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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 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 2
+
+Author: John Wilson
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER NORTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RECREATIONS
+
+OF
+
+CHRISTOPHER NORTH
+
+
+_A NEW EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES_
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
+EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+MDCCCLXVIII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
+
+
+                                             PAGE
+MAY-DAY                                         1
+
+SACRED POETRY:--
+
+    CHAPTER I.,                                38
+
+    CHAPTER II.,                               53
+
+    CHAPTER III.,                              75
+
+    CHAPTER IV.,                               88
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY:--
+
+    FIRST CANTICLE,                            98
+
+    SECOND CANTICLE,                          125
+
+    THIRD CANTICLE,                           149
+
+    FOURTH CANTICLE,                          165
+
+DR KITCHINER:--
+
+    FIRST COURSE,                             182
+
+    SECOND COURSE,                            194
+
+    THIRD COURSE,                             203
+
+    FOURTH COURSE,                            212
+
+SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS:--
+
+    FIRST RHAPSODY,                           224
+
+    SECOND RHAPSODY,                          239
+
+A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON,                       253
+
+THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT,              274
+
+CHRISTMAS DREAMS,                             285
+
+OUR WINTER QUARTERS,                          304
+
+STROLL TO GRASSMERE:--
+
+    FIRST SAUNTER,                            327
+
+    SECOND SAUNTER,                           355
+
+L'ENVOY                                       369
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REMARKS ON THE SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS,      385
+
+
+
+
+RECREATIONS
+
+OF
+
+CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
+
+
+
+
+MAY-DAY.
+
+
+Art thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moorland, sylvan, and pastoral
+Parish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious
+dawning of life--can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art
+indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in
+half an hour could fly the flapping dove--though the martens, wheeling
+to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, central in its
+own domain, seem in their more distant flight to glance their crescent
+wings over a vale rejoicing apart in another kirk-spire, yet how rich in
+streams, and rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar murmur--art
+Thou with thy bold bleak exposure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous
+undulations to the portals of the East! How endless the interchange of
+woods and meadows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without number, among
+thy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings--how rises the smoke,
+ever and anon, into the sky, all neighbouring on each other, so that the
+cock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead; while as you wander
+onwards, each roof still rises unexpectedly--and as solitary, as if it
+had been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thousand parishes--neither
+Highland, nor Lowland--but undulating--let us again use the descriptive
+word--like the sea in sunset after a day of storms--yes, Heaven's
+blessing be upon thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old!
+
+The same heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers of
+earth--like the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The stillness of those
+lofty clouds makes them seem whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to
+thy grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded corn, for thy
+brooding mate can no longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there
+is little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full budding
+branches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hook
+levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briery
+knolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the
+rustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter
+benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that now
+are gone--tall, far-spreading single trees, in whose shade used to lie
+the ruminating cattle, with the small herd-girl asleep. Gone are they,
+and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not more
+forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held
+converse--whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead--hands so often
+grasped--arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes--have long
+ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so
+much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the
+holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of
+time.
+
+It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some
+sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at
+nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and
+then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush,
+took possession of field or forest. We are all alone--a solitary
+pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are
+changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly
+along to the merry music of streams--or linger by the silent shores of
+lochs--or upon the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a
+panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight--or plunge into the old
+wood's magnificent exclusion from sky--where, at midsummer, day is as
+night--though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;
+and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the
+sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will
+be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the
+dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.
+
+What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, wherein
+and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away,
+like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint
+or pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it is
+built, and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equally
+against all the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to direct
+our footsteps--for that venerable Man has long been dead--not one of his
+ancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it was
+gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has
+been entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of, but
+never more shall see--and the voices that are now heard within those
+walls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the
+silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is an
+appalling trial to approach a place where once we have been
+happier--happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and a
+worse evil doth it seem to our imagination to return to Paradise, with a
+changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the
+outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that
+spirit that had glorified our prime.
+
+But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the
+hill--the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for
+stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled
+roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which
+the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore,
+and almost as early as the alder or the birch--the GLORY OF MOUNT
+PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner.
+You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling--for eaves,
+roof, and chimneys all disappeared--and then, when you stood beneath,
+was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself,
+continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide
+of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!
+
+MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou deserve the name, bestowed on
+thee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble proprietors, but by
+the general voice of praise, all eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty.
+For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields and
+meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of a river, the
+smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spire
+of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting with
+his solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the pulpit, with his
+expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged him
+to be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen him
+at labour on the working days, you might almost have thought him the
+serf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried
+the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength
+and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house,
+beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly
+esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverently
+beloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman of
+active habits and a strong mind, but tempering the natural sternness of
+her husband's character with that genial and jocund cheerfulness, that
+of all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of a
+household. One daughter only had they, and we could charm our heart even
+now, by evoking the vanished from oblivion, and imaging her over and
+over again in the light of words; but although all objects, animate and
+inanimate, seem always tinged with an air of sadness when they are
+past--and as at present we are resolved to be cheerful--obstinately to
+resist all access of melancholy--an enemy to the pathetic--and a scorner
+of shedders of tears--therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, and
+let us paint a pleasant picture of a May-Day afternoon, and enjoy it as
+it was enjoyed of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the
+grandisonant name of THE GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT.
+
+There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, used
+on MAY-DAY to be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayed
+in home-spun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on the
+distant mountain-head; and on various seats--stumps, stones, stools,
+creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and
+elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and
+allegorical--took their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping
+and bowing, blushing and curtsying, old, young, and middle-aged, of high
+and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister
+shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well
+worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread
+beneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. But the Minister
+uttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curds
+and cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on those
+horn-spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk--to the mouth how apt the
+bowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate of
+delft, rather more than full of curds, many million times more
+deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, and then filled to
+overflowing with a blessed outpouring of creamy richness that
+tenaciously descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar expression of
+whose physiognomy, particularly the nose, we will carry with us to the
+grave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT consisted of twenty cows--almost all
+spring calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed--so you may guess what cream!
+The spoon could not stand in it,--it was not so thick as that--for that
+was too thick,--but the spoon, when placed upright in it, retained its
+perpendicularity for a while, and then, when uncertain on which side to
+fall, was grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with its
+fresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Never
+beneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal cakes, pease-scones,
+and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. You could have eaten away at
+them with pleasure, even although not hungry--and yet it was impossible
+of them to eat too much--Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter
+yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount
+Pleasant--such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture--was coloured like
+the crocus, before the young thrushes had left the nest in the
+honey-suckled corner of the gavel-end. Not a single hair in the churn.
+Then what honey and what jam! The first, not heather, for that is too
+luscious, especially after such cream, but the pure white virgin honey,
+like dew shaken from clover, but now _querny_ after winter keep; and oh!
+over a layer of such butter on such barley bannocks was such honey, on
+such a day, in such company, and to such palates, too divine to be
+described by such a pen as that now wielded by such a writer! The Jam!
+It was of gooseberries--the small black hairy ones--gathered to a very
+minute from the bush, and boiled to a very moment in the pan! A bannock
+studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a
+corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The
+question, with the gaucy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was
+not--"My dear laddie, which will ye hae--hinny or jam?" but, "Which will
+ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs,
+or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half-a-dozen white cans of more moderate
+dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was
+withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity
+fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming
+Sycamore. There the bees were all at work for next May-day, happy as
+ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold,
+happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song;
+for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave
+forth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of
+Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that
+ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire
+in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies.
+
+Never had Mary Morrison heard the old ballad-airs sung, except during
+the mid-day hour of rest, in the corn or hay field--and rude singers are
+they all--whether male or female voices--although sometimes with a touch
+of natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. But as the
+nightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it never
+were to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among the
+shrub-roots, and the lark, though alone on earth, would sing the hymn
+well known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nature
+within her, and inspired by her own delightful genius alone, did Mary
+Morrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give them
+all an expression at once simple and profound. People who said they did
+not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous
+and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of
+the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly
+blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little
+hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground,
+or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would
+most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl--but her musical turn
+is really very singular indeed;"--but her happy father and mother knew,
+that in all common things--that is, in all the duties of an humble and
+innocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies and
+harmonies of song--and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was as
+angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearly
+inexperienced of sin.
+
+Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her--and to
+listen to her--as their Mary sat beside the young English boy--admired
+of all observers--and happier than she had ever been in this world
+before, in the charm of their blended music, and the unconscious
+affection--sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she had
+none--that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart.
+
+Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side-by-side in their music,
+insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both admired
+and beloved. It was thought that they loved one another too, too well;
+for Harry Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, and Mary Morrison
+a peasant's child; but they could not love too well--she in her
+tenderness--he in his passion--for, with them, life and love was a
+delightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as by
+some secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day--of the same
+fever--and died at the same hour;--and not from any dim intention of
+those who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-ground
+of the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in the
+same grave--for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them--a curtain
+between the beds on which brother and sister slept.
+
+In their delirium they both talked about each other--Mary Morrison and
+Harry Wilton--yet their words were not words of love, only of common
+kindness; for although on their death-beds they did not talk about
+death, but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasant
+meetings in neighbours' houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up
+in bed, and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute which
+to his lips was to breathe no more; and even at the very self-same
+moment--so it wonderfully was--did he tell all to be hushed, for that
+Mary Morrison was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest.
+
+Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they may
+sleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterly
+obliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour or
+other however distant, legible as at the very moment they were first
+engraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the long-ago
+vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delight
+or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesired
+indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating up
+into some inland vale, because, unknown to us who wonder at them, the
+tide is flowing and the breezes blow from the main. Bright as the living
+image stands now before us the ghost--for what else is it than the
+ghost--of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particular
+day--in one particular place, innumerable years ago! It was at the close
+of one of those midsummer days which melt away into twilight, rather
+than into night, although the stars are visible, and bird and beast
+asleep. All by herself, as she walked along between the braes, was she
+singing a hymn,--
+
+    "And must this body die?
+      This mortal frame decay?
+    And must these feeble limbs of mine
+      Lie mouldering in the clay?"
+
+Not that the child had any thought of death, for she was as full of life
+as the star above her was of lustre--tamed though they both were by the
+holy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as we
+met, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away in
+the distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we that
+voice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguished
+no more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer.
+
+Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter was
+taken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No--such is not
+the natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure and
+pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once
+been--nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in
+resignation that often wept when it did not repine--in faith that now
+held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of
+being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's--they had
+been as sisters--took her place, and filled it too, as far as the living
+can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while
+to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom their
+substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have
+discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others
+saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a
+delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired
+to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let
+him be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working man
+before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He broke
+down fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that
+partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those who
+have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other's
+arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there is
+one on which this inscription may be read--"HERE LIE THE BODIES OF ADAM
+MORRISON AND OF HELEN ARMOUR HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY
+17--. HERE ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORRISON, WHO DIED
+JUNE 2, 17--." The headstone is a granite slab--as they almost all are
+in that kirkyard--and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material.
+But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the very
+snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with the
+armorial bearings belonging to a family of the high-born.
+
+Sworn Brother of our soul! during the bright ardours of boyhood, when
+the present was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon
+forgotten, and the future unfeared, what might have been thy lot,
+beloved Harry Wilton, had thy span of life been prolonged to this very
+day? Better--oh! far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst so
+early die; for it seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; and
+that, with all their genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonour
+comes and goes, a familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house.
+Shame never veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor tamed the
+eloquence of those sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed down
+that young princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed each
+successive morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood.
+But the time was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergone
+a rueful transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of a
+sorceress, and forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice,
+worthlessness, profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a broken
+heart! And that lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelled
+hair--But all these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hour
+when we and the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and
+the burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem or
+organ-peal, among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all those
+floods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we who
+loved thee to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy image
+now survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away from
+eyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is not
+bedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet thou,
+Nature, on this glorious May-day, rejoicing in all the plenitude of thy
+bliss--we call upon thee to bear witness to the intensity of our
+never-dying grief! Ye fields, that long ago we so often trode together,
+with the wind-swept shadows hovering about our path--Ye streams, whose
+murmur awoke our imaginations, as we lay reading, or musing together in
+day-dreams, among the broomy braes--Ye woods, where we started at the
+startled cushat, or paused, without a word, to hear the creature's
+solitary moans and murmurs deepening the far-off hush, already so
+profound--Ye moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with your
+peat-trenches overshadowed by the heather-blossoms that scented the
+wilderness afar--where the little maiden, sent from the shieling on
+errands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met her
+in the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy from
+the desert bloom--Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and with
+nought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoral
+hills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven--no
+creature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in the
+breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, with some book of old
+ballads, or strain of some Immortal yet alive on earth--one and all bear
+witness to our undying affection, that silently now feeds on grief! And,
+oh! what overflowing thoughts did that shout of ours now awaken from the
+hanging tower of the Old Castle--"Wilton, Wilton!" The name of the
+long-ago buried faintly and afar-off repeated by an echo!
