to be far +otherwise--and, on that discovery, beauty fades or dies. But may not +soul and body--spirit and matter--meet in perfect union at birth; and +grow together into a creature, though of spiritual mould, comparable +with Eve before the Fall? Such a creature--such creatures--may have +been; but the question is--did you ever see one? We almost think that we +have--but many long years ago; + + "She is dedde, + Gone to her death-bedde + All under the willow-tree." + +And it may be that her image in the moonlight of memory and imagination +may be more perfectly beautiful than she herself ever was, when + + "Upgrew that living flower beneath our eye." + +Yes--'tis thus that we form to ourselves--incommunicably within our +souls--what we choose to call Ideal Beauty--that is, a life-in-death +image or Eidolon of a Being whose voice was once heard, and whose +footsteps once wandered among the flowers of this earth. But it is a +mistake to believe that such beauty as this can visit the soul only +after the original in which it once breathed is no more. For as it can +only be seen by profoundest passion--and the profoundest are the +passions of Love, and Pity, and Grief--then why may not each and all of +these passions--when we consider the constitution of this world and this +life--be awakened in their utmost height and depth by the sight of +living beauty, as well as by the memory of the dead? To do so is surely +within "the reachings of our souls,"--and if so, then may the virgin +beauty of his daughter, praying with folded hands and heavenward face +when leaning in health on her father's knees, transcend even the ideal +beauty which shall afterwards visit his slumbers nightly, long years +after he has laid her head in the grave. If by ideal beauty you mean a +beauty beyond whatever breathed, and moved, and had its being on +earth--then we suspect that not even "that inner eye which is the bliss +of solitude" ever beheld it; but if you merely mean by ideal beauty, +that which is composed of ideas, and of the feelings attached by nature +to ideas, then, begging your pardon, my good sir, all beauty whatever is +ideal--and you had better begin to study metaphysics. + +But what we were wishing to say is this--that whatever may be the truth +with regard to human female beauty--Windermere, seen by sunset from the +spot where we now stand, Elleray, is at this moment the most beautiful +scene on this earth. The reasons why it must be so are multitudinous. +Not only can the eye take in, but the imagination, in its awakened +power, can master all the component elements of the spectacle--and while +it adequately discerns and sufficiently feels the influence of each, is +alive throughout all its essence to the divine agency of the whole. The +charm lies in its entirety--its unity, which is so perfect--so seemeth +it to our eyes--that 'tis in itself a complete world--of which not a +line could be altered without disturbing the spirit of beauty that lies +recumbent there, wherever the earth meets the sky. There is nothing here +fragmentary; and had a poet been born, and bred here all his days, nor +known aught of fair or grand beyond this liquid vale, yet had he sung +truly and profoundly of the shows of nature. No rude and shapeless +masses of mountains--such as too often in our own dear Scotland encumber +the earth with dreary desolation--with gloom without grandeur--and +magnitude without magnificence. But almost in orderly array, and +irregular just up to the point of the picturesque, where poetry is not +needed for the fancy's pleasure, stand the Race of Giants--mist-veiled +transparently--or crowned with clouds slowly settling of their own +accord into all the forms that Beauty loves, when with her sister-spirit +Peace she descends at eve from highest heaven to sleep among the shades +of earth. + +Sweet would be the hush of lake, woods, and skies, were it not so +solemn! The silence is that of a temple, and, as we face the west, +irresistibly are we led to adore. The mighty sun occupies with his +flaming retinue all the region. Mighty yet mild--for from his disc, +awhile insufferably bright, is effused now a gentle crimson light, that +dyes all the west in one uniform glory, save where yet round the cloud +edges lingers the purple, the green, and the yellow lustre, unwilling to +forsake the violet beds of the sky, changing, while we gaze, into +heavenly roses; till that prevailing crimson colour at last gains entire +possession of the heavens, and all the previous splendour gives way to +one, whose paramount purity, lustrous as fire, is in its steadfast +beauty sublime. And, lo! the lake has received that sunset into its +bosom. It, too, softly burns with a crimson glow--and, as sinks the sun +below the mountains, Windermere, gorgeous in her array as the western +sky, keeps fading away as it fades, till at last all the ineffable +splendour expires, and the spirit that has been lost to this world in +the transcendent vision, or has been seeing all things appertaining to +this world in visionary symbols, returns from that celestial sojourn, +and knows that its lot is, henceforth as heretofore, to walk weariedly +perhaps, and woe-begone, over the no longer divine but disenchanted +earth! + +It is very kind in the moon and stars--just like them--to rise so soon +after sunset. The heart sinks at the sight of the sky, when a +characterless night succeeds such a blaze of light--like dull reality +dashing the last vestiges of the brightest of dreams. When the moon is +"hid in her vacant interlunar cave," and not a star can "burst its +cerements," imagination in the dim blank droops her wings--our thoughts +become of the earth earthly--and poetry seems a pastime fit but for +fools and children. But how different our mood, when + + "Glows the firmament with living sapphires," + +and Diana, who has ascended high in heaven, without our having once +observed the divinity, bends her silver bow among the rejoicing stars, +while the lake, like another sky, seems to contain its own luminaries, a +different division of the constellated night! 'Tis merry Windermere no +more. Yet we must not call her melancholy--though somewhat sad she +seems, and pensive, as if the stillness of universal nature did touch +her heart. How serene all the lights--how peaceful all the shadows! +Steadfast alike--as if they would brood for ever--yet transient as all +loveliness--and at the mercy of every cloud. In some places, the lake +has disappeared--in others, the moonlight is almost like sunshine--only +silver instead of gold. Here spots of quiet light--there lines of +trembling lustre--and there a flood of radiance checkered by the images +of trees. Lo! the Isle called Beautiful has now gathered upon its +central grove all the radiance issuing from that celestial Urn; and +almost in another moment it seems blended with the dim mass of mainland, +and blackness enshrouds the woods. Still as seems the night to +unobservant eyes, it is fluctuating in its expression as the face of a +sleeper overspread with pleasant but disturbing dreams. Never for any +two successive moments is the aspect of the night the same--each smile +has its own meaning, its own character; and Light is felt to be like +Music, to have a melody and a harmony of its own--so mysteriously allied +are the powers and provinces of eye and ear, and by such a kindred and +congenial agency do they administer to the workings of the spirit. + +Well, that is very extraordinary--Rain--rain--rain! All the eyes of +heaven were bright as bright might be--the sky was blue as violets--that +braided whiteness, that here and there floated like a veil on the brow +of night, was all that recalled the memory of clouds--and as for the +moon, no faintest halo yellowed round her orb, that seemed indeed "one +perfect chrysolite;"--yet while all the winds seemed laid asleep till +morn, and beauty to have chained all the elements into peace--overcast +in a moment is the firmament--an evanishing has left it blank as +mist--there is a fast, thick, pattering on the woods--yes--rain--rain-- +rain--and ere we reach Bowness, the party will be wet through to their +skins. Nay--matters are getting still more serious--for there was +lightning--yea, lightning! Ten seconds! and hark, very respectable +thunder! With all our wisdom, we have not been weather-wise--or we +should have known, when we saw it, an electrical sunset. Only look now +towards the West. There floats Noah's Ark--a magnificent spectacle; and +now for the Flood. That far-off sullen sound proclaims cataracts. And +what may mean that sighing and moaning and muttering up among the +cliffs? See--see how the sheet lightning shows the long lake-shore all +tumbling with foamy breakers. A strong wind is there--but here there is +not a breath. But the woods across the lake are bowing their heads to +the blast. Windermere is in a tumult--the storm comes flying on wings +all abroad--and now we are in the very heart of the hurricane. See, in +Bowness is hurrying many a light--for the people fear we may be on the +lake; and faithful Billy, depend on't, is launching his life-boat to go +to our assistance. Well, this is an adventure.--But soft--what ails our +Argand Lamp! Our study is in such darkness that we cannot see our +paper--in the midst of a thunderstorm we conclude, and to bed by a flaff +of lightning. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +PROLOGUE. + + +Once we knew the Highlands absolutely too well--not a nook that was not +as familiar to us as our brown study. We had not to complain of the +lochs, glens, woods, and mountains alone, for having so fastened +themselves upon us on a great scale that we found it impossible to shake +them off; but the hardship in our case was, that all the subordinate +parts of the scenery, many of them dull and dreary enough, and some of +them intolerably tedious, had taken it upon themselves so to thrust +their intimacy upon us, in all winds and weathers, that without giving +them the cut direct there was no way of escaping from the burden of +their friendship. To courteous and humane Christians, such as we have +always been both by name and nature as far back as we can recollect, it +is painful to cut even an impudent stone, or an upsetting tree that may +cross our path uncalled for, or obtrude itself on our privacy when we +wish to be alone in our meditations. Yet, we confess, they used +sometimes sorely to try our temper. It is all very well for you, our +good sir, to say in excuse for them that such objects are inanimate. So +much the worse. Were they animate, like yourself, they might be reasoned +with on the impropriety of interrupting the stream of any man's +soliloquies. But being not merely inanimate but irrational, objects of +that class know not to keep their own place, which indeed, it may be +said in reply, is kept for them by nature. But that Mistress of the +Ceremonies, though enjoying a fine green old age, cannot be expected to +be equally attentive to the proceedings of all the objects under her +control. Accordingly, often when she is not looking, what more common +than for a huge hulking fellow of a rock, with an absurd tuft of trees +on his head, who has observed you lying half-asleep on the greensward, +to hang eavesdropping, as it were, over your most secret thoughts, +which he whispers to the winds, and they to all the clouds! Or for some +grotesque and fantastic ash, with a crooked back, and arms +disproportionately long, like a giant in extreme old age dwindling into +a dwarf, to jut out from the hole in the wall, and should your leaden +eye chance at the time to love the ground, to put his mossy fist right +in your philosophical countenance! In short, it is very possible to know +a country so thoroughly well, outside and in, from mountain to +mole-hill, that you get mutually tired of one another's company, and are +ready to vent your quarrel in reciprocal imprecations. + +So was it once with us and the Highlands. That "too much familiarity +breeds contempt" we learned many a long year ago, when learning to write +large text; and passages in our life have been a running commentary on +the theme then set us by that incomparable caligraphist, Butterworth. +All "the old familiar faces" occasionally come in for a portion of that +feeling; and on that account, we are glad that we saw, but for one day +and one night, Charles Lamb's. Therefore, some dozen years ago we gave +up the Highlands, not wishing to quarrel with them, and confined our +tender assiduities to the Lowlands, while, like two great flats as we +were, we kept staring away at each other, with our lives on the same +level. All the consequences that might naturally have been expected have +ensued; and we are now as heartily sick of the Lowlands, and they of us. +What can we do but return to our First Love? + +Allow us to offer another view of the subject. There is not about Old +Age one blessing more deserving gratitude to Heaven, than the gradual +bedimming of memory brought on by years. In youth, all things, internal +and external, are unforgetable, and by the perpetual presence of passion +oppress the soul. The eye of a woman haunts the victim on whom it may +have given a glance, till he leaps perhaps out of a four-story window. A +beautiful lake, or a sublime mountain, drives a young poet as mad as a +March hare. He loses himself in an interminable forest louring all round +the horizon of a garret six feet square. It matters not to him whether +his eyes be open or shut. He is at the mercy of all Life and all Nature, +and not for one hour can he escape from their persecutions. His soul is +the slave of the Seven Senses, and each is a tyrant with instruments of +torture, to whom and to which Phalaris, with his brazen bull, was a +pointless joke. But in old age "the heart of a man is oppressed with +care" no longer; the Seven Tyrants have lost their sceptres, and are +dethroned; and the grey-headed gentleman feels that his soul has "set up +its rest." His eyes are dazzled no more with insufferable light--no more +his ears tingle with music too exquisite to be borne--no more his touch +is transport. The scents of nature, stealing from the balmy mouths of +lilies and roses, are deadened in his nostrils. He is above and beyond +the reach of all the long arms of many-handed misery, as he is out of +the convulsive clutch of bliss. And is not this the state of best +happiness for mortal man? Tranquillity! The peaceful air that we breathe +as we are westering towards the sunset-regions of our Being, and feel +that we are about to drop down for ever out of sight behind the Sacred +Mountains. + +All this may be very fine, but cannot be said to help us far on with our +Prologue. Let us try it again. Old men, we remarked, ought to be +thankful to Heaven for their dim memories. Never do we feel that more +profoundly than when dreaming about the Highlands. All is confusion. +Nothing distinctly do we remember--not even the names of lochs and +mountains. Where is Ben Cru--Cru--Cru--what's-his-name? +Ay--ay--Cruachan. At this blessed moment we see his cloud-capped +head--but we have clean forgotten the silver sound of the name of the +county he encumbers. Ross-shire? Nay, that won't do--he never was at +Tain. We are assured by Dr Reid's, Dr Beattie's, and Dugald Stewart's +great Instinctive First Principle Belief, that oftener than once, or ten +times either, have we been in a day-long hollow among precipices dear to +eagles, called Glen-Etive. But where begins or where ends that "severe +sojourn" is now to us a mystery--though we hear the sound of the sea and +the dashing of cataracts. Yet though all is thus dim in our memory, +would you believe it that nothing is utterly lost? No, not even the +thoughts that soared like eagles vanishing in the light--or that dived +like ravens into the gloom. They all reappear--those from the +Empyrean--these from Hades--reminding us of the good or the evil borne +in other days, within the spiritual regions of our boundless being. The +world of eye and ear is not in reality narrowed because it glimmers; +ever and anon as years advance, a light direct from heaven dissipates +the gloom, and bright and glorious as of yore the landscape laughs to +the sea, the sea to heaven, and heaven back again to the gazing spirit +that leaps forward to the hailing light with something of the same +divine passion that gave wings to our youth. + +All this may be still finer, yet cannot be said, any more than the +preceding paragraph, much to help us on with our Prologue. To come then, +if possible, to the point at once--We are happy that our dim memory and +our dim imagination restore and revive in our mind none but the +characteristic features of the scenery of the Highlands, unmixed with +baser matter, and all floating magnificently through a spiritual haze, +so that the whole region is now more than ever idealised; and in spite +of all his present, past, and future prosiness--Christopher North, soon +as in thought his feet touch the heather, becomes a poet. + +It has long been well known to the whole world that we are a sad +egotist--yet our egotism, so far from being a detraction from our +attraction, seems to be the very soul of it, making it impossible in +nature for any reasonable being to come within its sphere, without being +drawn by sweet compulsion to the old wizard's heart. He is so _humane_! +Only look at him for a few minutes, and liking becomes love--love +becomes veneration. And all this even before he has opened his lips--by +the mere power of his ogles and his temples. In his large mild blue +eyes is written not only his nature, but miraculously, in German text, +his very name, #Christopher North#. Mrs Gentle was the first to discover +it; though we remember having been asked more than once in our youth, by +an alarmed virgin on whom we happened at the time to be looking tender, +"If we were aware that there was something preternatural in our eyes?" +#Christopher# is conspicuous in our right eye--#North# in our left; and +when we wish to be incog., we either draw their fringed curtains, or, +nun-like, keep the tell-tale orbs fixed on the ground. Candour whispers +us to confess, that some years ago a child was exhibited at sixpence +with WILLIAM WOOD legible in its optics--having been affiliated, by +ocular evidence, on a gentleman of that name, who, with his dying +breath, disowned the soft impeachment. But in that case nature had +written a vile scrawl--in ours her hand is firm, and goes off with a +flourish. + +Have you ever entered, all alone, the shadows of some dilapidated old +burial-place, and in a nook made beautiful by wild-briers and a +flowering thorn, beheld the stone image of some long-forgotten worthy +lying on his grave? Some knight who perhaps had fought in Palestine,--or +some holy man, who in the Abbey--now almost gone--had led a long still +life of prayer? The moment you knew that you were standing among the +dwellings of the dead, how impressive became the ruins! Did not that +stone image wax more and more lifelike in its repose? And as you kept +your eyes fixed on the features Time had not had the heart to +obliterate, seemed not your soul to hear the echoes of the Miserere sung +by the brethren? + +So looks Christopher--on his couch--in his ALCOVE. He is taking his +siesta--and the faint shadows you see coming and going across his face +are dreams. 'Tis a pensive dormitory, and hangs undisturbed in its +spiritual region as a cloud on the sky of the Longest Day when it falls +on the Sabbath. + +What think you of OUR FATHER, alongside of the Pedlar in "The +Excursion?" Wordsworth says-- + + "Amid the gloom, + Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms, + Appear'd a roofless hut; four naked walls + That stared upon each other! I look'd round, + And to my wish and to my hope espied + Him whom I sought; a man of reverend age, + But stout and hale, for travel unimpair'd. + There was he seen upon the cottage bench, + Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep; + An iron-pointed staff lay at his side." + +Alas! "stout and hale" are words that could not be applied, without +cruel mocking, to our figure. "Recumbent in the shade" unquestionably he +is--yet, "recumbent" is a clumsy word for such quietude; and, recurring +to our former image, we prefer to say, in the words of Wilson,-- + + "Still is he as a frame of stone + That in its stillness lies alone, + With silence breathing from its face, + For ever in some holy place, + Chapel or aisle--on marble laid, + With pale hands on his pale breast spread, + An image humble, meek, and low, + Of one forgotten long ago!" + +No "iron-pointed staff lies at his side"--but "Satan's dread," THE +CRUTCH! Wordsworth tells us over again that the Pedlar-- + + "With no appendage but a staff, + The prized memorial of _relinquish'd_ toils, + Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs, + Screen'd from the sun." + +On his couch, in his Alcove, Christopher is reposing--not his limbs +alone, but his very essence. THE CRUTCH is, indeed, both _de jure_ and +_de facto_ the prized memorial of toils--but, thank Heaven, not +_relinquished_ toils; and then how characteristic of the dear merciless +old man--hardly distinguishable among the fringed draperies of his +canopy, the dependent and independent KNOUT! + +Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep? We shrewdly suspect not--'twas but a +doze. "Recumbent in the shade, _as if asleep_"--"Upon that cottage-bench +_reposed_ his limbs" induce us to lean to the opinion that he was but on +the border of the Land of Nod. Nay, the poet gets more explicit, and +with that minute particularity so charming in poetical description, +finally informs us that + + "Supine the wanderer lay, + _His eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut_, + The shadows of the breezy elms above + Dappling his face." + +It would appear, then, on an impartial consideration of all the +circumstances of the case, that the "man of reverend age," though +"recumbent" and "supine" upon the "cottage bench," "as if asleep," and +"his eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut," was in a mood between +sleeping and waking; and this creed is corroborated by the following +assertion-- + + "He had not heard the sound + Of my approaching steps, and in the shade + Unnoticed did I stand some minutes' space. + At length I hail'd him, seeing that his hat + Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim + Had newly scoop'd a running stream." + +He rose; and so do We, for probably by this time you may have discovered +that we have been describing Ourselves in our siesta or mid-day +snooze--as we have been beholding in our mind's eye our venerated and +mysterious Double. + +We cannot help flattering ourselves--if indeed it be flattery--that +though no relative of his, we have a look of the Pedlar--as he is +elaborately painted by the hand of a great master in the aforesaid Poem. + + "Him had I mark'd the day before--alone, + And station'd in the public way, with, face + Turn'd to the sun then setting, while that staff + Afforded to the figure of the man, + Detain'd for contemplation or repose, + Graceful support," &c. + +As if it were yesterday, we remember our first interview with the Bard. +It was at the Lady's Oak, between Ambleside and Rydal. We were then in +the very flower of our age--just sixty; so we need not say the century +had then seen but little of this world. The Bard was a mere boy of some +six lustres, and had a lyrical-ballad look that established his identity +at first sight, all unlike the lackadaisical. His right hand was within +his vest on the region of the heart, and he ceased his crooning as we +stood face to face. What a noble countenance! at once austere and +gracious--haughty and benign--of a man conscious of his greatness while +yet companioning with the humble--an unrecognised power dwelling in the +woods. Our figure at that moment so impressed itself on his imagination, +that it in time supplanted the image of the real Pedlar, and grew into +the _Emeritus of the Three Days_. We were standing in that very +attitude--having deposited on the coping of the wall our Kit, since +adopted by the British Army, with us at once a library and a larder. + +And again--and even more characteristically,-- + + "Plain was his garb: + Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared + For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man + Whom no one could have pass'd without remark, + Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs + And his whole figure breathed intelligence. + Time had compress'd the freshness of his cheeks + Into a narrower circle of deep red, + But had not tamed his eye, that under brows, + Shaggy and grey, had meanings, which it brought + From years of youth; whilst, like a being made + Of many beings, he had wondrous skill + To blend with knowledge of the years to come, + Human, or such as lie beyond the grave." + +In our intellectual characters we indulge the pleasing hope that there +are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty +will not permit us to dwell--and incur acquirements, more particularly +in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry:-- + + "While yet he linger'd in the rudiments + Of science, and among her simplest laws, + His triangles--they were the stars of heaven, + The silent stars! oft did he take delight + To measure the altitude of some tall crag, + That is the eagle's birthplace," &c. + +So it was with us. Give us but a base and a quadrant--and when a student +in Jemmy Millar's class, we could have given you the altitude of any +steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals. + +Occasionally, too, in a small party of friends, though, not proud of the +accomplishment, we have been prevailed on, as you may have heard, to +delight humanity with a song--"The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," +"Flee up, flee up, thou bonnie bonnie Cock," or "Auld Langsyne"--just as +the Pedlar + + "At request would sing + Old songs, the product of his native hills; + A skilful distribution of sweet sounds, + Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed + As cool refreshing water, by the care + Of the industrious husbandman diffused + Through a parch'd meadow-field in time of drought." + +Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as that of the "Vagrant +Merchant." + + "And surely never did there live on earth + A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports + And teasing ways of children vex'd not him: + Indulgent listener was he to the tongue + Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, + To his fraternal sympathy address'd, + Obtain reluctant hearing." + +Who can read the following lines, and not think of Christopher North? + + "Birds and beasts, + And the mute fish that glances in the stream, + And harmless reptile coiling in the sun, + And gorgeous insect hovering in the air, + The fowl domestic, and the household dog-- + In his capacious mind he loved them all." + +True, that our love of + + "The mute fish that glances in the stream," + +is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or +with the pleasure of "filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have +reason to know, was like his poet and ourselves, in that art a +craftsman, and for love beat the mole-catcher at busking a batch of +May-flies. We question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a +green dragon. "The harmless reptile coiling in the sun" we are not so +sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom in our simplicity we +mistook for a slow-worm--the very day, by the by, on which we were +poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for +mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as +the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin +between finger and thumb to compress their mealy wings. The household +dog we do indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicions we +prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic +fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing +them at their _walks_ + + "Among the rural villages and farms;" + +and though game to the back-bone, they are allowed to wear the spurs +nature gave them--to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is +the sward, like the _sod_, ever reddened with their heroic blood, for +hateful to our ears the war-song, + + "Welcome to your gory bed, + Or to victory!" + +'Tis our way, you know, to pass from gay to grave matter, and often from +a jocular to a serious view of the same subject--it being natural to +us--and having become habitual too, from our writing occasionally in +_Blackwood's Magazine_. All the world knows our admiration of +Wordsworth, and admits that we have done almost as much as Jeffrey or +Taylor to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles." But we +are not a nation of idolaters, and worship neither graven image nor man +that is born of a woman. We may seem to have treated the Pedlar with +insufficient respect in that playful parallel between him and Ourselves; +but there you are wrong again, for we desire thereby to do him honour. +We wish now to say a few words on the wisdom of making such a personage +the chief character in a Philosophical Poem. + +He is described as endowed by nature with a great intellect, a noble +imagination, a profound soul, and a tender heart. It will not be said +that nature keeps these her noblest gifts for human beings born in this +or that condition of life: she gives them to her favourites--for so, in +the highest sense, they are to whom such gifts befall; and not +unfrequently, in an obscure place, of one of the FORTUNATI + + "The fulgent head + Star-bright appears." + +Wordsworth appropriately places the birth of such a being in a humble +dwelling in the Highlands of Scotland. + + "Among the hills of Atholl he was born; + Where on a small hereditary farm, + An unproductive slip of barren ground, + His parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt; + A virtuous household, though exceeding poor." + +His childhood was nurtured at home in Christian love and truth--and +acquired other knowledge at a winter school; for in summer he "tended +cattle on the hill,"-- + + "that stood + Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge." + +And the influence of such education and occupation among such natural +objects, Wordsworth expounds in some as fine poetry as ever issued from +the cells of philosophic thought. + + "So the foundations of his mind were laid." + +The boy had small need of books-- + + "For many a tale + Traditionary, round the mountains hung, + And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, + Nourish'd Imagination in her growth, + And gave the mind that apprehensive power + By which she is made quick to recognise + The moral properties and scope of things." + +But in the Manse there were books--and he read + + "Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied, + The life and death of martyrs, who sustain'd, + With will inflexible, those fearful pangs, + Triumphantly display'd in records left + Of persecution and the Covenant." + +Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you +used to ride to the races on a pony, by the side of your sire the +Squire, this boy was your equal in knowledge, though you had a private +tutor all to yourself, and were then a promising lad, as indeed you are +now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had +small Latin, and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages may be +learned--trust us--by slow degrees--by the mind rejoicing in the +consciousness of its growing faculties--during leisure hours from other +studies--as they were by the Atholl adolescent. A Scholar--in your sense +of the word--he might not be called, even when he had reached his +seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and +Virgil; nor of English poetry had he read much--the less the better for +such a mind--at that age, and in that condition--for + + "Accumulated feelings press'd his heart + With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd + By nature, by the turbulence subdued + Of his own mind, by mystery and hope, + And the first virgin passion of a soul + Communing with the glorious Universe." + +But he had read Poetry--ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read +at the same age--and + + "Among the hills + He gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song, + The divine Milton." + +Thus endowed, and thus instructed, + + "By Nature, that did never yet betray + The heart that loved her," + +the youth was "greater than he knew;" yet that there was something great +in, as well as about him, he felt-- + + "Thus daily thirsting in that lonesome life," + +for some diviner communication than had yet been vouchsafed to him by +the Giver and Inspirer of his restless Being. + + "In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, + Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist + The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, + And every moral feeling of his soul + Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content + The keen, the wholesome air of poverty, + And drinking from the well of homely life." + +But he is in his eighteenth year, and + + "Is summon'd to select the course + Of humble industry that promised best + To yield him no unworthy maintenance." + +For a season he taught a village school, which many a fine, high, and +noble spirit has done and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills he +loved, and + + "That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains + The Savoyard to quit his native rocks, + The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales + (Spirit attach'd to regions mountainous + Like their own steadfast clouds), did now impel + His restless mind to look abroad with hope." + +It had become his duty to choose a profession--a trade--a calling. He +was not a gentleman, mind ye, and had probably never so much as heard a +rumour of the existence of a silver fork: he had been born with a wooden +spoon in his mouth--and had lived, partly from choice and partly from +necessity, on a vegetable diet. He had not ten pounds in the world he +could call his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his father's son was +to be trusted to that amount by any family that chanced to have it among +the Atholl hills--therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which + + "Gain'd merited respect in simpler times; + When squire, and priest, and they who round them dwelt + In rustic sequestration, all dependent + Upon the PEDLAR'S toil, supplied their wants, + Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought." + +Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the +hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be +Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest +nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by +working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the +Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without +victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to +the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay +homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous +human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are +Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a +shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand +cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core, +notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted, +the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to +consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths +uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence +there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a +faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to +indulge, and nearly let die. + +Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron's _Scotland_ an interesting passage, +illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class +of persons from whom he has chosen one--not, mind you, imaginary, though +for purposes of imagination--adding that "his own personal knowledge +emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As +they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form +habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation, and that, with all +their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish +the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. In North +America," says he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done +and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than +all the missionaries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent +among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more +than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of +Scotland to England for the purpose to _carry the pack_, was considered +as going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune of a gentleman. +When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment, +he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded +as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known +gentlemen who had carried the pack--one of them a man of great talents +and acquirements--who lived in his old age in the highest circles of +society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage--_for +he was then very rich_; but you could not sit ten minutes in his company +without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging +to the "aristocracy of Nature." + +You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious +Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon--and sometimes absurdly called +the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted +in colours that will never die--the Birds of the New World. He was a +weaver--a Paisley weaver--a useful trade, and a pleasant place--where +these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar. +Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this +day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored +the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what +have I gained by it?--only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an +invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in +glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair +daughters of wealth and indolence--the ample mirror, flowery floor, and +magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his +wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting +echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with +squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the +resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting +this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there +sits poverty and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill rags, and +ever shivering over the fireless chimney. Ascending this stair, the +voice of joy bursts on my ear--the bridegroom and bride, surrounded by +their jocund companions, circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke, +or join in the raptures of the noisy dance--the squeaking fiddle +breaking through the general uproar in sudden intervals, while the +sounding floor groans beneath its unruly load. Leaving these happy +mortals, and ushering into this silent mansion, a more solemn--a +striking object presents itself to my view. The windows, the furniture, +and everything that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn +white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse, +while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless +clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their +brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their +gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for +consolation, her Bible; and in this house the wife brawls, the children +shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury +should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily +occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralised +upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of +mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never +had a being except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors." + +At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of +his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a +more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an +account in his journal, from which it appears that his success was far +from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character, +occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects +of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are +not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some +that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the wounded pride founded on +conscious merit. "You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are +susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the +least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest +thwartings of your expectations--think what I felt." Wilson himself +attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage +of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A _packman_ +is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The +idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are +mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every +opportunity, and using every mean art within their power, to cheat." +This is a sad account of the estimation in which a trade was then held +in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to +the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions +on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth +are in the right: both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen +were then, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally +esteemed to be--peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty +sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"--and +for a plack people will forget principle who have, as we say in +Scotland, missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there +was degradation in such a calling; and he latterly vented his +contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and +nature of _packman_. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in +better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years +over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there +can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and +of respect--his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very +happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very +great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like +Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher. + +Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we +may believe the truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the hand +and heart of a still wiser man--though his wisdom has been gathered from +less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay floors of the +labouring poor. + +It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" +of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns, "the +fient a pride, nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on +earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is +his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had +he not studied the character of his subjects in "huts where poor men +lie"--had he not "stooped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such +huts, as willingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious +laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration he +"derived from the light of setting suns," was not so sacred as that +which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, +when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty +high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. You are +a scholar, and love poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, and +will be sad to think that heaven had not made you a pedlar. + + "In days of yore how fortunately fared + The Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall, + Baronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with gifts + Munificent, and love, and Ladies' praise; + Now meeting on his road an armed Knight, + Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side + Of a clear brook;--beneath an Abbey's roof + One evening sumptuously lodged; the next + Humbly, in a religious Hospital; + Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood; + Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell. + Him, sleeping or awake, the Robber spared; + He walk'd--protected from the sword of war + By virtue of that sacred Instrument + His Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side, + His dear companion wheresoe'er he went, + Opening from Land to Land an easy way + By melody, and by the charm of verse. + Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race + Drew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughts + From his long journeyings and eventful life, + Than this obscure Itinerant had skill + To gather, ranging through the tamer ground + Of these our unimaginative days; + Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise, + Accoutred with his burden and his staff; + And now, when free to move with lighter pace. + + "What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School + Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes, + Look'd on this Guide with reverential love? + Each with the other pleased, we now pursued + Our journey--beneath favourable skies. + Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light + Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass, + Rarely a house, that did not yield to him + Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth + Some way-beguiling tale. + --Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts, + Huts where his charity was blest; his voice + Heard as the voice of an experienced friend. + And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute + With his own mind, unable to subdue + Impatience, through inaptness to perceive + General distress in his particular lot; + Or cherishing resentment, or in vain + Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd, + And finding in herself no steady power + To draw the line of comfort that divides + Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven, + From the injustice of our brother men; + To him appeal was made as to a judge; + Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd + The perturbation; listen'd to the plea; + Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave + So grounded, so applied, that it was heard + With soften'd spirit--e'en when it condemn'd." + +What was to hinder such a man--thus born and thus bred--with such a +youth and such a prime--from being in his old age worthy of walking +among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting + + "On man, on nature, and on human life?" + +And remember he was a _Scotsman_--compatriot of CHRISTOPHER NORTH. + +What would you rather have had the Sage in "The Excursion" to have been? +The Senior Fellow of a College? A head? A retired Judge? An Ex-Lord +Chancellor? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire? or, at once to condescend +on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable +Custos Rotulorum? + +You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham +Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the +estates and honours of his ancestors? + + "Who is he that bounds with joy + On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy? + No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass + Light as the wind along the grass. + Can this be He that hither came + In secret, like a smother'd flame? + For whom such thoughtful tears were shed. + For shelter and a poor man's bread?" + +Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days +had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no +longer safe--and + + "The Boy must part from Mosedale groves, + And leave Blencathara's ragged coves, + And quit the flowers that summer brings + To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; + Must vanish, and his careless cheer + Be turn'd to heaviness and fear." + +Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his +foot on the mountains. + + "Again he wanders forth at will, + And tends a flock from hill to hill: + His garb is humble; ne'er was seen + Such garb with such a noble mien; + Among the shepherd grooms no mate + Hath he, a child of strength and state." + +So lives he till he is restored. + + "Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth; + The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more; + And, ages after he was laid in earth, + 'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!" + +Now mark--that Poem has been declared by one and all of the "Poets of +Britain" to be equal to anything in the language; and its greatness lies +in the perfect truth of the profound philosophy which so poetically +delineates the education of the naturally noble character of Clifford. +Does he sink in our esteem because at the Feast of the Restoration he +turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper who sings, + + "Happy day and mighty hour, + When our shepherd in his power, + Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword, + To his ancestors restored, + Like a reappearing star, + Like a glory from afar, + First shall head the flock of war"? + +No--his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and now deeply +imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget, +he appears noblest when showing himself faithful in his own hall to the +"huts where poor men lie;" while we know not, at the solemn close, which +life the Poet has most glorified--the humble or the high--whether the +Lord did the Shepherd more ennoble, or the Shepherd the Lord. + +Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth +thus records of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast of Brougham +Castle, and what he records of the low-born Pedlar in "The Excursion?" +None. They are both educated among the hills; and according to the +nature of their own souls and that of their education, is the +progressive growth and ultimate formation of their character. Both are +exalted beings--because both are wise and good--but to his own coeval he +has given, besides eloquence and genius, + + "The vision and the faculty divine," + +that + + "When years had brought the philosophic mind" + +he might walk through the dominions of the Intellect and the +Imagination, a Sage and a Teacher. + +Look into life, and watch the growth of character. Men are not what they +seem to the outward eye--mere machines moving about in customary +occupations--productive labourers of food and wearing apparel--slaves +from morn to night at taskwork set them by the Wealth of Nations. They +are the Children of God. The soul never sleeps--not even when its +wearied body is heard snoring by people living in the next street. All +the souls now in this world are for ever awake; and this life, believe +us, though in moral sadness it has often been rightly called so, is no +dream. In a dream we have no will of our own, no power over ourselves; +ourselves are not felt to be ourselves; our familiar friends seem +strangers from some far-off country; the dead are alive, yet we wonder +not; the laws of the physical world are suspended, or changed, or +confused by our phantasy; Intellect, Imagination, the Moral Sense, +Affection, Passion, are not possessed by us in the same way we possess +them out of that mystery: were Life a Dream, or like a Dream, it would +never lead to Heaven. + +Again, then, we say to you, look into life and watch the growth of +character. In a world where the ear cannot listen without hearing the +clank of chains, the soul may yet be free as if it already inhabited the +skies. For its Maker gave it LIBERTY OF CHOICE OF GOOD OR OF EVIL; and +if it has chosen the good it is a King. All its faculties are then fed +on their appropriate food provided for them in nature. It then knows +where the necessaries and the luxuries of its life grow, and how they +may be gathered--in a still sunny region inaccessible to blight--"no +mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother." In the beautiful language +of our friend Aird,-- + + "And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the Hills of God." + +Go, read the EXCURSION then--venerate the PEDLAR--pity the +SOLITARY--respect the PRIEST, and love the POET. + +So charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice--of all sounds +on earth the sweetest surely to our ears--and, therefore, we so dearly +love the monologue, and from the dialogue turn averse, impatient of him +ycleped the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, will keep prattling +and babbling on between the still deep pools of our discourse, which +nature feeds with frequent waterfalls--so charmed have we been with the +sound of our own voice, that, scarcely conscious the while of more than +a gentle ascent along the sloping sward of a rural Sabbath-day's +journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Highland +league--five miles--of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the +Mountain-top. True that his altitude is not very great--somewhere, we +should suppose, between two and three thousand feet--much higher than +the Pentlands--somewhat higher than the Ochils--a middle-sized Grampian. +Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable +bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so, +supporting the globe. So is Andes; but his strength has never been put +to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras--but we must not be +personal--so suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in +mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might +be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers? + +These mountains are neither immense nor enormous--nor are there any such +in the British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on Riddell's +ingenious Scale--in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland +the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole-hills to Chimborazo. +Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an +Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture--for Vulture he +is--flies league-high--the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself +half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long +river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of +the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, +can see the rising and the setting sun, and his march on the meridian, +without a telescope. If ever he fly by night--and we think we have seen +a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life--he must be a +rare astronomer. + + "High from the summit of a craggy cliff + Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown + On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race + Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, + The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young, + Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire. + Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own + He drives them from his fort, the towering seat + For ages of his empire; which in peace + Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea + He wings his course, and preys in distant isles." + +Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas! +such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions +would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds. +Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some +inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the +dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself +driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the +unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded +in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in +the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we +do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere +to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the +Himalayas would not satisfy our aspirations. But we can calculate the +distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon. + +Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains, +as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do +to ours--and let "Andes, giant of the Western Star," but dare to look at +us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from +his cloudy hands. There you stand--and were you to rear your summits +much higher into heaven, you would alarm the hidden stars. + +Yet we have seen you higher--but it was in storm. In calm like this you +do well to look beautiful--your solemn altitude suits the sunny season, +and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your +heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and +show them to the glens, crowned with fire. + +Are they a sea of mountains! No--they are mountains in a sea. And what a +sea! Waves of water, when at the prodigious, are never higher than the +foretop of a man-of-war. Waves of vapour--they alone are seen flying +mountains high--dashing, but howling not--and in their silent ascension, +all held together by the same spirit, but perpetually changing its +beautiful array, where order seems ever and anon to come in among +disorder, there is a grandeur that settles down in the soul of youthful +poet roaming in delirium among the mountain glooms, and "pacifies the +fever of his heart." + +Call not now these vapours waves; for movement there is none among the +ledges, and ridges, and roads, and avenues, and galleries, and groves, +and houses, and churches, and castles, and fairy palaces--all framed of +mist. Far up among and above that wondrous region, through which you +hear voices of waterfalls deepening the silence, behold hundreds of +mountain-tops--blue, purple, violet--for the sun is shining straight on +some and aslant on others--and on those not at all; nor can the shepherd +at your side, though he has lived among them all his life, till after +long pondering tell you the names of those most familiar to him; for +they seem to have all interchanged sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun +himself, the Eagle-Breeder, looks so serenely in his rainbow, that you +might almost mistake him for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds. + +Have you not seen sunsets in which the mountains were imbedded in masses +of clouds all burning and blazing--yes, blazing--with unimaginable +mixtures of all the colours that ever were born--intensifying into a +glory that absolutely became insupportable to the soul as insufferable +to the eyes--and that left the eyes for hours after you had retreated +from the supernatural scene, even when shut, all filled with floating +films of cross-lights, cutting the sky-imagery into gorgeous fragments? +And were not the mountains of such sunsets, whether they were of land or +of cloud, sufficiently vast for your utmost capacities and powers of +delight and joy longing to commune with the Region then felt to be in +very truth Heaven? Nor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, +conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond--while the senses themselves +seemed to have had given them a revelation, that as it was created could +be felt but by an immortal spirit. + +It elevates our being to be in the body near the sky--at once on earth +and in heaven. In the body? Yes--we feel at once fettered and free. In +Time we wear our fetters, and heavy though they be, and painfully +riveted on, seldom do we welcome Death coming to strike them off--but +groan at sight of the executioner. In eternity we believe that all is +spiritual--and in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes but to prove +that its foundation lies rooted far down below all earthquakes, +endurable is the sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, while +yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being absorbed in the great forms +of the outward universe, and they speak as if such absorption were +celestial and divine. But is not this a material creed? Let Imagination +beware how she seeks to glorify the objects of the senses, and having +glorified them, to elevate them into a kindred being with our own, +exalting them that we may claim with them that kindred being, as if we +belonged to them and not they to us, forgetting that they are made to +perish, we to live for ever! + +But let us descend the mountain by the side of this torrent. What a +splendid series of translucent pools! We carry "The Excursion" in our +pocket, for the use of our friends; but our own presentation-copy is +here--we have gotten it by heart. And it does our heart good to hear +ourselves recite. Listen, ye Naiads, to the famous picture of the Ram:-- + + "Thus having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd + The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalm'd + In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw + A twofold image; on a grassy bank + A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood + Another and the same! Most beautiful + On the green turf, with his imperial front + Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, + The breathing creature stood; as beautiful + Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart; + Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, + And each seem'd centre of his own fair world. + Antipodes unconscious of each other, + Yet, in partition, with their several spheres + Blended in perfect stillness to our sight. + Ah! what a pity were it to disperse + Or to disturb so fair a spectacle, + And yet a breath can do it." + +Oh! that the Solitary, and the Pedlar, and the Poet, and the Priest and +his Lady, were here to see a sight more glorious far than that +illustrious and visionary Ram. Two Christopher Norths--as Highland +chieftains--in the Royal Tartan--one burning in the air--the other in +the water--two stationary meteors, each seeming native to its own +element! This setting the heather, that the linn on fire--this ablaze +with war, that tempered into truce; while the Sun, astonied at the +spectacle, nor knowing the refulgent substance from the resplendent +shadow, bids the clouds lie still in heaven, and the winds all hold +their breath, that exulting nature may be permitted for a little while +to enjoy the miracle she unawares has wrought--alas! gone as she gazes, +and gone for ever! Our bonnet has tumbled into the Pool--and +Christopher--like the Ram in "The Excursion"--stands shorn of his +beams--no better worth looking at than the late Laird of Macnab. + +Now, since the truth must be told, that was but a Flight of Fancy--and +our apparel is more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a Highland chief. +'Tis all of a snuffy brown--an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. +Single-breasted our coatee--and we are in shorts. Were our name to be +imposed by our hat, it would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back a +wallet--and in our hand the Crutch. And thus, not without occasional +alarm to the cattle, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking along the +sward and swimming across the stream, and leaping over the quagmires--by +no means unlike that extraordinary pedestrian who has been accompanying +us for the last half-hour, far overhead up-by yonder, as if he meant +mischief; but he will find that we are up to a trick or two, and not +easily to be done brown by a native, a Cockney of Cloud-Land, a +long-legged awkward fellow with a head like a dragon and proud of his +red plush, in that country called thunder-and-lightning breeches, hot +very, one would think, in such sultry weather--but confound us if he has +not this moment stript them off, and be not pursuing his journey _in +puris naturalibus_--yes, as naked as the minute he was born--our Shadow +on the Clouds! + +The Picture of the Ram has been declared by sumphs in search of the +sublime to border on the Burlesque. They forget that a sumph may just as +truly be said to border on a sage. All things in heaven and on earth, +mediately and immediately, border on one another--much depends on the +way you look at them--and Poets, who are strange creatures, often love +to enjoy and display their power by bringing the burlesque into the +region of the sublime. Of what breed was the Tup? Cheviot, Leicester, +Southdown? Had he gained the Cup at the Great North Show? We believe +not, and that his owner saw in him simply a fine specimen of an ordinary +breed--a shapely and useful animal. In size he was not to be named on +the same day with the famous Ram of Derby, "whose tail was made a rope, +sir, to toll the market-bell." Jason would have thought nothing of him +compared with the Golden Fleece. The Sun sees a superior sire of flocks +as he enters Aries. Sorry are we to say it, but the truth must be +spoken, he was somewhat bandy-legged, and rather coarse in the wool. But +heaven, earth, air, and water conspired to glorify him, as the Poet and +his friends chanced to come upon him at the Pool, and, more than them +all united, the Poet's own soul; and a sheep that would not have sold +for fifty shillings, became Lord Paramount of two worlds, his regal mind +all the time unconscious of its empiry, and engrossed with the thought +of a few score silly ewes. + +Seldom have we seen so serene a day. It seems to have lain in one and +the same spirit over all the Highlands. We have been wandering since +sunrise, and 'tis now near sunset; yet not an hour without a visible +heaven in all the Lochs. In the pure element overflowing so many +spacious vales and glens profound, the great and stern objects of +nature have all day long been looking more sublime or more beautiful in +the reflected shadows, invested with one universal peace. The momentary +evanescence of all that imagery at a breath touches us with the thought +that all it represents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will as +utterly pass away. Such visions, when gazed on in that wondrous depth +and purity on a still slow-moving day, always inspire some such feeling +as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all things, when +the setting sun is seen to sink behind the mountain, and all the golden +pomp at the same instant to evanish from the Loch. + +Evening is preparing to let fall her shades--and Nature, cool, fresh, +and unwearied, is laying herself down for a few hours' sleep. There had +been a long strong summer drought, and a week ago you would have +pitied--absolutely pitied the poor Highlands. You missed the +cottage-girl with her pitcher at the well in the brae, for the spring +scarcely trickled, and the water-cresses were yellow before their time. +Many a dancing hill-stream was dead--only here and there one stronger +than her sisters attempted a _pas-seul_ over the shelving rocks; but all +choral movements and melodies forsook the mountains, still and silent as +so much painted canvass. Waterfalls first tamed their thunder, then +listened alarmed to their own echoes, wailed themselves away into +diminutive murmurs, gasped for life, died, and were buried at the feet +of the green slippery precipices. Tarns sank into moors; and there was +the voice of weeping heard and low lament among the water-lilies. Ay, +millions of pretty flowerets died in their infancy, even on their +mother's breast; the bee fainted in the desert for want of the +honey-dew, and the ground-cells of industry were hushed below the +heather. Cattle lay lean on the brownness of a hundred hills, and the +hoof of the red-deer lost its fleetness. Along the shores of lochs great +stones appeared, within what for centuries had been the lowest +water-mark; and whole bays, once bright and beautiful with reed-pointed +wavelets, became swamps, cracked and seamed, or rustling in the aridity +with a useless crop, to the sugh of the passing wind. On the shore of +the sea alone you beheld no change. The tides ebbed and flowed as +before--the small billows racing over the silver sands to the same goal +of shells, or climbing up to the same wildflowers that bathe the +foundation of some old castle belonging to the ocean. + +But the windows of heaven were opened,--and, like giants refreshed with +mountain-dew, the rivers flung themselves over the cliffs with roars of +thunder. The autumnal woods are fresher than those of summer. The mild +harvest-moon will yet repair the evil done by the outrageous sun; and, +in the gracious after-growth, the green earth far and wide rejoices as +in spring. Like people that have hidden themselves in caves when their +native land was oppressed, out gush the torrents, and descend with songs +to the plain. The hill-country is itself again when it hears the voice +of streams. Magnificent army of mists! whose array encompasses islands +of the sea, and who still, as thy glorious vanguard keeps deploying +among the glens, rollest on in silence more sublime than the trampling +of the feet of horses, or the sound of the wheels of chariots, to the +heath-covered mountains of Scotland, we bid thee hail! + +In all our wanderings through the Highlands, towards night we have +always found ourselves at home. What though no human dwelling was at +hand? We cared not--for we could find a bedroom among the casual +inclinations of rocks, and of all curtains the wild-brier forms itself +into the most gracefully-festooned draperies, letting in green light +alone from the intercepted stars. Many a cave we know of--cool by day, +and warm by night--how they happen to be so, we cannot tell--where no +man but ourselves ever slept, or ever will sleep; and sometimes, on +startling a doe at evening in a thicket, we have lain down in her lair, +and in our slumbers heard the rain pattering on the roofing birk-tree, +but felt not one drop on our face, till at dawning we struck a shower of +diamonds from the fragrant tresses. But to-night we shall not need to +sleep among the sylvans; for our Tail has pitched our Tent on the +Moor--and is now sweeping the mountain with telescope for sight of our +descending feet. Hark! signal-gun and bagpipe hail our advent, and the +Pyramid brightens in its joy, independent of the sunlight, that has left +but one streak in the sky. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT FIRST.--GLEN-ETIVE. + + +Yes! all we have to do is to let down their lids--to will what our eyes +shall see--and, lo! there it is--a creation! Day dawns, and for our +delight in soft illumination from the dim obscure floats slowly up a +visionary loch--island after island evolving itself into settled +stateliness above its trembling shadow, till, from the overpowering +beauty of the wide confusion of woods and waters, we seek relief, but +find none, in gazing on the sky; for the east is in all the glory of +sunrise, and the heads and the names of the mountains are uncertain +among the gorgeous colouring of the clouds. Would that we were a +painter! Oh! how we should dash, on the day and interlace it with night! +That chasm should be filled with enduring gloom, thicker and thicker, +nor the sun himself suffered to assuage the sullen spirit, now lowering +and threatening there, as if portentous of earthquake. Danger and fear +should be made to hang together for ever on those cliffs, and half-way +up the precipice be fixed the restless cloud ascending from the abyss, +so that in imagination you could not choose but hear the cataract. The +Shadows should seem to be stalking away like evil spirits before angels +of light--for at our bidding the Splendours should prevail against them, +deploying from the gates of Heaven beneath the banners of morn. Yet the +whole picture should be harmonious as a hymn--as a hymn at once sublime +and sweet--serene and solemn; nor should it not be felt as even +cheerful--and sometimes as if there were about to be merriment in +Nature's heart--for the multitude of the isles should rejoice--and the +new-woke waters look as if they were waiting for the breezes to enliven +them into waves, and wearied of rest to be longing for the motion +already beginning to rustle by fits along the sylvan shores. Perhaps a +deer or two--but we have opened a corner of the fringed curtains of our +eyes--the idea is gone--and Turner or Thomson must transfer from our +paper to his canvass the imperfect outline--for it is no more--and make +us a present of the finished picture. + +Strange that, with all our love of nature and of art, we never were a +Painter. True that in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at a Lion or +a Tiger--and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to +spring in keelivine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might +well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even yet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa +at a savage scene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up confused +shatterings of rocks, and flings a mountainous region into convulsions, +as if an earthquake heaved, _in a way that is no canny_, making people +shudder as if something had gone wrong with this planet of ours, and +creation were falling back into chaos. But we love scenes of beautiful +repose too profoundly ever to dream of "transferring them to canvass." +Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration--though we look +with delight on the work when done by others--the picture without the +process--the product of genius without thought of its mortal +instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, +feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world, as well as the inner, +is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetry--we +have proved _that_ to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech +you--how a little Loch seems to rise up with its tall heronry--a central +isle--and all its sylvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the +floor of our Cave, from which in three minutes we could hobble on our +crutch down the inclining greensward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in +that canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches--not any other kind of +tree--except a few pines, on whose tops the large nests repose--and here +and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for Roes! + +The great masters, were their eyes to fall on our idle words, might +haply smile--not contemptuously--on our ignorance of art--but graciously +on our knowledge of nature. All we have to do, then, is to learn the +theory and practice of art--and assuredly we should forthwith set about +doing so, had we any reasonable prospect of living long enough to open +an exhibition of pictures from our own easel. As it is, we must be +contented with that Gallery, richer than the Louvre, which our +imagination has furnished with masterpieces beyond all price or +purchase--many of them touched with her own golden finger, the rest the +work of high but not superior hands. Imagination, who limns in air, has +none of those difficulties to contend with that always beset, and often +baffle, artists in oils or waters. At a breath she can modify, alter, +obliterate, or restore; at a breath she can colour vacuity with rainbow +hues--crown the cliff with its castle--swing the drawbridge over the +gulf profound--through a night of woods roll the river along on its +moonlit reach--by fragmentary cinctures of mist and cloud, so girdle one +mountain that it has the power of a hundred--giant rising above giant, +far and wide, as if the mighty multitude, in magnificent and triumphant +disorder, were indeed scaling heaven. + +To speak more prosaically, every true and accepted lover of nature +regards her with a painter's as well as a poet's eye. He breaks not down +any scene rudely, and with "many an oft-repeated stroke;" but +unconsciously and insensibly he transfigures into Wholes, and all day +long, from morn till dewy eve, he is preceded, as he walks along, by +landscapes retiring in their perfection, one and all of them the birth +of his own inspired spirit. All non-essentials do of themselves drop off +and disappear--all the characteristics of the scenery range themselves +round a centre recognised by the inner sense that cannot err--and thus +it is that "beauty pitches her tents before him"--that sublimity +companions the pilgrim in the waste wilderness--and grandeur for his +sake keeps slowly sailing or settling in the clouds. With such pictures +has our Gallery been so thickly hung round for many years, that we have +often thought there was not room for one other single frame; yet a +vacant space has always been found for every new _chef-d'oeuvre_ that +came to add itself to our collection--and the light from that cupola so +distributes itself that it falls wherever it is wanted--wherever it is +wanted not how tender the shadow! or how solemn the gloom! + +Why, we are now in Glen-Etive--and sitting with our sketch-book at the +mouth of our Tent. Our oft-repeated passionate prayer, + + "O, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" + +has once more, after more than twenty years' absence, in this haunt of +our fanciful youth and imaginative manhood, been granted, and +Christopher, he thinks, could again bound along these cliffs like a +deer. Ay, well-nigh quarter of a century has elapsed since we pitched +this self-same snow-white Tent amid the purple heather, by the Linn of +Dee. How fleetly goes winnowing on the air even the weariest waving of +Time's care-laden wings! A few yellow weather-stains are on the +canvass--but the pole is yet sound--or call it rather mast--for we have +hoisted our topgallant, + + "And lo! the silver cross, to Scotland dear," + +languidly lifts itself up, an ineffectual streamer, in the fitful +morning breezes! + +Bold son, or bright daughter of England! hast thou ever seen a SCOTTISH +THRISSLE? What height are you--Captain of the Grenadier Guards? "Six +feet four on my stocking-soles." Poo--a dwarf! Stand up with your back +to that stalk. Tour head does not reach above his waist--he hangs high +over you--"his radious croun of rubies." There's a Flower! dear to Lady +Nature above all others, saving and excepting the Rose, and he is the +Rose's husband--the Guardian Genii of the land consecrated the Union, +and it has been blest. Eyeing the sun like an angry star that will not +suffer eclipse either from light or shadow--but burns proudly--fiercely--in +its native lustre--storm-brightened, and undishevelled by the tempest in +which it swings. See! it stoops beneath the blast within reach of your +hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and your hand will be as if it had +crushed a sleeping wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it--to do that would +require a giant with an iron glove. Then let it alone to dally with the +wind, and the sun, and the rain, and the snow--all alike dear to its +spears and rubies; and as you look at the armed lustre, you will see a +beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's warlike peace. The stalk +indeed is slender, but it sways without danger of breaking in the blast; +in the calm it reposes as gently as the gowan at its root. The softest +leaf that enfolds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, not greener +than those that sting not if but tenderly you touch them, for they are +green as the garments of the Fairies that dance by moonlight round the +Symbol of old Scotland, and unchristened creatures though they the +Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the AWFUL THRISSLE all the +health and happiness that are in the wholesome stars. + +The dawn is softly--slowly--stealing upon day; for the uprisen sun, +though here the edge of his disc as yet be invisible, is diffusing +abroad "the sweet hour of prime," and all the eastern region is tinged +with crimson, faint and fine as that which sleeps within the wreaths of +the sea-sounding shells. Hark! the eagle's earliest cry, yet in his +eyrie. Another hour, and he and his giant mate will be seen spirally +ascending the skies, in many a glorious gyration, tutoring their +offspring to dally with the sunshine, that, when their plumes are +stronger, they may dally with the storm. O, Forest of Dalness! how sweet +is thy name! Hundreds of red-deer are now lying half-asleep among the +fern and heather, with their antlers, could our eyes now behold them, +motionless as the birch-tree branches with which they are blended in +their lair. At the signal-belling of their king, a hero unconquered in a +hundred fights, the whole herd rises at once like a grove, and with +their stately heads lifted aloft on the weather-gleam, snuff the sweet +scent of the morning air, far and wide surcharged with the honey-dew yet +unmelting on the heather, and eye with the looks of liberty the glad +daylight that mantles the Black Mount with a many-coloured garment. Ha! +the first plunge of the salmon in the Rowan-tree Pool. There again he +shoots into the air, white as silver, fresh run from the sea! For +Loch-Etive, you must know, is one of the many million arms of Ocean, and +bright now are rolling in the billows of the far-heaving tide. Music +meet for such a morn and such mountains. Straight stretches the glen for +leagues, and then, bending through the blue gloom, seems to wind away +with one sweep into infinitude. The Great Glen of Scotland--Glen-More +itself--is not grander. But the Great Glen of Scotland is yet a living +forest. Glen-Etive has few woods or none--and the want of them is +sublime. For centuries ago pines and oaks in the course of nature all +perished; and they exist now but in tradition wavering on the tongues of +old bards, or deep down in the mosses show their black trunks to the +light, when the torrents join the river in spate, and the moor divulges +its secrets as in an earthquake. Sweetly sung, thou small, brown, +moorland bird, though thy song be but a twitter! And true to thy +time--even to a balmy minute--art thou, with thy velvet tunic of black +striped with yellow, as thou windest thy small but not sullen horn--by +us called in our pride HUMBLE-BEE--but not, methinks, so very humble, +while booming high in air in oft-repeated circles, wondering at our +Tent, and at the flag that now unfolds its gaudy length like a burnished +serpent, as if the smell of some far-off darling heather-bed had touched +thy finest instinct, away thou fliest straight southward to that rich +flower-store, unerringly as the carrier-pigeon wafting to distant lands +some love-message on its wings. Yet humble after all thou art; for all +day long, making thy industry thy delight, thou returnest at shut of +day, cheerful even in thy weariness, to thy ground-cell within the +knoll, where as Fancy dreams the Fairies dwell--a Silent People in the +Land of Peace. + +And why hast thou, wild singing spirit of the Highland Glenorchy, that +cheerest the long-withdrawing vale from Inveruren to Dalmally, and from +Dalmally Church-tower to the Old Castle of Kilchurn, round whose +mouldering turrets thou sweepest with more pensive murmur, till thy name +and existence are lost in that noble loch--why hast thou never had thy +Bard? "A hundred bards have I had in bygone ages," is thy reply; "but +the Sassenach understands not the traditionary strains, and the music of +the Gaelic poetry is wasted on his ear." Songs of war and of love are +yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when +the moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft +reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears +the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years. +Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to +thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and brackeny, +and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the +thick-falling dews perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier +music to every waterfall. + +There it was, on a little river-island, that once, whether sleeping or +waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard +small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to +the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly +instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the +stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem +came floating over our couch, and then alighted without footsteps among +the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living +creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing +but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical +dewdrops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our +eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision! +Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all +hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among +the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers +unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier, a Fairy, lying with +uncovered face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge +grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the +creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head +and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not +louder than the twittering of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up +the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The +flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and +in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever--the very dews +glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and, +with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar +off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the +disenthralled Orohy began to rejoice as before, through all her streams +and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of +the moon, we awoke. + +Age is the season of Imagination, youth of Passion; and having been long +young, shall we repine that we are now old? They alone are rich who are +full of years--the Lords of Time's Treasury are all on the staff of +Wisdom; their commissions are enclosed in furrows on their foreheads, +and secured to them for life. Fearless of fate, and far above fortune, +they hold their heritage by the great charter of nature for behoof of +all her children who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for their +decease; for every hour dispenses their wealth, and their bounty is not +a late bequest, but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sanctifies their +gifts to gratitude; and their worth is more clearly seen and profoundly +felt within the solemn gloom of the grave. + +And said we truly that Age is the season of Imagination? That Youth is +the season of Passion your own beating and bounding hearts now tell +you--your own boiling blood. Intensity is its characteristic; and it +burns like a flame of fire, too often but to consume. Expansion of the +soul is ours, with all its feelings and all its "thoughts, that wander +through eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have wings, for power +is given her, beyond the dove's or the eagle's, and no weariness can +touch her on that heavenward flight. + +Yet we are all of "the earth earthy," and, young and old alike, must we +love and honour our home. Your eyes are bright--ours are dim; but "it is +the soul that sees," and "this diurnal sphere" is visible through the +mist of tears. In that light how more than beautiful--how holy--appears +even this world! All sadness, save of sin, is then most sacred; and sin +itself loses its terrors in repentance, which, alas! is seldom perfect +but in the near prospect of dissolution. For temptation may intercept +her within a few feet of her expected rest, nay, dash the dust from her +hand that she has gathered from the burial-place to strew on her head; +but Youth sees flowery fields and shining rivers far-stretching before +her path, and cannot imagine for a moment that among life's golden +mountains there is many a Place of Tombs! + +But let us speak only of this earth--this world--this life--and is not +Age the season of Imagination? Imagination is Memory imbued by joy or +sorrow with creative power over the past, till it becomes the present, +and then, on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till +all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in +illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the Muses; and how +divinely indeed they sang around her as she lay in the pensive shade! + +You know the words of Milton-- + + "Till old experience doth attain + To something like prophetic strain;" + +and you know, while reading them, that Experience is consummate Memory, +Imagination wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with +Genius, and in its "prophetic strain"--Inspiration. + +We would fain lower our tone--and on this theme speak like what we are, +one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap now +twenty-three feet on level ground (our utmost might be twenty-three +inches), nevertheless we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty +minutes,"--ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. +What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first, worms +though we be, we cannot even crawl;--disdainful next of that +acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig;--pretty lambs, +we then totter to the terror of our deep-bosomed dames--till the welkin +rings with admiration to behold, _sans_ leading-strings, the weanlings +walk;--like wildfire then we run, for we have found the use of our +feet;--like wild-geese then we fly, for we may not doubt we have +wings;--in car, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and sky, and +universal nature. The car runs on a post--the ship on a rock--the "air +hath bubbles as the water hath"--the balloon is one of them, and bursts +like a bladder--and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons. +Where, pray, in all this is there a single symptom or particle of +Imagination? It is of Passion "all compact." + +True, this is not a finished picture--'tis but a slight sketch of the +season of Youth; but paint it as you will, and if faithful to nature you +will find Passion in plenty, and a dearth of Imagination. Nor is the +season of Youth therefore to be pitied--for Passion respires and expires +in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent as the unwise +lecture, it is mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth we are the +creatures, the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly +in spite of its severity; for ere long we come to discern through the +dust of our own raising, the pinnacles of towers and temples serenely +ascending into the skies, high and holy places for rule, for rest, or +for religion, where as kings we may reign, as priests minister, as +saints adore. + +We do not deny, excellent youth, that to your eyes and ears beautiful +and sublime are the sights and sounds of Nature--and of Art her Angel. +Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed ours, and deliver thyself up withouten +dread, or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, where night for ever +dwells--to the glory of skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. +Coming and going a thousand and a thousand times, yet, in its familiar +beauty, ever new as a dream--let thy soul span the heavens with the +rainbow. Ask thy heart in the wilderness if that "thunder, heard +remote," be from cloud or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shudder +at the shuddering moor, and your flesh creep upon your bones, as the +heather seems to creep on the bent, with the awe of a passing +earthquake. Let the sea-mew be thy guide up the glen, if thy delight be +in peace profounder than ever sat with her on the lull of summer waves! +For the inland loch seems but a vale overflowing with wondrous +light--and realities they all look, these trees and pastures, and rocks +and hills, and clouds--not softened images, as they are, of realities +that are almost stern even in their beauty, and in their sublimity +over-awing; look at yon precipice that dwindles into pebbles the granite +blocks that choke up the shore! + +Now all this, and a million times more than all this, have we too done +in our Youth, and yet 'tis all nothing to what we do whenever we will it +in our Age. For almost all _that_ is passion; spiritual passion +indeed--and as all emotions are akin, they all work with, and into one +another's hands, and, however remotely related, recognise and welcome +one another, like Highland cousins, whenever they meet. Imagination is +not the Faculty to stand aloof from the rest, but gives the one hand to +Fancy and the other to Feeling, and _sets_ to Passion, who is often so +swallowed up in himself as to seem blind to their _vis-a-vis_, till all +at once he hugs all the Three, as if he were demented, and as suddenly +sporting _dos-a-dos_--is off on a gallopade by himself right slick away +over the mountain-tops. + +To the senses of a schoolboy a green sour crab is as a golden pippin, +more delicious than any pine-apple--the tree which he climbs to pluck it +seems to grow in the garden of Eden--and the parish, moorland though it +be, over which he is let loose to play--Paradise. It is barely possible +there may be such a substance as matter, but all its qualities worth +having are given it by mind. By a necessity of nature, then, we are all +poets. We all make the food we feed on; nor is jealousy, the green-eyed +monster, the only wretch who discolours and deforms. Every evil thought +does so--every good thought gives fresh lustre to the grass--to the +flowers--to the stars. And as the faculties of sense, after becoming +finer and more fine, do then, because that they are earthly, gradually +lose their power, the faculties of the soul, because that they are +heavenly, become then more and more and more independent of such +ministrations, and continue to deal with images, and with ideas which +are diviner than images, nor care for either partial or total eclipse of +the daylight, conversant as they are, and familiar with a more +resplendent--a spiritual universe. + +You still look incredulous and unconvinced of the truth of our +position--but it was established in our first three paragraphs; and the +rest, though proofs too, are intended merely for illustrations. Age +alone understands the language of old Mother Earth--for Age alone, from +his own experience, can imagine its meanings in trouble or in +rest--often mysterious enough even to him in all conscience--but +intelligible though inarticulate--nor always inarticulate; for though +sobs and sighs are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and groans and +gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and cries, as if the old Earth were +undergoing a violent death--yet many a time and oft, within these few +years, have we heard her slowly syllabling words out of the Bible, and +as in listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed stars responded to +their truth, and, like Mercy visiting Despair, the Moon bore it into the +heart of the stormy clouds. + +And are there not now--have there never been young Poets? Many; for +Passion, so tossed as to leave, perhaps to give, the sufferer power to +reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical because creative, and loves to +express itself in "Prose or numerous verse," at once its nutriment and +relief. Nay, Nature sometimes gifts her children with an imaginative +spirit, that, from slight experiences of passion, rejoices to idealise +intentions, and incidents, and characters all coloured by it, or subject +to its sway; and these are Poets, not with old heads on young shoulders, +but with old hearts in young bosoms; yet such premature genius seldom +escapes blight, the very springs of life are troubled, and its possessor +sinks, pines, fades, and dies. So was it with Chatterton and Keats. + +It may be, after all, that we have only proved Age to be the strongest +season of Imagination; and if so, we have proved all we wish, for we +seek not to deny, but to vindicate. Knowledge is power to the poet as +it is power to all men--and indeed without Art and Science what is +Poetry? Without cultivation the faculty divine can have but imperfect +vision. The inner eye is dependent on the outward eye long familiar with +material objects--a finer sense, cognisant of spiritualities, but +acquired by the soul from constant communion with shadows--innate the +capacity, but awakened into power by gracious intercourse with Nature. +Thus Milton _saw_--after he became blind. + +But know that Age is not made up of a multitude of years--though that be +the vulgar reckoning--but of a multitude of experiences; and that a man +at thirty, if good for much, must be old. How long he may continue in +the prime of Age, God decrees; many men of the most magnificent +minds--for example, Michael Angelo--have been all-glorious in power and +majesty at fourscore and upwards; but one drop of water on the brain can +at any hour make it barren as desert dust. So can great griefs. + +Yestreen we had rather a hard bout of it in the Tent--the Glenlivet was +pithy--and our Tail sustained a total overthrow. They are snoring as if +it still were midnight. And is it thus that we sportsmen spend our time +on the Moors? Yet while "so many of our poorest subjects are yet +asleep," let us re-point the nib of our pen, and in the eye of the +sweet-breathed morning--moralise. + +Well-nigh quarter a century, we said, is over and gone since by the Linn +of Dee we pitched--on that famous excursion--THE TENT. Then was the +genesis of that white witch Maga-- + + "Like some tall Palm her noiseless fabric grew!" + +Nay, not noiseless--for the deafest wight that ever strove to hear with +his mouth wide open, might have sworn that he heard the sound of ten +thousand hammers. Neither grew she like a Palm--but like a Banyan-tree. +Ever as she threw forth branches from her great unexhausted stem, they +were borne down by the weight of their own beauty to the soil--the deep, +black rich soil in which she grew, originally sown there by a bird of +Paradise, that dropt the seed from her beak as she sailed along in the +sunshiny ether--and every limberest spray there again taking root, +reascended a stately scion, and so on ceaselessly through all the hours, +each in itself a spring-season, till the figurative words of Milton +have been fulfilled,-- + + --"Her arms + Branching so broad and long, that in the ground + The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow + About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade + High overarch'd, and echoing walks between; + There oft the Ettrick Shepherd, shunning heat, + Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds + At loopholes cut through thickest shade." + +But, alas! for the Odontist! He, the "_Deliciae generis Humani_," is +dead. The best of all the Bishops of Bristol is no more. Mansel had not +a tithe of his wit--nor Kaye a tithe of his wisdom. And can it be that +we have not yet edited "His Remains!" "Alas! poor Yorick!" If Hamlet +could smile even with the skull of the Jester in his hands, whom when a +princely boy he had loved, hanging on his neck many a thousand times, +why may not we, in our mind's eye seeing that mirthful face "quite +chap-fallen," and hearing as if dismally deadened by the dust, the voice +that "so often set our table on a roar!" Dr Parr's wig, too, is all out +of frizzle; a heavier shot has dishevelled its horsehair than ever was +sent from the Shepherd's gun; no more shall it be mistaken for owl +a-blink on the mid-day bough, or ptarmigan basking in the sun high up +among the regions of the snow. It has vanished, with other lost things, +to the Moon; and its image alone remains for the next edition of the +celebrated treatise "_De Rebus Deperditis_," a suitable and a welcome +frontispiece, transferred thither by the engraver's cunning from the +first of those Eight Tomes that might make the Trone tremble, laid on +the shoulders of Atlas who threatens to put down the Globe, by the least +judicious and the most unmerciful of editors that ever imposed upon the +light living the heavy dead--John Johnson, late of Birmingham, Fellow of +the Royal Society, and of the Royal College of Physicians, whose +practice is duller than that of all Death's doctors, and his +prescriptions in that preface unchristianly severe. ODoherty, likewise, +has been gathered to his fathers. The Standard-bearer has lowered his +colours before the foe who alone is invincible. The Ensign, let us not +fear, has been advanced to a company without purchase, in the +Celestials; the Adjutant has got a Staff appointment. Tims was lately +rumoured to be in a galloping consumption; but the very terms of the +report, about one so sedentary, were sufficient to give it the lie. +Though puny, he is far from being unwell; and still engaged in polishing +tea-spoons and other plated articles, at a rate cheaper than travelling +gypsies do horn. Prince Leopold is now King of the Belgians--but we must +put an end in the Tent to that portentous snore. + + "Arise, awake, or be for ever fallen!" + +Ho--ho! gentlemen--so you have had the precaution to sleep in your +clothes. The sun, like Maga, is mounting higher and higher in heaven; so +let us, we beseech you, to breakfast, and then off to the Moors. + +"Substantial breakfast!" by Dugald Dhu, and by Donald Roy, and by Hamish +Bhan--heaped up like icebergs round the pole. How nobly stands in the +centre that ten-gallon Cask of Glenlivet! Proud is that Round to court +his shade. That twenty-pound Salmon lies beneath it even as yesterday he +lay beneath the cliff, while a column of light falls from him on that +Grouse-Pie. Is not that Ham beautiful in the calm consciousness of his +protection? That Tongue mutely eloquent in his praise? Tap him with your +knuckles, tenderly as if you loved him--and that with all your heart and +soul you do--and is not the response firm as from the trunk of the +gnarled oak? He is yet "Virgin of Proserpina"--"by Jove" he is; no +wanton lip has ever touched his mouth so chaste; so knock out the bung, +and let us hear him gurgle. With diviner music does he fill the pitcher, +and with a diviner liquidity of light than did ever Naiad from fount of +Helicon or Castaly, pour into classic urn gracefully uplifted by Grecian +damsel to her graceful head, and borne away, with a thanksgiving hymn, +to her bower in the olive-grove. + +All eggs are good eating; and 'tis a vulgar heresy which holds that +those laid by sea-fowl have a fishy taste. The egg of the Sew-mew is +exceeding sweet; so is that of the Gull. Pleasant is even the yolk of +the Cormorant--in the north of England ycleped the Scarth, and in the +Lowlands of Scotland the Black Byuter. Try a Black Byuter's egg, my dear +boy; for though not newly laid, it has since May been preserved in +butter, and is as fresh as a daisy after a shower. Do not be afraid of +stumbling on a brace of embryo Black Byuters in the interior of the +globe, for by its weight we pronounce it an egg in no peril of +parturition. You may now smack your lips, loud as if you were smacking +your palms, for that yellow morsel was unknown to Vitellius. Don't crush +the shell, but throw it into the Etive, that the Fairies may find it at +night, and go dancing in the fragile but buoyant canoe, in fits of small +shrill laughter, along with the foam-bells over the ebb-tide Rapids +above Connal's raging Ferry. + +The salmon is in shivers, and the grouse-pie has vanished like a dream. + + "So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies, + All that this world is proud of!" + +Only a goose remains! and would that he too were gone to return no more; +for he makes us an old man. No tradition survives in the Glen of the era +at which he first flourished. He seems to have belonged to some tribe of +the Anseres now extinct; and as for his own single individual self, our +senses tell us, in a language not to be misinterpreted, that he must +have become defunct in the darkness of antiquity. But nothing can be too +old for a devil--so at supper let us rectify him in Cayenne. + +Oh! for David Wilkie, or William Simpson (while we send Gibb to bring +away yonder Shieling and its cliff), to paint a picture--coloured, if +possible, from the life--of the Interior of our airy Pyramid. Door open, +and perpendicular canvass walls folded up--that settled but cloudy sky, +with here its broad blue fields, and there its broad blue glimpsing +glades--this greensward mound in the midst of a wilderness of +rock-strewn heather--as much of that one mountain, and as many of those +others, as it can be made to hold--that bright bend of the river--a +silver bow--and that white-sanded, shelly, shingly shore at Loch-Etive +Head, on which a troop of Tritons are "charging with all their +chivalry," still driven back and still returning, to the sound of +trumpets, of "flutes and soft recorders," from the sea. On the table, +all strewn and scattered "in confusion worse confounded," round the +Cask, which + + --"dilated stands + Like Teneriffe or Atlas _unremoved_," + +what "buttery touches" might be given to the + + --"reliquias Danaum atque inmitis Achillei!" + +Then the camp-beds tidily covered and arranged along their own +department of the circle--quaint dresses hanging from loops, all the +various apparelling of hunter, shooter, fisher, and forester--rods, +baskets, and nets occupying their picturesque division--fowling-pieces, +double and single, rejoicing through the oil-smooth brownness of their +barrels in the exquisite workmanship of a Manton and a Lancaster--American +rifles, with their stocks more richly silver-chased than you could have +thought within reach of the arts in that young and prosperous +land--duck-guns, whose formidable and fatal length had in Lincolnshire +often swept the fens--and on each side of the door, a brass carronade on +idle hours to awaken the echoes--sitting erect on their hurdies, +deer-hound, greyhound, lurcher, pointer, setter, spaniel, varmint, and +though last, not least, O'Bronte watching Christopher with his steadfast +eyes, slightly raised his large hanging triangular ears, his Thessalian +bull dewlaps betokening keen anxiety to be off and away to the mountain, +and with a full view of the white star on his coal-black breast;-- + + "Plaided and plumed in their tartan array" + +our three chosen Highlanders, chosen for their strength and their +fleetness from among the prime Children of the Mist--and Tickler the +Tall, who keeps growing after threescore and ten like a stripling, and +leaves his mark within a few inches of the top of the pole, arrayed in +tights of Kendal green, bright from the skylight of the inimitable +Vallance or the matchless Williams--green too his vest, and green also +his tunic--while a green feather in a green bonnet dances in its airy +splendour, and gold button-holes give at once lustre and relief to the +glowing verdure (such was Little John, when arrayed in all his glory; to +walk behind Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as they glided from tree to +tree, in wait for the fallow-deer in merry Sherwood)--North in his +Quaker garb--Quaker-like all but in cuffs and flaps, which, when he goes +to the Forest, are not--North, with a figure combining in itself all the +strength of a William Penn, _sans_ its corpulency, all the agility of a +Jem Belcher with far more than a Jem Belcher's bottom--with a face +exhibiting in rarest union all the philosophy of a Bacon, the +benevolence of a Howard, the wisdom of a Wordsworth, the fire of a +Byron, the gnosticity of a John Bee, and the up-to-trappishness combined +not only with perfect honesty, but with honour bright, of the Sporting +Editor of _Bell's Life in London_--and then, why if Wilkie or Simpson +fail in making a GEM of all that, they are not the men of genius we took +them for, that is all, and the art must be at a low ebb indeed in these +kingdoms. + +Well, our Tail has taken wings to itself and flown away with Dugald Dhu +and Donald Roy; and we, with Hamish Bhan, with Ponto, Piro, Basta, and +O'Bronte, are left by ourselves in the Tent. Before we proceed farther, +it may not be much amiss to turn up our little fingers--yestreen we were +all a leetle opstropelous--and spermaceti is not a more "sovereign +remedy for an inward bruise," than is a hair from the dog's tail that +bit you an antidote to any pus that produces rabies in the shape of +hydrophobia. Fill up the quaich, Hamish! a caulker of Milbank can harm +no man at any hour of the day--at least in the Highlands. Sma' Stell, +Hamish--assuredly Sma' Stell! + +Ere we start, Hamish, play us a Gathering--and then a Pibroch. "The +Campbells are coming" is like a storm from the mountain sweeping +Glen-More, that roars beneath the hastening hurricane with all its +woods. No earthquake like that which accompanies the trampling of ten +thousand men. So, round that shoulder, Hamish--and away for a mile up +the Glen--then, turning on your heel, blow till proud might be the +mother that bore you; and from the Tent-mouth Christopher will keep +smart fire from his Pattereroes, answered by all the echoes. +Hamish--indeed + + "The dun-deer's hide + On swifter foot was never tied--" + +for even now as that cloud--rather thunderous in his aspect--settles +himself over the Tent--ere five minutes have elapsed--a mile off is the +sullen sound of the bagpipe!