+
+A pensive shade has fallen across MAY-DAY; and while the sun is behind
+those castellated clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into the
+saddest places of memory, and gather together stories and tales of
+tears. And many such there are, annually sprinkled all round the humble
+huts of our imaginative and religious land, even like the wildflowers
+that, in endless succession, disappearing and reappearing in their
+beauty, Spring drops down upon every brae. And as ofttimes some one
+particular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect and fragmentary part of
+an old melody, will nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to the
+finest and most finished strain; so now a faint and dim tradition comes
+upon us, giving birth to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an old
+Tradition. They were called the BLESSED FAMILY! Far up at the head of
+yonder glen of old was their dwelling, and in their garden sparkled the
+translucent well that is the source of the stream that animates the
+parish with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, and daughter--it was
+hard to say which of the three was the most beloved! Yet they were not
+native here, but brought with them, from some distant place, the soft
+and silvery accents of the pure English tongue, and manners most
+gracious in their serene simplicity; while over a life composed of acts
+of charity was spread a stillness that nothing ever disturbed--the
+stillness of a thoughtful pity for human sins and sorrows, yet not
+unwilling to be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In those days the
+very heart of Scotland was distracted--persecution scattered her
+prayers--and during the summer months, families remained shut up in fear
+within their huts, as if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up and
+buried their doors. It was as if the shadow of a thunder-cloud hung over
+all the land, so that men's hearts quaked as they looked up to
+heaven--when, lo! all at once, Three gracious Visitants appeared!
+Imagination invested their foreheads with a halo; and as they walked on
+their missions of mercy, exclaimed--How beautiful are their feet! Few
+words was the Child ever heard to speak, except some words of prayer;
+but her image-like stillness breathed a blessing wherever it smiled, and
+all the little maidens loved her, when hushed almost into awe by her
+spiritual beauty, as she knelt with them in their morning and evening
+orisons. The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as a face of
+grief, while her eyes seemed always happy, and a tone of thanksgiving
+was in her voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his way to the
+grave--for his eye's excessive brightness glittered with death--and
+often, as he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek became like ashes,
+for his heart in a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burst
+in agony, sounded audibly in the silence. Journeying on did they all
+seem to heaven; yet as they were passing by, how loving and how full of
+mercy! To them belonged some blessed power to wave away the sword that
+would fain have smitten the Saints. The dewdrops on the greensward
+before the cottage door, they suffered not to be polluted with blood.
+Guardian Angels were they thought to be, and such indeed they were, for
+what else are the holy powers of innocence?--Guardian Angels sent to
+save some of God's servants on earth from the choking tide and the
+scorching fire. Often, in the clear and starry nights, did the dwellers
+among all these little dells, and up along all these low hill-sides,
+hear music flowing down from heaven, responsive to the hymns of the
+Blessed Family. Music without the syllabling of words--yet breathing
+worship, and with the spirit of piety filling all the Night-Heavens. One
+whole day and night passed by, and not a hut had been enlightened by
+their presence. Perhaps they had gone away without warning as they had
+come--having been sent on another mission. With soft steps one maiden,
+and then another, entered the door, and then was heard the voice of
+weeping and of loud lament. The three lay, side by side, with their pale
+faces up to heaven. Dora, for that is the name tradition has handed
+down--Dorothea, the gift of God, lay between her Father and her Mother,
+and all their hands were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No agonies
+had been there--unknown what hand, human or divine, had closed their
+eyelids and composed their limbs; but there they lay as if asleep, not
+to be awakened by the burst of sunshine that dazzled upon their smiling
+countenances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of united death.
+
+The deep religion of that troubled time had sanctified the Strangers
+almost into an angelic character; and when the little kirk-bells were
+again heard tinkling through the air of peace (the number of the martyrs
+being complete), the beauty with which their living foreheads had been
+invested, reappeared to the eyes of imagination, as the Poets whom
+Nature kept to herself walked along the moonlight hills. "The Blessed
+Family," which had been as a household word, appertaining to them while
+they lived, now when centuries have gone by, is still full of a dim but
+divine meaning; the spirit of the tradition having remained, while its
+framework has almost fallen into decay.
+
+How beautifully emerges that sun-stricken Cottage from the rocks, that
+all around it are floating in a blue vapoury light! Were we so disposed,
+methinks we could easily write a little book entirely about the obscure
+people that have lived and died about that farm, by name LOGAN BRAES.
+Neither is it without its old traditions. One May-day long ago--some two
+centuries since--that rural festival was there interrupted by a
+thunderstorm, and the party of youths and maidens, driven from the
+budding arbours, were all assembled in the ample kitchen. The house
+seemed to be in the very heart of the thunder; and the master began to
+read, without declaring it to be a religious service, a chapter of the
+Bible; but the frequent flashes of lightning so blinded him, that he was
+forced to lay down the Book, and all then sat still without speaking a
+word; many with pale faces, and none without a mingled sense of awe and
+fear. The maiden forgot her bashfulness as the rattling peals shook the
+roof-tree, and hid her face in her lover's bosom; the children crept
+closer and closer, each to some protecting knee, and the dogs came all
+into the house, and lay down in dark places. Now and then there was a
+convulsive, irrepressible, but half-stifled shriek--some sobbed--and a
+loud hysterical laugh from one overcome with terror sounded ghastly
+between the deepest of all dread repose--that which separates one peal
+from another, when the flash and the roar are as one, and the thick air
+smells of sulphur. The body feels its mortal nature, and shrinks as if
+about to be withered into nothing. Now the muttering thunder seems to
+have changed its place to some distant cloud--now, as if returning to
+blast those whom it had spared, waxes louder and fiercer than
+before--till the Great Tree that shelters the house is shivered with a
+noise like the masts of a ship carried away by the board. "Look, father,
+look--see yonder is an Angel all in white, descending from heaven!" said
+little Alice, who had already been almost in the attitude of prayer, and
+now clasped her hands together, and steadfastly, and without fear of the
+lightning, eyed the sky. "One of God's Holy Angels--one of those who
+sing before the Lamb!" And with an inspired rapture the fair child
+sprung to her feet. "See ye her not--see ye her not--father--mother! Lo!
+she beckons to me with a palm in her hand, like one of the palms in that
+picture in our Bible, when our Saviour is entering into Jerusalem! There
+she comes, nearer and nearer the earth--Oh! pity, forgive, and have
+mercy on me, thou most beautiful of all the Angels--even for His name's
+sake." All eyes were turned towards the black heavens, and then to the
+raving child. Her mother clasped her to her bosom, afraid that terror
+had turned her brain--and her father going to the door, surveyed an
+ampler space of the sky. She flew to his side, and clinging to him
+again, exclaimed in a wild outcry, "On her forehead a star! on her
+forehead a star! And oh! on what lovely wings she is floating away, away
+into eternity! The Angel, father, is calling me by my Christian name,
+and I must no more abide on earth; but, touching the hem of her garment,
+be wafted away to heaven!" Sudden as a bird let loose from the hand,
+darted the maiden from her father's bosom, and with her face upward to
+the skies, pursued her flight. Young and old left the house, and at that
+moment the forked lightning came from the crashing cloud, and struck the
+whole tenement into ruins. Not a hair on any head was singed; and with
+one accord the people fell down upon their knees. From the eyes of the
+child, the Angel, or Vision of the Angel, had disappeared; but on her
+return to heaven, the Celestial heard the hymn that rose from those that
+were saved, and above all the voices, the small sweet silvery voice of
+her whose eyes alone were worthy of beholding a Saint Transfigured.
+
+For several hundred years has that farm belonged to the family of the
+Logans, nor has son or daughter ever stained the name--while some have
+imparted to it, in its humble annals, what well may be called lustre.
+Many a time have we stood when a boy, all alone, beginning to be
+disturbed by the record of heroic or holy lives, in the kirkyard, beside
+the GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS--the grave in which Christian and Hannah Logan,
+mother and daughter, were interred. Many a time have we listened to the
+story of their deaths, from the lips of one who well knew how to stir
+the hearts of the young, till "from their eyes they wiped the tears that
+sacred pity had engendered." Nearly a hundred years old was she that
+eloquent narrator--the Minister's mother--yet she could hear a whisper,
+and read the Bible without spectacles--although we sometimes used to
+suspect her of pretending to be reading off the Book, when, in fact, she
+was reciting from memory. The old lady often took a walk in the
+kirkyard--and being of a pleasant and cheerful nature, though in
+religious principle inflexibly austere, many were the most amusing
+anecdotes that she related to us and our compeers, all huddled round
+her, "where heaved the turf in many a mouldering heap." But the evening
+converse was always sure to have a serious termination--and the
+venerable matron could not be more willing to tell, than we to hear
+again and again, were it for the twentieth repetition, some old tragic
+event that gathered a deeper interest from every recital, as if on each
+we became better acquainted with the characters of those to whom it had
+befallen, till the chasm that time had dug between them and us
+disappeared, and we felt for the while that their happiness or misery
+and ours were essentially interdependent. At first she used, we well
+remember, to fix her solemn spirit-like eyes on our faces, to mark the
+different effects her story produced on her hearers; but ere long she
+became possessed wholly by the pathos of her own narrative, and with
+fluctuating features and earnest action of head and hands poured forth
+her eloquence, as if soliloquising among the tombs.
+
+"Ay, ay, my dear boys, that is the grave o' the Martyrs. My father saw
+them die. The tide o' the far-ebbed sea was again beginning to flow, but
+the sands o' the bay o' death lay sae dry, that there were but few spots
+where a bairn could hae wat its feet. Thousands and tens o' thousands
+were standing a' roun' the edge of the bay--that was in shape just like
+that moon--and then twa stakes were driven deep into the sand, that the
+waves o' the returning sea michtna loosen them--and my father, who was
+but a boy like ane o' yourselves noo, waes me, didna he see wi' his ain
+een Christian Logan, and her wee dochter Hannah, for she was but eleven
+years auld--hurried alang by the enemies o' the Lord, and tied to their
+accursed stakes within the power o' the sea. He who holds the waters in
+the hollow o' his hand, thocht my father, will not suffer them to choke
+the prayer within those holy lips--but what kent he o' the dreadfu'
+judgments o' the Almighty? Dreadfu' as those judgments seemed to be, o'
+a' that crowd o' mortal creatures there were but only twa that drew
+their breath without a shudder--and these twa were Christian Logan and
+her beautifu' wee dochter Hannah, wi' her rosy cheeks, for they blanched
+not in that last extremity, her blue een, and her gowden hair, that
+glittered like a star in the darkness o' that dismal day. 'Mother, be
+not afraid,' she was heard to say, when the foam o' the first wave broke
+about their feet--and just as these words were uttered, all the great
+black clouds melted away from the sky, and the sun shone forth in the
+firmament like the all-seeing eye of God. The martyrs turned their faces
+a little towards one another, for the cords could not wholly hinder
+them, and wi' voices as steady and as clear as ever they sang the psalm
+within the walls o' that kirk, did they, while the sea was mounting
+up--up from knee--waist--breast--neck--chin--lip--sing praises and
+thanksgivings unto God. As soon as Hannah's voice was drowned, it seemed
+as if her mother, before the water reached her own lips, bowed and gave
+up the ghost. While the people were all gazing the heads of both martyrs
+disappeared, and nothing then was to be seen on the face o' the waters,
+but here and there a bit white breaking wave or silly sea-bird floating
+on the flow o' the tide into the bay. Back and back had aye fallen the
+people, as the tide was roarin' on wi' a hollow soun'--and now that the
+water was high aboon the heads o' the martyrs, what chained that dismal
+congregation to the sea-shore? It was the countenance o' a man that had
+suddenly come down frae his hiding-place amang the moors--and who now
+knew that his wife and daughter were bound to stakes deep down in the
+waters o' the very bay that his eyes beheld rolling, and his ears heard
+roaring--all the while that there was a God in heaven! Naebody could
+speak to him--although they all beseeched their Maker to have
+compassion upon him, and not to let his heart break and his reason fail.