--music which, if it rouse you not when +heard among the mountains, may you henceforth confine yourself to the +Jew's harp. Ay, here's a claymore--let us fling away the scabbard--and +in upon the front rank of the bayoneted muskets, till the Saxon array +reels, or falls just where it has been standing, like a swathe of grass. +So swept of old the Highlanders--shepherds and herdsmen--down the wooded +cliffs of the pass of Killiecrankie, till Mackay's red-coats lay redder +in blood among the heather, or passed away like the lurid fragments of a +cloud. "The Campbells are coming"--and we will charge with the heroes in +the van. The whole clan is maddening along the Moor--and Maccallum More +himself is at their head. But we beseech you, O'Bronte! not to look so +like a lion--and to hush in your throat and breast that truly Leonine +growl--for after all, 'tis but a bagpipe with ribands + + "Streaming like meteors to the troubled air," + +and all our martial enthusiasm has evaporated in--wind. + +But let us inspect Brown Bess. Till sixty, we used a single barrel. At +seventy we took to a double;--but dang detonators--we stick to the +flint. "Flint," says Colonel Hawker, "shoots strongest into the bird." A +percussion-gun is quicker, but flint is fast enough; and it does, +indeed, argue rather a confusion than a rapidity of ideas, to find fault +with lightning for being too slow. With respect to the flash in the pan, +it is but a fair warning to ducks, for example, to dive if they can, and +get out of the way of mischief. It is giving birds a chance for their +lives, and is it not ungenerous to grudge it? When our gun goes to our +shoulder, that chance is but small; for with double-barrel Brown Bess, +it is but a word and a blow,--the blow first, and long before you could +say Jack Robinson, the gorcock plays thud on the heather. But we beg +leave to set the question at rest for ever by one single clencher. We +have killed fifty birds--grouse--at fifty successive shots--one bird +only to the shot. And mind, not mere pouts--cheepers--for we are no +chicken-butchers--but all thumpers--cocks and hens as big as their +parents, and the parents themselves likewise; not one of which fell _out +of bounds_ (to borrow a phrase from the somewhat silly though skilful +pastime of pigeon-shooting), except one that suddenly soared half-way up +to the moon, and then + + "Into such strange vagaries fell + As he would dance," + +and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. Now, what more could have done +a detonator in the hands of the devil himself? Satan might have shot as +well, perhaps, as Christopher North--better we defy him; and we cannot +doubt that his detonator--given to him in a present, we believe, by Joe +Manton--is a prime article--one of the best ever manufactured on the +percussion system. But what more could he have done? When we had killed +our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the Christian reader, would not +the odds have been six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, at the +close of the match, ten birds behind perhaps, and with a bag shamefully +rich in poor pouts, that would have fallen to the ground had he but +thrown salt on their tails, have looked excessively sheepish? True, that +in rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from its detonating power, +more correctly than the common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon, +will then often not act at all; but that is its only advantage, and we +confess a great one, especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on the +country to say that it always rains, for it almost as often snows. +However, spite of wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor shall +any newfangled invention, howsoever ingenious, wean us from our First +Love. + +Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen--in whose veins the blood yet +gallops, canters, or trots--despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in whose +veins the blood creeps like a wearied pedestrian at twilight hardly able +to hobble into the wayside inn--for thus so long preferring the steel +pen to the steel barrel (the style of both is equally polished)--our +Bramah to our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, Tickler and the +Admiral, whose united ages amount to little more than a century and a +half, are already slaughtering their way along the mountain-side, the +one on Buachaille Etive, and the other on the Black Mount. But we love +not to commit murder long before meridian--"gentle lover of Nature" as +we are; so, in spite of the scorn of the more passionate sportsman, we +shall continue for an hour or two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting +our eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue sky, from +memorandum-book to mountain, from ink-bottle to loch, and delight +ourselves, and perchance a few thousand others, by a waking-dream +description of Glen-Etive. + +'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling anywhere speck-like on +the river-winding plain--or nest-like among the brushwood knolls--or +rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do +our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptom of life. Two +houses we know to be in the solitude--ay, two--one of them near the +head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen--but both +distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart +of the Moor. We were mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible--for +yonder it looms in a sullen light, and before we have finished the +sentence, may have again sunk into the moor. Ay, it is gone--for lights +and shadows coming and going, we know not whence nor whither, here +travel all day long--the sole tenants--very ghostlike--and seemingly in +their shiftings imbued with a sort of dim uncertain life. How far off +from our Tent may be the Loch? Miles--and silently as snow are seen to +break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs an aerial haze, +the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at +the head of the Glen? Miles--for though that speck in the sky into which +they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot +hear its cry. What giants are these right opposite our Pyramid?--Co--grim +chieftain--and his Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven cliffs! +This is what may be well called--Nature on a grand scale. And then, how +simple! We begin to feel ourselves--in spite of all we can do to support +our dignity by our pride--a mighty small and insignificant personage. We +are about six feet high--and everybody around us about four thousand. +Yes, that is the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no idea that in any +situation we could be such dwindled dwarfs, such perfect pigmies. Our +Tent is about as big as a fir-cone--and Christopher North an insect! + +What a wild world of clouds all over that vast central wilderness of +Northern Argyllshire lying between Cruachan and Melnatorran--Corryfinuarach +and Ben Slarive, a prodigious land! defying description, and in memory +resembling not realities, but like fragments of tremendous dreams. Is it +a sterile region? Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a blade of +grass--not a bent of heather--not even moss. And so they go shouldering +up into the sky--enormous masses--huger than churches or ships. And +sometimes not unlike such and other structures--all huddled together--yet +never jostling, so far as we have seen; and though often overhanging, as +if the wind might blow them over with a puff, steadfast in the storm +that seems rather to be an earthquake, and moving not an hair's-breadth, +while all the shingly sides of the mountains--you know shingle--with an +inconstant clatter--hurry-skurry--seem to be breaking up into debris. + +Is that the character of the whole region? No, you darling; it has vales +on vales of emerald, and mountains on mountains of amethyst, and streams +on streams of silver; and, so help us Heaven!--for with these eyes we +have seen them, a thousand and a thousand times--at sunrise and sunset, +rivers on rivers of gold. What kind of climate? All kinds, and all kinds +at once--not merely during the same season, but the same hour. Suppose +it three o'clock of a summer afternoon--you have but to choose your +weather. Do you desire a close sultry breathless gloom? You have it in +the stifling dens of Ben-An[=e]a, where lions might breed. A breezy +coolness, with a sprinkling of rain? Then open your vest to the green +light in the dewy vales of Benl[=u]ra. Lochs look lovely in mist, and so +thinks the rainbow--then away with you ere the rainbow fade--away, we +beseech you, to the wild shores of Lochan-a-L[=u]rich. But you would +rather see a storm, and hear some Highland thunder? There is one at this +moment on Unimore, and Cruachl[=i]a growls to Meallanuir, till the +cataracts of Glashgour are dumb as the dry rocks of Craig-te[=o]nan. + +In those regions we were, when a boy, initiated into the highest +mysteries of the Highlands. No guide dogged our steps--as well might a +red-deer have asked a cur to show him the Forest of Braemar, or +Beniglo--an eagle where best to build his eyrie have advised with the +Glasgow Gander. O heavens! how we were bewildered among the vast objects +that fed that delirium of our boyhood! We dimly recognised faces of +cliffs wearing dreadful frowns; blind though they looked, they seemed +sensible of our approach; and we heard one horrid monster mutter, "What +brings thee here, infatuated Pech?--begone!" At his impotent malice we +could not choose but smile, and shook our staff at the blockhead, as +since at many a greater blockhead even than he have we shook--and more +than shook our Crutch. But as through "pastures green and quiet waters +by," we pursued, from sunrise to sunset, our uncompanioned way, some +sweet spot, surrounded by heather, and shaded by fern, would woo us to +lie down on its bosom, and enjoy a visionary sleep! Then it was that the +mountains confidentially told us their names--and we got them all by +heart; for each name characterised its owner by some of his peculiar and +prominent qualities--as if they had been one and all christened by poets +baptising them from a font + + "Translucent, pure, + With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod." + +O! happy pastor of a peaceful flock! Thou hast long gone to thy reward! +One--two--three--four successors hast thou had in that manse--(now it +too has been taken down and the plough gone over it)--and they all did +their duty; yet still is thy memory fragrant in the glen; for deeds like +thine "smell sweet, and blossom in the dust!" Under heaven, we owed our +life to thy care of us in a brain fever. Sometimes thy face would grow +grave, never angry, at our sallies--follies--call them what you will, +but not sins. And methinks we hear the mild old man somewhat mournfully +saying, "Mad boy! out of gladness often cometh grief--out of mirth +misery; but our prayers, when thou leavest us, shall be, that never, +never may such be thy fate!" Were those prayers heard in heaven and +granted on earth? We ask our heart in awe, but its depths are silent, +and make no response. + +But is it our intention to sit scribbling here all day? Our fancy lets +our feet enjoy their sinecure, and they stretch themselves out in +indolent longitude beneath the Tent-table, while we are settled in +spirit, a silent thought, on the battlements of our cloud-castle on the +summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our cloud-castle rests upon a +foundation of granite precipices; and down along their hundred chasms, +from which the eye recoils, we look on Loch-Etive bearing on its bosom +stationary--so it seems in the sunshine--one snow-white sail! What +brings the creature there--and on what errand may she be voyaging up the +uninhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the uninhabited mountains? +Some poet, perhaps, steers her--sitting at the helm in a dream, and +allowing her to dance her own way, at her own will, up and down the +green glens and hills of the foam-crested waves--a swell rolling in the +beauty of light and music for ever attendant on her, as the Sea-mew--for +so we choose to name her--pursues her voyage--now on water, and now, as +the breezes drop, in the air--elements at times undistinguishable, as +the shadows of the clouds and of the mountains mingle their imagery in +the sea. Oh! that our head, like that of a spider, were all studded with +eyes--that our imagination, sitting in the "palace of the soul" (a noble +expression, borrowed or stolen by Byron from Waller), might see all at +once all the sights from centre to circumference, as if all rallying +around her for her own delight, and oppressing her with the poetry of +nature--a lyrical, an elegiac, an epic, or a tragic strain. Now the +bright blue water-gleams enchain her vision, and are felt to constitute +the vital, the essential spirit of the whole--Loch Awe land-serpent, +large as serpent of the sea, lying asleep in the sun, with his burnished +skin all bedropt with scales of silver and of gold--the lands of Lorn, +mottled and speckled with innumerous lakelets, where fancy sees millions +of water-lilies riding at anchor in bays where the breezes have fallen +asleep--Oban, splendid among the splendours of that now almost +motionless mediterranean, the mountain-loving Linnhe Loch--Jura, Islay, +Colonsay, and nameless other islands, floating far and wide away on--on +to Coll and Tiree, drowned beneath the faint horizon. But now all the +eyes in our spider-head are lost in one blaze of undistinguishable +glory; for the whole Highlands of Scotland are up in their power against +us--rivers, lochs, seas, islands, cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen +drops from our hand, and here we are--not on the battlements of the +air-palace on the summit of Cruachan, but sitting on a tripod or +three-legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our MS. before us, and +at our right hand a quaich of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder +ten-gallon cask--and here's to the health of "Honest men and bonny +lasses" all over the globe. + +So much for description--an art in which the Public (God bless her, +where is she now--and shall we ever see her more?) has been often +pleased to say that we excel. But let us off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto! +Basta! to your paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. Pointers! +ye are a noble trio. White, O Ponto! art thou as the foam of the sea. +Piro! thou tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's hide, and +fleet as he while thou rangest the mountain-brow, now hid in heather, +and now reappearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, Basta!--for +finest-scented though be thy scarlet nostrils, one bad trick alone hast +thou; and whenever that grey wing glances from some pillar-stone in the +wilderness, headlong goest thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself +to-day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail or sun herself on the +cliff. As for thee, O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright breast, +keep thou like a serf at our heels, and when our course lies over the +fens and marshes, thou mayest sweep like a hairy hurricane among the +flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake himself, and, with thy +fan-like tail proudly spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet, +with a smile, the monstrous mallard. + +But in what direction shall we go, callants--towards what airt shall we +turn our faces? Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and descend into +Glen-Creran, where the stony regions that the ptarmigan loves melt away +into miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we near the salmon-haunted +Loch so beautiful, loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights of +Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with sylvan shades, wherein the cushat coos, +and the roe glides through the secret covert? Or shall we away up by +Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of +Streams, that from all their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch +have never yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of +bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, or trunk of a +tree--none but trunks of trees there, and all dead for centuries--that +had sunk down where it grew, and spanned the flood that eddies round it +with a louder music? Wild region! yet not barren; for there are cattle +on a thousand hills, that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their heads +as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him in a +half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. There flocks of +goats--outliers from Dalness--may be seen as if following one another on +the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that frown down unfathomed +abysses--and there is frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's wing, +and his gobble gathering together his brood, scattered by the lightning +that in its season volleys through the silence, else far deeper than +that of death;--for the silence of death--that is, of a churchyard +filled with tombs--is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness that +prevails under the shadow of Unimore and Attchorachan, with their cliffs +on which the storms have engraven strange hieroglyphical inscriptions, +which, could but we read them wisely, would record the successive ages +of the Earth, from the hour when fire or flood first moulded the +mountains, down to the very moment that we are speaking, and with small +steel-hammer roughening the edges of our flints that they may fail not +to murder. Or shall we away down by Armaddy, where the Fox-Hunter +dwells--and through the woods of Inverkinglass and Achran, "double, +double, toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Benanea and +Mealcopucaich, and drop down like two unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae, +with a peep in the distance of the young tower of Dalmally, and the old +turrets of Kilchurn? Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, which +by that route lies between this our Tent and the many tarns that freshen +the wildernesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word--tip the wink--tongue +on your cheek--up with your forefinger--and we shall go; for hark, +Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight--a long day is yet before us--and +what if we be benighted? We have a full moon and plenty of stars. + +All these are splendid schemes--but what say you, Hamish, to one less +ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits +down by Armaddy--the Forge--Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in +some six or seven hours--and then let us try that famous salmon-cast +nearest the mansion--(you have the rods?)--and if time permit, an hour's +trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass of the Brander, for one of those +giants that have immortalised the names of a Maule, a Goldie, and a +Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, what a beard! You cannot have been shaved +since Whitsunday--and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those +dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot--mulish in nought +but an inveterate aversion to all stumbling. And now for the heather! +But are you sure, gents, _that we are on_? + +And has it come to this! Where is the grandson of the desert-born? + +Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta wert a flyer! A fencer beyond +compare! Dost thou remember how, for a cool five hundred, thou clearedst +yon canal in a style that rivalled that of the red-deer across the +chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do was to hold hard and not ride over +the hounds, when running breast-high on the rear of Reynard the savage +pack wakened the welkin with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, +and whipper-in and huntsman were flogging on their faltering flight in +vain through fields and forests flying behind thy heels that glanced +and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What steed like thee in all +Britain at a steeple-chase? Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and +skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other horses--heavy there as +dragoons--seemed fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, soil-sunk +to the knees. Ditches dwindled beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as +rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate +plunged thy sixteen hands and a-half height, like a Polar monster +leaping from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up thy small head +and fine neck and high shoulder, like a Draco from the weltering waters, +with a few proud pawings to which the recovered greensward rang, thy +whole bold, bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, crested by old +Christopher, and after one short snorting pause, over the miry +meadows--tantivy!--tantivy!--away! away! away! + +Oh! son of a Rep! were not those glorious days? But Time has laid his +finger on us both, Filho; and never more must we two be seen by the edge +of the cover, + + "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard + Upon the golden hills." + +'Tis the last learned and highest lesson of Wisdom, Filho, in man's +studious obedience to Nature's laws--_to know when to stop in his +career_. Pride, Passion, Pleasure, all urge him on; while Prudence, +Propriety, Peace, cry halt! halt! halt! That mandate we have timeously +obeyed; and having, unblamed we hope, and blameless, carried on the +pastimes of youth into manhood, and even through the prime of manhood to +the verge of age--on that verge, after some few farewell vagaries up and +down the debatable land, we had the resolution to drop our bridle-hand, +to unloosen the spurs from our heels, and to dismount from the +stateliest and swiftest steed, Filho, that ever wafted mortal man over +moor and mountain like a storm-driven cloud. + +You are sure _we are on_, Hamish? And that he will not run away? Come, +come, Surefoot, none of your funking! A better mane for holding on by we +could not imagine. Pure Shelty you say, Hamish? From his ears we should +have suspected his grandfather of having been at least a Zebra. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT SECOND--THE COVES OF CRUACHAN. + + +Comma--semicolon--colon--full-point! All three scent-struck into +attitude steady as stones. That is beautiful. Ponto straight as a +rod--Piro in a slight curve--and Basta a perfect semicircle. O'Bronte! +down on your marrowbones. But there is no need, Hamish, either for hurry +or haste. On such ground, and on such a day, the birds will lie as if +they were asleep. Hamish, the flask!--not the powder-flask, you +dotterel--but the Glenlivet. 'Tis thus we always love to steady our hand +for the first shot. It gives a fine feeling to the forefinger. + +Ha! the heads of the old cock and hen, like snakes, above the +heather--motionless, but with glancing eyes--and preparing for the +spring. Whirr--whirr--whirr--bang--bang--tapsilleery--tapsalteery--thud-- +thud--thud! Old cock and old hen both down, Hamish. No mean omen, no +awkward augury, of the day's sport. Now for the orphan family--marked ye +them round + + "The swelling instep of the mountain's foot?" + +"Faith and she's the teevil's nainsel--that is she--at the shutin'; for +may I tine ma mull, and never pree sneeshin' mair, if she haena richt +and left murdered fowre o' the creturs!"--"Four!--why, we only covered +the old people; but if younkers will cross, 'tis their own fault that +they bite the heather."--"They're a' fowre spewin', sir, except ane--and +her head's aff--and she's jumpin' about waur nor ony o' them, wi' her +bluidy neck. I wuss she mayna tak to her wings again, and owre the +knowe. But ca' in that great toozy outlandish dowg, sir, for he's +devourin' them--see hoo he's flingin' them, first ane and then anither, +outowre his shouther, and keppin' them afore they touch the grun' in his +mouth, like a mountebank wi' a shour o' oranges!"--"Hamish, are they +bagged?"--"Ou ay."--"Then away to windward, ye sons of bitches--Heavens, +how they do their work!" + +Up to the time of our grand climacteric we loved a wide range--and +thought nothing of describing and discussing a circle of ten miles +diameter in a day, up to our hips in heather. But for these dozen or +twenty years bypast we have preferred a narrow beat, snugly seated on a +shelty, and pad the hoof on the hill no more. Yonder is the kind of +ground we now love--for why should an old man make a toil of a pleasure? +'Tis one of the many small coves belonging to Glen-Etive, and looks down +from no very great elevation upon the Loch. Its bottom, and sides nearly +half-way up, are green pastures, sheep-nibbled as smooth as a lawn--and +a rill, dropping in diamonds from the cliffs at its upper end, betrays +itself, where the water is invisible, by a line of still livelier +verdure. An old dilapidated sheepfold is the only building, and seems to +make the scene still more solitary. Above the green pastures are the +richest beds and bosoms of heather ever bees murmured on--and above them +nothing but bare cliffs. A stiff breeze is now blowing into this cove +from the sea-loch; and we shall slaughter the orphan family at our +leisure. 'Tis probable they have dropped--single bird after single +bird--or in twos and threes--all along the first line of heather that +met their flight; and if so, we shall pop them like partridges in +turnips. Three points in the game! Each dog, it is manifest, stands to a +different lot of feathers; and we shall slaughter them, without +dismounting, _seriatim_. No, Hamish--we must dismount--give us your +shoulder--that will do. The Crutch--now we are on our pins. Take a +lesson. Whirr! Bang! Bag number one, Hamish. Ay, that is right, +Ponto--back Basta. Ditto, ditto. Now Ponto and Basta both back +Piro--right and left this time--and not one of the brood will be left to +cheep of Christopher. Be ready--attend us with the other double-barrel. +Whirr! Bang--bang--bang--bang! What think you of that, you son of the +mist? There is a shower of feathers! They are all at sixes and sevens +upon the greensward at the edge of the heather. Seven birds at four +shots! The whole family is now disposed of--father, mother, and eleven +children. If such fire still be in the dry wood, what must it have been +in the green? Let us lie down in the sheltered shade of the mossy walls +of the sheepfold--take a drop of Glenlivet--and philosophise. + +Hollo! Hamish, who are these strange, suspicious-looking strangers +thitherwards-bound, as hallan-shaker a set as may be seen on an August +day? Ay, ay, we ken the clan. A week's residence to a man of gumption +gives an insight into a neighbourhood. Unerring physiognomists and +phrenologists are we, and what with instinctive, and what with intuitive +knowledge, we keek in a moment through all disguise. He in the centre of +the group is the stickit minister--on his right stands the drunken +dominie--on his left the captain, who in that raised look retains token +of _delirium tremens_--the land-louper behind him is the land-measurer, +who would be well to do in the world were he "monarch of all he +surveyed,"--but has been long out at elbows, and his society not much +courted since he was rude to the auld wife at the time the gudeman was +at the peats. That fine tall youth, the widow's son in Gleno, and his +friend the Sketcher, with his portfolio under his arm, are in +indifferent company, Hamish; but who, pray, may be the phenomenon in +plush, with bow and arrow, and tasseled horn, bonnet jauntily screwed to +the sinister, glass stuck in socket, and precisely in the middle of his +puckered mouth a cigar. You do not say so--a grocer's apprentice from +the Gorbals! + +No need of confabulating there, gemmen, on the knowe--come forward and +confront Christopher North. We find we have been too severe in our +strictures. After all, they are not a bad set of fellows, as the world +goes--imprudence must not be too harshly condemned--Shakespeare taught +us to see the soul of good in things evil--these two are excellent lads; +and, as for impertinence, it often proceeds from _mauvais honte_, and +with a glance we shall replace the archer behind his counter. + +How goes it, Cappy? Rather stiff in the back, minister, with the mouth +of the fowling-piece peeping out between the tails of your long coat, +and the butt at the back of your head, by way of bolster? You will find +it more comfortable to have her in hand. That bamboo, dominie, is well +known to be an air-gun. Have you your horse-pistol with you to-day, +surveyor? Sagittarius, think you, you could hit, at twoscore, a +haystack flying? Sit down, gentlemen, and let's have a crack. + +So ho! so ho! so ho! We see her black eyes beneath a primrose tuft on +the brae. In spring all one bank of blossoms; but 'tis barish now and +sheep-nibbled, though few eyes but our own could have thus detected +there the brown back of Maukin. Dominie, your bamboo. Shoot her sitting? +Fie fie--no, no. Kick her up, Hamish. There she goes. We are out of +practice at single ball--but whizz! she has it between the shoulders. +Head-over-heels she has started another--why, that's funny--give us your +bow and arrow, you green grocer--twang! within an inch of her fud. +Gentlemen, suppose we tip you a song. Join all in the chorus. + +THE POWCHER'S SONG. + + When I was boon apprentice + In vamous Zoomerzet Shere, + Lauks! I zerved my meester truly + Vor neerly zeven yeer, + _U_ntil I took to _Pow_ching, + Az you zhall quickly heer. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + + Az me and ma coomerades + Were zetting on a snere, + Lauks! the Geamkeepoors caem oop to uz; + Vor them we did na kere, + 'Case we could fight or wrestle, lads, + Jump over ony wheere. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + + Az we went oot wan morning + Atwixt your vive and zeex, + We cautcht a here alive, ma lads, + We found un in a deetch; + We popt un in a bag, ma lads, + We yoiten off vor town, + + We took un to a neeghboor's hoose, + And we zold un vor a crown. + We zold un vor a crown, ma lads, + But a wont tell ye wheere. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + + Then here's success to Powching, + Vor A doos think it feere, + And here's look to ere a gentleman + Az wants to buy a heere, + And here's to ere a geamkeepoor, + Az woona zell it deere. + CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year: + Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, + In the zeazon of the year. + +The Presbytery might have overlooked your fault, Mac, for the case was +not a flagrant one, and you were willing, we understand, to make her an +honest woman. Do you think you could recollect one of your sermons? In +action and in unction you had not your superior in the Synod. Do give us +a screed about Nimrod or Nebuchadnezzar. No desecration in a +sermon--better omitted, we grant, prayer and psalm. Should you be unable +to reproduce an entire discourse, yet by dove-tailing--that is, a bit +from one and a bit from another--surely you can be at no loss for half +an hour's miscellaneous matter--heads and tails. Or suppose we let you +off with a View of the Church Question. You look glum and shake your +head. Can you, Mac, how can you resist that Pulpit? + +Behold in that semicircular low-browed cliff, backed by a range of bonny +green braes dipping down from the hills that do themselves come shelving +from the mountains, what appears at first sight to be a cave, but is +merely a blind window, as it were, a few feet deep, arched and faced +like a beautiful work of masonry, though chisel never touched it, nor +man's hand dropped the line along the living stone thus wrought by +nature's self, who often shows us, in her mysterious processes, +resemblances of effects produced by us her children on the same +materials by our more most elaborate art. It is a very pulpit, and that +projecting slab is the sounding-board. That upright stone in front of +it, without the aid of fancy, may well be thought the desk. To us +sitting here, this spot of greensward is the floor; the sky that hangs +low, as if it loved it, the roof of the sanctuary; nor is there any harm +in saying, that we, if we choose to think so, are sitting in a kirk. + +Shall we mount the pulpit by that natural flight of steps, and, like a +Sedgwick or a Buckland, with a specimen in one hand, and before our eyes +mountains whose faces the scars of thunder have intrenched, tell you how +the globe, after formation on formation, became fit residence for +new-created man, and habitable no more to flying dragons? Or shall we, +rather, taking the globe as we find it, speculate on the changes wrought +on its surface by us, whom God gave feet to tread the earth, and faces +to behold the heavens, and souls to soar into the heaven of heavens, on +the wings of hope, aspiring through temporal shades to eternal light? + +Brethren!--The primary physical wants of the human being are food, +clothing, shelter, and defence. To supply these he has invented all his +arts. Hunger and Thirst cultivate the earth. Fear builds castles and +embattles cities. The animal is clothed by nature against cold and +storm, and shelters himself in his den. Man builds his habitation, and +weaves his clothing. With horns, or teeth, or claws, the strong and +deadly weapons with which nature has furnished them, the animal kinds +wage their war; he forges swords and spears, and constructs implements +of destruction that will send death almost as far as his eye can mark +his foe, and sweep down thousands together. The animal that goes in +quest of his food, that pursues or flies from his enemy, has feet, or +wings, or fins; but man bids the horse, the camel, the elephant, bear +him, and yokes them to his chariot. If the strong animal would cross the +river, he swims. Man spans it with a bridge. But the most powerful of +them all stands on the beach and gazes on the ocean. Man constructs a +ship, and encircles the globe. Other creatures must traverse the element +nature has assigned, with means she has furnished. He chooses his +element, and makes his means. Can the fish traverse the waters? So can +he. Can the bird fly the air? So can he. Can the camel speed over the +desert? He shall bear man as his rider. + +"That's beautifu'!" "Tuts, haud your tongue, and tak a chow. There's +some shag." "Is he gaun to be lang, Hamish?" "Wheesht! you micht as weel +be speakin in the kirk." + +But to see what he owes to inventive art, we should compare man, not +with inferior creatures, but with himself, looking over the face of +human society, as history or observation shows it. We shall find him +almost sharing the life of brutes, or removed from them by innumerable +differences, and incalculable degrees. In one place we see him +harbouring in caves, naked, living, we might almost say, on prey, +seeking from chance his wretched sustenance, food which he eats just as +he finds it. He lives like a beggar on the alms of nature. Turn to +another land, and you see the face of the earth covered with the works +of his hand--his habitation, widespreading stately cities--his clothing +and the ornaments of his person culled and fashioned from the three +kingdoms of nature. For his food the face of the earth bears him +tribute; and the seasons and changes of heaven concur with his own art +in ministering to his board. This is the difference which man has made +in his own condition by the use of his intellectual powers, awakened and +goaded on by the necessities of his physical constitution. + +The various knowledge, the endlessly multiplied observation, the +experience and reasonings of man added to man, of generation following +generation, which were required to bring to a moderate state of +advancement the great primary arts subservient to physical life--the +arts of providing food, habitation, clothing, and defence, _we_ are +utterly unable to conceive. We are _born_ to the knowledge which was +collected by the labours of many ages. How slowly were those arts reared +up which still remain to us! How many which had laboriously been brought +to perfection, have been displaced by superior invention, and fallen +into oblivion! Fenced in as we are by the works of our predecessors, we +see but a small part of the power of man contending with the +difficulties of his lot. But what a wonderful scene would be opened +before our eyes, with what intense interest should we look on, if we +could indeed behold him armed only with his own implanted powers, and +going forth to conquer the creation! If we could see him beginning by +subduing evils, and supplying painful wants--going on to turn those +evils and wants into the means of enjoyment--and at length, in the +wantonness and pride of his power, filling his existence with +luxuries;--if we could see him from his first step, in the untamed +though fruitful wilderness, advancing to subdue the soil, to tame and +multiply the herds--from bending the branches into a bower, to fell the +forest and quarry the rock--seizing into his own hands the element of +fire, directing its action on substances got from the bowels of the +earth--fashioning wood, and stone, and metal, to the will of his +thought--searching the nature of plants to spin their fibres, or with +their virtues to heal his diseases;--if we could see him raise his first +cities, launch his first ship, calling the winds and waters to be his +servants, and to do his work--changing the face of the earth--forming +lakes and rivers--joining seas, or stretching the continent itself into +the dominion of the sea;--if we could do all this in imagination, then +should we understand something of what man's intellect has done for his +physical life, and what the necessities of his physical life have done +in forcing into action all the powers of his intelligence. + +But there are still higher considerations arising from the influence of +man's physical necessities on the destiny of the species. It is this +subjugation of natural evil, and this created dominion of art, that +prepares the earth to be the scene of his social existence. His hard +conquest was not the end of his toil. He has conquered the kingdom in +which he was to dwell in his state. The full unfolding of his moral +powers was only possible in those states of society which are thus +brought into being by his conflict with all his physical faculties +against all the stubborn powers of the material universe; for out of the +same conquest Wealth is created. In this progress, and by means thus +brought into action, society is divided into classes. Property itself, +the allotment of the earth, takes place, because it is the bosom of the +earth that yields food. That great foundation of the stability of +communities is thus connected with the same necessity; and in the same +progress, and out of the same causes, arise the first great Laws by +which society is held together in order. Thus that whole wonderful +development of the Moral Nature of man, in all those various forms +which fill up the history of the race, in part arises out of, and is +always intimately blended with, the labours to which he has been aroused +by those first great necessities of his physical nature. But had the +tendency to increase his numbers been out of all proportion to the means +provided by nature, and infinitely multipliable by art, for the +subsistence of human beings, how could this magnificent march have moved +on? + +Hence we may understand on what ground the ancient nations revered so +highly, and even deified, the authors of the primary arts of life. They +considered not the supply of the animal wants merely; but they +contemplated that mighty change in the condition of mankind to which +these arts have given origin. It is on this ground that they had raised +the character of human life, that Virgil assigns them their place in the +dwellings of bliss, among devoted patriots and holy priests, among those +whom song or prophecy had inspired, among those benefactors of the race +whose names were to live for ever, giving his own most beautiful +expression to the common sentiment of mankind. + + "Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, + Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, + Quique pii vates, et Phoebo digna locuti, + _Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes_, + Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo; + _Omnibus his_ nivea cinguntur tempora vitta." + +"That's Latin for the minister and the dominie." "Wheesht! Heard you +ever the like o' that? Though I dinna understand a word o't, it gars me +a' grue." "Wheesht! wheesht!--we maun pit him intil Paurliment"--"Rather +intil the General Assembly, to tussle wi' the wild men." "He's nae +Moderate, man; and gin I'm no sair mistaen, he's a wild man himsel, and +wull uphaud the Veto." "Wheesht! wheesht! wheesht!" + +True, that in savage life men starve. But is that any proof that nature +has cursed the race with a fatal tendency to multiply beyond the means +of subsistence? None whatever. Attend for a little to this point. Of the +real power of the bodily appetites for food, and the sway they may +attain over the moral nature of the mind, we, who are protected by our +place among the arrangements of civil society from greatly suffering +under it, can indeed form no adequate conception. Let us not now speak +of those dreadful enormities which, in the midst of dismal famine, are +recorded to have been perpetrated by civilised men, when the whole moral +soul, with all its strongest affections and instinctive abhorrences, has +sunk prostrate under the force of that animal suffering. But the power +of which we speak, as attained by this animal feeling, subsists +habitually among whole tribes and nations. It is that power which it +acquires over the mind of the savage, who is frequently exposed to +suffer its severity, and who hunts for himself the food with which he is +to appease it. Compare the mind of the human being as you are accustomed +to behold him, knowing the return of this sensation only as a grateful +incitement to take the ready nourishment which is spread for his repast, +with that of his fellow-man bearing through the lonely woods the gnawing +pang that goads him to his prey. Hunger _is_ in his heart; hunger bears +along his unfatiguing feet; hunger lies in the strength of his arm; +hunger watches in his eye; hunger listens in his ear; as he couches down +in his covert, silently waiting the approach of his expected spoil, this +is the sole thought that fills his aching breast--"I shall satisfy my +hunger!" When his deadly aim has brought his victim to the ground, this +is the thought that springs up as he rushes to seize it, "I have got +food for my hungry soul!" What must be the usurpation of animal nature +here over the whole man! It is not merely the simple pain, as if it were +the forlornness of a human creature bearing about his famishing +existence in helplessness and despair--though that, too, is indeed a +true picture of some states of our race; but here is not a suffering and +sinking wretch--he is a strong hunter, and puts forth his strength +fiercely under the urgency of this passion. All his might in the +chase--all pride of speed, and strength, and skill--all thoughts of long +and hard endurance--all images of perils past--all remembrances and all +foresight--are gathered on that one strong and keen desire--are bound +down to the sense of that one bitter animal want. These feelings +recurring day by day in the sole toil of his life, bring upon his soul a +vehemence and power of desire in this object, of which we can have no +conception, till he becomes subjected to hunger as to a mighty animal +passion--a passion such as it rages in those fierce animal kinds which +it drives with such ferocity on their prey. He knows hunger as the wolf +knows it--he goes forth with his burning heart, like the tiger to lap +blood. But turn to man in another condition to which he has been brought +by the very agency of his physical on his intellectual and moral being! +How far removed is he now from that daily contention with such evils as +these! How much does he feel himself assured against them by belonging +to the great confederacy of social life! How much is it veiled from his +eyes by the many artificial circumstances in which the satisfaction of +the want is involved! The work in which he labours the whole day--on +which his eyes are fixed and his hands toil--is something altogether +unconnected with his own wants--connected with distant wants and +purposes of a thousand other men in which he has no participation. And +as far as it is a work of skill, he has to fix his mind on objects and +purposes so totally removed from himself, that they all tend still more +to sever his thoughts from his own necessities; and thus it is that +civilisation raises his moral character, when it protects almost every +human being in a country from that subjection to this passion, to which +even noble tribes are bound down in the wilderness of nature. + +"It's an awfu' thing hunger, Hamish, sure aneuch; but I wush he was +dune; for that vice o' his sing-sangin is makin me unco sleepy--and ance +I fa' owre, I'm no easy waukenin. But wha's that snorin?" + +Yet it is the most melancholy part of all such speculation, to observe +what a wide gloom is cast over them by this severe necessity, which is +nevertheless the great and constant cause of the improvement of their +condition. It is not suffering alone--for _that_ they may be inured to +bear,--but the darkness of the understanding, and the darkness of the +heart, which comes on under the oppression of toil, that is miserable to +see. Our fellow-men, born with the same spirit as ourselves, seem yet +denied the common privileges of that spirit. They seem to bring +faculties into the world that cannot be unfolded, and powers of +affection and desire which not their fault but the lot of their birth +will pervert and degrade. There is a humiliation laid upon our nature in +the doom which seems thus to rest upon a great portion of our species, +which, while it requires our most considerate compassion for those who +are thus depressed, compels us to humble ourselves under the sense of +our own participation in the nature from which it flows. Therefore, in +estimating the worth, the virtue of our fellow-men, whom Providence has +placed in a lot that yields to them the means, and little more than the +means, of supporting life in themselves and those born of them, let us +never forget how intimate is the necessary union between the wants of +the body and the thoughts of the soul. Let us remember, that over a +great portion of humanity the soul is in a struggle for its independence +and power with the necessities of that nature in which it is enveloped. +It has to support itself against sickening, or irritating, or maddening +thoughts, inspired by weariness, lassitude, want, or the fear of want. +It is chained down to the earth by the influence of one great and +constant occupation--that of providing the means of its mortal +existence. When it shows itself shook and agitated, or overcome in the +struggle, what ought to be the thoughts and feelings of the wise for +poor humanity! When, on the other hand, we see nature preserving itself +pure, bold, and happy amidst the perpetual threatenings or assaults of +those evils from which it cannot fly, and though oppressed by its own +weary wants, forgetting them all in that love which ministers to the +wants of others,--when we see the brow wrinkled and drenched by +incessant toil, the body in the power of its prime bowed down to the +dust, and the whole frame in which the immortal spirit abides marked, +but not dishonoured, by its slavery to fate,--and when, in the midst of +all this ceaseless depression and oppression, from which man must never +hope to escape on earth, we see him still seeking and still finding joy, +delight, and happiness in the finer affections of his spiritual being, +giving to the lips of those he loves the scanty morsel earned by his own +hungry and thirsty toil, purchasing by sweat, sickness, and fever, +Education and Instruction and Religion to the young creatures who +delight him who is starving for their sakes, resting with gratitude on +that day, whose return is ever like a fresh fountain to his exhausted +and weary heart, and preserving a profound and high sense of his own +immortality among all the earth-born toils and troubles that would in +vain chain him down to the dust;--when we see all this, and think of all +this, we feel indeed how rich may be the poorest of the poor, and learn +to respect the moral being of man in its triumphs over the power of his +physical nature. But we do not learn to doubt or deny the wisdom of the +Creator. We do not learn from all these struggles, and all these +defeats, and all these victories, and all these triumphs, that God sent +us His creatures into this life to starve, because the air, the earth, +and the waters have not wherewithal to feed the mouths that gape for +food through all the elements! Nor do we learn that want is a crime, and +poverty a sin--and that they who _would_ toil, but cannot, and they who +_can_ toil, but have no work set before them, are intruders at Nature's +table, and must be driven, by those who are able to pay for their seats, +to famine, starvation, and death--almost denied a burial!