+'The stakes! the stakes! O Jesus! point out to me, with thy own scarred
+hand, the place where my wife and daughter are bound to the stakes--and
+I may yet bear them up out of the sand, and bring the bodies ashore--to
+be restored to life! O brethren, brethren!--said ye that my Christian
+and my Hannah have been for an hour below the sea? And was it from fear
+of fifty armed men, that so many thousand fathers and mothers, and sons
+and daughters, and brothers and sisters, rescued them not from such
+cruel, cruel death?' After uttering mony mair siclike raving words, he
+suddenly plunged into the sea, and, being a strong swimmer, was soon far
+out into the bay--and led by some desperate instinct to the very place
+where the stakes were fixed in the sand. Perfectly resigned had the
+martyrs been to their doom--but in the agonies o' that horrible death,
+there had been some struggles o' the mortal body, and the weight o' the
+waters had borne down the stakes, so that, just as if they had been
+lashed to a spar to enable them to escape from shipwreck, baith the
+bodies came floatin' to the surface, and his hand grasped, without
+knowing it, his ain Hannah's gowden hair--sairly defiled, ye may weel
+think, wi' the sand--baith their faces changed frae what they ance were
+by the wrench o' death. Father, mother, and daughter came a'thegither to
+the shore--and there was a cry went far and wide, up even to the
+hiding-places o' the faithfu' among the hags and cleuchs i' the moors,
+that the sea had given up the living, and that the martyrs were
+triumphant, even in this world, over the powers o' Sin and o' Death.
+Yea, they were indeed triumphant;--and well might the faithfu' sing
+aloud in the desert, 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
+victory?' for these three bodies were but as the weeds on which they lay
+stretched out to the pitying gaze of the multitude, but their spirits
+had gane to heaven to receive the eternal rewards o' sanctity and
+truth."
+
+Not a house in all the parish--scarcely excepting Mount Pleasant
+itself--all round and about which our heart could in some dreamy hour
+raise to life a greater multitude of dear old remembrances, all touching
+ourselves, than LOGAN BRAES. The old people, when we first knew them, we
+used to think somewhat apt to be surly--for they were Seceders--and
+owing to some unavoidable prejudices, which we were at no great pains to
+vanquish, we Manse-boys recognised something repulsive in that most
+respectable word. Yet for the sake of that sad story of the Martyrs,
+there was always something affecting to us in the name of Logan Braes;
+and though Beltane was of old a Pagan Festival, celebrated with grave
+idolatries round fires ablaze on a thousand hills, yet old Laurence
+Logan would sweeten his vinegar aspect on May-day, would wipe out a
+score of wrinkles, and calm, as far as that might be, the terrors of his
+shaggy eyebrows. A little gentleness of manner goes a long way with such
+young folk as we were all then, when it is seen naturally and easily
+worn for our sakes, and in sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one who
+in his ordinary deportment may have added the austerity of religion to
+the venerableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence Logan, the
+Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom--and made the hush of
+his house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the restraint
+laid on reverent youth by feeling akin to fear, the heart ever and anon
+bounded with freedom in the smile of the old man's eyes. Plain was his
+own apparel--a suit of the hodden-grey. His wife, when in full dress,
+did not remind us of a Quakeress, for a Quakeress then had we never
+seen--but we often think now, when in company with a still, sensible,
+cheerful, and comely-visaged matron of that sect, of her of Logan Braes.
+No waster was she of her tears, or her smiles, or her words, or her
+money, or her meal--either among those of her own blood, or the stranger
+or the beggar that was within her gates. You heard not her foot on the
+floor--yet never was she idle--moving about in doors and out, from
+morning till night, so placid and so composed, and always at small cost
+dressed so decently, so becomingly to one who was not yet old, and had
+not forgotten--why should she not remember it?--that she was esteemed in
+youth a beauty, and that it was not for want of a richer and younger
+lover that she agreed at last to become the wife of the Laird of Logan
+Braes.
+
+Their family consisted of two sons and a niece;--and be thou who thou
+mayest that hast so far read our May-day, we doubt not that thine eyes
+will glance--however rapidly--over another page, nor fling it
+contemptuously aside, because amidst all the chance and change of
+administrations, ministries, and ministers in high places, there murmur
+along the channels of our memory "the simple annals of the poor," like
+unpolluted streams that sweep not by city walls.
+
+Never were two brothers more unlike in all things--in mind, body,
+habits, and disposition--than Lawrie and Willie Logan--and we see, as in
+a glass, at this very moment, both their images. "Wee Wise Willie"--for
+by that name he was known over several parishes--was one of those
+extraordinary creatures that one may liken to a rarest plant, which
+nature sows here and there--sometimes for ever unregarded--among the
+common families of Flowers. Early sickness had been his lot--continued
+with scarcely any interruption from his cradle to school-years--so that
+not only was his stature stunted, but his whole frame was delicate in
+the extreme; and his pale small-featured face, remarkable for large,
+soft, down-looking, hazel eyes, dark-lashed in their lustre, had a sweet
+feminine character, that corresponded well with his voice, his motions,
+and his in-door pursuits--all serene and composed, and interfering with
+the outgoings of no other living thing. All sorts of scholarship, such
+as the parish schoolmaster knew, he mastered as if by intuition. His
+slate was quickly covered with long calculations, by which the most
+puzzling questions were solved; and ere he was nine years old, he had
+made many pretty mechanical contrivances with wheels and pulleys, that
+showed in what direction lay the natural bent of his genius. Languages,
+too, the creature seemed to see into with quickest eyes, and with
+quickest ears to catch their sounds--so that, at the same tender age, he
+might have been called a linguist, sitting with his Greek and Latin
+books on a stool beside him by the fireside during the long winter
+nights. All the neighbours who had any books, cheerfully lent them to
+"Wee Wise Willie," and the Manse-boys gave him many a supply. At the
+head of every class he, of course, was found--but no ambition had he to
+be there; and like a bee that works among many thousand others on the
+clover-lea, heedless of their murmurs, and intent wholly on its own
+fragrant toil, did he go from task to task--although that was no fitting
+name for the studious creature's meditations on all he read or
+wrought--no more a task for him to grow in knowledge and in thought,
+than for a lily of the field to lift up its head towards the sun. That
+child's religion was like all the other parts of his character--as prone
+to tears as that of other children, when they read of the Divine Friend
+dying for them on the cross; but it was profounder far than theirs, when
+it shed no tears, and only made the paleness of his countenance more
+like that which we imagine to be the paleness of a phantom. No one ever
+saw him angry, complaining, or displeased; for angelical indeed was his
+temper, purified, like gold in fire, by suffering. He shunned not the
+company of other children, but loved all, as by them all he was more
+than beloved. In few of their plays could he take an active share; but
+sitting a little way off, still attached to the merry brotherhood,
+though in their society he had no part to enact, he read his book on the
+knoll, or, happy dreamer, sunk away among the visions of his own
+thoughts. There was poetry in that child's spirit, but it was too
+essentially blended with his whole happiness in life, often to be
+embodied in written words. A few compositions were found in his own
+small beautiful handwriting after his death--hymns and psalms. Prayers,
+too, had his heart indited--but they were not in measured
+language--framed, in his devout simplicity, on the model of our Lord's.
+How many hundred times have we formed a circle round him in the
+gloaming, all sitting or lying on the greensward, before the dews had
+begun to descend, listening to his tales and stories of holy or heroic
+men and women, who had been greatly good and glorious in the days of
+old! Not unendeared to his imagination were the patriots, who, living
+and dying, loved the liberties of the land--Tell--Bruce--or Wallace, he
+in whose immortal name a thousand rocks rejoice, while many a wood bears
+it on its summits as they are swinging to the storm. Weak as a reed that
+is shaken in the wind, or the stalk of a flower that tremblingly
+sustains its blossoms beneath the dews that feed their transitory
+lustre, was he whose lips were so eloquent to read the eulogies of
+mighty men of war riding mailed through bloody battles. What matters it
+that this frame of dust be frail, and of tiny size--still may it be the
+tenement of a lordly spirit. But high as such warfare was, it satisfied
+not that thoughtful child--for other warfare there was to read of, which
+was to him a far deeper and more divine delight--the warfare waged by
+good men against the legions of sin, and closed triumphantly in the eye
+of God--let this world deem as it will--on obscurest death-beds, or at
+the stake, or on the scaffold, where a profounder even than Sabbath
+silence glorifies the martyr far beyond any shout that from the immense
+multitude would have torn the concave of the heavens.
+
+What a contrast to that creature was his elder brother! Lawrie was
+eighteen years old when first we visited Logan Braes, and was a perfect
+hero in strength and stature--Bob Howie alone his equal--but Bob was
+then in the West Indies. In the afternoons, after his work was over in
+the fields or in the barn, he had pleasure in getting us Manse-boys to
+accompany him to the Moor-Lochs for an hour's angling or two in the
+evening, when the large trouts came to the gravelly shallows, and, as we
+waded mid-leg deep, would sometimes take the fly among our very feet. Or
+he would go with us into the heart of the great wood, to show us where
+the foxes had their earths--the party being sometimes so fortunate as to
+see the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery aperture in the
+strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it
+safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and
+wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw
+him take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft of
+wall-flowers. What was there of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan
+was not, in our belief, able to perform? We were all several years
+younger--boys from nine to fifteen--and he had shot up into sudden
+manhood--not only into its shape but its strength--yet still the boyish
+spirit was fresh within him, and he never wearied of us in such
+excursions. The minister had a good opinion of his principles, knowing
+how he had been brought up, and did not discountenance his visits to the
+Manse, nor ours to Logan Braes. Then what danger could we be in, go
+where we might, with one who had more than once shown how eager he was
+to risk his own life when that of another was in jeopardy? Generous and
+fearless youth! To thee we owed our own life--although seldom is that
+rescue now remembered--(for what will not in this turmoiling world be
+forgotten?) when in pride of the newly-acquired art of swimming, we had
+ventured--with our clothes on too--some ten yards into the Brother-Loch,
+to disentangle our line from the water-lilies. It seemed that a hundred
+cords had got entangled round our legs, and our heart quaked too
+desperately to suffer us to shriek--but Lawrie Logan had his hand on us
+in a minute, and brought us to shore as easily as a Newfoundland dog
+lands a bit of floating wood.
+
+But that was a momentary danger, and Lawrie Logan ran but small risk,
+you will say, in saving us; so let us not extol that instance of his
+intrepidity. But fancy to yourself, gentle reader, the hideous mouth of
+an old coal-pit, that had not been worked for time immemorial, overgrown
+with thorns, and briers, and brackens, but still visible from a small
+mount above it, for some yards down its throat--the very throat of death
+and perdition. But can you fancy also the childish and superstitious
+terror with which we all regarded that coal-pit, for it was said to be a
+hundred fathom deep--with water at the bottom--so that you had to wait
+for many moments--almost a minute--before you heard a stone, first
+beating against its sides--from one to the other--plunge at last into
+the pool profound. In that very field, too, a murder had been
+perpetrated, and the woman's corpse flung by her sweetheart into that
+coal-pit. One day some unaccountable impulse had led a band of us into
+that interdicted field--which we remember was not arable--but said to be
+a place where a hare was always sure to be found sitting among the
+binweeds and thistles. A sort of thrilling horror urged us on closer and
+closer to the mouth of the pit--when Wee Wise Willie's foot slipping on
+the brae, he bounded with inexplicable force along--in among the thorns,
+briers, and brackens--through the whole hanging mat, and without a
+shriek, down--down--down into destruction. We all saw it happen--every
+one of us--and it is scarcely too much to say, that we were for a while
+all mad with horror. Yet we felt ourselves borne back instinctively from
+the horrible pit--and as aid we could give none, we listened if we could
+hear any cry--but there was none--and we all flew together out of the
+dreadful field, and again collecting ourselves together, feared to
+separate on the different roads to our homes. "Oh! can it be that our
+Wee Wise Willie has this moment died sic a death--and no a single ane
+amang us a' greetin for his sake?" said one of us aloud; and then indeed
+did we burst out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another who could
+carry such tidings to Logan Braes? All at once we heard a clear, rich,
+mellow whistle as of a blackbird--and there with his favourite collie,
+searching for a stray lamb among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, who
+hailed us with a laughing voice, and then asked us, "Where is Wee
+Willie?--hae ye flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" The
+consternation of our faces could not be misunderstood--whether we told
+him or not what had happened we do not know--but he staggered, as if he
+would have fallen down--and then ran off with amazing speed--not towards
+Logan Braes--but the village. We continued helplessly to wander about
+back and forwards along the near edge of a wood, when we beheld a
+multitude of people rapidly advancing, and in a few minutes they
+surrounded the mouth of the pit. It was about the very end of the
+hay-harvest--and many ropes that had been employed that very day in the
+leading of the hay of the Landlord of the Inn, who was also an extensive
+farmer, were tied together to the length of at least twenty fathom. Hope
+was quite dead--but her work is often done by Despair. For a while there
+was confusion all round the pit-mouth, but with a white fixed face and
+glaring eyes, Lawrie Logan advanced to the very brink, with the rope
+bound in many firm folds around him, and immediately behind him stood
+his grey-headed father, unbonneted, just as he had risen from a prayer.
+"Is't my ain father that's gaun to help me to gang doun to bring up
+Willie's body? O! merciful God, what a judgment is this!
+Father--father--Oh! lie doun at some distance awa frae the sicht o' this
+place. Robin Alison, and Gabriel Strang, and John Borland 'ill haud the
+ropes firm and safe. O, father--father--lie doun, a bit apart frae the
+crowd; and have mercy upon him--O thou, great God, have mercy upon him!"