--Finis. Amen. + +Often has it been our lot, by our conversational powers to set the table +on a snore. The more stirring the theme, the more soporific the sound of +our silver voice. Look there, we beseech you! In a small spot of +"stationary sunshine"--lie Hamish, and Surefoot, and O'Bronte, and +Ponto, and Piro, and Basta, all sound asleep! Dogs are troubled +sleepers--but these four are now like the dreamless dead. Horses, too, +seem often to be witch-ridden in their sleep. But at this moment +Surefoot is stretched more like a stone than a shelty in the land of +Nod. As for Hamish, were he to lie so braxy-like by himself on the hill, +he would be awakened by the bill of the raven digging into his sockets. +We are Morpheus and Orpheus in one incarnation--the very Pink of +Poppy--the true spirit of Opium--of Laudanum the concentrated +Essence--of the black Drop the Gnome. + +Indeed, gentlemen, you have reason to be ashamed of yourselves--but +where is the awkward squad? Clean gone. They have stolen a march on us, +and while we have been preaching they have been poaching--_sans_ mandate +of the Marquess and Monzie. We may catch them ere close of day; and, if +they have a smell of slaughter, we shall crack their sconces with our +Crutch. No apologies, Hamish--'tis only making the matter worse; but we +expected better things of the Dogs. O'Bronte! fie! fie! sirrah. Your +sire would not have fallen asleep during a speech of ours--and such a +speech!--he would have sat it out without winking--at each more splendid +passage testifying his delight by a yowl. Leap over the Crutch, you +reprobate, and let us see thee scour. Look at him, Hamish, already +beckoning to us on his hurdies from the hill-top. Let us scale those +barriers--and away over the table-land between that summit and the head +of Gleno. No sooner said than done--and here we are on the level--such a +level as the ship finds on the main sea, when in the storm-lull she +rides up and down the green swell, before the trade-winds that cool the +tropics. The surface of this main land-sea is black in the gloom, and +green in the glimmer, and purple in the light, and crimson in the +sunshine. O, never looks Nature so magnificent + + "As in this varying and uncertain weather, + When gloom and glory force themselves together, + When calm seems stormy, and tempestuous light + At day's meridian lowers like noon of night!" + +Whose are these fine lines? Hooky Walker, OUR OWN. Dogs! +Down--down--down--be stonelike, O Shelty!--and Hamish, sink thou into +the heather like a lizard; for if these old dim eyes of ours may be in +aught believed, yonder by the birches stands a Red-Deer snuffing the +east wind! Hush! hush! hush! He suspects an enemy in that airt--but +death comes upon him with stealthy foot, from the west; and if Apollo +and Diana--the divinities we so long have worshipped--be now propitious, +his antlers shall be entangled in the heather, and his hoofs beat the +heavens. Hamish, the rifle! A tinkle as of iron, and a hiss accompanying +the explosion--and the King of the Wilderness, bounding up into the air +with his antlers higher than ever waved chieftain's plume, falls down +stone-dead where he stood; for the blue-pill has gone through his +vitals, and lightning itself could hardly have withered him into more +instantaneous cessation of life! + +He is an enormous animal. What antlers! Roll him over, Hamish, on his +side! See, up to our breast, nearly, reaches the topmost branch. He is +what the hunter of old called a "Stag of Ten." His eye has lost the +flash of freedom--the tongue that browsed the brushwood is bitten +through by the clenched teeth--the fleetness of his feet has felt that +fatal frost--the wild heart is hushed, Hamish--tame, tame, tame; and +there the Monarch of the Mountains--the King of the Cliffs--the Grand +Llama of the Glens--the Sultan of the Solitudes--the Dey of the +Deserts--the Royal Ranger of the Woods and Forests--yea, the very Prince +of the Air and Thane of Thunder--"shorn of all his beams," lies +motionless as a dead Jackass by the wayside, whose hide was not thought +worth the trouble of flaying by his owners the gypsies! "To this +complexion has he come at last"--he who at dawn had borrowed the wings +of the wind to carry him across the cataracts! + +A sudden pang shoots across our heart. What right had we to commit this +murder? How, henceforth, shall we dare to hold up our head among the +lovers of liberty, after having thus stolen basely from behind on him, +the boldest, brightest, and most beautiful of all her sons! We, who for +so many years have been just able to hobble, and no more, by aid of the +Crutch--who feared to let the heather-bent touch our toe, so sensitive +in its gout--We, the old and impotent, all last winter bed-ridden, and +even now seated like a lameter on a shelty, strapped by a patent buckle +to a saddle provided with a pummel behind as well as before--such an +unwieldy and weary wretch as We--"fat, and scant of breath"--and with +our hand almost perpetually pressed against our left side, when a +coughing-fit of asthma brings back the stitch, seldom an absentee--to +assassinate THAT RED-DEER, whose flight on earth could accompany the +eagles in heaven; and not only to assassinate him, but, in a moral vein, +to liken his carcass to that of a Jackass! It will not bear further +reflection; so, Hamish, out with your whinger, and carve him a dish fit +for the gods--in a style worthy of Sir Tristrem, Gill Morice, Robin +Hood, or Lord Ranald. No; let him lie till nightfall, when we shall be +returning from Inveraw with strength sufficient to bear him to the Tent. + +But hark, Hamish, to that sullen croak from the cliff! The old raven of +the cove already scents death-- + + "Sagacious of his quarry from afar!" + +But where art thou, Hamish? Ay, yonder is Hamish, wriggling on his very +belly, like an adder, through the heather to windward of the croaker, +whose nostrils, and eyes, and bill, are now all hungrily fascinated, and +as it were already fastened into the very bowels of the beast. His days +are numbered. That sly serpent, by circuitous windings insinuating his +limber length through among all obstructions, has ascended unseen the +drooping shoulder of the cliff, and now cautiously erects his crest +within a hundred yards or more of the unsuspecting savage, still +uttering at intervals his sullen croak, croak, croak! Something +crumbles, and old Sooty, unfolding his huge wings, lifts himself up like +Satan, about to sail away for a while into another glen; but the rifle +rings among the rocks--the lead has broken his spine--and look! how the +demon, head-over-heels, goes tumbling down, down, down, many hundred +fathoms, dashed to pieces and impaled on the sharp-pointed granite! Ere +nightfall the bloody fragments will be devoured by his mate. Nothing now +will disturb the carcass of the deer. No corbies dare enter the cove +where the raven reigned; the hawk prefers grouse to venison, and so does +the eagle, who, however, like a good Catholic as he is--this is +Friday--has gone out to sea for a fish dinner, which he devours to the +music of the waves on some isle-rock. Therefore lie there, dethroned +king! till thou art decapitated; and ere the moon wanes, that haunch +will tower gloriously on our Tent-table at the Feast of Shells. + +What is your private opinion, O'Bronte, of the taste of Red-deer blood? +Has it not a wild twang on the tongue and palate, far preferable to +sheep's-head? You are absolutely undergoing transfiguration into a +deer-hound! With your fore-paws on the flank, your tail brandished like +a standard, and your crimson flews (thank you, Shepherd, for that word) +licked by a long lambent tongue red as crimson, while your eyes express +a fierce delight never felt before, and a stifled growl disturbs the +star on your breast--just as you stand now, O'Bronte, might Edwin +Landseer rejoice to paint thy picture, for which, immortal image of the +wilderness, the Duke of Bedford would not scruple to give a draft on his +banker for one thousand pounds! + +Shooting grouse after red-deer is, for a while at first, felt to be like +writing an anagram in a lady's album, after having given the +finishing-touch to a tragedy or an epic poem. 'Tis like taking to +catching shrimps in the sand with one's toes, on one's return from +Davis' Straits in a whaler that arrived at Peterhead with sixteen fish, +each calculated at ten tun of oil. Yet, 'tis strange how the human soul +can descend, pleasantly at every note, from the top to the bottom of +passion's and imagination's gamut. + +A Tarn--a Tarn! with but a small circle of unbroken water in the centre, +and all the rest of its shallowness bristling, in every bay, with reeds +and rushes, and surrounded, all about the mossy flat, with marshes and +quagmires! What a breeding-place--"procreant cradle" for water-fowl! Now +comes thy turn, O'Bronte--for famous is thy name, almost as thy sire's, +among the flappers. Crawl down to leeward, Hamish, that you may pepper +them--should they take to flight overhead to the loch. Surefoot, taste +that greensward, and you will find it sweet and succulent. Dogs, +heel--heel!--and now let us steal, on our Crutch, behind that knoll, and +open a sudden fire on the swimmers, who seem to think themselves out of +shot at the edge of that line of water-lilies; but some of them will +soon find themselves mistaken, whirling round on their backs, and vainly +endeavouring to dive after their friends that disappear beneath the +agitated surface shot-swept into spray. Long Gun! who oft to the +forefinger of Colonel Hawker has swept the night-harbour of Poole all +alive with widgeons, be true to the trust now reposed in thee by Kit +North! And though these be neither geese, nor swans, nor hoopers, yet +send thy leaden shower among them feeding in their play, till all the +air be afloat with specks, as if at the shaking of a feather-bed that +had burst the ticking, and the tarn covered with sprawling mawsies and +mallards, in death-throes among the ducklings! There it lies on its +rest--like a telescope. No eye has discovered the invention--keen as +those wild eyes are of the plouterers on the shallows. Lightning and +thunder! to which all the echoes roar. But we meanwhile are on our back; +for of all the recoils that ever shook a shoulder, that one was the +severest--but 'twill probably cure our rheumatism and----Well +done--nobly, gloriously done, O'Bronte! Heaven and earth, how otter-like +he swims! Ha, Hamish! you have cut off the retreat of that airy +voyager--you have given it him in his stern, Hamish--and are reloading +for the flappers. One at a time in your mouth, O'Bronte! Put about with +that tail for a rudder--and make for the shore. What a stately creature! +as he comes issuing from the shallows, and bearing the old mallard +breast-high, walks all dripping along the greensward, and then shakes +from his curled ebony the flashing spray-mist. He gives us one look as +we crown the knoll, and then in again with a spang and a plunge far into +the tarn, caring no more for the reeds than for so many windle-straes, +and, fast as a sea-serpent, is among the heart of the killed and +wounded. In unerring instinct he always seizes the dead--and now a +devil's dozen lie along the shore. Come hither, O'Bronte, and caress thy +old master. Ay--that showed a fine feeling--did that long shake that +bedrizzled the sunshine. Put thy paws over our shoulders, and round our +neck, true son of thy sire--oh! that he were but alive, to see and share +thy achievements: but indeed, two such dogs, living together in their +prime at one era, would have been too great glory for this sublunary +canine world. Therefore Sirius looked on thy sire with an evil eye, and +in jealousy-- + + "Tantaene animis caelestibus irae!" + +growled upon some sinner to poison the Dog of all Dogs, who leapt up +almost to the ceiling of the room where he slept--our own bedroom--under +the agony of that accursed arsenic, gave one horrid howl, and expired. +Methinka we know his murderer--his eye falls when it meets ours on the +Street of Princes; and let him scowl there but seldom--for though 'tis +but suspicion, this fist, O'Bronte, doubles at the sight of the +miscreant--and some day, impelled by wrath and disgust, it will smash +his nose flat with the other features, till his face is a pancake. Yea! +as sure as Themis holds her balance in the skies, shall the poisoner be +punished out of all recognition by his parents, and be disowned by the +Irish Cockney father that begot him, and the Scotch Cockney mother that +bore him, as he carries home a tripe-like countenance enough to make his +paramour the scullion miscarry, as she opens the door to him on the +fifth flat of a common stair. But we are getting personal, O'Bronte, a +vice abhorrent from our nature. + +There goes our Crutch, Hamish, whirling aloft in the sky like a rainbow +flight, even like the ten-pound hammer from the fling of George Scougal +at the St Ronans games. Our gout is gone--so is our asthma--eke our +rheumatism--and, like an eagle, we have renewed our youth. There is hop, +step, and jump, for you, Hamish--we should not fear, young and agile as +you are, buck, to give you a yard. But now for the flappers. Pointers +all, stir your stumps and into the water. This is rich. Why, the reeds +are as full of flappers as of frogs. If they can fly, the fools don't +know it. Why, there is a whole musquito-fleet of yellow boys, not a +month old. What a prolific old lady must she have been, to have kept on +breeding till July. There she sits, cowering, just on the edge of the +reeds, uncertain whether to dive or fly. By the creak and cry of the +cradle of thy first-born, Hamish, spare the plumage on her yearning and +quaking breast. The little yellow images have all melted away, and are +now, in holy cunning of instinct, deep down beneath the waters, shifting +for themselves among the very mud at the bottom of the reeds. By-and-by +they will be floating with but the points of their bills above the +surface, invisible among the air-bells. The parent duck has also +disappeared; the drake you disposed of, Hamish, as the coward was +lifting up his lumbering body, with fat doup and long neck in the air, +to seek safer skies. We male creatures--drakes, ganders, and men +alike--what are we, when affection pleads, in comparison with females! +In our passions, we are brave, but these satiated, we turn upon our heel +and disappear from danger, like dastards. But doves, and ducks, and +women, are fearless in affection to the very death. Therefore have we +all our days, sleeping or waking, loved the sex, virgin and matron; nor +would we hurt a hair of their heads, grey or golden, for all else that +shines beneath the sun. + +Not the best practice this in the world, certainly, for pointers--and it +may teach them bad habits on the hill; but, in some situations, all dogs +and all men are alike, and cross them as you will, not a breed but shows +a taint of original sin, when under a temptation sufficiently strong to +bring it out. Ponto, Piro, and Basta, are now, according to their +abilities, all as bad as O'Bronte--and never, to be sure, was there such +a worrying in this wicked world. But now we shall cease our fire, and +leave the few flappers that are left alive to their own meditations. Our +conduct for the last hour must have seemed to them no less unaccountable +than alarming, and something to quack over during the rest of the +season. Well, we do not remember ever to have seen a prettier pile of +ducks and ducklings. Hamish, take census. What do you say--two score? +That beats cockfighting. Here's a hank of twine, Hamish, tie them +altogether by the legs, and hang them, in two divisions of equal +weights, over the crupper of Surefoot. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT THIRD--STILL LIFE. + + +We have been sufficiently slaughterous for a man of our fine +sensibilities and moderate desires, Hamish; and as, somehow or other, +the scent seems to be beginning not to lie well--yet the air cannot be +said to be close and sultry either--we shall let Brown Bess cool herself +in both barrels--relinquish, for an hour or so, our seat on Shelty, and, +by way of a change, pad the hoof up that smooth ascent, strangely left +stoneless--an avenue positively looking as if it were artificial, as it +stretches away, with its beautiful green undulations, among the blocks; +for though no view-hunter, we are, Hamish, what in fine language is +called a devout worshipper of Nature, an enthusiast in the sublime; and +if Nature do not show us something worth gazing at when we reach yonder +altitudes, she must be a grey deceiver, and we shall never again kneel +at her footstool, or sing a hymn in her praise. + +The truth is, we have a rending headache, for Bess has been for some +hours on the kick, and Surefoot on the jog, and our exertions in the +pulpit were severe--action, Hamish, action, action, being, as +Demosthenes said some two or three thousand years ago, essential to +oratory; and you observed how nimbly we kept changing legs, Hamish, how +strenuously brandishing arms, throughout our discourse--saving the +cunning pauses, thou simpleton, when, by way of relief to our auditors, +we were as gentle as sucking-doves, and folded up our wings as if about +to go to roost, whereas we were but meditating a bolder flight--about to +soar, Hamish, into the empyrean. Over and above all that, we could not +brook Tickler's insolence, who, about the sma' hours, challenged us, you +know, quaich for quaich; and though we gave him a fair back-fall, yet we +suffered in the tulzie, and there is at this moment a throbbing in our +temples that threatens a regular brain-fever. We burn for an air-bath on +the mountain-top. Moreover, we are seized with a sudden desire for +solitude--to be plain, we are getting sulky; so ascend, Surefoot, +Hamish, and be off with the pointers--O'Bronte goes with us--north-west, +making a circumbendibus round the _Tomhans_, where Mhairhe M'Intyre +lived seven years with the fairies; and in a couple of hours or so you +will find us under the Merlin Crag. + +We offer to walk any man of our age in Great Britain. But what _is_ our +age? Confound us if we know within a score or two. Yet we cannot get rid +of the impression that we are under ninety. However, as we seek no +advantage, and give no odds, we challenge the octogenarians of the +United Kingdom--fair toe and heel--a twelve-hour match--for love, fame, +and a legitimate exchequer bill for a thousand. Why, these calves of +ours would look queer, we confess, on the legs of a Leith porter; but +even in our prime they were none of your big vulgar calves, but they +handled like iron--now more like butter. There is still a spring in our +instep; and our knees, sometimes shaky, are to-day knit as Pan's and +neat as Apollo's. Poet we may not be, but Pedestrian we are; with +Wordsworth we could not walk along imaginative heights, but, if not +grievously out of our reckoning; on the turnpike road we could keep pace +with Captain Barclay for a short distance--say from Dundee to Aberdeen. + +Oh! Gemini! but we are in high spirits. Yes--delights there indeed are, +which none but pedestrians know. Much--all depends on the character of +the wanderer; he must have known what it is to commune with his own +thoughts and feelings, and be satisfied with them even as with the +converse of a chosen friend. Not that he must always, in the solitudes +that await him, be in a meditative mood, for ideas and emotions will of +themselves arise, and he will only have to enjoy the pleasures which his +own being spontaneously affords. It would indeed be a hopeless thing, if +we were always to be on the stretch for happiness. Intellect, +Imagination, and Feeling, all work of their own free-will, and not at +the order of any taskmaster. A rill soon becomes a stream--a stream a +river--a river a loch--and a loch a sea. So it is with the current +within the spirit. It carries us along, without either oar or sail, +increasing in depth, breadth, and swiftness, yet all the while the easy +work of our own wonderful minds. While we seem only to see or hear, we +are thinking and feeling far beyond the mere notices given by the +senses; and years afterwards we find that we have been laying up +treasures, in our most heedless moments, of imagery, and connecting +together trains of thought that arise in startling beauty, almost +without cause or any traceable origin. The Pedestrian, too, must not +only love his own society, but the society of any other human beings, if +blameless and not impure, among whom his lot may for a short season be +cast. He must rejoice in all the forms and shows of life, however simple +they may be, however humble, however low; and be able to find food for +his thoughts beside the ingle of the loneliest hut, where the inmates +sit with few words, and will rather be spoken to than speak to the +stranger. In such places he will be delighted--perhaps surprised--to +find in uncorrupted strength all the primary elements of human +character. He will find that his knowledge may be wider than theirs, and +better ordered, but that it rests on the same foundation, and +comprehends the same matter. There will be no want of sympathies between +him and them; and what he knows best, and loves most, will seldom fail +to be that also which they listen to with greatest interest, and +respecting which there is the closest communion between the minds of +stranger and host. He may know the courses of the stars according to the +revelation of science--they may have studied them only as simple +shepherds, "whose hearts were gladdened" walking on the mountain-top. +But they know--as he does--who sowed the stars in heaven, and that their +silent courses are all adjusted by the hand of the Most High. + +Oh! blessed, thrice blessed years of youth! would we choose to live over +again all your forgotten and unforgotten nights and days! Blessed, +thrice blessed we call you, although, as we then felt, often darkened +almost into insanity by self-sown sorrows springing out of our restless +soul. No, we would not again face such troubles, not even for the +glorious apparitions that familiarly haunted us in glens and forests, on +mountains and on the great sea. But all, or nearly all, that did once so +grievously disturb, we can lay in the depths of the past, so that +scarcely a ghastly voice is heard, a ghastly face beheld; while all +that so charmed of yore, or nearly all, although no longer the daily +companions of our life, still survive to be recalled at solemn hours, +and with a "beauty still more beauteous" to reinvest the earth, which +neither sin nor sorrow can rob of its enchantments. We can still travel +with the solitary mountain-stream from its source to the sea, and see +new visions at every vista of its winding waters. The waterfall flows +not with its own monotonous voice of a day or an hour, but like a choral +anthem pealing with the hymns of many years. In the heart of the blind +mist on the mountain-ranges we can now sit alone, surrounded by a world +of images, over which time holds no power but to consecrate or +solemnise. Solitude we can deepen by a single volition, and by a single +volition let in upon it the stir and noise of the world and life. Why, +therefore, should we complain, or why lament the inevitable loss or +change that time brings with it to all that breathe? Beneath the shadow +of the tree we can yet repose, and tranquillise our spirit by its +rustle, or by the "green light" uncheckered by one stirring leaf. From +sunrise to sunset, we can lie below the old mossy tower, till the +darkness that shuts out the day, hides not the visions that glide round +the ruined battlements. Cheerful as in a city can we traverse the +houseless moor; and although not a ship be on the sea, we can set sail +on the wings of imagination, and when wearied, sink down on savage or +serene isle, and let drop our anchor below the moon and stars. + +And 'tis well we are so spiritual; for the senses are of no use here, +and we must draw for amusement on our internal sources. A day-like night +we have often seen about midsummer, serenest of all among the Hebrides; +but a night-like day, such as this, ne'er before fell on us, and we +might as well be in the Heart o' Mid-Lothian. 'Tis a dungeon, and a dark +one--and we know not for what crime we have been condemned to solitary +confinement. Were it mere mist we should not mind; but the gloom is +palpable, and makes resistance to the hand. We did not think clouds +capable of such condensation--the blackness may be felt like velvet on a +hearse. Would that something would rustle--but no--all is breathlessly +still, and not a wind dares whistle. If there be anything visible or +audible hereabout, then are we stone-blind and stone-deaf. We have a +vision! + +See! a great City in a mist! All is not shrouded--at intervals something +huge is beheld in the sky--what we know not, tower, temple, spire, dome, +or a pile of nameless structures--one after the other fading away, or +sinking and settling down into the gloom that grows deeper and deeper +like a night. The stream of life seems almost hushed in the blind blank, +yet you hear ever and anon, now here, now there, the slow sound of feet +moving to their own dull echoes, and lo! the Sun + + "Looks through the horizontal misty air, + Shorn of his beams," + +like some great ghost. Ay, he _looks_! does he not? straight on _your_ +face, as if you two were the only beings there--and were held _looking_ +at each other in some strange communion. Surely you must sometimes have +felt that emotion, when the Luminary seemed no longer luminous, but a +dull-red brazen orb, sick unto the death--obscure the Shedder of Light +and the Giver of Life lifeless! + +The Sea has sent a tide-borne wind to the City, and you almost start in +wonder to behold all the heavens clear of clouds (how beautiful was the +clearing!) and bending in a mighty blue bow, that brightly overarches +all the brightened habitations of men! The spires shoot up into the +sky--the domes tranquilly rest there--all the roofs glitter as with +diamonds, all the white walls are lustrous, save where, here and there, +some loftier range of buildings hangs its steadfast shadow o'er square +or street, magnifying the city, by means of separate multitudes of +structures, each town-like in itself, and the whole gathered together by +the outward eye, and the inward imagination, worthy indeed of the name +of Metropolis. + +Let us sit down on this bench below the shadow of the Parthenon. The air +is now so rarified, that you can see not indistinctly the figure of a +man on Arthur's Seat. The Calton, though a city hill, is as green as the +Carter towering over the Border-forest. Not many years ago, no stone +edifice was on his unviolated verdure--he was a true rural Mount, where +the lassies bleached their claes, in a pure atmosphere, aloof from the +city smoke almost as the sides and summit of Arthur's Seat. Flocks of +sheep might have grazed here, had there been enclosures, and many milch +cows. But in their absence a pastoral character was given to the Hill by +its green silence, here and there broken by the songs and laughter of +those linen-bleaching lassies, and by the arm-in-arm strolling of lovers +in the morning light or the evening shade. Here married people used to +walk with their children, thinking and feeling themselves to be in the +country; and here elderly gentlemen, like ourselves, with gold-headed +canes or simple crutches, mused and meditated on the ongoings of the +noisy lower world. Such a Hill, so close to a great City, yet +undisturbed by it, and imbued at all times with a feeling of sweeter +peace, because of the immediate neighbourhood of the din and stir of +which its green recess high up in the blue air never partook, seems now, +in the mingled dream of imagination and memory, to have been a +super-urban Paradise! But a city cannot, ought not to be, controlled in +its growth; the natural beauty of this hill has had its day; now it is +broken all round with wide walks, along which you might drive chariots +abreast; broad flights of stone-stairs lead up along the once elastic +brae-turf; and its bosom is laden with towers and temples, monuments and +mausoleums. Along one side, where hanging gardens might have been, +magnificent as those of the old Babylon, stretches the macadamised Royal +Road to London, flanked by one receptacle for the quiet dead, and by +another for the unquiet living--a churchyard and a prison dying away in +a bridewell. But, making amends for such hideous deformities, with front +nobly looking to the cliffs, over a dell of dwellings seen dimly through +the smoke-mist, stands, sacred to the Muses, an Edifice that might have +pleased the eye of Pericles! Alas, immediately below one that would have +turned the brain of Palladio! Modern Athens indeed! Few are the Grecians +among thy architects; those who are not Goths are Picts--and the King +himself of the Painted People designed Nelson's Monument. + +But who can be querulous on such a day? Weigh all its defects, designed +and undesigned, and is not Edinburgh yet a noble city? Arthur's Seat! +how like a lion! The magnificent range of Salisbury Crags, on which a +battery might be built to blow the whole inhabitation to atoms! Our +friend here, the Calton, with his mural crown! Our Castle on his Cliff! +gloriously hung round with national histories along all his battlements! +Do they not embosom him in a style of grandeur worthy, if such it be, of +a "City of Palaces?" Call all things by their right names, in heaven +and on earth. Palaces they are not--nor are they built of marble; but +they are stately houses, framed of stone from Craig-Leith quarry, almost +as pale as the Parian; and when the sun looks fitfully through the +storm, or as now, serenely through the calm, richer than Parian in the +tempestuous or the peaceful light. Never beheld we the city wearing such +a majestic metropolitan aspect. + + "Ay, proudly fling thy white arms to the sea, + Queen of the unconquer'd North!" + +How near the Firth! Gloriously does it supply the want of a river. It is +a river, though seeming, and sweeping into, the sea; but a river that +man may never bridge; and though still now as the sky, we wish you saw +it in its magnificent madness, when brought on the roarings of the +stormful tide + + "Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began." + +Coast-cities alone are Queens. All inland are but Tributaries. Earth's +empiry belongs to the Power that sees its shadow in the sea. Two +separate Cities, not twins--but one of ancient and one of modern +birth--how harmoniously, in spite of form and features characteristically +different, do they coalesce into one Capital! This miracle, methinks, is +wrought by the Spirit of Nature on the World of Art. Her great features +subdue almost into similarity a Whole constructed of such various +elements, for it is all felt to be kindred with those guardian cliffs. +Those eternal heights hold the Double City together in an amity that +breathes over both the same national look--the impression of the same +national soul. In the olden time, the city gathered herself almost under +the very wing of the Castle; for in her heroic heart she ever heard, +unalarmed but watchful, the alarums of war, and that cliff, under +heaven, was on earth the rock of her salvation. But now the foundation +of that rock, whence yet the tranquil burgher hears the morning and the +evening bugle, is beautified by gardens that love its pensive shadow, +for it tames the light to flowers by rude feet untrodden, and yielding +garlands for the brows of perpetual peace. Thence elegance and grace +arose; and while antiquity breathes over that wilderness of antique +structures picturesquely huddled along the blue line of sky--as Wilkie +once finely said, like the spine of some enormous animal; yet all along +this side of that unrivered and mound-divided dell, now shines a new +world of radiant dwellings, declaring by their regular but not +monotonous magnificence, that the same people, whose "perfervid genius" +preserved them by war unhumbled among the nations in days of darkness, +have now drawn a strength as invincible from the beautiful arts which +have been cultivated by peace in the days of light. + +And is the spirit of the inhabitation there worthy of the place +inhabited? We are a Scotsman. And the great English Moralist has asked, +where may a Scotsman be found who loves not the honour or the glory of +his country better than truth? We are that Scotsman--though for our +country would we die. Yet dearer too than life is to us the honour--if +not the glory of our country; and had we a thousand lives, proudly would +we lay them all down in the dust rather than give--or see given--one +single stain + + "Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear," + +on which as yet no stain appears save those glorious weather-stains, +that have fallen on its folds from the clouds of war and the storms of +battle. Sufficient praise to the spirit of our land, that she knows how +to love, admire, and rival--not in vain--the spirit of high-hearted and +heroic England. Long as we and that other noble Isle + + "Set as an emerald in the casing sea," + +in triple union breathe as one, + + "Then come against us the whole world in arms, + And we will meet them!" + +What is a people without pride? But let them know that its root rests on +noble pillars; and in the whole range of strength and stateliness, what +pillars are there stronger and statelier than those glorious two--Genius +and Liberty? Here valour has fought--here philosophy has meditated--here +poetry has sung. Are not our living yet as brave as our dead? All wisdom +has not perished with the sages to whom we have built or are building +monumental tombs. The muses yet love to breathe the pure mountain-air of +Caledon. And have we not amongst us one myriad-minded man, whose name, +without offence to that high-priest of nature, or his devoutest +worshippers, may flow from our lips even when they utter that of +SHAKESPEARE? + +The Queen of the North has evaporated--and we again have a glimpse of +the Highlands. But where's the Sun? We know not in what airt to look for +him, for who knows but it may now be afternoon? It is almost dark enough +for evening--and if it be not far on in the day, then we shall have +thunder. What saith our repeater? One o'clock. Usually the brightest +hour of all the twelve--but anything but bright at this moment. Can +there be an eclipse going on--an earthquake at his toilette--or merely a +brewing of storm? Let us consult our almanac. No eclipse set down for +to-day--the old earthquake dwells in the neighbourhood of Comrie, and +has never been known to journey thus far north--besides, he has for some +years been bed-ridden; argal, there is about to be a storm. What a fool +of a land-tortoise were we to crawl up to the top of a mountain, when we +might have taken our choice of half-a-dozen glens with cottages in them +every other mile, and a village at the end of each with a comfortable +Change-house! And up which of its sides, pray, was it that we crawled? +Not this one--for it is as steep as a church--and we never in our life +peeped over the brink of an uglier abyss. Ay, Mister Merlin, 'tis wise +of you to be flying home into your crevice--put your head below your +wing, and do cease that cry.--Croak! croak! croak! Where is the sooty +sinner? We hear he is on the wing--but he either sees or smells us, +probably both, and the horrid gurgle in his throat is choked by some +cloud. Surely that was the sughing of wings! A Bird! alighting within +fifty yards of us--and, from his mode of folding his wings--an Eagle! +This is too much--within fifty yards of an Eagle on his own +mountain-top. Is he blind? Age darkens even an Eagle's eyes--but he is +not old, for his plumage is perfect--and we see the glare of his +far-keekers as he turns his head over his shoulder and regards his eyrie +on the cliff. We would not shoot him for a thousand a-year for life. Not +old--how do we know that? Because he is a creature who is young at a +hundred--so says Audubon--Swainson--our brother James--and all +shepherds. Little suspects he who is lying so near him with his Crutch. +Our snuffy suit is of a colour with the storm-stained granite--and if he +walk this way he will get a buffet. And he _is_ walking this way--his +head up, and his tail down,--not hopping like a filthy raven--but one +foot before the other--like a man--like a King. We do not altogether +like it--it is rather alarming--he may not be an Eagle after all--but +something worse--"Hurra! ye Sky-scraper! Christopher is upon you! take +that, and that, and that"--all one tumbling scream, there he goes, +Crutch and all, over the edge of the Cliff. Dashed to death--but +impossible for us to get the body. Whew! dashed to death indeed! There +he wheels, all on fire, round the thunder gloom. Is it electric matter +in the atmosphere--or fear and wrath that illumine his wings? + +We wish we were safe down. There is no wind here yet--none to speak of; +but there is wind enough, to all appearance, in the region towards the +west. The main body of the clouds is falling back on the reserve--and +observing that movement the right wing deploys; as for the left, it is +broken, and its retreat will soon be a flight. Fear is contagious--the +whole army has fallen into irremediable disorder--has abandoned its +commanding position--and in an hour will be self-driven into the sea. We +call that a Panic. + +Glory be to the corps that covers the retreat. We see now the cause of +that retrograde movement. In the north-west, "far off its coming shone," +and "in numbers without number numberless," lo! the adverse Host! Thrown +out in front, the beautiful rifle brigade comes fleetly on, extending in +open order along the vast plain between the aerial Pine-mountains to yon +Fire-cliffs. The enemy marches in masses--the space between the +divisions now widening and now narrowing--and as sure as we are alive we +hear the sound of trumpets. The routed army has rallied and +reappears--and, hark, on the extreme left a cannonade. Never before had +the Unholy Alliance a finer park of artillery--and now its fire opens +from the great battery in the centre, and the hurly-burly is general far +and wide over the whole field of battle. + +But these lead drops dancing on our bonnet tell us to take up our crutch +and be off--for there it is sticking--by-and-by the waters will be in +flood, and we may have to pass a night on the mountain. Down we go. + +We do not call this the same side of the mountain we crawled up? There, +all was purple except what was green--and we were happy to be a +heather-legged body, occasionally skipping like a grasshopper on turf. +Here, all rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ptarmigans. We hate +shingle from the bottom of our ---- oh dear! oh dear! but _this_ is +painful--sliddering on shingle away down what is anything but an +inclined plane--feet foremost--accompanied with rattling debris--at +railroad speed--every twenty yards or so dislodging a stone as big as +oneself, who instantly joins the procession, and there they go hopping +and jumping along with us, some before, some at each side, and, we +shudder to think of it, some behind--well somersetted over our head, +thou Grey Wacke--but mercy on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this +lasts, in another minute we are all at the bottom of that pond of pitch. +Take care of yourself, O'Bronte! + +Here we are--sitting! How we were brought to assume this rather uneasy +posture we do not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to the fact. +Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape appears to have been little less than +miraculous, and must have been mainly owing, under Providence, to the +Crutch. Who's laughing? 'Tis you, you old Witch, in hood and cloak, +crouching on the cliff as if you were warming your hands at the fire. +Hold your tongue--and you may sit there to all eternity if you +choose--you cloud-ridden hag! No--there will be a blow-up some day--as +there evidently has been here before now; but no more Geology--from the +tarn, who is a 'tarnation deep 'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our +guide down to the Low Country. + +Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green +serenity--not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable +to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell--"the air is balm." No +sultriness--how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had +wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury--Cherub we never were +nor Cauliflower--by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we +have made one day a whole week--with, at the end, a Sabbath. For all +over the really moun_taineous_ region of the Highlands, every glen has +its own indescribable kind of day--all vaguely comprehended under the +One Day that may happen to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists, +meeting in the evening after a long absence--having, perhaps, parted +that morning--on comparing notes lose their temper, and have been even +known to proceed to extremities in defence of facts well established of +a most contradictory and irreconcilable nature. + +Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In the glen beyond that range he +would have used the minnow--and in the huge hollow behind our friends to +the South-east, he might just as well try the bare hook--though it is +not universally true that trouts don't rise when there is thunder. Let +us see how he throws. What a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, you +there; friend, what sport? What sport we say? No answer; are you deaf? +Dumb? He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try what a whack on +the back may elicit. Down he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of +most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a goat, is off like a shot. +Alas! we have frightened the wretch out of his few poor wits, and he may +kill himself among the rocks. He is indeed an idiot--an innocent. We +remember seeing him near this very spot forty years ago--and he was not +young then--they often live to extreme old age. No wonder he was +terrified--for we are duly sensible of the _outre tout ensemble_ we must +have suddenly exhibited in the glimmer that visits those weak red +eyes--he is an albino. That whack was rash, to say the least of it--our +Crutch was too much for him; but we hear him whining--and moaning--and, +good God! there he is on his knees with hands clasped in +supplication--"Dinna kill me--dinna kill me--'am silly--'am silly--and +folk say 'am auld--auld--auld." The harmless creature is convinced we +are not going to kill him--takes from our hand what he calls his +fishing-rod and tackle--and laughs like an owl. "Ony meat--ony meat--ony +meat?" "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this wallet, and you and we +shall have our dinner." "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a can say +the Lord's Prayer." "What's your name, my man?" "Daft Dooggy the +Haveril." "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this--a drop of water on +the brain will do it--so wise physicians say, and we believe it. For all +that, the brain is not the soul. He takes the food with a kind of +howl--and carries it away to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by +mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a +saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!" + +This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet so +congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is +familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days--as if that cottage +were our dwelling-place--and we had retired hither to await the close. +Were we never here before--in the olden and golden time? Those dips in +the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a +morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost +as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which +we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness +often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among +the past times in the dormitory--call it not the burial-place--overshadowed +by sweet or solemn imagery--in the inland regions; nor can we question +the recollections as they rise--being ghosts, they are silent--their +coming and their going alike a mystery--but sometimes--as now--they are +happy hauntings--and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning +youth. + +'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands--yet we know not that +a painter would see in it the subject of a picture--for the sprinklings +of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no +reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the +remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent +with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green +wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools +there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but +each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that +above its homehills there are mountains--and these are cliffs on which +the eagle might not disdain to build--but the range wheels away in its +grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits +swimming in the distant clouds. + +God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what +Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most +lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a +look at thy happiness--for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and +think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee +and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may +lay our hands on it and bless it--and promise, as thou art growing up +here, sometimes to think of the voice that spake to thee by the +Birk-tree well. Love, fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches--and +whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven. + +Do not be afraid of him, sweet one! O'Bronte would submit to be flayed +alive rather than bite a child: see, he offers you a paw--take it +without trembling; nay, he will let thee ride on his back, my pretty +dear--won't thou, O'Bronte?--and scamper with thee up and down the +knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing to bear the Fairy Queen. +Thou tellest us thy father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are +dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as plaintive. Smile--laugh-- +sing--as thou wert doing a minute ago--as thou hast done for many a +morning--and shalt do for many a morning more on thy way to the well--in +the woods--on the braes--in the house,--often all by thyself when the +old people are out of doors not far off--or when sometimes they have for +a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words--and no +evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne,--and +nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth will ever be able to +hurt a hair on thy head. + +My stars! what a lovely little animal! A tame fawn, by all that is +wild--kneeling down--to drink--no--no--at his lady's feet. The collie +catched it--thou sayest--on the edge of the Auld wood--and by the time +its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon +learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of +this--and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human +dwellings. What! it dances like a kid--does it--and sometimes you put a +garland of wildflowers round its neck--and pursue it like a huntress, as +it pretends to be making its escape into the forest? + +Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts +with a spring--so--and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign, +and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush--that was a graceful curtsy. Keep +the crooked sixpence for good-luck, and you never will want. With the +yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what +else you like; and now--you two, lead the way--try a race to the +door--and old Christopher North will carry the pitcher--balancing it on +his head--thus--ha! O'Bronte galloping along as umpire. The Fawn has it, +and by a neck has beat Camilla. + +We shall lunch ere we go--and lunch well too--for this is a poor man's, +not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer--"give us this +day our daily bread." Sweeter--richer bannocks of barley-meal never met +the mouth of mortal man--nor more delicious butter. "We salt it, sir, +for a friend in Glasgow--but now and then we tak a bite of the fresh--do +oblige us a', sir, by eatin, and you'll maybe find the mutton-ham no +that bad, though I've kent it fatter--and, as you hae a lang walk afore +you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggeest a glass o' +speerit in your milk. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his +life--but we keep it for a cordial--and that bottle--to be sure it's a +gey big ane--and would thole replenishing--has lasted us sin' +Whitsuntide." + +So presseth us to take care of number one the gudewife, while the +gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith +nothing, and the bonny wee bit lassie sits on her stool at the wunnock +wi' her coggie ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or +nothing, out of bashfulness in presence of Christopher North, who she +believes is a good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great man. Our +third bannock has had the gooseberry jam laid on it thick by "the +gudewife's ain hand,"--and we suspect at that last wide bite we have +smeared the corners of our mouth--but it will only be making matters +worse to attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! thou hast a +cunning look--purring on our knees--and though those glass een o' thine +are blinking at the cream on the saucer--with which thou jalousest we +intend to let thee wet thy whiskers,--we fear thou mak'st no bones of +the poor birdies in the brake, and that many an unlucky leveret has lost +its wits at the spring of such a tiger. Cats are queer creatures, and +have an instinctive liking to Warlocks. + +And these two old people have survived all their children--sons and +daughters! They have told us the story of their life--and as calmly as +if they had been telling of the trials of some other pair. Perhaps, in +our sympathy, though we say but little, they feel a strength that is not +always theirs--perhaps it is a relief from silent sorrow to speak to one +who is a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, a brother in +affliction--but prayer like thanksgiving assures us that there is in +this hut a Christian composure, far beyond the need of our pity, and +sent from a region above the stars. + +There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidiness, it is pleasant to know, has +for a good many years past been establishing itself in Scotland among +the minor domestic virtues. Once established it will never decay; for it +must be felt to brighten, more than could be imagined by our fathers, +the whole aspect of life. No need for any other household fairy to sweep +this floor. An orderly creature we have seen she is, from all her +movements out and in doors--though the guest of but an hour. They have +told us that they had known what are called better days--and were once +in a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in +the country; and their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of its +serene and simple spirit--at once Lowland and Highland--to us a pleasant +union, not without a certain charm of grace. + +What loose leaves are those lying on the Bible? A few odd numbers of the +SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. We shall take care, our friends, that all the +Numbers, bound in three large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, be +lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite to you, our worthy friends, a +small sacred Poem, which we have by heart. Christian, keep your eye on +the page, and if we go wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you say +many psalms and hymns? But we need not ask--for + + "Piety is sweet to infant minds;" + +what they love they remember--for how easy--how happy--to get dear +things by heart! Happiest of all--the things held holy on earth as in +heaven--because appertaining here to Eternal Life. + + TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. + + BY THE REV. DUNCAN GRANT, A.M., MINISTER OF FORRES. + + "Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains, + May our HERALD'S feet appear; + Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains, + May his voice be to our ear. + Let the tenants of our rocks, + Shepherds watching o'er their flocks, + Village swain and peasant boy, + Thee salute with songs of joy! + + CHRISTIAN HERALD! spread the story + Of Redemption's wondrous plan; + 'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory, + 'Tis His highest gift to man; + Angels on their harps of gold, + Love its glories to unfold; + Heralds who its influence wield, + Make the waste a fruitful field. + + To the fount of mercy soaring, + On the wings of faith and love; + And the depths of grace exploring, + By the light shed from above; + Show us whence life's waters flow, + And where trees of blessing grow, + Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom, + Breathing Eden's rich perfume. + + Love to God and man expressing, + In thy course of mercy speed; + Lead to springs of joy and blessing, + And with heavenly manna feed + Scotland's children high and low, + Till the Lord they truly know: + As to us our fathers told, + He was known by them of old. + + To the young, in season vernal, + Jesus in His grace disclose; + As the tree of life eternal, + 'Neath whose shade they may repose, + Shielded from the noontide ray, + And from ev'ning's tribes of prey; + And refresh'd with fruits of love, + And with music from above. + + CHRISTIAN HERALD! may the blessing + Of the Highest thee attend, + That, this chiefest boon possessing, + Thou may'st prove thy country's friend + Tend to make our land assume + Something of its former bloom, + When the dews of heaven were seen + Sparkling on its pastures green, + + When the voice of warm devotion + To the throne of God arose-- + Mighty as the sound of ocean, + Calm as nature in repose; + Sweeter, than when Araby + Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree, + Rising 'bove the shining sphere, + To Jehovah's list'ning ear." + +It is time we were going--but we wish to hear how thy voice sounds, +Christian, when it reads. So read these same verses, first "into +yourself," and then to us. They speak of mercies above your +comprehension, and ours, and all men's; for they speak of the infinite +goodness and mercy of God--but though thou hast committed in thy short +life no sins, or but small, towards thy fellow-creatures--how couldst +thou? yet thou knowest we are all sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest +on whose merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Thank you, +Christian. Three minutes from two by your house-clock--she gives a clear +warning--and three minutes from two by our watch--rather curious this +coincidence to such a nicety--we must take up our Crutch and go. Thank +thee, bonny wee Christian--in wi' the bannocks intil our pouch--but we +fear you must take us for a sad glutton. + + "Zickety, dickety, dock, + The mouse ran up the nock; + The nock struck one, + Down the mouse ran, + Zickety, dickety, dock." + +Come closer, Christian--and let us put it to thine ear. What a pretty +face of wonder at the chime! Good people, you have work to do in the +hay-field--let us part--God bless you--Good-by--farewell! + +Half an hour since we parted--we cannot help being a little sad--and +fear we were not so kind to the old people--not so considerate as we +ought to have been--and perhaps, though pleased with us just now, they +may say to one another before evening that we were too merry for our +years. Nonsense. We were all merry together--daft Uncle among the +lave--for the creature came stealing in and sat down on his own stool in +the corner; and what's the use of wearing a long face at all times like +a Methodist minister? A Methodist minister! Why, John Wesley was facete, +and Whitfield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty--though he, we believe, +was not a Methody; yet were their hearts fountains of tears--and ours is +not a rock--if it be, 'tis the rock of Horeb. + +Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the Merlin Crag. What sport? Why, five +brace is not so much amiss--and they are thumpers. Fifteen brace in all. +Ducks and flappers. Seven leash. We are getting on. + + "But what are these, + So wither'd and so wild in their attire; + That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth, + And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught + That man may question? You seem to understand me, + By each at once her choppy finger laying + Upon her skinny lips:--you should be women, + And yet your beards forbid me to interpret + That you are so!" + +Shakespeare is not familiar, we find, among the natives of Loch-Etive +side--else these figures would reply, + + "All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glammis!" + +But not satisfied with laying their choppy fingers on their skinny lips, +they now put them to their plooky noses, having first each dipped fore +and thumb in his mull, and gibber Gaelic, to us unintelligible as the +quacking of ducks, when a Christian auditor has been prevented from +catching its meaning by the gobbling of turkeys. + +Witches at the least, and about to prophesy to us some pleasant events, +that are to terminate disastrously in after years. Is there no nook of +earth perfectly solitary--but must natural or supernatural footsteps +haunt the remotest and most central places? But now we shall have our +fortunes told in choice Erse, for sure these are the Children of the +Mist, and perhaps they will favour us with a running commentary on +Ossian. Stout, grim, heather-legged bodies they are, one and all, and +luckily we are provided with snuff and tobacco sufficient for the whole +crew. Were they even ghosts they will not refuse a sneeshin, and a +Highland spirit will look picturesque puffing a cigar!--Hark! we know +them and their vocation. These are the Genii of the Mountain-dew; and +their hidden enginery, depend on't, is not far off, but buried in the +bowels of some brae. See!--a faint mist dissipating itself over the +heather! There--at work, shaming the idle waste, and in use and wont to +break even the Sabbath-day, is a STILL! + +Do we look like Excisemen? The Crutch has indeed a suspicious family +resemblance to a gauging-rod; and literary characters, like us, may well +be mistaken for the Supervisor himself. But the smuggler's eye knows his +enemy at a glance, as the fox knows a hound; and the whispering group +discern at once that we are of a nobler breed. That one fear dispelled, +Highland hospitality bids us welcome, even into the mouth of the +malt-kiln, and, with a smack on our loof, the Chief volunteers to +initiate us into the grand mysteries of the Worm. + +The turf-door is flung outward on its lithe hinges, and already what a +gracious smell! In we go, ushered by unbonneted Celts, gentlemen in +manners wherever the kilt is worn; for the tartan is the symbol of +courtesy, and Mac a good password all the world over between man and +man. Lowland eyes are apt to water in the peat-reek, but ere long we +shall have another "drappie in our ee," and drink to the Clans in the +"uuchristened cretur." What a sad neglect in our education, among all +the acquired lingoes extant, to have overlooked the Gaelic! Yet nobody +who has ever heard P. R. preach an Erse Sermon, need despair of +discoursing in that tongue after an hour's practice; so let us forget, +if possible, every word of English, and the language now needed will +rise up in its place. + +And these figures in men's coats and women's petticoats are females? We +are willing to believe it in spite of their beards. One of them +absolutely suckling a child! Thank you, my dear sir, but we cannot +swallow the contents of that quaich. Yet, let us try.--A little too +warm, and rather harsh; but meat and drink to a man of age. That seems +to be goat-milk cheese, and the scones are barley; and they and the +speerit will wash one another down in an amicable plea, nor quarrel at +close quarters. Honey too--heather-honey of this blessed year's produce. +Hecate's forefinger mixes it in a quaich with mountain-dew--and that is +Atholl-brose? + +There cannot be the least doubt in the world that the Hamiltonian +system of teaching languages is one of the best ever invented. It will +enable any pupil of common-run powers of attention to read any part of +the New Testament in Greek in some twenty lessons of an hour each. But +what is that to the principle of the Worm? Half a blessed hour has not +elapsed since we entered into the door of this hill-house, and we offer +twenty to one that we read Ossian _ad aperturam libri_, in the original +Gaelic. We feel as if we could translate the works of Jeremy Bentham +into that tongue--ay, even Francis Maximus Macnab's Theory of the +Universe. We guarantee ourselves to do both, this identical night before +we go to sleep, and if the printers are busy during the intermediate +hours, to correct the press in the morning. Why, there are not above +five thousand roots--but we are getting a little gizzy--into a state of +civilation in the wilderness--and, gentlemen, let us drink--in solemn +silence--the "Memory of Fingal." + +O St Cecilia! we did not lay our account with a bagpipe! What is the +competition of pipers in the Edinburgh Theatre, small as it is, to this +damnable drone in an earth-cell, eight feet by six! Yet while the drums +of our ears are continuing to split like old parchment title-deeds to +lands nowhere existing, and all our animal economy, from finger to toe, +is one agonising dirl, Aeolus himself sits as proud as Lucifer in +Pandemonium; and as the old soldiers keep tending the Worm in the reek +as if all were silence, the male-looking females, and especially the +he-she with the imp at her breast, nod, and smirk, and smile, and snap +their fingers, in a challenge to a straspey--and, by all that is +horrible, a red hairy arm is round our neck, and we are half choked with +the fumes of whisky-kisses. An hour ago we were dreaming of Malvina! and +here she is with a vengeance, while we in the character of Oscar are +embraced till almost all the Lowland breath in our body expires. + +And this is STILL-LIFE. + +Extraordinary it is, that, go where we will, we are in a wonderfully +short time discovered to be Christopher North. A few years ago, the +instant we found our feet in a mine in Cornwall, after a descent of +about one-third the bored earth's diameter, we were saluted by name by a +grim Monops who had not seen the upper regions for years, preferring the +interior of the planet; and forthwith "Christopher North," "Christopher +North," reverberated along the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking +in all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a glimpse of the famous +Editor. On another occasion, we remember, when coasting the south of +Ireland in our schooner, falling in with a boat like a cockle-shell, +well out of the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked Paddies that +were ensnaring the finny race, two smoked us at the helm, and bawled up, +"Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a balloon, and by any accident +descend in the interior of Africa, we have not the slightest doubt that +Sultan Belloo would know us in a jiffy, having heard our person so +frequently described by Major Denham and Captain Clapperton. So we are +known, it seems, in the Still--by the men of the Worm? Yes--the +principal proprietor in the concern is a schoolmaster over about +Loch-Earn-Head--a man of no mean literary abilities, and an occasional +contributor to the Magazine. He visits The Shop in breeches--but now +mounts the kilt--and astonishes us by the versatility of his talents. In +one of the most active working bees we recognise a cadie, formerly in +Auld Reekie ycleped "The Despatch," now retired to the Braes of +Balquhidder, and breathing strongly the spirit of his youth. With that +heather-houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of Day, we were, for +the quarter of a century that we held a large grazing farm, in the +annual practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; and--wonderful, +indeed, to think how old friends meet--we were present at the amputation +of the right leg of that timber-toed hero with the bushy whiskers--in +the Hospital of Rosetta--having accompanied Sir David Baird's splendid +Indian army into Egypt. + +Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing +the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the +true influence of THE STILL? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of +idleness is that which consists in being up night and day--traversing +moors and mountains in all weathers--constantly contriving the most +skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some +disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert--when all is +lost except honour--hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!) +wickedly wasted among the heather-roots, and the whole beautiful +Apparatus lying battered and spiritless in the sun beneath the accursed +blows of the Pagans--returns, after a few weeks set apart to natural +grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to the self-same work, even +within view of the former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the first +amalgamated hotness that deserves the name of speerit, devotes the whole +Board of Excise to the Infernal Gods? + +The argument of idleness has not a leg to stand on, and falls at once to +the ground.--But the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that there is a +certain degree of dishonesty in cheating the Excise; and we shall allow +yourself to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the sma' still as +any moral writer on Honesty with whom we have the pleasure occasionally +to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows either grow or purchase +their own malt. They do not steal it; and many is the silent benediction +that we have breathed over a bit patch of barley, far up on its stony +soil among the hills, bethinking us that it would yield up its precious +spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge for it any very extravagant +price--for what is twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a-gallon for such +drink divine as is now steaming before us in that celestial caldron? + +Having thus got rid of the charge of idleness and dishonesty, nothing +more needs to be said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and we come +now, in the second place, to consider it in a Social Light. The biggest +bigot will not dare to deny, that without whisky the Highlands of +Scotland would be uninhabitable. And if all the population were gone, or +extinct, where then would be your social life? Smugglers are seldom +drunkards; neither are they men of boisterous manners or savage +dispositions. In general, they are grave, sedate, peaceable characters, +not unlike elders of the Kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on rare +occasions when human patience is exhausted, to be merciful. Four +pleasanter men do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, than the +friends with whom we are now on the hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet--a +profound and beautiful reflection--and no doubt originally made by some +peripatetic philosopher at a Still. The very soul of the strong drink +evaporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. An evil day would it +indeed be for Scotland, that should witness the extinguishment of all +her free and unlicensed mountain stills! The charm of Highland +hospitality would be wan and withered, and the _doch-an-dorras_, instead +of a blessing, would sound like a ban. + +We have said that smugglers are never drunkards, not forgetting that +general rules are proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and declare +that the Highlanders are the soberest people in Europe. Whisky is to +them a cordial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the umbrella and +wraprascal! were you ever in the Highlands? We shall produce a single +day from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that will out-argue you +on the present subject, in half an hour. What sound is that? The rushing +of rain from heaven, and the sudden outcry of a thousand waterfalls. +Look through a chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for the mists, +the heath-covered desert is steaming like the smoke of a smouldering +fire. Winds biting as winter come sweeping on their invisible chariots +armed with scythes, down every glen, and scatter far and wide over the +mountains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you have a taste of the +summer cold, more dangerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes +"aitches" into the unprepared bones, and congeals the blood of the +shelterless shepherd on the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit +down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and bold as a rainbow he faces +the reappearing sun, and feels assured (though there he may be mistaken) +of dying at a good old age. + +Then think, oh think, how miserably poor are most of those men who have +fought our battles, and so often reddened their bayonets in defence of +our liberties and our laws! Would you grudge them a little whisky? And +depend upon it, a little is the most, taking one day of the year with +another, that they imbibe. You figure to yourself two hundred thousand +Highlanders, taking snuff, and chewing tobacco, and drinking whisky, all +year long. Why, one pound of snuff, two of tobacco, and two gallons of +whisky, would be beyond the mark of the yearly allowance of every +grown-up man! Thousands never taste such luxuries at all--meal and +water, potatoes and salt, their only food. The animal food, sir, and the +fermented liquors of various kinds, Foreign and British, which to our +certain knowledge you have swallowed within the last twelve months, +would have sufficed for fifty families in our abstemious region of mist +and snow. We have known you drink a bottle of champagne, a bottle of +port, and two bottles of claret, frequently at a sitting, equal, in +prime cost, to three gallons of the best Glenlivet! And YOU (who, by the +way, are an English clergyman, a circumstance we had entirely forgotten, +and have published a Discourse against Drunkenness, dedicated to a +Bishop) pour forth the Lamentations of Jeremiah over the sinful +multitude of Small Stills! Hypocrisy! hypocrisy! where shalt thou hide +thy many-coloured sides? + +Whisky is found by experience to be, on the whole, a blessing in so +misty and mountainous a country. It destroys disease and banishes death; +without some such stimulant the people would die of cold. You will see a +fine old Gael, of ninety or a hundred, turn up his little finger to a +caulker with an air of patriarchal solemnity altogether scriptural; his +great-grandchildren eyeing him with the most respectful affection, and +the youngest of them toddling across the floor, to take the quaich from +his huge, withered, and hairy hand, which he lays on the amiable +Joseph's sleek craniology, with a blessing heartier through the +Glenlivet, and with all the earnestness of religion. There is no +disgrace in getting drunk--in the Highlands--not even if you are of the +above standing--for where the people are so poor, such a state is but of +rare occurrence; while it is felt all over the land of sleet and snow, +that a 'drap o' the cretur' is a very necessary of life, and that but +for its 'dew' the mountains would be uninhabitable. At fairs, and +funerals, and marriages, and suchlike merry meetings, sobriety is sent +to look after the sheep; but, except on charitable occasions of that +kind, sobriety stays at home among the peat-reek, and is contented with +crowdy. Who that ever stooped his head beneath a Highland hut would +grudge a few gallons of Glenlivet to its poor but unrepining inmates? +The seldomer they get drunk the better--and it is but seldom they do so; +but let the rich man--the monied moralist, who bewails and begrudges the +Gael a modicum of the liquor of life, remember the doom of a certain +Dives, who, in a certain place that shall now be nameless, cried, but +cried in vain, for a drop of water. Lord bless the Highlanders, say we, +for the most harmless, hospitable, peaceable, brave people that ever +despised breeches, blew pibrochs, took invincible standards, and +believed in the authenticity of Ossian's poems. In that pure and lofty +region ignorance is not, as elsewhere, the mother of vice--penury cannot +repress the noble rage of the mountaineer as "he sings aloud old songs +that are the music of the heart;" while superstition herself has an +elevating influence, and will be suffered, even by religion, to show her +shadowy shape and mutter her wild voice through the gloom that lies on +the heads of the remote glens, and among the thousand caves of echo in +her iron-bound coasts, dashed on for ever--night and day--summer and +winter--by those sleepless seas, who have no sooner laid their heads on +the pillow than up they start with a howl that cleaves the Orcades, and +away off in search of shipwrecks round the corner of Cape Wrath. + +In the third place, what shall we say of the poetical influence of +STILLS? What more poetical life can there be than that of the men with +whom we are now quaffing the barley-bree? They live with the moon and +stars. All the night winds are their familiars. If there be such things +as ghosts, and fairies, and apparitions--and that there are, no man who +has travelled much by himself after sunset will deny, except from the +mere love of contradiction--they see them; or when invisible, which they +generally are, hear them--here--there--everywhere--in sky, forest, cave, +or hollow-sounding world immediately beneath their feet. Many poets walk +these wilds; nor do their songs perish. They publish not with Blackwood +or with Murray--but for centuries on centuries, such songs are the +preservers, often the sources, of the oral traditions that go glimmering +and gathering down the stream of years. Native are they to the mountains +as the blooming heather, nor shall they ever cease to invest them with +the light of poetry--in defiance of large farms, Methodist preachers, +and the Caledonian Canal. + +People are proud of talking of solitude. It redounds, they opine, to the +honour of their great-mindedness to be thought capable of living, for an +hour or two, by themselves, at a considerable distance from knots or +skeins of their fellow-creatures. Byron, again, thought he showed his +superiority by swearing as solemnly as a man can do in the Spenserian +stanza that + + "To sit alone, and muse o'er flood and fell," + +has nothing whatever to do with solitude--and that, if you wish to know +and feel what solitude really is, you must go to Almack's. + + "This is to be alone,--this, this is solitude." + +His Lordship's opinions were often peculiar--but the passage has been +much admired; therefore we are willing to believe that the Great Desert +is, in point of loneliness, unable to stand a philosophical, much less a +poetical comparison, with a well-frequented Fancy-ball. But is the +statement not borne out by facts? Zoology is on its side--more +especially two of its most interesting branches, Entomology and +Ornithology. + +Go to a desert and clap your back against a cliff. Do you think yourself +alone? What a ninny! Your great clumsy splay feet are bruising to death +a batch of beetles. See that spider whom you have widowed, running up +and down your elegant leg, in distraction and despair, bewailing the +loss of a husband who, however savage to the ephemerals, had always +smiled sweetly upon her. Meanwhile your shoulders have crushed a colony +of small red ants settled in a moss city beautifully roofed with +lichens--and that accounts for the sharp tickling behind your ear, which +you keep scratching, no Solomon, in ignorance of the cause of that +effect. Should you sit down--we must beg to draw a veil over your +hurdies, which at the moment extinguish a fearful amount of animal +life--creation may be said to groan under them; and, insect as you are +yourself, you are defrauding millions of insects of their little day. +All the while you are supposing yourself alone! Now, are you not, as we +hinted, a prodigious ninny? But the whole wilderness--as you choose to +call it--is crawling with various life. London with its million and a +half of inhabitants--including of course the suburbs--is, compared with +it, an empty joke. Die--and you will soon be picked to the bones. The +air swarms with sharpers--and an insurrection of radicals will attack +your corpse from the worm-holes of the earth. Corbies, ravens, hawks, +eagles, all the feathered furies of beak and bill, will come flying ere +sunset to anticipate the maggots, and carry your remains--if you will +allow us to call them so--over the whole of Argyllshire in many living +sepulchres. We confess ourselves unable to see the solitude of this--and +begin to agree with Byron, that a man is less crowded at a masquerade. + +But the same subject may be illustrated less tragically, and even with +some slight comic effect. A man among mountains is often surrounded on +all sides with mice and moles. What cosy nests do the former construct +at the roots of heather, among tufts of grass in the rushes, and the +moss on the greensward! As for the latter, though you think you know a +mountain from a molehill, you are much mistaken; for what is a mountain, +in many cases, but a collection of molehills--and of fairy +knolls?--which again introduce a new element into the composition, and +show, in still more glaring colours, your absurdity in supposing +yourself to be in solitude. The "Silent People" are around you at every +step. You may not see them--for they are dressed in invisible green; but +they see you, and that unaccountable whispering and buzzing sound one +often hears in what we call the wilderness, what is it, or what can it +be, but the fairies making merry at your expense, pointing out to each +other the extreme silliness of your meditative countenance, and laughing +like to split at your fond conceit of being alone among a multitude of +creatures far wiser than yourself. + +But should all this fail to convince you that you are never less alone +than when you think yourself alone, and that a man never knows what it +is to be in the very heart of life till he leaves London, and takes a +walk in Glen-Etive--suppose yourself to have been leaning with your back +against that knoll, dreaming of the far-off race of men, when all at +once the support gives way inwards, and you tumble head over heels in +among a snug coterie of kilted Celts, in the very act of creating +Glenlivet in a great warlock's caldron, seething to the top with the +Spirit of Life! + +Such fancies as these, among many others, were with us in the Still. But +a glimmering and a humming and a dizzy bewilderment hangs over that time +and place, finally dying away into oblivion. Here are we sitting in a +glade of a birch-wood in what must be Gleno--some miles from the Still. +Hamish asleep, as usual, whenever he lies down, and all the dogs +yowffing in dreams, and Surefoot standing with his long beard above +ours, almost the same in longitude. We have been more, we suspect, than +half-seas over, and are now lying on the shore of sobriety, almost a +wreck. The truth is, that the new spirit is even more dangerous than the +new light. Both at first dazzle, then obfuscate, and lastly darken into +temporary death. There is, we fear, but one word of one syllable in the +English language that could fully express our late condition. Let our +readers solve the enigma. Oh! those quaichs! By + + "What drugs, what spells, + What conjurations, and what mighty magic" + +was Christopher overthrown! A strange confusion of sexes, as of men in +petticoats and women in breeches--gowns transmogrified into +jackets--caps into bonnets--and thick naked hairy legs into slim ankles +decent in hose--all somewhere whirling and dancing by, dim and obscure, +to the sound of something groaning and yelling, sometimes +inarticulately, as if it came from something instrumental, and then +mixed up with a wild gibberish, as if shrieking, somehow or other, from +living lips, human and brute--for a dream of yowling dogs is over +all--utterly confounds us as we strive to muster in recollection the few +last hours that have passed tumultuously through our brain--and then a +wide black moor, sometimes covered with day, sometimes with night, +stretches around us, hemmed in on all sides by the tops of mountains +seeming to reel in the sky. Frequent flashes of fire, and a whirring as +of the wings of birds--but sound and sight alike uncertain--break again +upon our dream. Let us not mince the matter--we can afford the +confession--we have been overtaken by liquor--sadly intoxicated--out +with it at once! Frown not, fairest of all sweet--for we lay our +calamity, not to the charge of the Glenlivet circling in countless +quaichs, but at the door of that inveterate enemy to sobriety--the Fresh +Air. + +But now we are as sober as a judge. Pity our misfortune--rather than +forgive our sin. We entered that Still in a State of innocence before +the Fall. Where we fell, we know not--in divers ways and sundry +places--between that magic cell on the breast of Benachochie, and this +glade in Gleno. But + + "There are worse things in life than a fall among heather." + +Surefoot, we suppose, kept himself tolerably sober--and O'Bronte, at +each successive cloit, must have assisted us to remount--for Hamish, +from his style of sleeping, must have been as bad as his master; and, +after all, it is wonderful to think how we got here--over hags and +mosses, and marshes, and quagmires, like those in which "armies whole +have sunk." But the truth is, that never in the whole course of our +lives--and that course has been a strange one--did we ever so often as +once lose our way. Set us down blindfolded on Zahara, and we will beat +the caravan to Timbuctoo. Something or other mysteriously indicative of +the right direction touches the soles of our feet in the shape of the +ground they tread; and even when our souls have gone soaring far away, +or have sunk within us, still have our feet pursued the shortest and the +safest path that leads to the bourne of our pilgrimage. Is not that +strange? But not stranger surely than the flight of the bee, on his +first voyage over the coves of the wilderness to the far-off +heather-bells--or of the dove that is sent by some Jew stock-jobber, to +communicate to Dutchmen the rise or fall of the funds, from London to +Hamburg, from the clear shores of silver Thames to the muddy shallows of +the Zuyder Zee. + + + + +THE MOORS. + +FLIGHT FOURTH--DOWN RIVER AND UP LOCH. + + +Let us inspect the state of Brown Bess. Right barrel empty--left +barrel--what is the meaning of this?--crammed to the muzzle! Ay, that +comes of visiting Stills. We have been snapping away at the coveys and +single birds all over the moor, without so much as a pluff, with the +right-hand cock--and then, imagining that we had fired, have kept +loading away at the bore to the left, till, see! the ramrod absolutely +stands upright in the air, with only about three inches hidden in the +hollow! What a narrow--a miraculous escape has the world had of losing +Christopher North! Had he drawn that trigger instead of this, Brown Bess +would have burst to a moral certainty, and blown the old gentleman +piecemeal over the heather. "In the midst of life we are in death!" +Could we but know one in a hundred of the close approachings of the +skeleton, we should lead a life of perpetual shudder. Often and often do +his bony fingers almost clutch our throat, or his foot is put out to +give us a cross-buttock. But a saving arm pulls him back, ere we have +seen so much as his shadow. We believe all this--but the belief that +comes not from something steadfastly present before our eyes, is barren; +and thus it is, since believing is not seeing, that we walk hoodwinked +nearly all our days, and worst of all blindness is that of ingratitude +and forgetfulness of Him whose shield is for ever over us, and whose +mercy shall be with us in the world beyond the grave. + +By all that is most beautifully wild in animated nature, a Roe! a Roe! +Shall we slay him where he stands, or let him vanish in silent glidings +in among his native woods? What a fool for asking ourselves such a +question! Slay him where he stands to be sure--for many pleasant seasons +hath he led in his leafy lairs, a life of leisure, delight, and love, +and the hour is come when he must sink down on his knees in a sudden +and unpainful death--fair sylvan dreamer! We have drawn that +multitudinous shot--and both barrels of Brown Bess now are loaded with +ball--for Hamish is yet lying with his head on the rifle. Whiz! whiz! +one is through lungs, and another through neck--and seemingly rather to +sleep than die (so various are the many modes of expiration!) + + "In quietness he lays him down + Gently, as a weary wave + Sinks, when the summer breeze has died, + Against an anchor'd vessel's side." + +Ay--Hamish--you may start to your feet--and see realised the vision of +your sleep. What a set of distracted dogs! But O'Bronte first catches +sight of the quarry--and clearing, with grasshopper spangs, the patches +of stunted coppice, stops stock-still beside the roe in the glade, as if +admiring and wondering at the beauty of the fair spotted creature! Yes, +dogs have a sense of the beautiful. Else how can you account for their +loving so to lie down at the feet and lick the hands of the virgin whose +eyes are mild, and forehead meek, and hair of placid sunshine, rather +than act the same part towards ugly women, who, coarser and coarser in +each successive widow-hood, when at their fourth husband are beyond +expression hideous, and felt to be so by the whole canine tribe? Spenser +must have seen some dog like O'Bronte lying at the feet and licking the +hand of some virgin--sweet reader, like thyself--else never had he +painted the posture of that Lion who guarded through Fairyland + + "Heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb." + +A divine line of Wordsworth's, which we shall never cease quoting on to +the last of our inditings, even to our dying day! + +But where, Hamish, are all the flappers, the mawsies, and the mallards? +What! You have left them--hare, grouse, bag, and all, at the Still! We +remember it now--and all the distillers are to-night to be at our Tent, +bringing with them feathers, fur, and hide--ducks, pussy, and deer. But +take the roe on your stalwart shoulders, Hamish, and bear it down to the +sylvan dwelling at the mouth of Gleno. Surefoot has a sufficient burden +in us--for we are waxing more corpulent every day--and ere long shall be +a Silenus. + +Ay, travel all the world over, and a human dwelling lovelier in its +wildness shall you nowhere find, than the one that hides itself in the +depth of its own beauty, beneath the last of the green knolls +besprinkling Gleno, dropt down there in presence of the peacefulest bay +of all Loch-Etive, in whose cloud-softened bosom it sees itself +reflected among the congenial imagery of the skies. And, hark! a murmur +as of swarming bees! 'Tis a Gaelic school--set down in this loneliest of +all places, by that religious wisdom that rests not till the seeds of +saving knowledge shall be sown over all the wilds. That greyhaired +minister of God, whom all Scotland venerates, hath been here from the +great city on one of his holy pilgrimages. And, lo! at his bidding, and +that of his coadjutors in the heavenly work, a Schoolhouse has risen +with its blue roof--the pure diamond-sparkling slates of +Ballahulish--beneath a tuft of breeze-breaking trees. But whence come +they--the little scholars--who are all murmuring there? We said that the +shores of Loch-Etive were desolate. So seem they to the eye of +Imagination, that loves to gather up a hundred scenes into one, and to +breathe over the whole the lonesome spirit of one vast wilderness. But +Imagination was a liar ever--a romancer and a dealer in dreams. Hers are +the realms of fiction, + + "A boundless contiguity of shade!" + +But the land of truth is ever the haunt of the heart--there her eye +reposes or expatiates, and what sweet, humble, and lowly visions arise +before it, in a light that fadeth not away, but abideth for ever! +Cottages, huts, shielings, she sees hidden--few and far between +indeed--but all filled with Christian life--among the hollows of the +hills--and up, all the way up the great glens--and by the shores of the +loneliest lochs--and sprinkled, not so rarely, among the woods that +enclose little fields and meadows of their own--all the way down--more +and more animated--till children are seen gathering before their doors +the shells of the contiguous sea. + +Look and listen far and wide through a sunshiny day, over a rich wooded +region, with hedgerows, single trees, groves, and forests, and yet haply +not one bird is to be seen or heard--neither plumage nor song. Yet many +a bright lyrist is there, all mute till the harbinger-hour of sunset, +when all earth, air, and heaven, shall be ringing with one song. Almost +even so is it with this mountain-wilderness. Small bright-haired, +bright-eyed, bright-faced children, come stealing out in the morning +from many hidden huts, each solitary in its own site, the sole dwelling +on its own brae or its own dell. Singing go they one and all, alone or +in small bands, trippingly along the wide moors; meeting into pleasant +parties at cross-paths or at fords, till one stated hour sees them all +gathered together, as now in the small Schoolhouse of Gleno, and the +echo of the happy hum of the simple scholars is heard soft among the +cliffs. But all at once the hum now ceases, and there is a hurry out of +doors, and an exulting cry; for the shadow of Hamish, with the roe on +his shoulders, has passed the small lead-latticed window, and the +Schoolroom has emptied itself on the green, which is now brightening +with the young blossoms of life. "A roe--a roe--a roe!"--is still the +chorus of their song; and the Schoolmaster himself, though educated at +college for the kirk, has not lost the least particle of his passion for +the chase, and with kindling eyes assists Hamish in laying down his +burden, and gazes on the spots with a hunter's joy. We leave you to +imagine his delight and his surprise when, at first hardly trusting his +optics, he beholds CHRISTOPHER ON SUREFOOT, and then, patting the shelty +on the shoulder, bows affectionately and respectfully to the Old Man, +and while our hands grasp, takes a pleasure in repeating over and over +again that celebrated surname--North--North--North. + +After a brief and bright hour of glee and merriment, mingled with grave +talk, nor marred by the sweet undisturbance of all those elves maddening +on the Green around the Roe, we express a wish that the scholars may all +again be gathered together in the Schoolroom, to undergo an examination +by the Christian Philosopher of Buchanan Lodge. 'Tis in all things +gentle, in nothing severe. All slates are instantly covered with +numerals, and 'tis pleasant to see their skill in finest fractions, and +in the wonder-working golden rule of three. And now the rustling of +their manuals is like that of rainy breezes among the summer leaves. No +fears are here that the Book of God will lose its sanctity by becoming +too familiar to eye, lip, and hand. Like the sunlight in the sky, the +light that shines there is for ever dear--and unlike any sunlight in +any skies, never is it clouded, permanently bright, and undimmed before +pious eyes by one single shadow. We ought, perhaps, to be ashamed, but +we are not so--we are happy that not an urchin is there who is not fully +better acquainted with the events and incidents recorded in the Old and +New Testaments than ourselves; and think not that all these could have +been so faithfully committed to memory without the perpetual operation +of the heart. Words are forgotten unless they are embalmed in spirit; +and the air of the world, blow afterwards rudely as it may, shall never +shrivel up one syllable that has been steeped into their souls by the +spirit of the Gospel--felt by these almost infant disciples of Christ to +be the very breath of God. + +It has turned out one of the sweetest and serenest afternoons that ever +breathed a hush over the face and bosom of August woods. Can we find it +in our mind to think, in our heart to feel, in our hand to write, that +Scotland is now even more beautiful than in our youth! No--not in our +heart to feel--but in our eyes to see--for they tell us it is the truth. +The people have cared for the land which the Lord their God hath given +them, and have made the wilderness to blossom like the rose. The same +Arts that have raised their condition have brightened their habitation; +Agriculture, by fertilising the loveliness of the low-lying vales, has +sublimed the sterility of the stupendous mountain heights--and the +thundrous tides, flowing up the lochs, bring power to the cornfields and +pastures created on hill-sides once horrid with rocks. The whole country +laughs with a more vivid verdure--more pure the flow of her streams and +rivers--for many a fen and marsh has been made dry, and the rainbow +pictures itself on clearer cataracts. + +The Highlands were, in our memory, overspread with a too dreary gloom. +Vast tracts there were in which Nature herself seemed miserable; and if +the heart find no human happiness to repose on, Imagination will fold +her wings, or flee away to other regions, where in her own visionary +world she may soar at will, and at will stoop down to the homes of this +real earth. Assuredly the inhabitants are happier than they then +were--_better off_--and therefore the change, whatever loss it may +comprehend, has been a gain in good. Alas! poverty--penury--want--even +of the necessaries of life--are too often there still rife; but patience +and endurance dwell there, heroic and better far, Christian--nor has +Charity been slow to succour regions remote but not inaccessible, +Charity acting in power delegated by Heaven to our National Councils. +And thus we can think not only without sadness, but with an elevation of +soul inspired by such example of highest virtue in humblest estate, and +in our own sphere exposed to other trials be induced to follow it, set +to us in many "a virtuous household, though exceeding poor." What are +the poetical fancies about "mountain scenery," that ever fluttered on +the leaves of albums, in comparison with any scheme, however prosaic, +that tends in any way to increase human comforts? The best sonnet that +ever was written by a versifier from the South to the Crown of +Benlomond, is not worth the worst pair of worsted stockings trotted in +by a small Celt going with his dad to seek for a lost sheep among the +snow-wreaths round his base. As for eagles, and ravens, and red-deer, +"those magnificent creatures so stately and bright," let them shift for +themselves--and perhaps in spite of all our rhapsodies--the fewer of +them the better; but among geese, and turkeys, and poultry, let +propagation flourish--the fleecy folk baa--and the hairy hordes bellow +on a thousand hills. All the beauty and sublimity on earth--over the +Four Quarters of the World--is not worth a straw if valued against a +good harvest. An average crop is satisfactory; but a crop that soars +high above an average--a golden year of golden ears--sends joy into the +heart of heaven. No prating now of the degeneracy of the potato. We can +sing now with our single voice, like a numerous chorus, of + + "Potatoes drest both ways, both roasted and boiled;" + +sixty bolls to the acre on a field of our own of twenty acres--mealier +than any meal--Perth reds--to the hue on whose cheeks dull was that on +the face of the Fair Maid of Perth, when she blushed to confess to +Burn-y-win' that hand-over-hip he had struck the iron when it was hot, +and that she was no more the Glover's. O bright are potato blooms!--O +green are potato-shaws!