+But the old man kept his place; and the only one son who now survived to
+him disappeared within the jaws of the same murderous pit, and was
+lowered slowly down, nearer and nearer to his little brother's corpse.
+They had spoken to him of foul air, of which to breathe is death, but he
+had taken his resolution, and not another word had been said to shake
+it. And now, for a short time, there was no weight at the line, except
+that of its own length. It was plain that he had reached the bottom of
+the pit. Silent was all that congregation, as if assembled in divine
+worship. Again, there was a weight at the rope, and in a minute or two,
+a voice was heard far down the pit that spread a sort of wild
+hope--else, why should it have spoken at all--and lo! the child--not
+like one of the dead--clasped in the arms of his brother, who was all
+covered with dust and blood. "Fall down on your knees--in the face o'
+heaven, and sing praises to God, for my brother is yet alive!"
+
+During that Psalm, father, mother, and both their sons--the rescuer and
+the rescued--and their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, were
+lying embraced in speechless--almost senseless trances; for the agony of
+such a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures be
+endured.
+
+The child himself was the first to tell how his life had been
+miraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out of
+the inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, and
+among them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. For
+days, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visited
+Logan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received a
+shock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried him
+subsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and its
+hospitable door open to all the neighbours.
+
+Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth--but too
+apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life of
+poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or
+carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its
+ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and
+distress. He did not keep evil society--but neither did he shun it: and
+having a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to a
+stripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequented
+all meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, and
+in such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character for
+recklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticated
+evil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quiet
+retreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did all
+the Manse-boys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! It
+was he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey the
+Egyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a waggon of
+Staffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel," as he called Lawrie,
+in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annual
+Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the
+dust--nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whose
+provincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-Ready
+School. Even now--as in an ugly dream--we see the combatants alternately
+prostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood.
+All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at such
+unchristian work; but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the shepherds
+and the ploughmen, to see fair play against all the attempts of the
+Showmen and the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their money thick on
+the King; till a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, which had
+nearly been the gypsy's everlasting quietus, gave the victory to Lawrie,
+amid acclamations that would have fitlier graced a triumph in a better
+cause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruiting
+sergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the colours of the
+42d Regiment, and in the intoxication of victory, whisky, and the
+bagpipe, the young champion was as fairly enlisted into his Majesty's
+service, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married at
+Gretna Green; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, gold
+could not have bought off such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board a
+transport.
+
+Logan Braes was not the same place--indeed, the whole parish seemed
+altered--after Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thenceforth anything
+but cheerful ones, going by turns to inquire for Willie, who seemed to
+be pining away--not in any deadly disease, but just as if he himself
+knew, that without ailing much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearly
+two years passed on, and all that time the principle of life had seemed
+like a flickering flame within him, that when you think it expiring or
+expired, streams up again with surprising brightness, and continues to
+glimmer even steadily with a protracted light. Every week--nay, almost
+every day, they feared to lose him--yet there he still was at morning
+and evening prayers. The third spring after the loss of his brother was
+remarkably mild, and breathing with west-winds that came softened over
+many woody miles from the sea. He seemed stronger, and more cheerful,
+and expressed a wish that the Manse-boys, and some others of his
+companions, would come to Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May-day.
+There we all sat at the long table, and both parents did their best to
+look cheerful during the feast. Indeed, all that had once been harsh and
+forbidding in the old man's looks and manners, was now softened down by
+the perpetual yearnings at his heart towards "the distant far and absent
+long," nor less towards him that peaceful and pious child, whom every
+hour he saw, or thought he saw, awaiting a call from the eternal voice.
+Although sometimes sadness fell across us like a shadow, yet the hours
+passed on as May-day hours should do; and what with our many-toned talk
+and laughter, the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the twittering
+of the swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs ringing like
+silver bells over all the heavens, it seemed a day that ought to bring
+good tidings--or, the Soldier himself returning from the wars to bless
+the eyes of his parents once more, so that they might die in peace.
+"Heaven hold us in its keeping, for there's his wraith!" ejaculated
+Annie Raeburn. "It passed before the window, and my Lawrie, I now know,
+is with the dead!"--Bending his stately head beneath the lintel of the
+door, in the dress, and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Logan
+stepped again across his father's threshold, and, ere he well uttered
+"God be with you all!" Willie was within his arms, and on his bosom. His
+father and his mother rose not from their chairs, but sat still, with
+faces like ashes. But we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted his
+name aloud--while Luath, from his sleep in the corner, leapt on his
+master breast-high, and whining his dumb delight, frisked round him as
+of yore, when impatient to snuff the dawn on the hill-side. "Let us go
+out and play," said a boy's voice, and issuing somewhat seriously into
+the sunshine, we left the family within to themselves, and then walked
+away, without speaking, down to the Bridge.
+
+After the lapse of an hour or more, and while we were all considering
+whether or no we should return to the house, the figure of Annie Raeburn
+was seen coming down the brae towards the party, in a way very unlike
+her usual staid and quiet demeanour, and stopping at some distance, to
+beckon with her hand more particularly, it was thought, on ourselves, as
+we stood a few yards apart from the rest. "Willie is worse," were the
+only words she said, as we hastened back together; and on entering the
+room, we found the old man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, but
+with a composed countenance. "He expressed a wish to see you--but he is
+gone!" We followed into Willie's small bedroom and study, and beheld him
+already _laid out_, and his mother sitting as calmly beside him as if
+she were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, Lawrie--God was gracious
+to let him live to this day, that he micht dee in his brither's arms."
+
+The sun has mounted high in heaven, while thus we have been dreaming
+away the hours--a dozen miles at least have we slowly wandered over,
+since morning, along pleasant by-paths, where never dust lay, or from
+gate to gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fearless of those
+threatening nonentities, spring-guns. There is the turnpike road--the
+great north and south road--for it is either the one or the other,
+according to the airt towards which you, choose to turn your face.
+Behold a little WAYSIDE INN, neatly thatched, and with white-washed
+front, and sign-board hanging from a tree, on which are painted the
+figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches,
+shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals
+is a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of these
+strapping hens is good augury;--hark, a cackle from the barn--another
+egg is laid--and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, and
+clapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultana
+till the welkin rings. "Turn to the left, sir, if you please," quoth a
+comely matron; and we find ourselves snugly seated in an arm-chair, not
+wearied, but to rest willing, while the clock ticks pleasantly, and we
+take no note of time but by its gain; for here is our journal, in which
+we shall put down a few jottings for MAY-DAY. Three boiled eggs--one to
+each penny-roll--are sufficient, under any circumstances, along with the
+same number fried with mutton ham, for the breakfast of a Gentleman and
+a Tory. Nor do we remember--when tea-cups have been on a proper scale,
+ever to have wished to go beyond the Golden Rule of Three. In politics,
+we confess that we are rather ultra; but in all things else we love
+moderation. "Come in, my bonny little lassie--ye needna keep keekin in
+that gate fra ahint the door"--and in a few minutes the curly-pated
+prattler is murmuring on our knee. The sonsy wife, well-pleased with
+the sight, and knowing from our kindness to children, that we are on the
+same side of politics with her gudeman--Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch,
+and once Orderly to Garth himself--brings out her ain bottle from the
+spence--a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its
+honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously
+letting fall a not inelegant curtsy--for she had, we now learned, been a
+lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her
+lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies,
+and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she
+said, Corfu. One of the children has been sent to the field, where her
+husband is sowing barley, to tell him that there is fear lest dinner
+cool; and the mistress now draws herself up in pride of his noble
+appearance, as the stately Highlander salutes us with the respectful but
+bold air of one who has seen some service at home and abroad. Never knew
+we a man make other than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a charge
+of bayonets.
+
+Shenstone's lines about always meeting the warmest welcome in an inn,
+are very natural and tender--as most of his compositions are, when he
+was at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of ever
+meeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we are
+not obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed,
+or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers),
+we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn,
+the only kind of welcome that is indispensable, is a civil one. When
+that is not forthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, off our feet,
+and pursue our journey, well assured that a few milestones will bring us
+to a humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have occasionally given us
+opportunities of beholding rare celestial phenomena--meteors--falling
+and shooting stars--the Aurora Borealis, in her shifting
+splendours--haloes round the moon, variously bright as the
+rainbow--electrical arches forming themselves on the sky in a manner so
+wondrously beautiful, that we should be sorry to hear them accounted for
+by philosophers--one-half of the horizon blue, and without a cloud, and
+the other driving tempestuously like the sea-foam, with waves
+mountain-high--and divinest show of all for a solitary night-wandering
+man, who has anything of a soul at all, far and wide, and high up into
+the gracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burning as if their urns
+were newly fed with light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or a
+vapoury night, although then, too, are the softened or veiled luminaries
+beautiful--but large, full, and free over the whole firmament--a galaxy
+of shining and unanswerable arguments in proof of the Immortality of the
+Soul.
+
+The whole world is improving; nor can there be a pleasanter proof of
+that than this very wayside inn--ycleped the SALUTATION. What a
+miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, that
+would neither open nor shut--neither let you out nor in--immovable and
+intractable to foot or hand--or all at once, when you least expected it
+to yield, slamming to with a bang; a constant puddle in front during
+rainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry--roof partly thatched, partly
+slated, partly tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its naked
+rafters. Broken windows repaired with an old petticoat, or a still older
+pair of breeches, and walls that had always been plastered and better
+plastered and worse plastered, in frosty weather--all labour in vain, as
+crumbling patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains of dismal
+ochre, meanest of all colours, and still symptomatic of want,
+mismanagement, bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenement that
+was never known to have paid any rent. Then what a pair of drunkards
+were old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once were they seen drunk on
+a Sabbath or a fast-day--regular kirk-goers, and attentive observers of
+ordinances. They had not very many children, yet, pass the door when you
+might, you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or the ban of the
+mother, or the smacking of the palm of the hand on the part of the enemy
+easiest of access; or you saw one of the ragged fiends pursued by a
+parent round the corner, and brought back by the hair of the head till
+its eyes were like those of a Chinese. Now, what decency--what
+neatness--what order--in this household--this private public! into which
+customers step like neighbours on a visit, and are served with a
+heartiness and goodwill that deserve the name of hospitality, for they
+are gratuitous, and can only be repaid in kind. A limited prospect does
+that latticed window command--and the small panes cut objects into too
+many parts--little more than the breadth of the turnpike road, and a
+hundred yards of the same, to the north and to the south, with a few
+budding hedgerows, half-a-dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could
+we sit and moralise, and intellectualise, for hours at this window, nor
+hear the striking clock.
+
+There trips by a blooming maiden of middle degree, all alone--the more's
+the pity--yet perfectly happy in her own society, and one we venture to
+say who never received a love-letter, valentines excepted, in all her
+innocent days.--A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! somewhat red in
+the face, as if he had dined early, and not so sure of the road as his
+horse, who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of water, and is
+anxious to get to town that he may be rubbed down, and see oats once
+more.--Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for your sake, may that
+cloud breathe forth rain and breeze, before you reach the burn, which
+you seem to fear may run dry before you can see the Pool where the
+two-pounders lie.--Methinks we know that old woman, and of the first
+novel we write she shall be the heroine.--Ha! a brilliant bevy of
+mounted maidens, in riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swaling
+feathers"--sisters, it is easy to see, and daughters of one whom we
+either loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat and
+vulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husband
+lead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time it
+was _tout une autre chose_; for a smaller foot, a slimmer ankle, a more
+delicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneath
+her bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn--such starlike
+eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul--But phoo! phoo! phoo!
+she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in
+self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.--There is a Head for a
+painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's
+countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms--those
+sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as,
+staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells
+his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his long
+silvery hair, journeying contentedly in darkness towards the eternal
+light.--A gang of gypsies! with their numerous assery laden with
+horn-spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not be
+surprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leads
+the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the
+misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred
+cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing
+about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made
+for the wearer--long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in
+huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails--a shambling gait,
+notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night
+prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to
+awaken--so noiseless his stealthy advances--the unchained mastiff in his
+kennel.
+
+But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regiment
+of soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment of
+soldiers--and that is as much as we can be expected to know about their
+movements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has been
+gorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation,
+blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bole of her pipe, have all burst as
+they have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, and
+with feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what is
+called the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all these
+fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for some
+unlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to die
+in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the composition
+of a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shall
+suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuine
+clodhoppers, chaw-bacons _sans peur et sans reproche_, except that the
+overseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; add
+one shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of the
+spring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certain
+fleeces, for which no ingenuity could account; a laird's son, long known
+by the name of the Neerdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the
+bounty-money during a protracted strike--not dungs they, but flints all
+the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and
+who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at
+last; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the
+Seven Young Men--all that now survive--impatient of the drudgery of the
+compting-house, and the injustice of the age--but they, we believe, are
+in the band--the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the
+least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers from the bowels of
+the earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble--flunkies long out of
+place, and unable to live on their liveries--felons acquitted, or that
+have dreed their punishment--picked men from the shilling galleries of
+playhouses--and the élite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look
+how all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it of
+such materials that our conquering army was made?--were such the heroes
+of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo?