--O yellow are potato-plums! But how oft are +blighted summer hopes and broken summer promises! Spare not the +shaw--heap high the mounds--that damp nor frost may dim a single eye; so +that all winter through poor men may prosper, and spring see settings +of such prolific vigour, that they shall yield a thousandfold--and the +sound of rumbledethumps be heard all over the land. + +Let the people eat--let them have food for their bodies, and then they +will have heart to care for their souls; and the good and the wise will +look after their souls with sure and certain hope of elevating them from +their hovels to heaven, while prigs, with their eyes in a fine frenzy +rolling, rail at railroads, and all the other vile inventions of an +utilitarian age to open up and expedite communication between the +Children of the Mist and the Sons and Daughters of the Sunshine, to the +utter annihilation of the sublime Spirit of Solitude. Be under no sort +of alarm for Nature. There is some talk, it is true, of a tunnel through +Cruachan to the Black Mount, but the general impression seems to be that +it will be a _great bore_. A joint-stock company that undertook to +remove Ben-Nevis, is beginning to find unexpected obstructions. Feasible +as we confess it appeared, the idea of draining Loch Lomond has been +relinquished for the easier and more useful scheme of converting the +Clyde from below Stonebyres to above the Bannatyne Fall into a +canal--the chief lock being, in the opinion of the most ingenious +speculators, almost ready-made at Corra Linn. Shall we never be done +with our soliloquy? It may be a little longish, for age is prolix--but +every whit as natural and congenial with circumstances, as Hamlet's "to +be or not to be, that is the question." O beloved Albin! our soul +yearneth towards thee, and we invoke a blessing on thy many thousand +glens. The man who leaves a blessing on any one of thy solitary places, +and gives expression to a good thought in presence of a Christian +brother, is a missionary of the church. What uncomplaining and +unrepining patience in thy solitary huts! What unshrinking endurance of +physical pain and want, that might well shame the Stoic's philosophic +pride! What calm contentment, akin to mirth, in so many lonesome +households, hidden the greatest part of the year in mist and snow! What +peaceful deathbeds, witnessed but by a few, a very few grave but +tearless eyes! Ay, how many martyrdoms for the holy love and religion of +nature, worse to endure than those of old at the stake, because +protracted through years of sore distress, for ever on the very limit of +famine, yet for ever far removed from despair! Such is the people among +whom we seek to drop the books, whose sacred leaves are too often +scattered to the winds, or buried in the dust of Pagan lands. Blessed is +the fount from whose wisely-managed munificence the small house of God +will rise frequent in the wide and sea-divided wilds, with its humble +associate, the heath-roofed school, in which, through the silence of +nature, will be heard the murmuring voices of the children of the poor, +instructed in the knowledge useful for time, and of avail for eternity. + +We leave a loose sovereign or two to the Bible Fund; and remounting +Surefoot, while our friend the schoolmaster holds the stirrup tenderly +to our toe, jog down the road which is rather alarmingly like the +channel of a drought-dried torrent, and turning round on the saddle, +send our farewell salutes to the gazing scholars, first, bonnet waved +round our head, and then, that replaced, a kiss flung from our hand. +Hamish, relieved of the roe, which will be taken up (how, you shall +by-and-by hear) on our way back to the Tent, is close at our side, to be +ready should Shelty stumble; O'Bronte as usual bounds in the van; and +Ponto, Piro, and Basta, impatient for the next heather hill, keep close +at our heels through the wood. + +We do not admire that shooting-ground which resembles a poultry-yard. +Grouse and barn-door fowls are constructed on opposite principles, the +former being wild, and the latter tame creatures, when in their +respective perfection. Of all dull pastimes, the dullest seems to us +sporting in a preserve; and we believe that we share that feeling with +the Grand Signior. The sign of a lonely wayside inn in the Highlands, +ought not to be the Hen and Chickens. Some shooters, we know, sick of +common sport, love slaughter. From sunrise to sunset of the First Day of +the Moors, they must bag their hundred brace. That can only be done +where pouts prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where you have +half-a-dozen attendants to hand you double-barrels _sans_ intermission, +for a round dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire. Commend us to a +plentiful sprinkling of game; to ground which seems occasionally barren, +and which it needs a fine instructed eye to traverse scientifically, and +thereof to detect the latent riches. Fear and Hope are the Deities whom +Christopher in his Sporting Jacket worships; and were they +unpropitious, the Moors would lose all their witchcraft. We are a dead +shot, but not always, for the forefinger of our right hand is the most +fitful forefinger in all this capricious world. Like all performers in +the Fine Arts, our execution is very uncertain; and though "_toujours +pret_" is the impress on one side of our shield, "_hit and miss_" is +that on the other, and often the more characteristic. A gentleman ought +not to shoot like a gamekeeper, any more than at billiards to play like +a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to tool his prads like the +Portsmouth Dragsman. We choose to shoot like a philosopher as we are, +and to preserve the golden mean in murder. We hold, with Aristotle, that +all virtue consists in the middle between the two extremes; and thus we +shoot in a style equidistant from that of the gamekeeper on the one +hand, and that of the bagman on the other, neither killing nor missing +every bird; but, true to the spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine, +leaning with a decided inclination towards the first rather than the +second predicament. If we shoot too well one day, we are pretty sure to +make amends for it by shooting just as much too ill another; and thus, +at the close of the week, we can go to bed with a clear conscience. In +short, we shoot like gentlemen, scholars, poets, philosophers as we are; +and looking at us, you have a sight + + "Of him who walks (rides) in glory and in joy, + Following his dog upon the mountain-side,"-- + +a man evidently not shooting for a wager, and performing a match from +the mean motive of avarice or ambition, but blazing away "at his own +sweet will," and, without seeming to know it, making a great noise in +the world. Such, believe us, is ever the mode in which true genius +displays at once the earnestness and the modesty of its character.--But, +Hamish--Hamish--Hamish--look with both thine eyes on yonder bank--yonder +sunny bank, beneath the shade of that fantastic cliff's superincumbent +shadow--and seest thou not basking there a miraculous amount of the +right sort of feathers? They have packed, Hamish--they have packed, +early as it yet is in the season; and the question is--_What shall we +do?_ We have it. Take up a position--Hamish--about a hundred yards in +the rear--on yonder knoll--with the Colonel's Sweeper. Fire from the +rest--mind, from the rest, Hamishright into the centre of that bed of +plumage, and we shall be ready, with Brown Bess and her sister, to pour +in our quartette upon the remains as they rise--so that not escape shall +one single feather. Let our coming "to the present" be your +signal.--Bang! Whew!--what a flutter! Now take that--and that--and +that--and that! Ha! Hamish--as at the springing of a mine, the whole +company has perished. Count the dead. Twenty-one! Life is short--and by +this compendious style we take Time by the forelock. But where the devil +are the ducks? Oh, yes! with the deer at the Still. Bag, and be +stirring. For the Salmon-pond is murmuring in our ear; and in another +hour we must be at Inveraw. Who said that Cruachan was a steep mountain? +Why, with a gentle, smooth, and easy slope, he dips his footsteps in the +sea-salt waters of Loch Etive's tide, as if to accommodate the old +gentleman who, half-a-century ago, used to beard him in his pride on his +throne of clouds. Heaven bless him!--he is a kind-hearted mountain, +though his forehead be furrowed, and his aspect grim in stormy weather. +A million memories "o' auld lang syne" revive, as almost "smooth-sliding +without a step" Surefoot travels through the sylvan haunts, by us +beloved of yore, when every day was a dream, and every dream filled to +overflowing with poetic visions that swarmed in every bough, on every +bent, on every heather-bell, on every dewdrop, in every mote o' the sun, +in every line of gossamer, all over greenwood and greensward, grey +cliff, purple heath, blue lock, "wine-faced sea," + + "with locks divinely spreading, + Like sullen hyacinths in vernal hue," + +and all over the sky, seeming then a glorious infinitude, where light, +and joy, and beauty had their dwelling in calm and storm alike for +evermore. + +Heaven bless thee--with all her sun, moon, and stars! there thou art, +dearest to us of all the lochs of Scotland--and they are all +dear--mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, grove-girdled, +wide-winding, and far-stretching, with thy many-bayed banks and braes of +brushwood, fern, broom, and heather, rejoicing in their huts and +shielings, thou glory of Argyllshire, rill-and-river-fed, sea-arm-like, +floating in thy majesty, magnificent Loch Awe! + +Comparisons, so far from being odious, are always suggested to our +hearts by the spirit of love. We behold Four Lochs--Loch Awe, before our +bodily eyes, which sometimes sleep--Loch Lomond, Windermere, Killarney, +before those other eyes of ours that are waking ever. The longest is +Loch Awe, which from that bend below Sonnachan to distant Edderline, +looks like a river. But cut off, with the soft scythe or sickle of +fancy, twenty miles of the length of the mottled snake, who never coils +himself up except in misty weather, and who is now lying outstretched in +the sunshine, and the upper part, the head and shoulders, are of +themselves a Loch. Pleasant are his many hills, and magnificent his one +mountain. For you see but Cruachan. He is the master-spirit. Call him +the noblest of Scotland's Kings. His subjects are princes; and +gloriously they range around him, stretching high, wide, and far away, +yet all owing visible allegiance to him, their sole and undisputed +sovereign. The setting and the rising sun do him homage. Peace loves--as +now--to dwell within his shadow; but high among the precipices are the +halls of the storms. Green are the shores as emerald. But the dark +heather with its purple bloom sleeps in sombre shadow over wide regions +of dusk, and there is an austere character in the cliffs. Moors and +mosses intervene between holms and meadows, and those black spots are +stacks of last year's peats--not huts, as you might think; but those +other specks are huts, somewhat browner--few roofed with straw, almost +all with heather--though the better houses are slated--nor is there in +the world to be found slate of a more beautiful pale-green colour than +in the quarries of Ballahulish. The scene is vast and wild; yet so much +beauty is interfused, that at such an hour as this its character is +almost that of loveliness; the rude and rugged is felt to be rural, and +no more; and the eye, gliding from the cottage gardens on its banks to +the islands on the bosom of the Loch, loses sight of the mighty masses +heaved up to the heavens, while the heart forgets that they are there, +in its sweet repose. The dim-seen ruins of castle or religious house, +secluded from all the stir that disturbed the shore, carries back our +dreams to the olden time, and we awake from our reveries of "sorrows +suffered long ago," to enjoy the apparent happiness of the living world. + +Loch Lomond is a sea! Along its shores might you voyage in your swift +schooner, with shifting breezes, all a summer's day, nor at sunset, when +you dropped anchor, have seen half the beautiful wonders. It is +many-isled; and some of them are in themselves little worlds, with woods +and hills. Houses are seen looking out from among old trees, and +children playing on the greensward that slopes safely into deep water, +where in rushy havens are drawn up the boats of fishermen, or of +woodcutters who go to their work on the mainland. You might live all +your life on one of those islands, and yet be no hermit. Hundreds of +small bays indent the shores, and some of a majestic character take a +fine bold sweep with their towering groves, enclosing the mansion of a +Colquhoun or a Campbell at enmity no more, or the turreted castle of the +rich alien, who there finds himself as much at home as in his hereditary +hall, Sassenach and Gael now living in gentle friendship. What a +prospect from the Point of Firkin! The Loch in its whole length and +breadth--the magnificent expanse unbroken, though bedropped, with +unnumbered isles--and the shores diversified with jutting cape and +far-shooting peninsula, enclosing sweet separate seclusions, each in +itself a loch. Ships might be sailing here, the largest ships of war; +and there is anchorage for fleets. But the clear course of the lovely +Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with gravelly shallows, and guards +Loch Lomond from the white-winged roamers that from all seas come +crowding into the Firth of Clyde, and carry their streaming flags above +the woods of Ardgowan. And there stands Ben. What cares he for all the +multitude of other lochs his gaze commands--what cares he even for the +salt-sea foam tumbling far away off into the ocean? All-sufficient for +his love is his own loch at his feet. How serenely looks down the Giant! +Is there not something very sweet in his sunny smile? Yet were you to +see him frown--as we have seen him--your heart would sink; and what +would become of you--if all alone by your own single self, wandering +over the wide moor that glooms in utter houselessness between his +corries and Glenfalloch--what if you were to hear the strange mutterings +we have heard, as if moaning from an earthquake among quagmires, till +you felt that the sound came from the sky, and all at once from the +heart of night that had strangled day burst a shattering peal that +might waken the dead--for Benlomond was in wrath, and vented it in +thunder? + +Perennially enjoying the blessing of a milder clime, and repaying the +bounty of nature by beauty that bespeaks perpetual gratitude--merry as +May, rich as June, shady as July, lustrous as August, and serene as +September, for in her meet the characteristic charms of every season, +all delightfully mingled by the happy genius of the place commissioned +to pervade the whole from heaven, most lovely yet most majestic, we +breathed the music of thy name, and start in this sterner solitude at +the sweet syllabling of Windermere, Windermere! Translucent thy waters +as diamond without a flaw. Unstained from source to sea are all the +streams soft issuing from their silver springs among those beautiful +mountains. Pure are they all as dew--and purer look the white clouds +within their breast. These are indeed the Fortunate Groves! Happy is +every tree. Blest the "Golden Oak," which seems to shine in lustre of +his own, unborrowed from the sun. Fairer far the flower-tangled grass of +those wood-encircled pastures than any meads of Asphodel. Thou need'st +no isles on thy heavenly bosom, for in the sweet confusion of thy shores +are seen the images of many isles, fragments that one might dream had +been gently loosened from the land, and had floated away into the lake +till they had lost themselves in the fairy wilderness. But though thou +need'st them not, yet hast thou, O Windermere! thine own steadfast and +enduring isles--her called the Beautiful--and islets not far apart that +seem born of her; for theirs the same expression of countenance--that of +celestial calm--and, holiest of the sisterhood, one that still retains +the ruins of an oratory, and bears the name of the Virgin Mother Mild, +to whom prays the mariner when sailing, in the moonlight, along Sicilian +seas. + +Killarney! From the village of Cloghereen issued an uncouth figure, who +called himself the "Man of the Mountain;" and pleased with Pan, we +permitted him to blow his horn before us up to the top of Mangerton, +where the Devil, 'tis believed, scooped out the sward beneath the cliffs +into a Punch-bowl. No doubt he did, and the Old Potter wrought with +fire. 'Tis the crater of an extinct volcano. Charles Fox, Weld says, and +Wright doubts, swam the Pool. Why not? 'Tis not so cold as the Polar +Sea. We swam across it--as Mulcocky, were he alive, but he is dead, +could vouch; and felt braced like a drum. What a panorama! Our first +feeling was one of grief that we were not an Irishman. We knew not where +to fix our gaze. Surrounded by the dazzling bewilderment of all that +multitudinous magnificence, the eye, as if afraid to grapple with the +near glory--for such another day never shone from heaven--sought relief +in the remote distance, and slid along the beautiful river Kenmare, +insinuating itself among the recesses of the mountains, till it rested +on the green glimmer of the far-off sea. The grandeur was felt, far off +as it was, of that iron-bound coast. Coming round with an easy sweep, as +the eyes of an eagle may do, when hanging motionless aloft he but turns +his head, our eyes took in all the mighty range of the Reeks, and rested +in awe on Carran Tual. Wild yet gentle was the blue aerial haze over the +glimpses of the Upper Lake, where soft and sweet, in a girdle of rocks, +seemed to be hanging, now in air and now in water--for all was strangely +indistinct in the dim confusion--masses of green light that might be +islands with their lovely trees; but suddenly tipt with fire shone out +the golden pinnacles of the Eagle's Nest; and as again they were tamed +by cloud-shadow, the glow of Purple Mountain for a while enchained our +vision, and then left it free to feast on the forests of Glena, till, +wandering at the capricious will of fancy, it floated in delight over +the woods of Mucruss, and long lost among the trembling imagery of the +water, found lasting repose on the steadfast beauty of the sylvan isle +of Inisfallen. + +But now for the black mass of rapid waters that, murmuring from loch to +river, rush roaring through that rainbow-arch, and bathe the green woods +in freshening spray-mist through a loveliest landscape, that steals +along with its meadow-sprinkling trees close to the very shore of Loch +Etive, binding the two lochs together with a sylvan band--her whose +calmer spirit never knows the ebb or flow of tide, and her who +fluctuates even when the skies are still with the swelling and subsiding +tumult duly sent up into and recalled down from the silence of her +inland solitude. And now for one pool in that river, called by eminence +the Salmon Pool, whose gravelly depths are sometimes paved with the blue +backs of the silver-scaled shiners, all strong as sunbeams, for a while +reposing there, till the river shall blacken in its glee to the floods +falling in Glen-Scrae and Glenorchy, and then will they shoot through +the cataract--for 'tis all one fall between the lochs--passionate of the +sweet fresh waters in which the Abbey-Isle reflects her one ruined +tower, or Kilchurn, at all times dim or dark in the shadow of Cruachan, +see his grim turrets, momentarily less grim, imaged in the tremblings of +the casual sunshine. Sometimes they lie like stones, nor, unless you +stir them up with a long pole, will they stir in the gleam, more than if +they were shadows breathed from trees when all winds are dead. But at +other times, they are on feed; and then no sooner does the fly drop on +the water in its blue and yellow gaudiness (and oh! but the brown +mallard wing is bloody--bloody!) than some snout sucks it in--some snout +of some swine-necked shoulder-bender; and instantly--as by dexterously +dropping your elbow you give him the butt, and strike the barb through +his tongue--down the long reach of the river vista'd along that straight +oak-avenue--but with clear space of greensward between wood and +water--shoots the giant steel-stung in his fear, bounding blue-white +into the air, and then down into the liquid element with a plunge as of +a man, or rather a horse, till your heart leaps to your mouth, or, as +the Greeks we believe used to say, to your nose, and you are seen +galloping along the banks, by spectators in search of the picturesque, +and ignorant of angling, supposed in the act of making your escape, with +an incomprehensible weapon in both hands, from some rural madhouse. + +Eh? eh? not in our hat--not in our waistcoat--not in our jacket--not in +our breeches! By the ghost of Autolycus some pickpocket, while we were +moralising, has abstracted our Lascelles! We may as well tie a stone to +each of our feet, and sink away from all sense of misery in the Salmon +Pool. Oh! that it had been our purse! Who cares for a dozen dirty +sovereigns and a score of nasty notes? And what's the use of them to us +now, or indeed at any time? And what's the use of this identical rod? +Hang it, if a little thing would not make us break it! A multiplying +reel, indeed! The invention of a fool. The Tent sees not us again; this +afternoon we shall return to Edinburgh. Don't talk to us of flies at the +next village. There are no flies at the village--there is no village. O +Beelzebub! O Satan! was ever man tempted as we are tempted? See--see a +Fish--a fine Fish--an enormous Fish--leaping to insult us! Give us our +gun that we may shoot him--no--no, dang guns--and dang this great clumsy +rod! There--let it lie there for the first person that passes--for we +swear never to angle more. As for the Awe, we never liked it--and wonder +what infatuation brought us here. We shall be made to pay for this +yet--whew! there was a twinge--that big toe of ours we'll warrant is as +red as fire, and we bitterly confess that we deserve the gout. Och! och! +och! + +But hark! whoop and hollo, and is that too the music of the hunter's +horn? Reverberating among the woods a well-known voice salutes our ear; +and there! bounds Hamish over the rocks like a chamois taking his +pastime. Holding up our LASCELLES! he places it with a few respectful +words--hoping we have not missed it--and standing aloof--leaves us to +our own reflections and our flies. Nor do those amount to remorse--nor +these to more than a few dozens. Samson's strength having been +restored--we speak of our rod, mind ye, not of ourselves--we lift up our +downcast eyes, and steal somewhat ashamed a furtive glance at the trees +and stones that must have overheard and overseen all our behaviour. We +leave those who have been in anything like the same predicament to +confess--not publicly--there is no occasion for that--nor on their +knees--but to their own consciences, if they have any, their grief and +their joy, their guilt, and, we hope, their gratitude. Transported +though they were beyond all bounds, we forgive them; for even those +great masters of wisdom, the Stoics, were not infallible, nor were they +always able to sustain, at their utmost strength, in practice the +principles of their philosophy. + +Phin! this Rod is thy masterpiece. And what Gut! _There she has it!_ +Reel-music for ever! Ten fathom are run out already--and see how she +shoots, Hamish;--such a somerset as that was never thrown from a +spring-board. Just the size for strength and agility--twenty pound to an +ounce--jimp weight, Hamish--ha! Harlequin art thou--or Columbine? +Assuredly neither Clown nor Pantaloon. Now we have turned her ladyship's +nose up the stream, her lungs, if she have any, must be beginning to +labour, and we almost hear her snore. What! in the sulks already--sullen +among the stones. But we shall make you mudge, madam, were we to tear +the very tongue out of your mouth. Ay, once more down the middle to the +tune of that spirited country-dance--"Off she goes!" Set corners, and +reel! The gaff, Hamish--the gaff! and the landing-net! For here is a +shallow of the silver sand, spreading into the bay of a ford--and ere +she recovers from her astonishment, here will we land her--with a strong +pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether--just on the edge of the +greensward--and then smite her on the shoulder, Hamish--and, to make +assurance doubly sure, the net under her tail, and hoist her aloft in +the sunshine, a glorious prize, dazzling the daylight, and giving a +brighter verdure to the woods. + +He who takes two hours to kill a fish--be its bulk what it may--is no +man, and is not worth his meat, nor the vital air. The proportion is a +minute to the pound. This rule were we taught by the "Best at Most" +among British sportsmen--Scrope the Matchless on moor, mountain, river, +loch, or sea; and with exquisite nicety have we now carried it into +practice. Away with your useless steelyards. Let us feel her teeth with +our forefinger, and then held out at arm's length--so--we know by +feeling, that she is, as we said soon as we saw her side, a +twenty-pounder to a drachm, and we have been true to time, within two +seconds. She has literally no head; but her snout is in her shoulders. +That is the beauty of a fish--high and round shoulders, short-waisted, +no loins, but all body, and not long of terminating--the shorter still +the better--in a tail sharp and pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent +in the sky. + +And lo, and behold! there is Diana--but not crescent--for round and +broad is she as the sun himself--shining in the south, with as yet a +needless light--for daylight has not gone down in the west--and we can +hardly call it gloaming. Chaste and cold though she seem, a nunlike +luminary who has just taken the veil--a transparent veil of fine fleecy +clouds--yet, alas! is she frail as of old, when she descended on the top +of Latmos, to hold dalliance with Endymion. She has absolutely the +appearance of being in the family way--and not far from her time. Lo! +two of her children stealing from ether towards her feet. One on her +right hand, and another on her left--the fairest daughters that ever +charmed mother's heart--and in heaven called stars. What a celestial +trio the three form in the sky! The face of the moon keeps brightening +as the lesser two twinkle into darker lustre; and now, though day is +still lingering, we feel that it is Night. When the one comes and when +the other goes, what eye can note, what tongue can tell--but what heart +feels not in the dewy hush divine--as the power of the beauty of earth +decays over us, and a still dream descends upon us in the power of the +beauty of heaven! + +But hark! the regular twang and dip of oars coming up the river--and lo! +indistinct in the distance, something moving through the moonshine--and +now taking the likeness of a boat--a barge--with bonneted heads leaning +back at every flashing stroke--and, Hamish, list! a choral song in thine +own dear native tongue! Sent hither by the Queen of the sea-fairies to +bear back in state Christopher North to the Tent? No. 'Tis the big coble +belonging to the tacksman of the Awe--and the crew are going to pull her +through the first few hours of the night--along with the flowing +tide--up to Kinloch-Etive, to try a cast with their long net at the +mouth of the river, now winding dim like a snake from King's House +beneath the Black Mount, and along the bays at the head of the Loch. A +rumour that we were on the river had reached them--and see an awning of +tartan over the stern, beneath which, as we sit, the sun may not smite +our head by day, nor the moon by night. We embark--and descending the +river like a dream, rapidly but stilly, and kept in the middle of the +current by cunning helmsman, without aid of idle oar, all six suspended, +we drop along through the sylvan scenery, gliding serenely away back +into the mountain-gloom, and enter into the wider moonshine trembling on +the wavy verdure of the foam-crested sea. May this be Loch-Etive? +Yea--verily; but so broad here is its bosom, and so far spreads the +billowy brightness, that we might almost believe that our bark was +bounding over the ocean, and marching merrily on the main. Are we--into +such a dream might fancy for a moment half beguile herself--rowing back, +after a day among the savage islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in +the offing, on a voyage of discovery round the world? + +Where are all the dogs? Ponto, Piro, Basta, trembling partly with cold, +partly with hunger, partly with fatigue, and partly with fear, among and +below the seats of the rowers--with their noses somewhat uncomfortably +laid between their fore-paws on the tarry timbers; but O'Bronte boldly +sitting at our side, and wistfully eyeing the green swell as it heaves +beautifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap overboard, and +wallow like a walrus in the brine, of which you might almost think he +was born and bred, so native seems the element to the "Dowg o' Dowgs." +Ay, these are sea-mews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in the +moonshine; but we _shall_ not shoot them--no--no--no--we _will_ not +shoot you, ye images of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly +attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts of the billows, in +motion quick almost as your slowest flight, while ye linger around, and +behind, and before our path, like fair spirits wiling us along up this +great Loch, farther and farther through gloom and glimmer, into the +heart of profounder solitude. On what errands of your own are ye +winnowing your way, stooping ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in +the waves, and then up into the open air--the blue light filling this +magnificent hollow--or seen glancing along the shadows of the mountains +as they divide the Loch into a succession of separate bays, and often +seem to block it up, till another moonlight reach is seen extending far +beyond, and carries the imagination on--on--on--into inland recesses +that seem to lose at last all connection with the forgotten sea. All at +once the moon is like a ghost;--and we believe--Heaven knows why--in the +authenticity of Ossian's Poems. + +Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We devoutly hope there was--for if +so, then there were a prodigious number of fine fellows, besides his +Bardship, who after their death figured away as their glimmering ghosts, +with noble effect, among the moonlight mists of the mountains. The +poetry of Ossian has, it is true, since the days of Macpherson, in no +way coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr Wordsworth, who has +written beautiful lines about the old Phantom, states that fact as an +argument against its authenticity. He thinks Ossian, as we now possess +him, no poet; and alleges, that if these compositions had been the good +things so many people have thought them, they would, in some way or +other, have breathed their spirit over the poetical genius of the land. +Who knows that they may not do so yet? The time may not have come. But +must all true poetry necessarily create imitation, and a school of +imitators? One sees no reason why it must. Besides, the life which the +poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly passed away; and the poetry +itself, good, bad, or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imitate +it at all you must almost transcribe it. That, for a good many years, +was often done, but naturally inspired any other feeling than delight or +admiration. But the simple question is, Do the poems of Ossian delight +greatly and widely? We think they do. Nor can we believe that they would +not still delight such a poet as Mr Wordsworth. What dreariness +overspreads them all! What a melancholy spirit shrouds all his heroes, +passing before us on the cloud, after all their battles have been +fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The very picture of the old +blind Hero-bard himself, often attended by the weeping virgins whom war +has made desolate, is always touching, often sublime. The desert is +peopled with lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap them with +ghosts, whose remembrances of this life are all dirge and elegy. True, +that the images are few and endlessly reiterated; but that, we suspect, +is the case with all poetry composed not in a philosophic age. The great +and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all +its purposes. The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his +hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same +strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any +greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived +and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we +suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think +dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and +mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, +and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no +tenderness--no pathos--no beauty? Alas for thousands of hearts and souls +if it be even so! For then are many of their holiest dreams worthless +all, and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of the understanding, +which a bit of philosophical criticism will purge away, as the leech's +phial does a disease of the blood. + +Macpherson's "Ossian," is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not--but +Christopher North says it is--with all reverence for the King. Let its +antiquity be given up--let such a state of society as is therein +described be declared impossible--let all the inconsistencies and +violations of nature ever charged against it be acknowledged--let all +its glaring plagiarisms from poetry of modern date inspire what derision +they may--and far worse the perpetual repetition of its own imbecilities +and inanities, wearying one down even to disgust and anger;--yet, in +spite of all, are we not made to feel, not only that we are among the +mountains, but to forget that there is any other world in existence, +save that which glooms and glimmers, and wails and raves around us in +mists and clouds, and storms and snows--full of lakes and rivers, +sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, with a sky as troublous as the +earth--yet both at times visited with a mournful beauty that sinks +strangely into the soul--while the shadowy life depictured there eludes +not our human sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they be--so sweet and +sad are their voices--do there float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or +unhonoured--single, or in bands--the ghosts of the brave and beautiful; +when the few stars are dim, and the moon is felt, not seen, to be +yielding what faint light there may be in the skies. + +The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not only so, but all the +mountains are bagpipes, and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes in the +world are here, and they fill heaven and earth. 'Tis no +exaggeration--much less a fiction--but the soul and body of truth. There +Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the boat hangs by midships on +the very point that commands all the echoes, he fills the whole night +with the "Campbells are coming," till the sky yells with the gathering +as of all the Clans. His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to catch +their emotions; his fingers cease their twinkling; and still that wild +gathering keeps playing of itself among the mountains--fainter and +fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, till it dies away far--far +off--as if in infinitude--sweet even and soft in its evanescence as some +lover's lute. + +We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters +the whole face of nature, confusing its most settled features, and with +a gentle glamoury blending with the greensward what once was the grey +granite, and investing with apparent woodiness what an hour ago was the +desolation of herbless cliffs--yet not all the changes that wondrous +nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could +metamorphose out of our recognition that Glen, in which, one +night--long--long ago-- + + "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!" + +we were visited by a dream--a dream that shadowed forth in its +inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life--the +graves--the tombs where many we loved are now buried--that churchyard, +where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest. + +But who shouts from the shore, Hamish--and now, as if through his +fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky? Ah, +ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. 'Tis +the schoolmaster of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat--kilted, +we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but +stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong +in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red +hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat, and followed it himself +like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties--my heroes--the +wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots +an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the lantern, +twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent. + +In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be +so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might, + + "Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!" + +A sound there is in the sea-green swell, and the hollows of the rocks, +that keep muttering and muttering, as their entrances feel the touch of +the tide. But nothing beneath the moon can be more solemn, now that her +aspect is so wan, and that some melancholy spirit has obscured the +lustre of the stars. We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry were +visiting our slumber. All is sad within us, yet why we know not; and the +sadness is stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost foolish +pastime, spent by a being who believes that he is immortal, and that +this life is but the threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and paltry +pastimes indeed are they all! But are they more so than those pursuits +of which the moral poet has sung, + + "The paths of glory lead but to the grave!" + +Methinks, now, as we are entering into a sabler mass of shadow, that the +doctrine of eternal punishment of sins committed in time--but-- + + "Here's a health to all good lasses, + Here's a health to all good lasses, + Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses; + Let the bumper toast go round, + Let the bumper toast go round!" + +Best on your oars, lads. Hamish! the quaich! give each man a caulker, +that his oar may send a bolder twang from its rollock, and our +fish-coble walk the waves like a man-of-war's gig, with the captain on +board, going ashore, after a long cruise, to meet his wife. Now she +spins! and lo! lights at Kinloch-Etive, and beyond on the breast of the +mountain, bright as Hesperus--the Pole-star of our Tent! + +Well, this is indeed the Londe of Faery! A car with a nag caparisoned at +the water edge! On with the roe, and in with Christopher and the Fish. +Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. After a cast or two, which, may they be +successful as the night is auspicious, your presence, gentlemen, will be +expected in the Tent. Now, Hamish, handle thou the ribbons--alias the +hair-tether--and we will touch him behind, should he linger, with a +weapon that might + + "Create a soul under the ribs of death." + +Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, as he carries us along a +fine natural causeway, like Ossian's car-borne heroes. From the size and +state of the stones over which we make such a clatter, we shrewdly +suspect that the parliamentary grant for destroying the old Highland +torrent-roads has not extended its ravages to Glen-Etive. O'Bronte, + + "Like panting Time, toils after us in vain;" + +and the pointers are following us by our own scent, and that of the roe, +in the distant darkness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise we shall +overshoot our mark, and meet with some accident or other, perhaps a +capsize on Buachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had no idea the +circle of greensward in front of the Tent was so spacious. Why, there is +room for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to turn with its eight +horses, and that enormous ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could +have made us think at this moment of London? Certes, the association of +ideas is a droll thing, and also sometimes most magnificent. Dancing in +the Tent, among strange figures! Celebration of the nuptials of some +Arab chief, in an oasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia! Heavens! +look at Tickler! How he hauls the Hizzies! There is no time to be +lost--he and the Admiral must not have all the sport to themselves; and, +by-and-by, spite of age and infirmity, we shall show the Tent a touch of +the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers! Christopher is upon +you--behold the Tenth Avatar incarnated in North. + +But what Apparitions at the Tent-door salute our approach? + + "Back step these two fair angels, half afraid + So suddenly to see the Griesly King!" + +Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Glencreran or Glenco, kilted to the +knee, and not unconscious of their ankles, one twinkle of which is +sufficient to bid "Begone dull care" for ever. One hand on a shoulder of +each of the mountain-nymphs--sweet liberties--and then embraced by both, +half in their arms, and half on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so +pleasantly let down from triumphal car, on the soft surface of his +mother-earth? Ay, there lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller +slain! But was there ever such a rush of dogs! We shall be extinguished. +Down, dogs, down--nay, ladies and gentlemen, be seated--on one another's +knees as before--we beseech you--we are but men like yourselves--and + + "Without the smile from partial beauty won, + Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun!" + +What it is to be the darling of gods and men, and women and children! +Why the very stars burn brighter--and thou, O Moon! art like the Sun. We +foresee a night of dancing and drinking--till the mountain-dew melt in +the lustre of morn. Such a day should have a glorious death--and a +glorious resurrection. Hurra! Hurra! + +THE MOORS FOR EVER! THE MOORS! THE MOORS! + + + + +HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM. + + +What do you mean by original genius? By that fine line in the "Pleasures +of Hope"-- + + "To muse on Nature with a poet's eye?" + +Why--genius--one kind of it at least--is transfusion of self into all +outward things. The genius that does that--naturally, but novelly--is +original; and now you know the meaning of one kind of original genius. +Have we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have you? Yea, both of Us. +Our spirits animate the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, smiles, +laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though +perhaps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to +drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus--and lo! +list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened +heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in +communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the +hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. +What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps that ever stung had been +revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We +are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be +seen any more than if we were in the middle of the sea. Yet a wan glare +shows that the snow-storm is strangely shadowed by superincumbent +cliffs; and though you cannot see, you _hear_ the mountains. Rendings +are going on, frequent, over your head--and all around the blind +wilderness--the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the +moanings, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were +angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the +cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning, and rooking and tossing of +old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate? + + "Red comes the river down, and loud and oft + The angry spirit of the water shrieks," + +more fearful than at midnight in this night-like day--whose meridian is +a total sun eclipse. The river runs by, blood-like, through the +snow--and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, +that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible--more and +more terrible--as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan--ere +long he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining +rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into +the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear +thunder, though you know that cannot be--but sublimer than thunder is +the nameless noise so like that of agonised life--that eddies far and +wide around--high and huge above--fear all the while being at the bottom +of your heart--an objectless, dim, dreary, undefinable fear, whose +troubled presence--if any mortal feeling be so--is sublime. Your +imagination is troubled, and dreams of death, but of no single corpse, +of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourself--for the Hut in which you +thus enjoy the storm is safer than the canopied cliff-calm of the +eagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from its deepest and darkest +foundations, and all that lay hidden there of the wild and wonderful, +the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and pathetic, is now upturned +in dim confusion, and imagination, working among the hoarded gatherings +of the heart, creates out of them moods kindred and congenial with the +hurricane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till +that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which +is heard, undergo alternate mutual transfiguration; and the blind +Roaring Day--at once substance, shadow, and soul--is felt to be one with +ourselves--the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive. + +We are in a Highland Hut--if we called it a Shieling we did so merely +because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once +brings to eye and ear--the rustling of leaves on a summer sylvan bower, +by simple art slightly changed from the form of the growth of nature, +or the waving of fern on the turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with +wildflowers and mosses, and moulded by one single season into a +knoll-like beauty, beside its guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all +evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the +Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet +Shieling-season, when, far away from all other human dwellings, on the +dip of some great mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journey-long +glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with +him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk +and cross--Luath his sole companion--his sole care the pasturing +herds--the sole sounds he hears the croak of the raven on the cliff, or +bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in +some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid +the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his +tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the +sunny, moonlight, starry months,--the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her +dying father gave into his arms--the old blind soldier--knowing that the +boy would shield her innocence when every blood-relation had been +buried--now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the +Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird--the happiest +of all living things--her own Ronald's dark-haired Bride. + +We are in a Highland Hut among a Highland Snow-storm--and all at once +amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of +Burns--the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound +pathos are they charged! + + "List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle; + I think me on the ourie cattle, + Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle + O' winter war, + And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, + Beneath a scaur! + + Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, + That, in the merry months o' spring, + Delighted me to hear thee sing, + What comes o' thee? + Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, + An' close thy ee? + + Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd, + Lone from your savage homes exiled, + The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd, + My heart forgets, + While pitiless the tempest wild + Sore on you beats." + +Burns is our Lowland bard--but poetry is poetry all over the world, when +streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of +inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes +of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the +Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm +that enshrouds the day. Ay--the one single door of this Hut--the one +single "winnock," does "rattle"--by fits--as the blast smites it, in +spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all round the buried +dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan--fear +has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle--and all the +other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the +meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent, +now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have +been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when +summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle +in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks +feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all +the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia--a realm of +wrath--woe--danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood--when +the bagpipe blows--is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The +limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of +battle within the shadow of the Pyramids, + + "Brought from the dust the sound of liberty," + +while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old +Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on "that +thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the +banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyrie the eagle's +wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night +imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand-in-hand as is their wont when +crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its +strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful +inland or the more wrathful sea. + + "They think upon the ourie cattle + And silly sheep," + +and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct. + +How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the +noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it,-- + + "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, + That, in the merry months o' spring, + Delighted me to hear thee sing, + What comes o' thee? + Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, + An' close thy ee?" + +The whole earth is for a moment green again--trees whisper--streamlets +murmur--and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her +groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those +sweet-singers are now dead--or that they "cow'r the chittering +wing"--never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the ee" +that shall never more be re-illumined with love, when the Season of +Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with +the survivors of some gentler climate. + +The poet's heart, humanised to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its +own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each +syllable tells--each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the +life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at +such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos +reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these +few simplest words,-- + + "My heart forgets, + While pitiless the tempest wild + Sore on you beats!" + +They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the "silly sheep;" but who knows +that they are not _sent_ on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear +has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about +to perish!--an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on +which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, +that we felt that interference providential--as if we had indeed seen +the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We +all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot +it--but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday. + +One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco--the families of +two brothers--seldom visiting each other on working-days--seldom meeting +even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk--seldom coming +together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these +are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken +together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each +family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible +threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two +dwellings together--as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to +another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings +were. _That_ in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered +rock--lown in all storms--with greensward and garden on a slope down to +a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once woefully reddened!) and +_growing_--so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge +stones that overshadow it--out of the earth. _That_ in Glencreran, more +conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between +mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when +the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark +indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old +oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan; +but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, +near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive; +and, except this old oak-like grove of pines, there is not a tree, and +hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are +kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a +perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light +is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts--for they are huts and no +more--and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the +beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your +heart--and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, +not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes +they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be +allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the +bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay. + +These Huts belonged to brothers--and each had an only child--a son and a +daughter--born on the same day--and now blooming on the verge of youth. +A year ago, and they were but mere children--but what wondrous growth of +frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before +our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn +and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought +closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most +sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the +sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins +grown up before their parents' eyes, Flora Macdonald--a name hallowed of +yore--the fairest, and Ranald Cameron, the boldest of all the living +flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday, +and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow. +Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and +Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the +many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of +February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, +so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same +hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the +happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the +smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water +glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along +the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place--a bank of birch-trees +beneath a cliff that takes its name from the Eagles. + +On their meeting seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly +inspired with joy and beauty? Insects unheard by them before, hummed and +glittered in the air--from tree-roots, where the snow was thin, little +flowers, or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were seen looking +out as if alive--the trees themselves seemed budding as if it were +already spring--and rare as in that rocky region are the birds of song, +a faint trill for a moment touched their ears, and the flutter of a +wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest. +Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills +unreached by the frost--and merry, thought they, was the music of these +contented prisoners. Not Summer's self, in its deepest green, so +beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of Winter; +and as their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen +before a sky of such perfect blue, a sun so gentle in its brightness, or +altogether a week-day in any season, so like a Sabbath in its stillness, +so like a holyday in its joy! Lovers were they--although as yet they +scarcely knew it; for from love only could have come such bliss as now +was theirs, a bliss that while it beautified was felt to come from the +skies. + +Flora sang to Ranald many of her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs +that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the +branches of storm-tossed trees when the subsiding tempest is about to +let them rest. Monotonous music! But irresistible over the heart it has +once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it +breathes--a mournfulness brooding and feeding on the same note that is +at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment--of which the +singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is +haunted by all that is most piteous, by the faces of the dead in their +paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may +pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears! + +How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to +see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of +great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea--tales which +he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over +Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of +blood! + + "The sun sat high in his meridian tower," + +but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings +believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they +had met in the prime of the morn! + +The boy starts to his feet--and his keen eye looks along the ready +rifle--for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion +of the chase was hereditary in his blood, Lo! a deer from Dalness, +hound-driven or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, +then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and then away--away! The +rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the +animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh! +for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering +heavily along, the snow spotted as he bounds with blood, the huge animal +at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me, +Flora!" the boy-hunter cries--and flinging down their plaids, they turn +their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the +stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl--and Ranald, as he ever and +anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion +as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and +more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the +deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off--now standing at +bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the +forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd +while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly +to him with my rifle--and shoot him through the heart!" + +Up--up--up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round +many a jutting promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer +kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then, +for some hundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while the boy, +maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more +looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was +hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion--till at last he struck +the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air +was spurned by the convulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald upon +the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lifted up a look of triumph to +the mountain-tops. + +Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her--and he is alone--nor knows +it--he and the Red-deer--an enormous animal--fast stiffening in the +frost of death. + +Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and they seem to waver and +whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and +faster--the flakes are almost as large as leaves--and overhead whence so +suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are you? where +are you, Flora?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that +no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck far off upon the snow! +'Tis she--'tis she--and again Ranald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and +the heart of the hunter burns within him like a new-stirred fire. Shrill +as the eagle's cry disturbed in his eyrie, he sends a shout down the +glen--and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last at his +side. Panting and speechless she stands--and then dizzily sinks on his +breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face +all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not falling but driven--for the +day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the skies are now +lowering savage symptoms of a fast-coming night-storm. + +Bare is poor Flora's head, and sorely drenched her hair, that an hour or +two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the +warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had +kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would +the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in +his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! "Oh! Flora! +if you would not fear to stay here by yourself--under the protection of +God, who surely will not forsake you--soon will I go and come from the +place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we +may be able to outlive the hurricane--you wrapped up in them--and +folded--O my dearest sister--in my arms!"--"I will go with you down the +glen, Ranald!" and she left his breast--but, weak as a day-old lamb, +tottered and sank down on the snow. The cold--intense as if the air were +ice--had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race; and +it was manifest that here she must be for the night--to live or to die. +And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while +the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring +long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a +sea-born tempest from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both knew the tide +was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow-blasts from afar; and +from the opposite quarter of the sky an inland tempest was raging to +meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all +hands they were environed with death. + +"I will go--and, till I return, leave you with God."--"Go, Ranald!" and +he went and came--as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings! + +Miles away--and miles back had he flown--and an hour had not been with +his going and his coming--but what a dreary wretchedness meanwhile had +been hers! She feared that she was dying--that the cold snow-storm was +killing her--and that she would never more see Ranald, to say to him +farewell. Soon as he was gone, all her courage had died. Alone, she +feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus +miserably to die. He came--and her whole being was changed. Folded up in +both the plaids, she felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me--kiss me, Ranald--for +your love--great as it is--is not as my love. You must never forget me, +Ranald--when your poor Flora is dead." + +Religion with these two young creatures was as clear as the light of the +Sabbath-day--and their belief in heaven just the same as in earth. The +will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parents' +will--and the same was their loving obedience to its decrees. If she was +to die--supported now by the presence of her brother--Flora was utterly +resigned; if she were to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms +of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes--ceased +breathing--and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell +around them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, thinking that she +was dead. + +"Wretched sinner that I am!--my wicked madness brought her here to die +of cold!" And he smote his breast--and tore his hair--and feared to look +up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm. + +All at once, without speaking a word, Ranald lifted Flora in his arms, +and walked away up the glen--here almost narrowed into a pass. +Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that +of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly +remembered, were but a short way off--whether or not they had any roof, +he had forgotten; but the thought even of such shelter seemed a thought +of salvation. There it was--a snow-drift at the opening that had once +been a door--snow up the holes once windows--the wood of the roof had +been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if +they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was +all trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low +lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the +hurricane, and that all huddled together looked on him as on the +shepherd come to see how they were faring in the storm. + +And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms. +All colour--all motion--all breath seemed to be gone--and yet something +convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, +but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung as a +sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in +cruel weather--some pine-branches left by the woodcutters who had felled +the few trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that +corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there +with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of +his distracted heart might be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse. +The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, +and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place +in which it seemed possible that she might revive--miserable as it was +with mire-mixed snow--and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And +she did revive--and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be +not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the afternoon--night-like though +it was--and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red +returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death +away. + +"Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I dreamt to-night he was perishing +in the snow!"--"Flora, fear not--God is with us." "Wild swans, they say, +are come to Loch-Phoil--let us go, Ranald, and see them--but no +rifle--for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where +they lay bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way +beneath the increasing weight;--but there it still hung--though the +drift came over their feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing +upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and +fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me--and what noise is +this in our house?"--"Fear not--fear not, Flora--God is with us." +"Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm! +Oh! I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these +Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep--which soon becomes that +of death. + +Night itself came--but Flora and Ranald knew it not--and both lay now +motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions--though earth-born, +heavenly all--pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last +despair--had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the +brave boy--who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a +fever--with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore +afraid of some nameless ill, had submitted to lay down his head beside +his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and +all its storms! + +Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco--and +they were among the happiest of the humbly happy, blessing this the +birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet +songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran--and tender thoughts of +her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to +their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own +ghosts, and all its own ghost-like visitings, and they had seen their +Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the +quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too Love, who starts at +shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to +realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the +dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left +them in the morning--night had come, and he and Flora were not +there--but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their +infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed +their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had +laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by +bringing back to them Flora on her birthday--and, strange though it +afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear +from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay +down in untroubled sleep. + +And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good +or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? +As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the +inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's +House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions +where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the +long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buachaille-Etive and the Black +Mount, towards the lone House of Dalness, that lives in everlasting +shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred +frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength--and then away over the +drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with their sheep-dogs +scouring the loose snows--in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his +head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the Correi where last +he tasted blood. All "plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds +laughed at the storm--and hark! you hear the bagpipe play--the music the +Highlanders love both in war and in peace. + + "They think then of the ourie cattle, + And silly sheep;" + +and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night--for the snow-storm will +sweep her out of heaven--up the mountain and down the glen they go, +marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at +nightfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth +where once stood the old Grove of Pines. Following the dogs, who know +their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now +close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so--and why howls +Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead +body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest, when the +antlers went by! Not dead--nor dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in +both is frozen--and will the iced blood in their veins ever again be +thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the roofless ruin--and the frightened sheep +know not what is the terrible Shape that is howling there. But a man +enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of them +at the doorway--and then lifts up the other; and, by the flash of a +rifle, they see that it is Ranald Cameron and Flora Macdonald, +seemingly both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds +burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured +that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not +there--and licks the face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to his +eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their +plaids--how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the +field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and +wounded, they bore away the shattered body--yet living--of the youthful +warrior, who had shown that of such a Clan, he was worthy to be the +Chief. + +The storm was with them all the way down the glen--nor could they have +heard each other's voices had they spoke--but mutely they shifted the +burden from strong hand to hand--thinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of +what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind +people walk through what to them is the night of crowded +daystreets--unpausing turn round corners--unhesitatingly plunge down +steep stairs--wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life--and +reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For +God is with the blind. So is he with all who walk on works of mercy. +This saving band had no fear--and therefore there was no danger--on the +edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the +mountains shown momentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful +night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow +at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The +dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did +not deceive them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct were guides +that erred not, and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves did +Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way, as +if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting +their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges +were--stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the +wild-fowl feed. And thus Instinct, and Reason, and Faith conducted the +saving band along--and now they are at Glenco--and at the door of the +Hut. + +To life were brought the dead; and there at midnight sat they up like +ghosts. Strange seemed they--for a while--to each other's eyes--and at +each other they looked as if they had forgotten how dearly once they +loved. Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each other's faces, +thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. "Flora!" said +Ranald--and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, +reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom +they had put their trust had sent them deliverance. Flora, too, knew her +parents, who were on their knees--and she strove to rise up and kneel +down beside them--but she was powerless as a broken reed--and when she +thought to join with them in thanksgiving, her voice was gone. Still as +death sat all the people in the hut--and one or two who were fathers +were not ashamed to weep. + +Who were they--the solitary pair--all alone by themselves save a small +image of her on whose breast it lay--whom--seven summers after--we came +upon in our wanderings, before their Shieling in Correi-Vollach at the +foot of Ben Chrulas, who sees his shadow in a hundred lochs? Who but +Ranald and Flora! + + * * * * * + +Nay, dry up--Daughter of our Age, dry up thy tears! and we shall set a +vision before thine eyes to fill them with unmoistened light. + +Oft before have those woods and waters--those clouds and mountains--that +sun and sky, held thy spirit in Elysium,--thy spirit, that then was +disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glory of the elements. +'TIS WINDERMERE--WINDERMERE! Never canst thou have forgotten those more +than fortunate--those thrice-blessed Isles! But when last we saw them +within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, summer suns had overloaded +them with beauty, and they stooped their flowers and foliage down to the +blushing, the burning deep, that glowed in its transparency with other +groves as gorgeous as themselves, the whole mingling mass of reality and +of shadow forming one creation. But now, lo! Windermere in Winter. All +leafless now the groves that girdled her as if shifting rainbows were in +love perpetually letting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. Gone +now are her banks of emerald that carried our calm gazings with them, +sloping away back into the cerulean sky. Her mountains, shadowy in +sunshine, and seeming restless as seas, where are they now?--The +cloud-cleaving cliffs that shot up into the blue region where the +buzzard sailed? All gone. But mourn not for that loss. Accustom thine +eye--and through it thy soul, to that transcendent substitution, and +deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou ever the bosom of the Lake +hushed into profounder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides through the +sunshine--no clanking oar is heard leaving or approaching cape, point, +or bay--no music of voice, stop, or string, wakens the sleeping echoes. +How strangely dim and confused on the water the fantastic frostwork +imagery, yet more steadfastly hanging there than ever hung the banks of +summer! For all one sheet of ice, now clear as the Glass of Glamoury in +which that lord of old beheld his Geraldine--is Windermere, the +heaven-loving and the heaven-beloved. Not a wavelet murmurs in all her +bays, from the sylvan Brathay to where the southern straits narrow into +a river--now chained too the Leven on his sylvan course towards that +perilous Estuary afar off raging on its wreck-strewn sands. The frost +came after the last fall of snow--and not a single flake ever touched +that surface; and now that you no longer miss the green twinkling of the +large July leaves, does not imagination love those motionless frozen +forests, cold but not dead, serene but not sullen, inspirative in the +strangeness of their appareling of wild thoughts about the scenery of +foreign climes, far away among the regions of the North, where Nature +works her wonders aloof from human eyes, and that wild architect Frost, +during the absence of the sun, employs his night of months in building +and dissolving his ice-palaces, magnificent beyond the reach of any +power set to work at the bidding of earth's crowned and sceptred kings? +All at once a hundred houses, high up among the hills, seem on fire. The +setting sun has smitten them, and the snow-tracts are illuminated by +harmless conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted up by a lurid +splendour, in its strong suddenness sublime. But look, look we beseech +you, at the sun--the sunset--the sunset region--and all that kindred and +corresponding heaven, effulgent where a minute ago lay in its cold +glitter the blue bosom of the lake. Who knows the laws of light and the +perpetual miracle of their operation? God--not thou. The snow-mountains +are white no more, but gorgeous in their colouring as the clouds. Lo! +Pavey-Ark--magnificent range of cliffs--seeming to come forward, while +you gaze!--How it glows with a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers +decked the precipice in that delicate splendour! Langdale-Pikes, +methinks, are tinged with finest purple, and the thought of violets is +with us as we gaze on the tinted bosom of the mountains dearest to the +setting sun. But that long broad slip of orange-coloured sky is +yellowing with its reflection almost all the rest of our Alps--all but +yon stranger--the summit of some mountain belonging to another +region--ay--the Great Gabel--silent now as sleep--when last we clomb his +cliffs, thundering in the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud he +stands pallid like a ghost. Beyond the reach of the setting sun he lours +in his exclusion from the rejoicing light, and imagination personifying +his solitary vastness into forsaken life, pities the doom of the forlorn +Giant. Ha! just as the eye of day is about to shut, one smile seems sent +afar to that lonesome mountain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his +forehead. + +On which of the two sunsets art thou now gazing? Thou who art to our old +loving eyes so like the "mountain nymph, sweet Liberty?" On the sunset +in the heaven--or the sunset in the lake? The divine truth is--O +Daughter of our Age!--that both sunsets are but visions of our own +spirits. Again both are gone from the outward world--and nought remains +but a forbidding frown of the cold bleak snow. But imperishable in thy +imagination will both sunsets be--and though it will sometimes retire +into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there among the unsuspected +treasures of forgotten imagery that have been unconsciously accumulating +there since first those gentle eyes of thine had perfect vision given to +their depths--yet mysteriously brought back from vanishment by some one +single silent thought, to which power has been yielded over that bright +portion of the Past, will both of them sometimes reappear to thee in +solitude--or haply when in the very heart of life. And then surely a few +tears will fall for sake of him--then no more seen--by whose side thou +stoodest, when that double sunset enlarged thy sense of beauty, and made +thee in thy father's eyes the sweetest--best--and brightest +poetess--whose whole life is musical inspiration--ode, elegy, and hymn, +sung not in words but in looks--sigh-breathed or speechlessly distilled +in tears flowing from feelings the farthest in this world from grief. + +So much, though but little, for the beautiful--with, perhaps, a tinge of +the sublime. Are the two emotions different and distinct--think'st thou, +O! metaphysical critic of the gruesome countenance--or modifications of +one and the same? 'Tis a puzzling question--and we, Sphinx, might wait +till doomsday, before you, Oedipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly +a Rose is one thing and Mount Aetna is another--an antelope and an +elephant--an insect and a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun--a little +lucid well in which the fairies bathe, and the Polar Sea in which +Leviathan is "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait"--the jewelled +finger of a virgin bride, and grim Saturn with his ring--the upward eye +of a kneeling saint, and a comet "that from his horrid hair shakes +pestilence and war." But let the rose bloom on the mouldering ruins of +the palace of some great king--among the temples of Balbec or Syrian +Tadmor--and in its beauty, methinks, 'twill be also sublime. See the +antelope bounding across a raging chasm--up among the region of eternal +snows on Mont Blanc--and deny it, if you please--but assuredly we think +that there is sublimity in the fearless flight of that beautiful +creature, to whom nature grudged not wings, but gave instead the power +of plumes to her small delicate limbs, unfractured by alighting among +the pointed rocks. All alone, by your single solitary self, in some +wide, lifeless desert, could you deny sublimity to the unlooked-for hum +of the tiniest insect, or to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his +gauze-wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to quench your thirst in +that little lucid well where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the +image of the evening star shining in some strange subterranean world? We +suspect that you would hold in your breath, and swear devoutly that it +was sublime. Dead on the very evening of her marriage day is that virgin +bride whose delicacy was so beautiful; and as she lies in her white +wedding garments that serve for a shroud, that emblem of eternity and of +eternal love, the ring, upon her finger--with its encased star shining +brightly now that her eyes, once stars, are closed--would, methinks, be +sublime to all Christian hearts. In comparison with all these beautiful +sublimities, Mount Aetna, the elephant, the man-of-war, Leviathan +swimming the ocean-stream, Saturn with his ring, and with his horrid +hair the comet--might be all less than nothings. Therefore beauty and +sublimity are twin-feelings--one and the same birth--seldom +inseparable;--if you still doubt it, become a fire-worshipper, and sing +your morning and evening orisons to the rising and the setting sun. + + + + +THE HOLY CHILD. + + +This house of ours is a prison--this Study of ours a cell. Time has laid +his fetters on our feet--fetters fine as the gossamer, but strong as +Samson's ribs, silken-soft to wise submission, but to vain impatience +galling as cankered wound that keeps ceaselessly eating into the bone. +But while our bodily feet are thus bound by an inevitable and inexorable +law, our mental wings are free as those of the lark, the dove, or the +eagle--and they shall be expanded as of yore, in calm or tempest, now +touching with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved earth, and now +aspiring heavenwards, beyond the realms of mist and cloud, even unto the +very core of the still heart of that otherwise unapproachable sky which +graciously opens to receive us on our flight, when, disencumbered of the +burden of all grovelling thoughts, and strong in spirituality, we exult +to soar + + "Beyond this visible diurnal sphere," + +nearing and nearing the native region of its own incomprehensible being. + +Now touching, we said, with their tips the bosom of this dearly-beloved +earth! How sweet that attraction to imagination's wings! How delightful +in that lower flight to skim along the green ground, or as now along the +soft-bosomed beauty of the virgin snow! We were asleep all night +long--sound asleep as children--while the flakes were falling, "and soft +as snow on snow" were all the descendings of our untroubled dreams. The +moon and all her stars were willing that their lustre should be veiled +by that peaceful shower; and now the sun, pleased with the purity of the +morning earth, all white as innocence, looks down from heaven with a +meek unmelting light, and still leaves undissolved the stainless +splendour. There is Frost in the air--but he "does his spiriting +gently," studding the ground-snow thickly with diamonds, and shaping the +tree-snow according to the peculiar and characteristic beauty of the +leaves and sprays, on which it has alighted almost as gently as the dews +of spring. You know every kind of tree still by its own spirit showing +itself through that fairy veil--momentarily disguised from +recognition--but admired the more in the sweet surprise with which again +your heart salutes its familiar branches, all fancifully ornamented with +their snow-foliage, that murmurs not like the green leaves of summer, +that like the yellow leaves of autumn strews not the earth with decay, +but often melts away into changes so invisible and inaudible, that you +wonder to find that it is all vanished, and to see the old tree again +standing in its own faint-green glossy bark, with its many million buds, +which perhaps fancy suddenly expands into a power of umbrage +impenetrable to the sun in Scorpio. + +A sudden burst of sunshine! bringing back the pensive spirit from the +past to the present, and kindling it, till it dances like light +reflected from a burning mirror. A cheerful Sun-scene, though almost +destitute of life. An undulating Landscape, hillocky and hilly, but not +mountainous, and buried under the weight of a day and night's incessant +and continuous snow-fall. The weather has not been windy--and now that +the flakes have ceased falling, there is not a cloud to be seen, except +some delicate braidings here and there along the calm of the Great Blue +Sea of Heaven. Most luminous is the sun, yet you can look straight on +his face, almost with unwinking eyes, so mild and mellow is his large +light as it overflows the day. All enclosures have disappeared, and you +indistinctly ken the greater landmarks, such as a grove, a wood, a hall, +a castle, a spire, a village, a town--the faint haze of a far-off and +smokeless city. Most intense is the silence; for all the streams are +dumb, and the great river lies like a dead serpent in the strath. Not +dead--for, lo! yonder one of his folds glitters--and in the glitter you +see him moving--while all the rest of his sullen length is palsied by +frost, and looks livid and more livid at every distant and more distant +winding. What blackens on that tower of snow? Crows roosting innumerous +on a huge tree--but they caw not in their hunger. Neither sheep nor +cattle are to be seen or heard--but they are cared for;--the folds and +the farmyards are all full of life--and the ungathered stragglers are +safe in their instincts. There has been a deep fall--but no storm--and +the silence, though partly that of suffering, is not that of death. +Therefore, to the imagination, unsaddened by the heart, the repose is +beautiful. The almost unbroken uniformity of the scene--its simple and +grand monotony--lulls all the thoughts and feelings into a calm, over +which is breathed the gentle excitation of a novel charm, inspiring many +fancies, all of a quiet character. Their range, perhaps, is not very +extensive, but they all regard the home-felt and domestic charities of +life. And the heart burns as here and there some human dwelling +discovers itself by a wreath of smoke up the air, or as the +robin-redbreast, a creature that is ever at hand, comes flitting before +your path with an almost pert flutter of his feathers, bold from the +acquaintanceship he has formed with you in severer weather at the +threshold or window of the tenement, which for years may have been the +winter sanctuary of the "bird whom man loves best," and who bears a +Christian name in every clime he inhabits. Meanwhile the sun waxes +brighter and warmer in heaven--some insects are in the air, as if that +moment called to life--and the mosses that may yet be visible here and +there along the ridge of a wall or on the stem of a tree, in variegated +lustre frost-brightened, seem to delight in the snow, and in no other +season of the year to be so happy as in winter. Such gentle touches of +pleasure animate one's whole being, and connect, by many a fine +association, the emotions inspired by the objects of animate and of +inanimate nature. + +Ponder on the idea--the emotion of purity--and how finely soul-blent is +the delight imagination feels in a bright hush of new-fallen snow! Some +speck or stain--however slight--there always seems to be on the most +perfect whiteness of any other substance--or "dim suffusion veils" it +with some faint discolour--witness even the leaf of the lily or the +rose. Heaven forbid that we should ever breathe aught but love and +delight in the beauty of these consummate flowers! But feels not the +heart, even when the midsummer morning sunshine is melting the dews on +their fragrant bosoms, that their loveliness is "of the earth +earthy"--faintly tinged or streaked, when at the very fairest, with a +hue foreboding languishment and decay? Not the less for its sake are +those soulless flowers dear to us--thus owning kindred with them whose +beauty is all soul enshrined for a short while on that perishable face. +Do we not still regard the insensate flowers--so emblematical of what, +in human life, we do most passionately love and profoundly pity--with a +pensive emotion, often deepening into melancholy that sometimes, ere the +strong fit subsides, blackens into despair! What pain doubtless was in +the heart of the Elegiac Poet of old, when he sighed over the transitory +beauty of flowers-- + + "Conquerimur natura brevis quam gratia Florum!" + +But over a perfectly pure expanse of night-fallen snow, when unaffected +by the gentle sun, the first fine frost has encrusted it with small +sparkling diamonds, the prevalent emotion is Joy. There is a charm in +the sudden and total disappearance even of the grassy green. All the +"old familiar faces" of nature are for a while out of sight, and out of +mind. That white silence shed by heaven over earth carries with it, far +and wide, the pure peace of another region--almost another life. No +image is there to tell of this restless and noisy world. The +cheerfulness of reality kindles up our reverie ere it becomes a dream; +and we are glad to feel our whole being complexioned by the passionless +repose. If we think at all of human life, it is only of the young, the +fair, and the innocent. "Pure as snow," are words then felt to be most +holy, as the image of some beautiful and beloved being comes and goes +before our eyes--brought from a far distance in this our living world, +or from a distance further still in a world beyond the grave--the image +of virgin growing up sinlessly to womanhood among her parents' prayers, +or of some spiritual creature who expired long ago, and carried with her +her native innocence unstained to heaven. + +Such Spiritual Creature--too spiritual long to sojourn below the +skies--wert Thou--whose rising and whose setting--both most +starlike--brightened at once all thy native vale, and at once left it in +darkness. Thy name has long slept in our heart--and there let it sleep +unbreathed--even as, when we are dreaming our way through some solitary +place, without naming it we bless the beauty of some sweet wildflower, +pensively smiling to us through the snow. + +The Sabbath returns on which, in the little kirk among the hills, we saw +thee baptised. Then comes a wavering glimmer of five sweet years, that +to Thee, in all their varieties, were but as one delightful season, one +blessed life--and, finally, that other Sabbath, on which, at thy own +dying request--between services thou wert buried. + +How mysterious are all thy ways and workings, O gracious Nature! Thou +who art but a name given by us to the Being in whom all things are and +have life. Ere three years old, she, whose image is now with us, all +over the small sylvan world that beheld the evanescent revelation of her +pure existence, was called the "Holy Child!" The taint of Sin--inherited +from those who disobeyed in Paradise--seemed from her fair clay to have +been washed out at the baptismal font, and by her first infantine tears. +So pious people almost believed, looking on her so unlike all other +children, in the serenity of that habitual smile that clothed the +creature's countenance with a wondrous beauty, at an age when on other +infants is but faintly seen the dawn of reason, and their eyes look +happy just like the thoughtless flowers. So unlike all other +children--but unlike only because sooner than they she seemed to have +had given to her, even in the communion of the cradle, an intimation of +the being and the providence of God. Sooner, surely, than through any +other clay that ever enshrouded immortal spirit, dawned the light of +religion on the face of the "Holy Child." + +Her lisping language was sprinkled with words alien from common +childhood's uncertain speech, that murmurs only when indigent nature +prompts; and her own parents wondered whence they came, when first they +looked upon her kneeling in an unbidden prayer. As one mild week of +vernal sunshine covers the braes with primroses, so shone with fair and +fragrant feelings--unfolded, ere they knew, before her parents' +eyes--the divine nature of her who for a season was lent to them from +the skies. She learned to read out of the Bible--almost without any +teaching--they knew not how--just by looking gladly on the words, even +as she looked on the pretty daisies on the green--till their meanings +stole insensibly into her soul, and the sweet syllables, succeeding each +other on the blessed page, were all united by the memories her heart had +been treasuring every hour that her father or her mother had read aloud +in her hearing from the Book of Life. "Suffer little children to come +unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of +heaven"--how wept her parents, as these the most affecting of our +Saviour's words dropt silver-sweet from her lips, and continued in her +upward eyes among the swimming tears! + +Be not incredulous of this dawn of reason, wonderful as it may seem to +you, so soon becoming morn--almost perfect daylight--with the "Holy +Child." Many such miracles are set before us--but we recognise them not, +or pass them by with a word or a smile of short surprise. How leaps the +baby in its mother's arms, when the mysterious charm of music thrills +through its little brain! And how learns it to modulate its feeble +voice, unable yet to articulate, to the melodies that bring forth all +round its eyes a delighted smile! Who knows what then may be the +thoughts and feelings of the infant awakened to the sense of a new +world, alive through all its being to sounds that haply glide past our +ears unmeaning as the breath of the common air! Thus have mere infants +sometimes been seen inspired by music, till, like small genii, they +warbled spell-strains of their own, powerful to sadden and subdue our +hearts. So, too, have infant eyes been so charmed by the rainbow +irradiating the earth, that almost infant hands have been taught, as if +by inspiration, the power to paint in finest colours, and to imitate +with a wondrous art, the skies so beautiful to the quick-awakened spirit +of delight. What knowledge have not some children acquired, and gone +down scholars to their small untimely graves! Knowing that such things +have been--are--and will be--why art thou incredulous of the divine +expansion of soul, so soon understanding the things that are divine--in +the "Holy Child?" + +Thus grew she in the eye of God, day by day waxing wiser and wiser in +the knowledge that tends towards the skies; and, as if some angel +visitant were nightly with her in her dreams, awakening every morn with +a new dream of thought, that brought with it a gift of more +comprehensive speech. Yet merry she was at times with her companions +among the woods and braes, though while they all were laughing, she only +smiled; and the passing traveller, who might pause for a moment to bless +the sweet creatures in their play, could not but single out one face +among the many fair, so pensive in its paleness, a face to be +remembered, coming from afar, like a mournful thought upon the hour of +joy. + +Sister or brother of her own had she none--and often both her +parents--who lived in a hut by itself up among the mossy stumps of the +old decayed forest--had to leave her alone--sometimes even all the day +long from morning till night. But she no more wearied in her +solitariness than does the wren in the wood. All the flowers were her +friends--all the birds. The linnet ceased not his song for her, though +her footsteps wandered into the green glade among the yellow broom, +almost within reach of the spray from which he poured his melody--the +quiet eyes of his mate feared her not when her garments almost touched +the bush where she brooded on her young. Shyest of the winged sylvans, +the cushat clapped not her wings away on the soft approach of such +harmless footsteps to the pine that concealed her slender nest. As if +blown from heaven, descended round her path the showers of the painted +butterflies, to feed, sleep, or die--undisturbed by her--upon the +wildflowers--with wings, when motionless, undistinguishable from the +blossoms. And well she loved the brown, busy, blameless bees, come +thither for the honey-dews from a hundred cots sprinkled all over the +parish, and all high overhead sailing away at evening, laden and +wearied, to their straw-roofed steps in many a hamlet garden. The leaf +of every tree, shrub, and plant, she knew familiarly and lovingly in its +own characteristic beauty; and she was loth to shake one dewdrop from +the sweetbrier rose. And well she knew that all nature loved in +return--that they were dear to each other in their innocence--and that +the very sunshine, in motion or in rest, was ready to come at the +bidding of her smiles. Skilful those small white hands of hers among the +reeds and rushes and osiers--and many a pretty flower-basket grew +beneath their touch, her parents wondering on their return home to see +the handiwork of one who was never idle in her happiness. Thus +early--ere yet but five years old--did she earn her mite for the +sustenance of her own beautiful life. The russet garb she wore she +herself had won--and thus Poverty, at the door of that hut, became even +like a Guardian Angel, with the lineaments of heaven on her brow, and +the quietude of heaven beneath her feet. + +But these were but her lonely pastimes, or gentle taskwork self-imposed +among her pastimes, and itself the sweetest of them all, inspired by a +sense of duty that still brings with it its own delight, and hallowed +by religion, that even in the most adverse lot changes slavery into +freedom--till the heart, insensible to the bonds of necessity, sings +aloud for joy. The life within the life of the "Holy Child," apart from +even such innocent employments as these, and from such recreations as +innocent, among the shadows and the sunshine of those sylvan haunts, was +passed--let us fear not to say the truth, wondrous as such worship was +in one so very young--was passed in the worship of God; and her +parents--though sometimes even saddened to see such piety in a small +creature like her, and afraid, in their exceeding love, that it +betokened an early removal from this world of one too perfectly pure +ever to be touched by its sins and sorrows--forbore, in an awful pity, +ever to remove the Bible from her knees, as she would sit with it there, +not at morning and at evening only, or all the Sabbath long, as soon as +they returned from the kirk, but often through all the hours of the +longest and sunniest weekdays, when, had she chosen to do so, there was +nothing to hinder her from going up the hill-side, or down to the little +village, to play with the other children, always too happy when she +appeared--nothing to hinder her but the voice she heard speaking in that +Book, and the hallelujahs that, at the turning over of each blessed +page, came upon the ear of the "Holy Child" from white-robed saints all +kneeling before His throne in heaven. + +Her life seemed to be the same in sleep. Often at midnight, by the light +of the moon shining in upon her little bed beside theirs, her parents +leant over her face, diviner in dreams, and wept as she wept, her lips +all the while murmuring, in broken sentences of prayer, the name of Him +who died for us all. But plenteous as were her penitential +tears--penitential in the holy humbleness of her stainless spirit, over +thoughts that had never left a dimming breath on its purity, yet that +seemed in those strange visitings to be haunting her as the shadows of +sins--soon were they all dried up in the lustre of her returning smiles. +Waking, her voice in the kirk was the sweetest among many sweet, as all +the young singers, and she the youngest far, sat together by themselves, +and within the congregational music of the psalm uplifted a silvery +strain that sounded like the very spirit of the whole, even like +angelic harmony blent with a mortal song. But sleeping, still more +sweetly sang the "Holy Child;" and then, too, in some diviner +inspiration than ever was granted to it while awake, her soul composed +its own hymns, and set the simple scriptural words to its own mysterious +music--the tunes she loved best gliding into one another, without once +ever marring the melody, with pathetic touches interposed never heard +before, and never more to be renewed! For each dream had its own +breathing, and many-visioned did then seem to be the sinless creature's +sleep. + +The love that was borne for her all over the hill-region, and beyond its +circling clouds, was almost such as mortal creatures might be thought to +feel for some existence that had visibly come from heaven. Yet all who +looked on her, saw that she, like themselves, was mortal, and many an +eye was wet, the heart wist not why, to hear such wisdom falling from +such lips; for dimly did it prognosticate, that as short as bright would +be her walk from the cradle to the grave. And thus for the "Holy Child" +was their love elevated by awe, and saddened by pity--and as by herself +she passed pensively by their dwellings, the same eyes that smiled on +her presence, on her disappearance wept. + +Not in vain for others--and for herself, oh! what great gain!