+
+Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go,
+are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three years
+ripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined into
+courage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets become
+patriots--members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and step
+out from the ranks to head the storm. Lord bless you! have you not
+studied sympathy and _l'esprit de corps_? An army fifty thousand strong
+consists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; and
+saints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then,
+that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory to
+victory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at work
+with all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing _Te Deum?_
+You must not be permitted too curiously to analyse the composition of
+the British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them as
+Wholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God to
+bless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar.
+
+The baggage-waggons halt, and some refreshment is sent for to the women
+and children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there--a
+year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now
+mothers, with babies at their breasts--happy still perhaps; but that
+pretty face is woefully wan--that hair did not use to be so
+dishevelled--and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay
+so white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp of the seducer.
+
+Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her
+marriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and no
+more, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots not
+fall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell.
+
+The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and twelve outsides--driver and
+guard excluded--rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stoppages.
+Why, in the name of Heaven, are all people nowadays in such haste and
+hurry? Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of this dozen and a
+half Protestants and Catholics--alike anxious for emancipation--should
+be at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of the
+twenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are we
+that that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman--whose ample
+rotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, a
+spenser--needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to his
+comfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honest
+man's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge,
+or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades.
+But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats with
+as many necks as Hydra--the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud of
+dust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeled
+onwards a mile on its destination.
+
+But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us--a hearse
+and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that
+the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got
+higher than a single-horse Chay--yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneys
+must be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides a
+race, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, and
+another--all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, on
+cart-horses in the Brooze--the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort of
+notice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps its
+snorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water--for well
+may they be thirsty--the kirkyard being far among the hills, and the
+roads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend," addressing ourself to the
+hearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir--if you
+are going my way, you may have a lift for a dram!" We had always
+thought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in the
+month of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in that
+month too--some in warm sheets--and some in cold--cold--cold--dripping
+damp as the grave.
+
+But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish--that
+is to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabited
+by persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know to
+the contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather too
+great an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, of
+sufficient antiquity to please a lover of the olden time; and of those
+four, the one which we used to love best to look at was--THE MAINS. No
+need to describe it in many words. A Hall on a river-side, embosomed in
+woods--holms and meadows winding away in front, with their low thick
+hedgerows and stately single trees--on--on--on--as far as the eye can
+reach, a crowd of grove-tops--elms chiefly, or beeches--and a beautiful
+boundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell,
+Ma'am--farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-house
+at the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed grey
+walls of the MAINS, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by the
+weather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house," quod Sergeant
+Stewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune--so
+the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had
+been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could
+do--and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand,
+undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own
+decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own
+hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with
+shells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor--and that
+bright scintillating piece of spar, the centre of the circle, came all
+the way from Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, who died a
+Professor. It is strange the roof has not fallen in long ago; but what a
+slight ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins from tumbling
+into nothing! The old moss-house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive;
+and, if these swallows don't take care, they will be stunning themselves
+against our face, jerking out and in, through door and window, twenty
+times in a minute. Yet with all that twittering of swallows--and with
+all that frequent crowing of a cock--and all that cawing of rooks--and
+cooing of doves--and lowing of cattle along the holms--and bleating of
+lambs along the braes--it is nevertheless a pensive place; and here sit
+we like a hermit, world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkening in
+the solitude to the voices of other years.
+
+What more mournful thought than that of a Decayed Family--a high-born
+race gradually worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The remote ancestors
+of this House were famous men of war--then some no less famous
+statesmen--then poets and historians--then minds still of fine, but of
+less energetic mould--and last of all, the mystery of madness breaking
+suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formed
+for profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters,
+undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race--the oldest on his
+approach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious of
+being destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. The
+twin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no
+maiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet's
+dream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walked
+along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at all
+describe--and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended all
+that imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As the
+sisters were, so were the brothers--distinguished above all their mates
+conspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangers
+could single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according to
+veritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable gift
+from nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the last
+three generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridian
+of life--and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans.
+Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from this
+cell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united together
+with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!--One
+morning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in her
+mind, and perfectly astray--with no symptom of having been suddenly
+alarmed or terrified--but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcely
+changed in their expression, although they knew not--but rarely--on whom
+they looked. It was but a few months till she died--and Adelaide was
+laughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day--and asked why mourning
+should be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away the
+bride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive?
+Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees--not walking in the free realms
+of earth and heaven with thy husband--the noble youth, who loved thee
+from thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can be
+beneath the sun--shut up in some narrow cell perhaps--no one knows
+where--whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land--with
+those hands manacled--a demon-light in eyes once most angelical--and
+ringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekings
+and yellings in thy poor distracted brain!--Down went the ship with all
+her crew in which Percy sailed;--the sabre must have been in the hand of
+a skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto
+down; and the gentle Richard, whose soul--while he possessed it
+clearly--was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he was
+as a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short time
+starlike reappear--and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal
+creatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to save
+sinners.
+
+Let us away--let us away from this overpowering place--and make our
+escape from such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebration of merry
+May-day? Is this the spirit in which we ought to look over the bosom of
+the earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just as man's heart should
+be teeming--and why not ours--with hopes and joys? Yet beautiful as this
+May-day is--and all the country round which it so tenderly illumines, we
+came not hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant home, to indulge
+ourself in a joyful happiness. No, hither came we purposely to mourn
+among the scenes which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And
+therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life
+is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the
+cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after a
+life of wandering--and maybe not without sorrow--comes back to gaze on
+the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of
+Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still--for, praise be to Heaven!
+the sense of beauty is still strong within us--and methinks we could
+feel the beauty of this scene though our heart were broken.
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, so
+pertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limited
+understandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius,
+and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do not
+know that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formally
+stated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect,
+nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine his
+statement, which, though, as we think, altogether unsatisfactory and
+sophistical, is yet a splendid specimen of false reasoning, and
+therefore worthy of being exposed and overthrown. Dr Johnson was not
+often utterly wrong in his mature and considerate judgments respecting
+any subject of paramount importance to the virtue and happiness of
+mankind. He was a good and wise being; but sometimes he did grievously
+err; and never more so than in his vain endeavour to exclude from the
+province of poetry its noblest, highest, and holiest domain. Shut the
+gates of Heaven against Poetry, and her flights along this earth will be
+feebler and lower,--her wings clogged and heavy by the attraction of
+matter,--and her voice--like that of the caged lark, so different from
+its hymning when lost to sight in the sky--will fail to call forth the
+deepest responses from the sanctuary of our spirit.
+
+"Let no pious ear be offended," says Johnson, "if I advance, in
+opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often
+please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic
+poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose
+it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the
+grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn,
+the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise
+his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the
+disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the
+description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or
+the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man
+admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of
+his Reedemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.
+
+"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing
+something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are
+few, and being few are universally known: but few as they are, they can
+be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment,
+and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting
+an idea more grateful in the mind than things themselves afford. This
+effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract,
+and the concealment of those that repel, the imagination; but religion
+must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and
+such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly
+expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his
+comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be
+hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great,
+desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being.
+Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection
+cannot be improved.
+
+"The employments of pious meditation are _faith_, _thanksgiving_,
+_repentance_, and _supplication_. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be
+invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful
+of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is
+confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed.
+Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure
+for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself
+through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry
+for mercy.
+
+"Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
+expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
+because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
+itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight
+the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies
+nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere."
+
+Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit--that they
+are fit--for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wide
+and comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and just
+admission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once as
+destructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. The
+doctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didactic
+poem--and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are also
+expounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as it
+were, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as can
+possibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit of
+religion--and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also be
+frequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, in
+particular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense,
+a Sacred poem?
+
+"But," says Dr Johnson, "the subject of the disputation is not piety,
+but the motives to piety." Why introduce the word "disputation," as if
+it characterised justly and entirely all didactic poetry? And who ever
+heard of an essential distinction between piety, and motives to piety?
+Mr James Montgomery, in a very excellent Essay prefixed to that most
+interesting collection, "The Christian Poet," well observes, that
+"motives to piety must be of the _nature_ of piety, otherwise they could
+never incite to it--the precepts and sanctions of the Gospel might as
+well be denied to be any part of the Gospel." And, for our own parts, we
+scarcely know what piety is, separated from its motives--or how, so
+separated, it could be expressed in words at all.
+
+With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, the argument, if argument it
+may be called, is still more lame and impotent. "A poet," it is said,
+"may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the
+spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the
+revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader
+shall lay aside." Most true he may; but then we are told, "the subject
+of the description is not God, but the works of God!" Alas! what
+trifling--what miserable trifling is this! In the works of God, God is
+felt to be by us His creatures, whom He has spiritually endowed. We
+cannot look on them, even in our least elevated moods, without some
+shadow of love or awe; in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them with
+religion. By the very constitution of our intelligence, the effects
+speak of the cause. We are led by nature up to nature's God. The Bible
+is not the only revelation--there is another--dimmer but not less
+divine--for surely the works are as the words of God. No great poet, in
+describing the glories and beauties of the external world, is forgetful
+of the existence and attributes of the Most High. That thought, and that
+feeling, animate all his strains; and though he dare not to describe Him
+the Ineffable, he cannot prevent his poetry from being beautifully
+coloured by devotion, tinged by piety--in its essence it is religious.
+
+It appears, then, that the qualifications or restrictions with which Dr
+Johnson is willing to allow that there may be didactic and descriptive
+sacred poetry, are wholly unmeaning, and made to depend on distinctions
+which have no existence.
+
+Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr Montgomery well remarks,
+Johnson makes no mention, except it be implicated with the statement,
+that "the ideas of Christian Theology are too sacred for fiction--a
+sentiment more just than the admirers of Milton and Klopstock are
+willing to admit, without almost plenary indulgence in favour of these
+great, but not infallible authorities." Here Mr Montgomery expresses
+himself very cautiously--perhaps rather too much so--for he leaves us in
+the dark about his own belief. But this we do not hesitate to say, that
+though there is great danger of wrong being done to the ideas of
+Christian theology by poetry--a wrong which must be most painful to the
+whole inner being of a Christian; yet that there seems no necessity of
+such a wrong, and that a great poet, guarded by awe, and fear, and love,
+may move his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, even among the
+most awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awful
+for "fiction"--but fiction is not the word here, any more than
+disputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; and
+then, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with the
+Holy of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities,
+if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards were
+inspired--with them
+
+              ----"the name
+    Of prophet and of poet was the same;"
+
+but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, not in that highest of
+senses inspired, is, we may say it, of the same kind--inferior but in
+degree; for religion itself is always an inspiration. It is felt to be
+so in the prose of holy men--Why not in their poetry?
+
+If these views be just, and we have expressed them "boldly, yet
+humbly"--all that remains to be set aside of Dr Johnson's argument is,
+"that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and man,
+cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator,
+and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than
+poetry can confer."
+
+There is something very fine and true in the sentiment here; but the
+sentiment is only true in some cases, not in all. There are different
+degrees in the pious moods of the most pious spirit that ever sought
+communion with its God and its Saviour. Some of these are awe-struck and
+speechless. That line,
+
+    "Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!"
+
+denies the power of poetry to be adequate to adoration, while the line
+itself is most glorious poetry. The temper even of our fallen spirits
+may be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute before
+his Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feel
+ourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessness
+laid upon us--but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, and
+the heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song--in
+the inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms--poetry
+indeed--if there be poetry on this earth? Why may we not say that the
+spirits of just men made perfect--almost perfect, by such visitations
+from heaven--will break forth--"rapt, inspired," into poetry which may
+be called holy, sacred, divine?
+
+We feel as if treading on forbidden ground--and therefore speak
+reverently; but still we do not fear to say, that between that highest
+state of contemplative piety which must be mute, down to that lowest
+state of the same feeling which evanishes and blends into mere human
+emotion as between creature and creature, there are infinite degrees of
+emotion which may be all embodied, without offence, in words--and if so
+embodied, with sincerity and humility, will be poetry, and poetry too of
+the most beautiful and affecting kind.
+
+"Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits
+of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer."
+Most true, indeed. But, though poetry did not confer that higher state,
+poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe
+audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry
+may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because
+poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself
+out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there
+may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and
+strong in the spirit of that word--unexistent but for the Old and the
+New Testament.
+
+We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argument
+amounts to this--that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between
+God and the human soul, _cannot be poetical_. But here we at once ask
+ourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry," he
+says, "is invention--such invention as, by producing something
+unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, again, there is confusion and
+sophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, such
+invention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is
+of that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprising
+in a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelings
+as these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, without
+much--without any aid from the imagination--except in as far as the
+imagination will work under the power of every great emotion that does
+not absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even below
+the very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment," and
+"very little from novelty of expression"--to use Dr Johnson's words--for
+it is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet is
+seeking--"the strain we hear is of a higher mood;" and "few as the
+topics of devotion may be," (but are they few?) and "universally known,"
+they are all commensurate--nay, far more than commensurate, with the
+whole power of the soul--never can they become unaffecting while it is
+our lot to die;--even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow
+on such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, and
+sincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shall
+dare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt to
+be poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, and
+by their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels," than whom we were
+made but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be no
+more, be equalled in heaven?
+
+We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the _effect_ of
+poetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea
+more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is only
+because the things themselves are imperfect--more so than suits the
+aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a higher
+sphere--a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all awe
+and reverence, made the subject of song--then it is the office--the
+sacred office of poetry--not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soul
+that contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human nature
+glory in the "Paradise Lost?"
+
+"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name
+of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted--Infinity cannot be
+amplified--Perfection cannot be improved." Should not this go to
+prohibit all speech--all discourse--all sermons concerning the divine
+attributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the
+attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot,
+indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot be
+improved"--nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while the
+Creator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, too
+willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, may
+be raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel,"
+from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into the
+ether.
+
+Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural Theology? On
+the same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in his
+doctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all
+animate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, or
+improve perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divine
+contemplations--by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of an
+insect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and
+exclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" And
+while science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and the
+mercies of our God?
+
+The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as it
+proceeds--the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it is
+founded becomes more and more glaring--the paradoxes, dealt out as
+confidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsive
+alike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of pious
+meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith,
+invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.
+Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet
+addressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is
+to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence
+of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication
+to men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but
+supplication to God can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt
+authoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is not
+invariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering--unquaking--to save it
+from lingering or from sudden death--is the most difficult service to
+which the frail spirit--frail even in its greatest strength--is called
+every day--every hour--of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and
+often most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will," says Jeremy Taylor,
+"is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of
+trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; it
+wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more.
+It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore,
+for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignity
+and excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrument
+and capacity of all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose faith is
+finally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of that faith, what
+hinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings,
+and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith has
+experienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many a
+melancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent of
+peace?
+
+Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holy
+effusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be
+"confined to a few modes." "Out of the fulness of the heart the tongue
+speaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech,
+yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude--yea, the
+very dumb do speak--nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that has
+been wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and high
+enthusiasm.
+
+That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not be
+at leisure for cadences and epithets," is in one respect true; but
+nobody supposes that during such moments--or hours--poetry is composed;
+and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mind
+is left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of the
+past, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmly
+contemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogether
+endurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry--that
+is, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted to
+clothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after a
+swell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or still
+bearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the whole
+being self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itself
+in an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance
+will not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets," but cadences
+and epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth,
+if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences and
+epithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, and
+ingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly and
+more easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressive
+mood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the full
+possession of powers that had for a short severe season been
+overwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on the
+feelings that during their height were nearly unendurable, and then
+unfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at the
+bar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receiving
+his doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to
+the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or
+reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly
+recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that
+hour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?
+
+"Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of
+persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." And in that
+cry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his
+creatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which they
+have learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of being
+forgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may follow
+supplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various and
+most affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many other
+words besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle with
+prayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak in
+poetry--else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacred
+passions.
+
+Dr Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that
+the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre
+and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more
+excellent than itself." Here he had in his mind the most false notions
+of poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despising
+simplicity--whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, he
+truly says, is in religion most sublime--and why should not poetry be
+simple in its expression? Is it not always so--when the mood of mind it
+expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great
+emotion? But he uses--as we see--the terms "lustre" and "decoration"--as
+if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and
+ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct
+and simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reason
+sublime.
+
+With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that Dr
+Johnson, enlightened man as he was, should have concluded his argument
+with this absurdity--"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as they are--on them have been
+bestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence--and
+here we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone--one of the highest that
+ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been
+desecrated by the fictions--so to call them--of John Milton; majestic as
+are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments
+that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung
+around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of
+Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in
+the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent as
+are the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to our
+eyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a still
+lake or the slumbering ocean.
+
+This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr Johnson's splendid
+sophistry--splendid at first sight--but on closer inspection a mere
+haze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artificial lustre. How far more
+truly, and how far more sublimely, does Milton, "that mighty orb of
+song," speak of his own divine gift--the gift of Poetry! "These
+abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of
+power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and
+public civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the
+affections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the
+throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be
+wrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies
+of Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations,
+doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore
+the general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's true
+worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and in
+virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in all
+the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
+subtleties and reflections of men's thoughts from within; all these
+things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and
+describe--Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, through
+all instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of soft
+and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself
+unless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths of
+honesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear to
+all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult
+indeed."
+
+It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown on
+the mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets,
+moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel more
+profoundly than they--to see, as it were, into a new world. The things
+of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck
+moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the
+revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by
+Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity,
+which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain.
+The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates
+and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over
+many lands into "the huts where poor men lie"--and thoughts are familiar
+there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from
+the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his
+pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being,
+in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and
+he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even
+when he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that Religion
+was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime
+expression--The Brotherhood of Man.
+
+Yet it is just as true that there is as much misery and suffering in
+Christendom--nay, far more of them all--than troubled and tore men's
+hearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. But
+with what different feelings is it all thought of--spoken of--looked
+at--alleviated--repented--expiated--atoned for--now! In the olden time,
+such was the prostration of the "million," that it was only when seen in
+high places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling;--Remorse
+was the privilege of Kings and Princes--and the Furies shook their
+scourges but before the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had brought
+eclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line.
+
+But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow all
+disastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does
+"with the lofty equalise the low;" and the same deep-felt community of
+guilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in a
+lower degree something of the same character--has made it far more
+profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and
+thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charity
+more comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by those
+to whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed,
+darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life.
+
+We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified
+and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human
+nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken
+of that purity and that elevation--and that it may now be a far holier
+and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of
+Apollo and the Muses. We may not circumscribe its sphere. To what
+cerulean heights shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what
+dungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers and
+privileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion?
+
+If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then it
+would indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be worse than
+worthless. They must be, not imperfect merely, but false; and not false
+merely, but calumnious against human nature. The agonies of passion
+fling men down to the dust on their knees, or smite them motionless as
+stone statues, sitting alone in their darkened chambers of despair. But
+sooner or later, all eyes, all hearts, look for comfort to God. The
+coldest metaphysical analyst could not avoid _that_, in his sage
+enumeration of "each particular hair" that is twisted and untwisted by
+him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the impassioned and
+philosophical poet will not, dare not, for the spirit that is within
+him, exclude _that_ from his elegies, his hymns, and his songs, which,
+whether mournful or exulting, are inspired by the life-long, life-deep
+conviction, that all the greatness of the present is but for the
+future--that the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyre
+only because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens.
+
+But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a
+picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its
+very essence--how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this
+spirit--how shall we limit it--measure it--and accustom it to the curb
+of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few
+who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in
+allusion--hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half
+ashamed--and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians,
+without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose
+scorn, even in this enlightened age, has--the more is the pity--even by
+men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal than
+death?
+
+No: Let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion.
+Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great
+Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen,
+who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's
+discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened
+by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still more
+unpublishable--but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured that
+the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to your
+eyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish,
+but will have everlasting life. Your books--humble and unpretending
+though they be--yet here and there a page not uninspired by the spirit
+of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, and Charity--that is, by Religion--will
+be held up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of the pious
+patriarch, sitting with his children's children round his knees--nor
+will any one sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers the sacred
+links that bind together the brotherhood of man, escape the solemn
+search of a soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught wisdom, and
+happy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknown--even
+perhaps by name--who although dead yet speaketh--and, without
+superstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household.
+
+He who knows that he writes in the fear of God and in the love of man,
+will not arrest the thoughts that flow from his pen, because he knows
+that they may--will be--insulted and profaned by the name of cant, and
+he himself held up as a hypocrite. In some hands, ridicule is indeed a
+terrible weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius,
+branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule
+in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as
+a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her
+blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float
+in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the
+sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage
+during the Christmas holydays of a thousand years.
+
+We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metrical
+composition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and
+then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a pious
+pretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is, indeed, to see
+"fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express
+our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those
+awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings,
+but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns--would-be
+fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and
+rings on their fingers--afterwards extending their notes into Sacred
+Poems for the use of the public--penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments
+of Providence as they would the proceedings of a police court.
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The distinctive character of poetry, it has been said, and credited
+almost universally, is _to please_. That they who have studied the laws
+of thought and passion should have suffered themselves to be deluded by
+an unmeaning word is mortifying enough; but it is more than
+mortifying--it perplexes and confounds--to think that poets themselves,
+and poets too of the highest order, have declared the same degrading
+belief of what is the scope and tendency, the end and aim of their own
+divine art--forsooth, _to please_! Pleasure is no more the end of
+poetry, than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion,
+or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction,
+expansion, elevation, honour, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or it
+is nothing. Is the end of "Paradise Lost" to please? Is the end of
+Dante's Divine Comedy to please? Is the end of the Psalms of David to
+please? Or of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that poetry has
+often been injured or vitiated by having been written in the spirit of
+this creed. It relieved poets from the burden of their duty--from the
+responsibility of their endowments--from the conscience that is in
+genius. We suspect that this doctrine has borne especially hard on all
+sacred poetry, disinclined poets to devoting their genius to it--and
+consigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much of what is great in that
+magnificent walk. For if the masters of the Holy Harp are to strike it
+but to please--if their high inspirations are to be deadened and dragged
+down by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim--they will
+either be contented to awaken a few touching tones of "those strains
+that once did sweet in Zion glide"--unwilling to prolong and deepen them
+into the diapason of praise--or they will deposit their lyre within the
+gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "the soul of music sleeping
+on its strings."
+
+All arguments, or rather objections to, sacred poetry, dissolve as you
+internally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like
+imagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes ocular
+deceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry is mostly meant
+Scriptural; but there are, and always have been, conceited and callous
+critics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, and
+indeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had such
+criticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried in
+their great bards. Poetry, it is clear, embraces all we can experience;
+and every high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, and moral state
+of being becomes religious before it passes away, provided it be left
+free to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted to the glebe by some
+severe slavery of condition, which destroys the desire of ascent by the
+same inexorable laws that palsy the power, and reconcile the toilers to
+the doom of the dust. If all the states of being that poetry illustrates
+do thus tend, of their own accord, towards religious elevation, all high
+poetry must be religious; and so it is, for its whole language is
+breathing of a life "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men
+call earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations,
+obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or embodies,
+enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directly
+or indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of the
+immortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward and
+retribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, and
+he may hang up his harp.
+
+Among the great living poets, Wordsworth is the one whose poetry is to
+us the most inexplicable--with all our reverence for his transcendent
+genius, we do not fear to say the most open to the most serious
+charges--on the score of its religion. From the first line of the
+"Lyrical Ballads" to the last of "The Excursion"--it is avowedly one
+system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life,
+and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human
+heart--the human mind--the human soul--to use his own fine words--is
+"the haunt and main region of his song." There are few, perhaps none of
+our affections--using that term in its largest sense--which have not
+been either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In
+his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears
+to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentable
+defect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of the
+representation? We think there is--and that it lies in his Religion.
+
+In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion," is there
+any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to
+Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The
+hopes that lie beyond the grave--and the many holy and awful feelings in
+which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever
+part of the character of any of the persons--male or female--old or
+young--brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most
+interesting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitely
+delineated--and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, had
+the thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's
+heart during the hours of inspiration--and he often has written like a
+man inspired--they must have found expression in his strains; and the
+personages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, would
+have been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and their
+trials, Christians. But most assuredly this is not the case; the
+religion of this great Poet--in all his poetry published previous to
+"The Excursion"--is but the "Religion of the Woods."
+
+In "The Excursion," his religion is brought forward--prominently and
+conspicuously--in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet,
+and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is it
+Christianity? No--it is not. There are glimpses given of some of the
+Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions,
+in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect without some allusion to
+the Christian creed. The interlocutors--eloquent as they all are--say
+but little on that theme; nor do they show--if we except the
+Priest--much interest in it--any solicitude; they may all, for anything
+that appears to the contrary, be deists.
+
+Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from entering
+on such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance of
+this having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem.
+Nor could it have been the case with such a man--a man privileged, by
+the power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations of
+the earth, on all themes, however high and holy, which the children of
+men can feel and understand. Christianity, during almost all their
+disquisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as they kept
+journeying among the hills,
+
+    "On man, on nature, and on human life,
+    Musing in Solitude!"