--for those +few years on earth did that pure spirit ponder on the word of God! Other +children became pious from their delight in her piety--for she was +simple as the simplest among them all, and walked with them hand in +hand, nor declined companionship with any one that was good. But all +grew good by being with her--and parents had but to whisper her name, +and in a moment the passionate sob was hushed--the lowering brow +lighted--and the household in peace. Older hearts owned the power of the +piety so far surpassing their thoughts; and time-hardened sinners, it is +said, when looking and listening to the "Holy Child," knew the error of +their ways, and returned to the right path as at a voice from heaven. + +Bright was her seventh summer--the brightest, so the aged said, that had +ever, in man's memory, shone over Scotland. One long, still, sunny, blue +day followed another, and in the rainless weather, though the dews kept +green the hills, the song of the streams was low. But paler and paler, +in sunlight and moonlight, became the sweet face that had been always +pale; and the voice that had been always something mournful, breathed +lower and sadder still from the too perfect whiteness of her breast. No +need--no fear--to tell her that she was about to die. Sweet whispers had +sung it to her in her sleep--and waking she knew it in the look of the +piteous skies. But she spoke not to her parents of death more than she +had often done--and never of her own. Only she seemed to love them with +a more exceeding love--and was readier, even sometimes when no one was +speaking, with a few drops of tears. Sometimes she disappeared--nor, +when sought for, was found in the woods about the hut. And one day that +mystery was cleared; for a shepherd saw her sitting by herself on a +grassy mound in a nook of the small solitary kirkyard, a long mile off +among the hills, so lost in reading the Bible, that shadow or sound of +his feet awoke her not; and, ignorant of his presence, she knelt down +and prayed--for a while weeping bitterly--but soon comforted by a +heavenly calm--that her sins might be forgiven her! + +One Sabbath evening, soon after, as she was sitting beside her parents +at the door of their hut, looking first for a long while on their faces, +and then for a long while on the sky, though it was not yet the stated +hour of worship, she suddenly knelt down, and leaning on their knees, +with hands clasped more fervently than her wont, she broke forth into +tremulous singing of that hymn which from her lips they never heard +without unendurable tears: + + "The hour of my departure's come, + I hear the voice that calls me home; + At last, O Lord, let trouble cease, + And let thy servant die in peace!" + +They carried her fainting to her little bed, and uttered not a word to +one another till she revived. The shock was sudden, but not unexpected, +and they knew now that the hand of death was upon her, although her eyes +soon became brighter and brighter, they thought, than they had ever been +before. But forehead, cheeks, lips, neck, and breast, were all as white, +and, to the quivering hands that touched them, almost as cold, as snow. +Ineffable was the bliss in those radiant eyes; but the breath of words +was frozen, and that hymn was almost her last farewell. Some few words +she spake--and named the hour and day she wished to be buried. Her lips +could then just faintly return the kiss, and no more--a film came over +the now dim blue of her eyes--the father listened for her breath--and +then the mother took his place, and leaned her ear to the unbreathing +mouth, long deluding herself with its lifelike smile; but a sudden +darkness in the room, and a sudden stillness, most dreadful both, +convinced their unbelieving hearts at last, that it was death. + +All the parish, it may be said, attended her funeral--for none stayed +away from the kirk that Sabbath--though many a voice was unable to join +in the Psalm. The little grave was soon filled up--and you hardly knew +that the turf had been disturbed beneath which she lay. The afternoon +service consisted but of a prayer--for he who ministered had loved her +with love unspeakable--and, though an old grey-haired man, all the time +he prayed he wept. In the sobbing kirk her parents were sitting, but no +one looked at them--and when the congregation rose to go, there they +remained sitting--and an hour afterwards, came out again into the open +air, and parting with their pastor at the gate, walked away to their +hut, overshadowed with the blessing of a thousand prayers. + +And did her parents, soon after she was buried, die of broken hearts, or +pine away disconsolately to their graves? Think not that they, who were +Christians indeed, could be guilty of such ingratitude. "The Lord +giveth, and the Lord taketh away--blessed be the name of the Lord!" were +the first words they had spoke by that bedside; during many, many long +years of weal or woe, duly every morning and night, these same blessed +words did they utter when on their knees together in prayer--and many a +thousand times besides, when they were apart, she in her silent hut, and +he on the hill--neither of them unhappy in their solitude, though never +again, perhaps, was his countenance so cheerful as of yore--and though +often suddenly amidst mirth or sunshine their eyes were seen to +overflow. Happy had they been--as we mortal beings ever can be +happy--during many pleasant years of wedded life before she had been +born. And happy were they--on to the verge of old age--long after she +had here ceased to be. Their Bible had indeed been an idle Book--the +Bible that belonged to "the Holy Child,"--and idle all their kirk-goings +with "the Holy Child," through the Sabbath-calm--had those intermediate +years not left a power of bliss behind them triumphant over death and +the grave. + + + + +OUR PARISH. + + +Nature must be bleak and barren indeed to possess no power over the +young spirit daily expanding on her breast into new susceptibilities, +that ere long are felt to fill life to overflowing with a perpetual +succession--an infinite series--of enjoyments. Nowhere is she destitute +of that power--not on naked sea-shores--not in central deserts. But our +boyhood was environed by the beautiful--its home was among moors and +mountains, which people in towns and cities called dreary, but which we +knew to be the cheerfullest and most gladsome parish in all braid +Scotland--and well it might be, for it was in her very heart. Mountains +they seemed to us in those days, though now we believe they are only +hills. But such hills!--undulating far and wide away till the highest +even on clear days seemed to touch the sky, and in cloudy weather were +verily a part of heaven. Many a valley, and many a glen--and many a +hollow that was neither valley nor glen--and many a flat, of but a few +green acres, which we thought plains--and many a cleft waterless with +its birks and breckans, except when the rains came down, and then they +all sang a new song in merry chorus--and many a wood, and many a grove, +for it takes no great number of trees to make a wood, and four firs by +themselves in a lonesome place are a grove--and many a single sycamore, +and many a single ash, kenned afar-off above its protected cottage--and +many an indescribable spot of scenery at once pastoral and agricultural +and sylvan, where, if house there was, you hardly knew it among the +rocks;--so was Our Parish, which people in towns and cities called +dreary, composed; but the composition itself,--as well might we hope +thus to show it to your soul's eye, as by a few extracts however fine, +and a few criticisms however exquisite, to give you the idea of a +perfect poem. + +But we have not given you more than a single hint of a great part of our +Parish--the Moor. It was then ever so many miles long, and ever so many +miles broad, and nobody thought of guessing how many miles round--but +some twenty years ago it was absolutely measured to a rood by a +landlouper of a land-surveyor--distributed--drained--enclosed--utterly +ruined for ever. No, not for ever. Nature laughs to scorn acts of +Parliament, and we predict that in a quarter of a century she will +resume her management of that moor. We rejoice to hear that she is +beginning already to take lots of it into her own hands. Wheat has no +business there, and should keep to the carses. In spring, she takes him +by the braird till he looks yellow in the face long before his time--in +summer, by the cuff of the neck till he lies down on his back and rots +in the rain--in autumn, by the ears, and rubs him against the grain till +he expires as fushionless as the windle-straes with which he is +interlaced--in winter, she shakes him in the stook till he is left but a +shadow which pigeons despise. See him in stack at Christmas, and you +pity the poor straw. Here and there bits of bear or big, and barley, she +permits to flourish--nor is she loth to see the flowers and shaws and +apples on the poor man's plant, the life-sustaining potato--which none +but political economists hate and all Christians love. She is not so +sure about turnips, but as they are a green crop she leaves them to the +care of the fly. But where have her gowans gone? There they still are in +flocks, which no cultivation can scatter or eradicate--inextinguishable +by all the lime that was ever brought unslokened from all the kilns that +ever glowed--by all the dung that was ever heaped up fresh and fuming +from all the Augean stables in the land. Yet her heart burns within her +to behold, even in the midst of what she abhors, the large dew-loved +heads of clover whitening or reddening, or with their rival colours +amicably intermingled, a new birth glorious in the place of reedy marish +or fen where the catspaws nodded--and them she will retain unto herself +when once more she shall rejoice in her Wilderness Restored. + +And would we be so barbarous as to seek to impede the progress of +improvement, and to render agriculture a dead letter? We are not so +barbarous, nor yet so savage. We love civilised life, of which we have +long been one of the smaller but sincerest ornaments. But agriculture, +like education, has its bounds. It is, like it, a science, and woe to +the country that encourages all kinds of quacks. Cultivate a moor! +educate a boor! First understand the character of Clods and Clodhoppers. +To say nothing now of the Urbans and Suburbans--a perilous people--yet +of great capabilities; for to discuss that question would lead us into +lanes; and as it is a long lane that has never a turning, for the +present we keep in the open air, and abstain from wynds. We are no +enemies to poor soils, far less to rich ones ignorantly and stupidly +called poor, which under proper treatment effuse riches; but to expect +to extract from paupers _a return_ for the expenditure squandered by +miserly greed on their reluctant bottoms, cold and bare, is the insanity +of speculation, and such schemers deserve being buried along with their +capital in quagmires. Heavens! how they--the quagmires--suck in the +dung! You say they don't suck it in--well, then, they spew it out--it +evaporates--and what is the worth of weeds? Lime whitens a moss, that is +true, but so does snow. Snow melts--what becomes of lime no mortal knows +but the powheads--them it poisons, and they give up the ghost. Drains +are dug deep nowadays--and we respect Mr Johnstone. So are gold mines. +But from gold mines that precious metal--at a great expense, witness its +price--is exterred; in drains that precious metal, witness wages, is +interred, and then it becomes _squash_. Stirks starve--heifers are hove +with windy nothing--with oxen frogs compete in bulk with every prospect +of a successful issue, and on such pasturage where would be the virility +of the Bulls of Bashan? + +If we be in error, we shall be forgiven at least by all lovers of the +past, and what to the elderly seems the olden time. Oh, misery for that +Moor! Hundreds, thousands, loved it as well as we did; for though it +grew no grain, many a glorious crop it bore--shadows that glided like +ghosts--the giants stalked--the dwarfs crept; yet sometimes were the +dwarfs more formidable than the giants, lying like blackamoors before +your very feet, and as you stumbled over them in the dark, throttling as +if they sought to strangle you, and then leaving you at your leisure to +wipe from your mouth the mire by the light of a straggling +star;--sunbeams that wrestled with the shadows in the gloom--sometimes +clean flung, and then they cowered into the heather, and insinuated +themselves into the earth; sometimes victorious, and then how they +capered in the lift, ere they shivered away--not always without a hymn +of thunder--in behind the clouds, to refresh themselves in their +tabernacle in the sky. + +Won't you be done with this Moor, you monomaniac? Not for yet a little +while--for we see Kitty North all by himself in the heart of it, a boy +apparently about the age of twelve, and happy as the day is long, though +it is the Longest Day in all the year. Aimless he seems to be, but all +alive as a grasshopper, and is leaping like a two-year-old across the +hags. Were he to tumble in, what would become of the personage whom +Kean's Biographer would call "the future Christopher the First?" But no +fear of that--for at no period of his life did he ever overrate his +powers--and he knows now his bound to an inch. Cap, bonnet, hat, he has +none; and his yellow hair, dancing on his shoulders like a mane, gives +him the look of a precocious lion's whelp. Leonine too in his aspect, +yet mild withal; and but for a certain fierceness in his gambols, you +would not suspect he was a young creature of prey. A fowling-piece is in +his left hand, and in his right a rod. And what may he be purposing to +shoot? Anything full-fledged that may play whirr or sugh. Good +grouse-ground this; but many are yet in the egg, and the rest are but +cheepers--little bigger than the small brown moorland bird that goes +birling up with its own short epithalamium, and drops down on the rushes +still as a stone. Them he harms not on their short flight--but marking +them down, twirls his piece like a fugleman, and thinks of the Twelfth. +Safer methinks wilt thou be a score or two yards further off, O Whaup! +for though thy young are yet callow, Kit is beginning to think they may +shift for themselves; and that long bill and that long neck, and those +long legs and that long body--the _tout-ensemble_ so elegant, so +graceful, and so wild--are a strong temptation to the trigger;--click-- +clack--whizz--phew--fire--smoke and thunder--head-over-heels topsy-turvy +goes the poor curlew--and Kit stands over him leaning on his +single-barrel, with a stern but somewhat sad aspect, exulting in his +skill, yet sorry for the creature whose wild cry will be heard no more. + +'Tis an oasis in the desert. That green spot is called a quagmire--an +ugly name enough--but itself is beautiful; for it diffuses its own light +round about it, like a star vivifying its halo. The sward encircling it +is firm--and Kit lays him down, heedless of the bird, with eyes fixed on +the oozing spring. How fresh the wild cresses! His very eyes are +drinking! His thirst is at once excited and satisfied by looking at the +lustrous leaves--composed of cooling light without spot or stain. What +ails the boy? He covers his face with his hands, and in the silence +sighs. A small white hand, with its fingers spread, rises out of the +spring, as if it were beckoning to heaven in prayer--and then is sucked +slowly in again out of sight with a gurgling groan. The spring so fresh +and fair--so beautiful with its cresses and many another water-loving +plant beside--is changed into the same horrid quagmire it was that +day--a holiday--three years ago--when racing in her joy Amy Lewars +blindly ran into it, among her blithe companions, and suddenly perished. +Childhood, they say, soon dries its tears, and soon forgets. God be +praised for all his goodness! true it is that on the cheek of childhood +tears are dried up as if by the sunshine of joy stealing from on +high--but, God be praised for all his goodness! false it is that the +heart of childhood has not a long memory, for in a moment the mournful +past revives within it--as often as the joyful--sadness becomes sorrow, +sorrow grief, and grief anguish, as now it is with the solitary boy +seated by that ghastly spot in the middle of the wide moor. + +Away he flies, and he is humming a tune. But what's this? A merry-making +in the moor? Ay, merry-making; but were you to take part in it, you +would find it about the hardest work that ever tried the strength of +your spine. 'Tis a party of divot-flaughters. The people in the parish +are now digging their peats, and here is a whole household, provident of +winter, borrowing fuel from the moss. They are far from coals, and wood +is intended by nature for other uses; but fire in peat she dedicated to +the hearth, and there it burns all over Scotland, Highland and Lowland, +far and near, at many a holy altar. 'Tis the mid-day hour of rest. Some +are half asleep, some yet eating, some making a sort of under-voiced, +under-hand love. "Mr North! Mr North! Mr North!" is the joyful +cry--horny-fists first--downy-fists next--and after heartiest greeting, +Master Kitty is installed, enthroned on a knowe, Master of the +Ceremonies--and in good time gives them a song. Then "galliards cry a +hall, a hall," and hark and lo! preluded by six smacks--three foursome +reels! "Sic hirdum-dirdum and sic din," on the sward, to a strathspey +frae the fiddle o' auld blin' Hugh Lyndsay, the itinerant musicianer, +who was noways particular about the number of his strings, and when one, +or even two snapped, used to play away at pretty much of the same tune +with redoubled energy and variations. He had the true old Niel-Gow yell, +and had he played on for ever, folk would have danced on for ever till +they had all, one after the other, dropped down dead. What steps! + +"Who will try me," cries Kit, "at loup-the-barrows?" "I will," quoth +Souple Tam. The barrows are laid--how many side by side we fear to +say--for we have become sensitive on our veracity--on a beautiful piece +of springy turf, an inclined plane with length sufficient for a run; and +while old and young line both sides of the lane near the loup, stript to +the sark and the breeks, Souple Tam, as he fondly thinks, shows the way +to win, and clears them all like a frog or a roebuck. "Clear the way, +clear the way for the callant, Kit's comin!" cries Ebenezer Brackenrigg, +the Elder, a douce man now, but a deevil in his youth, and like "a waff +o' lichtnin'" past their een, Kit clears the barrows a foot beyond +Souple Tam, and at the first fly is declared victor by acclamation. Oh, +our unprophetic soul, did the day indeed dawn--many long years after +this our earliest great conquest yet traditional in the parish--that ere +nightfall witnessed our defeat by--a tailor! The Flying Tailor of +Ettrick--the Lying Shepherd thereof--would they had never been born--the +one to triumph and the other to record that triumph;--yet let us be just +to the powers of our rival--for though all the world knows we were lame +when we leapt him, long past our prime, had been wading all day in the +Yarrow with some stones-weight in our creel, and allowed him a yard, + + "Great must I call him, for he vanquish'd ME." + +What a place at night was that Moor! At night! That is a most +indeterminate mode of expression, for there are nights of all sorts and +sizes, and what kind of a night do we mean? Not a mirk night, for no man +ever walked that moor on a mirk night, except one, and he, though +blind-fou, was drowned. But a night may be dark without being mirk, with +or without stars; and on many such a night have we, but not always +alone--who was with us you shall never know--threaded our way with no +other clue than that of evolving recollections, originally notices, +across that wilderness of labyrinths, fearlessly, yet at times with a +beating heart. Our companion had her clue too, one in her pocket, of +blue worsted, with which she kept in repair all the stockings belonging +to the family, and one in her memory, of green ethereal silk, which, +finer far than any spider's web, she let out as she tript along the +moor, and on her homeward way she felt, by some spiritual touch, the +invisible lines, along which she retript as safely as if they had been +moonbeams. During such journeyings we never saw the moor, how then can +you expect us to describe it? + +But oftener we were alone. Earthquakes abroad are dreadful occurrences, +and blot out the obituary. But here they are so gentle that the heedless +multitude never feel them, and on hearing you tell of them, they +incredulously stare. That moor made no show of religion, but was a +Quaker. We had but to stand still for five minutes or so, no easy matter +then, for we were more restless than a wave, or to lie down with our ear +to the ground, and the spirit was sure to move the old Quaker, who +forthwith began to preach and pray and sing Psalms. How he moaned at +times as if his heart were breaking! At times, as if some old forgotten +sorrow were recalled, how he sighed! Then recovering his +self-possession, as if to clear his voice, he gave a hem, and then a +short nasty cough like a patient in a consumption. Now all was hush, and +you might have supposed he had fallen asleep, for in that hush you heard +what seemed an intermitting snore. When all at once, whew, whew, whew, +as if he were whistling, accompanied with a strange rushing sound as of +diving wings. That was in the air--but instantly after you heard +something odder still in the bog. And while wondering, and of your +wonder finding no end, the ground, which a moment before had felt firm +as a road, began to shrink, and sink, and hesitate, and hurry, and +crumble, and mumble all around you, and close up to your very feet--the +quagmires gurgling as if choked--and a subterranean voice distinctly +articulating Oh! Oh! Oh! + +We have heard of people who pretend not to believe in ghosts--geologists +who know how the world was created; but will they explain that moor? And +how happened it that only by nights and dark nights it was so haunted? +Beneath a wakeful moon and unwinking stars it was silent as a frozen +sea. You listened then, and heard but the grass growing, and beautiful +grass it was, though it was called coarse, and made the sweetest-scented +hay. What crowds of bum-bees' bikes--foggies--did the scythe not reveal +as it heaped up the heavy swathes--three hundred stone to the acre--by +guess,--for there was neither weighing nor measuring there then-a-days, +but all was in the lump--and there the rush-roped stacks stood all the +winter through, that they might be near the "eerie outlan' cattle," on +places where cart-wheel never circled, nor axle-tree creaked--nor ever +car of antique make trailed its low load along--for the horse would have +been laired. We knew not then at all--and now we but imperfectly +know--the cause of the Beautiful. Then we believed the Beautiful to be +wholly extern; something we had nothing to do with but to look at, and +lo! it shone divinely there! Happy creed if false--for in it, with +holiest reverence, we blamelessly adored the stars. There they were in +millions as we thought--every one brighter than another, when by chance +we happened to fix on any individual among them, that we might look +through its face into its heart. All above gloriously glittering, all +below a blank. Our body here, our spirit there--how mean our birthplace, +our death-home how magnificent! "Fear God and keep his commandments," +said a small still voice--and we felt that if He gave us strength to +obey that law, we should live for ever beyond all those stars. + +But were there no Lochs in our parish? Yea. Four. The Little Loch--the +White Loch--the Black Loch--and the Brother Loch. Not a tree on the +banks of any one of them--yet he had been a blockhead who called them +bare. Had there been any need for trees, Nature would have sown them on +hills she so dearly loved. Nor sheep nor cattle were ever heard to +complain of those pastures. They bleated and they lowed as cheerily as +the moorland birdies sang--and how cheerily that was nobody knew who had +not often met the morning on the brae, and shaken hands with her the +rosy-fingered like two familiar friends. No want of lown places there, +in which the creatures could lie with wool or hair unruffled among +surrounding storms. For the hills had been dropt from the hollow of His +hand who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"--and even high up, where +you might see tempest-stricken stones--some of them like pillars--but +placed not there by human art--there were cosy bields in wildest +weather, and some into which the snow was never known to drift, green +all the winter through--perennial nests. Such was the nature of the +region where lay our Four Lochs. They were some quarter of a mile--some +half mile--and some whole mile--not more--asunder; but there was no +great height--and we have a hundred times climbed the highest--from +which they could be all seen at once--so cannily were they embosomed, so +needed not to be embowered. + +The LITTLE LOCH was the rushiest and reediest little rascal that ever +rustled, and he was on the very edge of the Moor. That he had fish we +all persisted in believing, in spite of all the successless angling of +all kinds that from time immemorial had assailed his sullen depths;--but +what a place for pow-heads! One continued bank of them--while yet they +were but eyes in the spawn--encircled it instead of water-lilies; and at +"the season of the year," by throwing in a few stones, you awoke a +croaking that would have silenced a rookery. In the early part of the +century a pike had been seen basking in the shallows, by eye-measurement +about ten feet long--but fortunately he had never been hooked, or the +consequences would have been fatal. We have seen the Little Loch alive +with wild-ducks; but it was almost impossible by position to get a shot +at them--and quite impossible, if you did, to get hold of the slain. Fro +himself--the best dog that ever dived--was baffled by the multiplicity +of impediments and obstructions--and at last refused to take the +water--sat down and howled in spiteful rage. Yet Imagination loved the +Little Loch, and so did Hope. We have conquered it in sleep both with +rod and gun--the weight of bag and basket has wakened us out of dreams +of murder that never were realised--yet once, and once only, in it we +caught an eel, which we skinned, and wore the shrivel for many a day +round our ankle--nor is it a vain superstition--to preserve it from +sprains. We are willing the Little Loch should be drained; but you would +have to dig a fearsome trench, for it used to have no bottom. A party of +us--six--ascertained that fact, by heaving into it a stone which +six-and-thirty schoolboys of this degenerate age could not have lifted +from its moss-bed--and though we watched for an hour, not a bubble rose +to the surface. It used sometimes to boil like a pot on breathless days, +for events happening in foreign countries disturbed the spring, and the +torments it suffered thousands of fathoms below, were manifested above +in turbulence that would have drowned a school-boy's skiff. + +The WHITE LOCH--so called from the silver sand of its shores--had +likewise its rushy and reedy bogs; but access to every part of the main +body was unimpeded, and you waded into it, gradually deeper and deeper, +with such a delightful descent, that up to the arm-pits and then to the +chin, you could keep touching the sand with your big-toe, till you +floated away off at the nail, out of your depth, without for a little +while discovering that it was incumbent on you, for sake of your +personal safety, to take to regular swimming--and then how buoyant was +the milk-warm water, without a wave but of your own creating, as the +ripples went circling away before your breast or your breath! It was +absolutely too clear--for without knitting your brows you could not see +it on bright airless days--and wondered what had become of it--when all +at once, as if it had been that very moment created out of nothing, +there it was! endued with some novel beauty--for of all the lochs we +ever knew--and to be so simple too--the White Loch had surely the +greatest variety of expression,--but all within the cheerful--for +sadness was alien altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere for +ever wore a smile. Swans--but that was but once--our own eyes had seen +on it--and were they wild or were they tame swans, certain it is they +were great and glorious and lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow. +No house was within sight, and they had nothing to fear--nor did they +look afraid--sailing in the centre of the loch--nor did we see them fly +away--for we lay still on the hill-side till in the twilight we should +not have known what they were, and we left them there among the shadows +seemingly asleep. In the morning they were gone, and perhaps making love +in some foreign land. + +The BLACK LOCH was a strange misnomer for one so fair--for black we +never saw him, except it might be for an hour or so before thunder. If +he really was a loch of colour the original taint had been washed out of +him, and he might have shown his face among the purest waters of Europe. +But then he was deep; and knowing that, the natives had named him, in no +unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black Loch. We have seen wild-duck +eggs five fathoms down so distinctly that we could count them--and +though that is not a bad dive, we have brought them up, one in our mouth +and one in each hand, the tenants of course dead--nor can we now +conjecture what sank them there; but ornithologists see unaccountable +sights, and they only who are not ornithologists disbelieve Audubon and +Wilson. Two features had the Black Loch which gave it to our eyes a +pre-eminence in beauty over the other three--a tongue of land that +half-divided it, and never on hot days was without some cattle grouped +on its very point, and in among the water--and a cliff on which, though +it was not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. Yet in misty +weather, when its head was hidden, the shrill cry seemed to come from a +great height. There were some ruins too--tradition said of some church +or chapel--that had been ruins long before the establishment of the +Protestant faith. But they were somewhat remote, and likewise somewhat +imaginary, for stones are found lying strangely distributed, and those +looked to our eyes not like such as builders use, but to have been +dropped there most probably from the moon. + +But the best beloved, if not the most beautiful, of them all was the +BROTHER LOCH. It mattered not what was his disposition or genius, every +one of us boys, however different might be our other tastes, preferred +it far beyond the rest, and for once that we visited any of them we +visited it twenty times, nor ever once left it with disappointed hopes +of enjoyment. It was the nearest, and therefore most within our power, +so that we could gallop to it on shank's naigie, well on in the +afternoon, and enjoy what seemed a long day of delight, swift as flew +the hours, before evening prayers. Yet was it remote enough to make us +always feel that our race thither was not for every day--and we seldom +returned home without an adventure. It was the largest too by far of the +Four--and indeed its area would have held the waters of all the rest. +Then there was a charm to our heart as well as our imagination in its +name--for tradition assigned it on account of three brothers that +perished in its waters--and the same name for the same reason belongs to +many another loch--and to one pool on almost every river. But above all +it was the Loch for angling, and we long kept to perch. What schools! +Not that they were of a very large size--though pretty well--but +hundreds all nearly the same size gladdened our hearts as they lay, at +the close of our sport, in separate heaps on the greensward shore, more +beautiful out of all sight than your silver or golden fishes in a +glass-vase, where one appears to be twenty, and the delusive voracity +is all for a single crumb. No bait so killing as cowshairn-mauks, fresh +from their native bed, scooped out with the thumb. He must have been a +dear friend to whom in a scarcity, by the water-side, when the corks +were dipping, we would have given a mauk. No pike. Therefore the trout +were allowed to gain their natural size--and that seemed to be about +five pounds--adolescents not unfrequent swam two or three--and you +seldom or never saw the smaller fry. But few were the days "good for the +Brother Loch." Perch rarely failed you, for by perseverance you were +sure to fall in with one circumnatatory school or other, and to do +murderous work among them with the mauk, from the schoolmaster himself +inclusive down to the little booby of the lowest form. Not so with +Trout. We have angled ten hours a-day for half a-week (during the +vacance), without ever getting a single rise, nor could even that be +called bad sport, for we lived in momentary expectation, mingled with +fear, of a monster. Better far from sunrise to sunset never to move a +fin, than oh! me miserable! to hook a huge hero with shoulders like a +hog--play him till he comes floating side up close to the shore, and +then to feel the feckless fly leave his lip and begin gamboling in the +air, while he wallops away back into his native element, and sinks +utterly and for evermore into the dark profound. Life loses at such a +moment all that makes life desirable--yet strange! the wretch lives +on--and has not the heart to drown himself, as he wrings his hands and +curses his lot and the day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that ghastly +fit of fancy is gone by, and we imagine one of those dark, scowling, +gusty, almost tempestuous days, "prime for the Brother Loch." No glare +or glitter on the water, no reflection of fleecy clouds, but a +black-blue undulating swell, at times turbulent--with now and then a +breaking wave,--that was the weather in which the giants fed, showing +their backs like dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and sucking in +the red heckle among your very feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then +the fly was all the rage. This is a mystery, for you could do nothing +with the worm. Oh! that we had then known the science of the spinning +minnow! But we were then but an apprentice--who are now Emeritus Grand +Master. Yet at this distance of time--half a century and more--it is +impious to repine. Gut was not always to be got; and on such days a +three-haired snood did the business--for they were bold as lions, and +rashly rushed on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted body with +star-y-pointed tail maddened them with desire--no dallying with the gay +deceiver--they licked him in--they gorged him--and while satiating their +passion got involved in inextricable fate. You have seen a single strong +horse ploughing up-hill. How he sets his brisket to it--and snooves +along--as the furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the gliding +share. So snooved along the Monarch of the Mere--or the +heir-apparent--or heir-presumptive--or some other branch of the royal +family--while our line kept steadily cutting the waves, and our rod +enclosing some new segment of the sky. + +But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even +angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion +wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle +alway," thinks the wise boy--"off to some other game we altogether +flew." Never were there such hills for hare and hounds. There couched +many a pussy--and there Bob Howie's famous Tickler--the Grew of all +Grews--first stained his flews in the blood of the Fur. But there is no +coursing between April and October--and during the intervening months we +used to have many a hunt on foot, without dogs, after the leverets. We +all belonged to the High School indeed, and here was its playground. +Cricket we had then never heard of; but there was ample room and verge +enough for football. Our prime delight, however, was the chase. We were +all in perpetual training, and in such wind that there were no bellows +to mend after a flight of miles. We circled the Lochs. Plashing through +the marishes we strained winding up the hill-sides, till on the cairn +called a beacon that crowned the loftiest summit of the range, we stood +and waved defiance to our pursuers scattered wide and far below, for +'twas a Deer Hunt. Then we became cavaliers. We caught the long-maned +and long-tailed colts, and mounting bare-backed, with rush helmets and +segg sabres charged the nowte till the stirks were scattered, and the +lowing lord of herds himself taken captive, as he stood pawing in a nook +with his nose to the ground and eyes of fire. That was the riding-school +in which we learned to witch the world with noble horsemanship. We thus +got confirmed in that fine, easy, unconstrained, natural seat, which we +carried with us into the saddle when we were required to handle the +bridle instead of the mane. 'Tis right to hold on by the knees, but +equally so to hold on by the calves of the legs and the heels. The +modern system of turning out the toes, and sticking out the legs as if +they were cork or timber, is at once dangerous and ridiculous; hence in +our cavalry the men got unhorsed in every charge. On pony-back we used +to make the soles of our feet smack together below the belly, for +quadruped and biped were both unshod, and hoof needed no iron on that +stoneless sward. But the biggest fun of all was to "grup the auld mare," +and ride her sextuple, the tallest boy sitting on the neck, and the +shortest on the rump with his face to the tail, and holding on by that +fundamental feature by which the urchin tooled her along as by a tiller. +How the silly foal whinnied, as with light-gathered steps he accompanied +in circles his populous parent, and seemed almost to doubt her identity, +till one by one we slipped off over her hurdies, and let him take a +suck! But what comet is yon in the sky--"with fear of change perplexing +mallards?" A Flying Dragon. Of many degrees is his tail, with a tuft +like that of Taurus terrified by the sudden entrance of the Sun into his +sign. Up goes Sandy Donald's rusty and rimless beaver as a messenger to +the Celestial. He obeys, and stooping his head, descends with many +diverse divings, and buries his beak in the earth. The feather kite +quails and is cowed by him of paper, and there is a scampering of cattle +on a hundred hills. + +The Brother Loch saw annually another sight, when on the Green-Brae was +pitched a Tent--a snow-white Pyramid, gathering to itself all the +sunshine. There lords and ladies, and knights and squires, celebrated +Old May-day, and half the parish flocked to the Festival. The Earl of +Eglintoun, and Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, and old Sir John of Polloc, and +Pollock of that Ilk, and other heads of illustrious houses, with their +wives and daughters, a beautiful show, did not disdain them of low +degree, but kept open table in the moor; and would you believe it, +high-born youths and maidens ministered at the board to cottage lads and +lasses, whose sunburnt faces hardly dared to smile, under awe of that +courtesy--yet whenever they looked up there was happiness in their eyes. +The young ladies were all arrayed in green; and after the feast, they +took bows and arrows in their lily hands, and shot at a target in a +style that would have gladdened the heart of Maid Marian--nay, of Robin +himself;--and one surpassing bright--the Star of Ayr--she held a hawk on +her wrist--a tercel gentle--after the fashion of the olden time; and +ever as she moved her arm you heard the chiming of silver bells. And her +brother--gay and gallant as Sir Tristrem--he blew his tasseled bugle--so +sweet, so pure, so wild the music, that when he ceased to breathe, the +far-off repeated echoes, faint and dim, you thought died away in heaven +like an angel's voice. + +Was it not a Paragon of a Parish? But we have not told you one half of +its charms. There was a charm in every nook--and Youth was the master of +the spell. Small magicians were we in size, but we were great in might. +We had but to open our eyes in the morning, and at one look all nature +was beautiful. We have said nothing about the Burns. The chief was the +Yearn--endearingly called the Humbie, from a farm near the Manse, and +belonging to the minister. Its chief source was, we believe, the Brother +Loch. But it whimpled with such an infantine voice from the lucid bay, +which then knew nor sluice nor dam, that for a while it was scarcely +even a rill, and you had to seek for it among the heather. In doing so, +ten to one some brooding birdie fluttered off her nest--but not till +your next step would have crushed them all--or perhaps--but he had no +nest there--a snipe. There it is--betrayed by a line of livelier +verdure. Ere long it sparkled within banks of its own and "braes of +green bracken," and as you footed along, shoals of minnows, and perhaps +a small trout or two, brastled away to the other side of the shallow, +and hid themselves in the shadows. 'Tis a pretty rill now--nor any +longer mute; and you hear it murmur. It has acquired confidence on its +course, and has formed itself into its first pool--a waterfall, three +feet high, with its own tiny rocks, and a single birk--no, it is a +rowan--too young yet to bear berries--else might a child pluck the +highest cluster. Imperceptibly, insensibly, it grows just like life. The +Burn is now in his boyhood; and a bold, bright boy he is--dancing and +singing--nor heeding which way he goes along the wild, any more than +that wee rosy-cheeked, flaxen-headed girl seems to heed, who drops you a +curtsy, and on being asked by you, with your hand on her hair, where she +is going, answers wi' a soft Scottish accent--ah! how sweet--"Owre the +hill to see my Mither." Is that a house? No--a fauld. For this is the +Washing-Pool. Look around you, and you never saw such perfectly white +sheep. They are Cheviots; for the black-faces are on the higher hills to +the north of the moor. We see a few rigs of flax--and "lint is in the +bell"--the steeping whereof will sadly annoy the bit burnie, but poor +people must spin--and as this is not the season, we will think of +nothing that can pollute his limpid waters. Symptoms of husbandry! +Potato-shaws luxuriating on lazy-beds, and a small field with alternate +rigs of oats and barley. Yes, that is a house--"an auld clay +bigging,"--in such Robin Burns was born--in such was rocked the cradle +of Pollok. We think we hear two separate liquid voices--and we are +right--for from the flats beyond Floak, and away towards Kingswells, +comes another yet wilder burnie, and they meet in one at the head of +what you would probably call a meadow, but which we call a holm. There +seems to be more arable land hereabouts than a stranger could have any +idea of; but it is a long time since the ploughshare traced those almost +obliterated furrows on the hill-side; and such cultivation is now wisely +confined, you observe, to the lower lands. We fear the Yearn--for that +is his name now--heretofore he was anonymous--is about to get flat. But +we must not grudge him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, lulled by +the murmur of millions of humble-bees--we speak within bounds--on their +honied flowerage. We are confusing the seasons, for a few minutes ago we +spoke of "lint being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream how +sweetly do the seasons all slide into one another! After sleep comes +play, and see and hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling over rocks, +nor will rest in any one linn, but impatient of each beautiful prison in +which one would think he might lie a willing thrall, hurries on as if he +were racing against time, nor casts a look at the human dwellings now +more frequent near his sides. But he will be stopped by-and-by, whether +he will or no; for there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a mill. +But the wheel is at rest--the sluice on the lade is down--with the lade +he has nothing more to do than to fill it; and with undiminished volume +he wends round the miller's garden--you see Dusty Jacket is a +florist--and now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any rocks. 'Tis +but some hundred yards across from bank to brae--and as you angle along +on either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating high overhead; for +though, the braes are steep, they are all intersected with sheep-walks, +and ever and anon among the broom and the brackens are little platforms +of close-nibbled greensward, yet not bare--and nowhere else is the +pasturage more succulent--nor do the young creatures not care to taste +the primroses, though were they to live entirely upon them, they could +not keep down the profusion--so thickly studded in places are the +constellations--among sprinklings of single stars. Here the +hill-blackbird builds--and here you know why Scotland is called the +lintie's land. What bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. But +here there are no larks--a little further down and you will hear one +ascending or descending over almost every field of grass or of the +tender braird. Down the dell before you, flitting from stone to stone, +on short flight seeks the water-pyet--seemingly a witless creature with +its bonnie white breast--to wile you away from the crevice, even within +the waterfall, that holds its young--or with a cock of her tail she dips +and disappears. There is grace in the glancing sandpiper--nor, though +somewhat fantastical, is the water-wagtail inelegant--either belle or +beau--an outlandish bird that makes himself at home wherever he goes, +and, vain as he looks, is contented if but one admire him in a solitary +place--though it is true that we have seen them in half-dozens on the +midden in front of the cottage door. The blue slip of sky overhead has +been gradually widening, and the dell is done. Is that snow? A +bleachfield. Lasses can bleach their own linen on the green near the +pool, "atween twa flowery braes," as Allan has so sweetly sung, in his +truly Scottish pastoral "The Gentle Shepherd." But even they could not +well do without bleachfields on a larger scale, else dingy would be +their smocks and their wedding-sheets. Therefore there is beauty in a +bleachfield, and in none more than in Bell's-Meadows. But where is the +Burn? They have stolen him out of his bed, and, alas! nothing but +stones! Gather up your flies, and away down to yonder grove. There he is +like one risen from the dead; and how joyful his resurrection! All the +way from this down to the Brigg o' Humbie the angling is admirable, and +the burn has become a stream. You wade now through longer +grass--sometimes even up to the knees; and half-forgetting pastoral +life, you ejaculate "Speed the plough!" Whitewashed houses--but still +thatched--look down on you from among trees, that shelter them in +front; while behind is an encampment of stacks, and on each side a line +of offices, so that they are snug in every wind that blows. The Auld +Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for though the turn was perilous sharp, +time had so coloured it that in a sunny shower we have mistaken it for a +rainbow. That's Humbie House, God bless it! and though we cannot here +with our bodily sense see the Manse, with our spiritual eye we can see +it anywhere. Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The wind we see +has shifted to the south; and ere we reach the Cart, we shall have to +stuff our pockets. The Cart!--ay, the river Cart--not that on which +pretty Paisley stands, but the Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for +sake of Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at Glasgow, we visited +every Play-Friday, and deepened the ivy on its walls with our first +sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn becomes even sylvan now; and +though still sweet its murmurs to our ear, they no longer sink into our +hearts. So let it mingle with the Cart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and +the Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the river becomes a firth, +and the firth the sea;--but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the +vision that showed us the solitary region dearest to our imagination and +our hearts, and opening them on completion of the charm that works +within the spirit when no daylight is there, rejoice to find ourselves +again sole-sitting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch. + +Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish--pray give us one of yours, +that both may gain by comparison. But is ours a true picture? True as +Holy Writ--false as any fiction in an Arabian tale. How is this? +Perception, memory, imagination, are all moods--states of mind. But +mind, as we said before, is one substance, and matter another; and mind +never deals with matter without metamorphosing it like a mythologist. +Thus truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, become all one and the +same; for they are so essentially blended, that we defy you to show what +is biblical--what apocryphal--and what pure romance. How we transpose +and dislocate while we limn in aerial colours! Where tree never grew we +drop it down centuries old--or we tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, +and steep what was once his shadow in sunshine--hills sink at a touch, +or at a beck mountains rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the +spirit of the place remains the same; for in that spirit has imagination +all along been working, and boon nature smiles on her son as he +imitates her creations--but "hers are heavenly, his an empty dream." + +Where lies Our Parish, and what is its name? Seek, and you will find it +either in Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. As for its name, +men call it the Mearns. M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter--and in +Scotland he has no superior--will perhaps accompany you to what once was +the Moor. All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there still; but the +Little Loch transmogrified into an auxiliar appurtenance to some cursed +Wark--the Brother Loch much exhausted by daily drains upon him by we +know not what wretch--the White Loch _larched_--and the Black Loch of a +ghastly blue, cruelly cultivated all close round the brim. From his moor + + "The parting genius is with sighing sent;" + +but sometimes, on blear-eyed days, he is seen disconsolately sitting in +some yet mossy spot among the ruins of his ancient reign. That painter +has studied the aspect of the Old Forlorn, and has shown it more than +once on bits of canvass not a foot long; and such pictures will survive +after the Ghost of the Genius has bade farewell to the ruined solitudes +he had haunted ever since the flood, or been laid beneath the yet +unprofaned Green-Brae, above the Brother Loch, whence we devoutly trust +he will re-issue, though ages may have to elapse, to see all his +quagmires in their primeval glory, and all his hags more hideously +beautiful, as they yawn back again into their former selves, frowning +over the burial in their bottoms of all the harvests that had dared to +ripen above their heads. + + + + + +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's note: | + | | + | Inconsistent hyphenation was not changed. | + | Table of Contents: Corrected 336 to 335 | + | Page 127: Corrected word order problem | + | Page 132: Changed "this to happen her" to "this to happen to her" | + +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, +VOLUME I (OF 2)*** + + +******* This file should be named 31666.txt or 31666.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/6/6/31666 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/31666.zip b/31666.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..60114eb --- /dev/null +++ b/31666.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80529c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #31666 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31666) |