+
+But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, or, perceiving it,
+looked upon it with a cold and indifferent regard, and passed by into
+the poetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering from the cloudy
+skies. Their talk is of "Palmyra central, in the desert," rather than of
+Jerusalem. On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful poetry is
+bestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian.
+
+Yet there is no subject too high for Wordsworth's muse. In the preface
+to "The Excursion," he says daringly--we fear too daringly,--
+
+                    "Urania, I shall need
+    Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such
+    Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven!
+    For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
+    Deep--and aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
+    To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
+    All strength--all terror--single or in bands,
+    That ever was put forth in personal form,
+    Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir
+    Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones;
+    I passed them unalarm'd!"
+
+Has the poet, who believes himself entitled to speak thus of the power
+and province given to him to put forth and to possess, spoken in
+consonance with such a strain, by avoiding, in part of the very work to
+which he so triumphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? Nothing
+could have reconciled us to a burst of such--audacity--we use the word
+considerately--but the exhibition of a spirit divinely imbued with the
+Christian faith. For what else, we ask, but the truths beheld by the
+Christian Faith, can be beyond those "personal forms," "beyond Jehovah,"
+"the choirs of shouting angels," and the "empyreal thrones?"
+
+This omission is felt the more deeply--the more sadly--from such
+introduction as there is of Christianity; for one of the books of "The
+Excursion" begins with a very long, and a very noble eulogy on the
+Church Establishment in England. How happened it that he who pronounced
+such eloquent panegyric--that they who so devoutly inclined their ear to
+imbibe it--should have been all contented with
+
+    "That basis laid, these principles of faith
+    Announced,"
+
+and yet throughout the whole course of their discussions, before and
+after, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity or a
+Christian Church in the world?
+
+We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtful and sincere student of
+this great poet's works, must regard such omission--such inconsistency
+or contradiction--with more than the pain of regret; for there is no
+relief afforded to our defrauded hearts from any quarter to which we can
+look. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of a
+Christian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof--for our
+delight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before the
+heavenly splendour; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after all
+this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation
+into the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on the
+Church of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we have
+much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most
+ingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion.
+
+Should the opinion boldly avowed be challenged, we shall enter into
+further exposition and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confine
+ourselves to some remarks on one of the most elaborate tales of domestic
+suffering in "The Excursion." In the story of Margaret, containing, we
+believe, more than four hundred lines--a tolerably long poem in
+itself--though the whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife and
+mother's heart, for year after year of "hope deferred, that maketh the
+heart sick," is described, or rather dissected, with an almost cruel
+anatomy--not one quivering fibre being left unexposed--all the
+fluctuating, and finally all the constant agitations laid bare and naked
+that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave--there is not--except
+one or two weak lines, that seem to have been afterwards purposely
+dropped in--one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret a
+Christian?--Let the answer be yes--as good a Christian as ever kneeled
+in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for
+the resurrection. If she was--then the picture painted of her and her
+agonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character of
+all other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as she
+was, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions--she surely
+must have turned sometimes--ay, often, and often, and often, else had
+she sooner left the clay--towards her Lord and Saviour. But of such
+"comfort let no man speak," seems to have been the principle of Mr
+Wordsworth; and the consequence is, that this, perhaps the most
+elaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one human
+heart, is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious
+mind--_that_ being wanting without which the entire representation is
+vitiated, and necessarily false to nature--to virtue--to resignation--to
+life--and to death. These may seem strong words--but we are ready to
+defend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth.
+
+This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have been
+all-in-all--for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we
+regard the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance--shocks far deeper
+feelings within us than those of taste, and throws over the whole poem
+to which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion of
+hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion, which at the best
+is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Above
+all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over
+the orthodox Church-of-Englandism--for once to quote a not inexpressive
+barbarism of Bentham--which every now and then breaks out either in
+passing compliment--amounting to but a bow--or in eloquent laudation,
+during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaks
+nobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning
+all the land; but in none--no, not one of the houses of the humble, the
+hovels of the poor into which he takes us--is the religion preached in
+those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealing
+organ, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree,
+lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tutelary spirit of the
+lowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find the
+Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever
+was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of
+the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he
+breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be
+one of the order of the High Priests of nature?
+
+Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very
+interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does
+not pretend to present a model of virtue?--that there are miseries which
+shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too
+severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their
+suffering, to look to that source for comfort?--that this is human
+nature, and the description only follows it?--that when "in peace and
+comfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven," and that
+her habit in that respect was only broken up by the stroke of her
+calamity, causing such a derangement of her mental power as should
+deeply interest the sympathies?--in short, that the poet is an artist,
+and that the privation of all comfort from religion completes the
+picture of her desolation?
+
+Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet so
+pathetically speak?
+
+                    "Of one whose stock
+    Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof.
+    She was a woman of a steady mind,
+    Tender and deep in her excess of love;
+    Not speaking much--pleased rather with the joy
+    Of her own thoughts. By some especial care
+    Her temper had been framed, as if to make
+    A Being who, by adding love to fear,
+    Might live on earth a life of happiness.
+    Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side
+    The humble worth that satisfied her heart--
+    Frugal, affectionate, sober, and withal
+    Keenly industrious. She with pride would tell
+    That he was often seated at his loom
+    In summer, ere the mower was abroad
+    Among the dewy grass--in early spring,
+    Ere the last star had vanish'd. They who pass'd
+    At evening, from behind the garden fence
+    Might hear his busy spade, which he would ply
+    After his daily work, until the light
+    Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost
+    In the dark hedges. So their days were spent
+    In peace and comfort; and a pretty boy
+    Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven."
+
+We are prepared by that character, so amply and beautifully drawn, to
+pity her to the utmost demand that may be made on our pity--to judge her
+leniently, even if in her desertion she finally give way to inordinate
+and incurable grief. But we are not prepared to see her sinking from
+depth to depth of despair, in wilful abandonment to her anguish, without
+oft-repeated and long-continued passionate prayers for support or
+deliverance from her trouble, to the throne of mercy. Alas! it is true
+that in our happiness our gratitude to God is too often more selfish
+than we think, and that in our misery it faints or dies. So is it even
+with the best of us--but surely not all life long--unless the heart has
+been utterly crushed--the brain itself distorted in its functions, by
+some calamity, under which nature's self gives way, and falls into ruins
+like a rent house when the last prop is withdrawn.
+
+                      "Nine tedious years
+    From their first separation--nine long years
+    She linger'd in unquiet widowhood--
+    A wife and widow. Needs must it have been
+    A sore heart-wasting."
+
+It must indeed, and it is depicted by a master's hand. But even were it
+granted that sufferings, such as hers, might, in the course of nature,
+have extinguished all heavenly comfort--all reliance on God and her
+Saviour--the process and progress of such fatal relinquishment should
+have been shown, with all its struggles and all its agonies; if the
+religion of one so good was so unavailing, its weakness should have
+been exhibited and explained, that we might have known assuredly why, in
+the multitude of the thoughts within her, there was no solace for her
+sorrow, and how unpitying Heaven let her die of grief.
+
+This tale, too, is the very first told by the Pedlar to the Poet, under
+circumstances of much solemnity, and with affecting note of preparation.
+It arises naturally from the sight of the ruined cottage near which
+they, by appointment, have met; the narrator puts his whole heart into
+it, and the listener is overcome by its pathos. No remark is made on
+Margaret's grief, except that
+
+    "I turn'd aside in weakness, nor had power
+    To thank him for the tale which he had told.
+    I stood, and leaning o'er the garden wall,
+    Review'd that woman's sufferings; and it seem'd
+    To comfort me, while, with a brother's love,
+    I bless'd her in the impotence of grief.
+    Then towards the cottage I return'd, and traced
+    Fondly, though with an interest more mild,
+    The sacred spirit of humanity,
+    Which, 'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies
+    Of nature--'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers,
+    And silent overgrowings, still survived."
+
+Such musings receive the Pedlar's approbation, and he says,--
+
+    "My friend! enough to sorrow you have given.
+    The purposes of wisdom ask no more.
+    Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read
+    The forms of things with an unworthy eye.
+    She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here."
+
+As the Poet, then, was entirely satisfied with the tale, so ought to be
+all readers. No hint is dropped that there was anything to blame in the
+poor woman's nine years' passion--no regret breathed that she had sought
+not, by means offered to all, for that peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding--no question asked, how it was that she had not communed
+with her own afflicted heart, over the pages of that Book where it is
+written, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
+will give you rest!" The narrator had indeed said, that on revisiting
+her during her affliction,--
+
+                    "Her humble lot of books,
+    Which in her cottage window, heretofore,
+    Had been piled up against the corner panes
+    In seemly order, now, with straggling leaves,
+    Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut,
+    As they had chanced to fall."
+
+But he does not mention the Bible.
+
+What follows has always seemed to us of a questionable character:--
+
+    "I well remember that those very plumes,
+    Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall,
+    By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er,
+    As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd
+    So still an image of tranquillity,
+    So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful
+    Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind,
+    _That what we feel of sorrow and despair
+    From ruin and from change, and all the griefs
+    The passing shows of Being leave behind_,
+    Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live
+    Where meditation was. I turn'd away,
+    And walk'd along my road in happiness."
+
+These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in face of them, to deny the
+power of the beauty and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow of us
+mortal beings, who live for awhile on her breast. Assuredly there is
+sorrow that may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here spoken of--for poor
+Margaret, many years dead--was of that kind. But does not the heart of a
+man beat painfully, as if violence were offered to its most sacred
+memories, to hear from the lips of wisdom, that "sorrow and despair from
+ruin and from change, and all the griefs" that we can suffer here below,
+appear an idle dream among plumes, and weeds, and spear-grass, and
+mists, and rain-drops? "Where meditation is!" What meditation? Turn
+thou, O child of a day! to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest
+find comfort. It matters not whether a spring-bank be thy seat by Rydal
+Mere, "while heaven and earth do make one imagery," or thou sittest in
+the shadow of death, beside a tomb.
+
+We said, that for the present we should confine our remarks on this
+subject to the story of Margaret; but they are, more or less,
+applicable to almost all the stories in "The Excursion." In many of the
+eloquent disquisitions and harangues of the Three Friends, they carry
+along with them the sympathies of all mankind; and the wisest may be
+enlightened by their wisdom. But what we complain of is, that neither in
+joy nor grief, happiness nor misery, is religion the dominant principle
+of thought and feeling in the character of any one human being with whom
+we are made acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single one, man or
+woman, are we made to feel the beauty of holiness--the power and the
+glory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought before us whom we pity,
+respect, admire, love. The great poet is high-souled and
+tender-hearted--his song is pure as the morning, bright as day, solemn
+as night. But his inspiration is not drawn from the Book of God, but
+from the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails to sustain his genius when
+venturing into the depths of tribulation and anguish. Therefore
+imperfect are his most truthful delineations of sins and sorrows; and
+not in his philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found alleviation or
+cure of the maladies that kill the soul. Therefore never will "The
+Excursion" become a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and conditions of
+a Christian People, like "The Task" or the "Night Thoughts." Their
+religion is that of revelation--it acknowledges no other source but the
+word of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay,
+these poets appeal; and though they may sometimes, or often,
+misinterpret its judgment, that is an evil incident to finite
+intelligence; and the very consciousness that it is so, inspires a
+perpetual humility that is itself a virtue found to accompany only a
+Christian's Faith.
+
+We have elsewhere vindicated the choice of a person of low degree as
+Chief of "The Excursion," and exult to think that a great poet should
+have delivered his highest doctrines through the lips of a Scottish
+Pedlar.
+
+                "Early had he learn'd
+    To reverence the volume that displays
+    The mystery of life that cannot die."
+
+Throughout the poem he shows that he does reverence it, and that his
+whole being has been purified and elevated by its spirit. But fond as he
+is of preaching, and excellent in the art or gift, a Christian Preacher
+he is not--at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by his parentage and
+nurture with all most hallowed round the poor man's hearth, and guarded
+by his noble nature from all offence to the sanctities there enshrined;
+yet the truth must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not the Word as
+the servant of the Lord, as the follower of Him Crucified. There is very
+much in his announcements to his equals wide of the mark set up in the
+New Testament. We seem to hear rather of a divine power and harmony in
+the universe than of the Living God. The spirit of Christianity as
+connected with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Human-God, the link
+between heaven and earth, between helplessness and omnipotence, ought to
+be everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a Christian
+Poet--wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love for
+his goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness.
+Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of that
+spirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, falling
+not from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming its
+conceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own power than humbled
+in the comparison of its personal inferiority; and in enunciating them
+in verse, more rejoices in the consciousness of the power of its own
+genius than in the contemplation of Him from whom cometh every good and
+perfect gift--it has not attained Piety, and its worship is not an
+acceptable service. For it is self-worship--worship of the creature's
+own conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness,
+in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command the
+praise and adoration of his fellow-mortals. Those lofty speculations,
+alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment of
+waterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude the
+hold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment and
+impatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escaping
+from the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a
+Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support to
+his steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him to
+everlasting life.
+
+Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little of
+the light of revelation, and they all speak of the theological
+doctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressions
+as these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem often
+to have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are which
+human reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it is
+impossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely to
+itself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or in
+express, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; and
+we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting
+its powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In these
+circumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions which
+regard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfy
+itself in such great inquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer of
+truth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is able
+to deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it in
+their belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, it
+has means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing one
+from the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would be
+impossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which has
+been poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertain
+what self-left reason could find out. Yet this much we are able to do in
+the speculations of our philosophy: We can inquire, in this light, what
+are the grounds of evidence which nature and reason themselves offer for
+belief in the same truths. A like remark must be extended to the
+morality which we seem now to inculcate from the authority of human
+reason. We no longer possess any such independent morality. The spirit
+of a higher, purer, moral law than man could discover, has been breathed
+over the world, and we have grown up in the air and the light of a
+system so congenial to the highest feelings of our human nature, that
+the wisest spirits amongst us have sometimes been tempted to forget that
+its origin is divine.
+
+Had "The Excursion" been written in the poet's later life, it had not
+been so liable to such objections as these; for much of his poetry
+composed since that era is imbued with a religious spirit, answering the
+soul's desire of the devoutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are
+sacred Poetry indeed. How comprehensive the sympathy of a truly pious
+heart! How religion reconciles different forms, and modes, and signs,
+and symbols of worship, provided only they are all imbued with the
+spirit of faith! This is the toleration Christianity sanctions--for it
+is inspired by its own universal love. No sectarian feeling here, that
+would exclude or debar from the holiest chamber in the poet's bosom one
+sincere worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. Christian brethren!
+By that mysterious bond our natures are brought into more endearing
+communion--now more than ever brethren, because of the blood that was
+shed for us all from His blessed side! Even of that most awful mystery
+in some prayer-like strains the Poet tremblingly speaks, in many a
+strain, at once so affecting and so elevating--breathing so divinely of
+Christian charity to all whose trust is in the Cross! Who shall say what
+form of worship is most acceptable to the Almighty? All are holy in
+which the soul seeks to approach him--holy
+
+          "The chapel lurking among trees,
+    Where a few villagers on bended knees
+    Find solace which a busy world disdains;"
+
+we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the image of some old
+abbey,--
+
+    "Once ye were holy, ye are holy still!"
+
+And what heart partakes not the awe of his
+
+              "Beneath that branching roof
+    Self-poised and scoop'd into ten thousand cells
+    Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
+    Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die"?
+
+Read the first of these sonnets with the last--and then once more the
+strains that come between--and you will be made to feel how various and
+how vast beneath the sky are the regions set apart by the soul for
+prayer and worship; and that all places become consecrated--the high and
+the humble--the mean and the magnificent--in which Faith and Piety have
+sought to hold communion with Heaven.
+
+But they who duly worship God in temples made with hands, meet every
+hour of their lives "Devotional Excitements" as they walk among His
+works; and in the later poetry of Wordsworth these abound--age having
+solemnised the whole frame of his being, that was always alive to
+religious emotions--but more than ever now, as around his paths in the
+evening of life longer fall the mysterious shadows. More fervid lines
+have seldom flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, than some
+awakened by the sounds and sights of a happy day in May--to him--though
+no church-bell was heard--a Sabbath. His occasional poems are often felt
+by us to be linked together by the finest affinities, which perhaps are
+but affinities between the feelings they inspire. Thus we turn from
+those lines to some on a subject seemingly very different, from a
+feeling of such fine affinities--which haply are but those subsisting
+between all things and thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in them
+how the Poet, as he gazes on a Family that holds not the Christian
+Faith, embraces them in the folds of Christian Love--and how religion as
+well as nature sanctifies the tenderness that is yearning at his heart
+towards them--"a Jewish Family"--who, though outcasts by Heaven's
+decree, are not by Heaven, still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth.
+
+How exquisite the stanzas composed in one of the Catholic Chapels in
+Switzerland,--
+
+    "Doom'd as we are our native dust
+    To wet with many a bitter shower,
+    It ill befits us to disdain
+    The Altar, to deride the Fane,
+    Where patient sufferers bend, in trust
+    To win a happier hour.
+
+    I love, where spreads the village lawn,
+    Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze;
+    Hail to the firm unmoving Cross,
+    Aloft, where pines their branches toss!
+    And to the Chapel far withdrawn,
+    That lurks by lonely ways!
+
+    Where'er we roam--along the brink
+    Of Rhine--or by the sweeping Po,
+    Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide,
+    _Whate'er we look on, at our side
+    Be Charity--to bid us think
+    And feel, if we would know._"
+
+How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, most
+touching in their simple pathos--such as a Hymn for the boatmen as they
+approach the Rapids--Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damsels
+floating homeward on the lake of Brientz--the Italian Itinerant and the
+Swiss Goat-herd--and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives of
+Italian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as if
+by magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace the
+peculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Such
+gentle visions disappear, and we sit by the side of the Poet as he gazes
+from his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the Church of San
+Salvador, which was almost destroyed by lightning a few years ago, while
+the altar and the image of the patron saint were untouched, and devoutly
+listen while he exclaims,--
+
+    "Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times,
+    Let all remind the soul of heaven;
+    Our slack devotion needs them all;
+    And faith, so oft of sense the thrall,
+    While she, by aid of Nature, climbs,
+    May hope to be forgiven."
+
+We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse of the Sun, 1820," one of the
+finest lyrical effusions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, and
+imagery, within the whole compass of poetry. If the beautiful be indeed
+essentially different from the sublime, we here feel that they may be
+made to coalesce so as to be in their united agencies one divine power.
+We called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transitions. Though not an
+ode, it is ode-like in its invocations; and it might be set and sung to
+music if Handel were yet alive, and St Cecilia to come down for an hour
+from heaven. How solemn the opening strain! and from the momentary
+vision of Science on her speculative Tower, how gently glides
+Imagination down, to take her place by the Poet's side, in his bark
+afloat beneath Italian skies--suddenly bedimmed, lake, land, and all,
+with a something between day and night. In a moment we are conscious of
+Eclipse. Our slight surprise is lost in the sense of a strange
+beauty--solemn not sad--settling on the face of nature and the abodes of
+men. In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, we
+have a vision of the Lake, with all its noblest banks, and bays, and
+bowers, and mountains--when in an instant we are wafted away from a
+scene that might well have satisfied our imagination and our heart--if
+high emotions were not uncontrollable and omnipotent--wafted away by
+Fancy with the speed of Fire--lakes, groves, cliffs, mountains, all
+forgotten--and alight amid an aerial host of figures, human and divine,
+on a spire that seeks the sky. How still those imaged sanctities and
+purities, all white as snows of Apennine, stand in the heavenly region,
+circle above circle, and crowned as with a zone of stars! They are
+imbued with life. In their animation the figures of angels and saints,
+insensate stones no more, seem to feel the Eclipse that shadows them,
+and look awful in the portentous light. In his inspiration he transcends
+the grandeur even of that moment's vision--and beholds in the visages of
+that aerial host those of the sons of heaven darkening with celestial
+sorrow at the Fall of Man--when
+
+        "Throngs of celestial visages,
+    Darkening like water in the breeze,
+    A holy sadness shared."
+
+Never since the day on which the wondrous edifice, in its consummate
+glory, first saluted the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneeling
+saint a thought so sad and so sublime--a thought beyond the reaches of
+the soul of him whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adornments so
+far from earth, that the silent company seem sometimes, as light and
+shadow moves among them, to be in ascension to heaven. But the Sun
+begins again to look like the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyful
+light from that awful trance, delights to behold
+
+              "Town and Tower,
+    The Vineyard and the Olive Bower,
+    Their lustre re-assume;"
+
+and "breathes there a man with soul so dead," that it burns not within
+him as he hears the heart of the husband and the father breathe forth
+its love and its fear, remembering on a sudden the far distant whom it
+has never forgotten--a love and a fear that saddens, but disturbs not,
+for the vision he saw had inspired him with a trust in the tender
+mercies of God? Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who may some time
+or other be a traveller over the wide world, the sacred stanzas that
+bring the Poem to a close--and it will not fail to comfort thee when
+sitting all alone by the well in the wilderness, or walking along the
+strange streets of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnight
+afloat on far-off seas.
+
+    "O ye, who guard and grace my Home
+    While in far-distant lands we roam,
+    Was such a vision given to you?
+    Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes,
+    Did sullen mist hide lake and skies
+    And mountains from your view?
+
+    "I ask in vain--and know far less,
+    If sickness, sorrow, or distress
+    Have spared my Dwelling to this hour;
+    Sad blindness! but ordained to prove
+    Our faith in Heaven's unfailing love,
+    And all-controlling power."
+
+Let us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James Montgomery is truly a
+religious poet. His popularity, which is great, has, by some scribes
+sitting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been attributed chiefly
+to the power of sectarianism. He is, we believe, a sectary; and, if all
+sects were animated by the spirit that breathes throughout his poetry,
+we should have no fears for the safety and stability of the Established
+Church; for in that self-same spirit was she built, and by that
+self-same spirit were her foundations dug in a rock. Many are the
+lights--solemn and awful all--in which the eyes of us mortal creatures
+may see the Christian dispensation. Friends, looking down from the top
+of a high mountain on a city-sprinkled plain, have each his own vision
+of imagination--each his own sinking or swelling of heart. They urge no
+inquisition into the peculiar affections of each other's secret
+breasts--all assured, from what each knows of his brother, that every
+eye there may see God--that every tongue that has the gift of lofty
+utterance may sing His praises aloud--that the lips that remain silent
+may be mute in adoration--and that all the distinctions of habits,
+customs, professions, modes of life, even natural constitution and form
+of character, if not lost, may be blended together in mild amalgamation
+under the common atmosphere of emotion, even as the towers, domes, and
+temples, are all softly or brightly interfused with the huts, cots, and
+homesteads--the whole scene below harmonious because inhabited by beings
+created by the same God--in his own image--and destined for the same
+immortality.
+
+It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, in an invidious sense,
+any of Montgomery's fame to any such cause. No doubt many persons read
+his poetry on account of its religion, who, but for that, would not have
+read it; and no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it.
+But so, too, do many persons read Wordsworth's poetry on account of its
+religion--the religion of the woods--who, but for that, would not have
+read it; and so, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. So is
+it with the common-manners-painting poetry of Crabbe--the
+dark-passion-painting poetry of Byron--the high-romance-painting poetry
+of Scott--and so on with Moore, Coleridge, Southey, and the rest. But it
+is to the _mens divinior_, however displayed, that they owe all their
+fame. Had Montgomery not been a true poet, all the Religious Magazines
+in the world could not have saved his name from forgetfulness and
+oblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholy
+Poppy--melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness; but as it is, he is
+like the Rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, planted
+on the banks of "that river whose streams make glad the city of the
+Lord."
+
+Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conceived in the spirit of a most
+exclusive sectarianism, may not be of a very high order, and powerfully
+impressive on minds whose religious tenets are most irreconcilable and
+hostile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being unduly concentrated,
+are not thereby necessarily enfeebled--on the contrary, often
+strengthened; and there is a grand austerity which the imagination more
+than admires--which the conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, the
+conviction from which that austerity grows, is in itself right; for it
+is a feeling--a conviction of the perfect righteousness of God--the
+utter worthlessness of self-left man--the awful sanctity of duty--and
+the dreadfulness of the judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe till
+the seals have been broken, and the Archangel has blown his trumpet. A
+religion planted in such convictions as these, may become dark and
+disordered in its future growth within the spirit; and the tree, though
+of good seed and in a strong soil, may come to be laden with bitter
+fruit, and the very droppings of its leaves may be pernicious to all who
+rest within its shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast than
+the trunk of a dead faith; and such food, unwholesome though it be, is
+not so miserable as famine to a hungry soul.
+
+Grant, then, that there may be in Mr Montgomery's poetry certain
+sentiments, which, in want of a better word, we call Sectarian. They are
+not necessarily false, although not perfectly reconcilable to our own
+creed, which, we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, we may be made
+much the better and the wiser men by meditating upon them; for while
+they may, perhaps (and we are merely making a supposition), be too
+strongly felt by him, they may be too feebly felt by us--they may,
+perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of his poetry than of his
+faith--and if, in some degree, offensive in the composition of a poem,
+far less so, or not at all, in that of a life.
+
+All his shorter poems are stamped with the character of the man. Most of
+them are breathings of his own devout spirit, either delighted or awed
+by a sense of the Divine goodness and mercy towards itself, or
+tremblingly alive--not in mere sensibility to human virtues and joys,
+crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs to the diseased and
+depraved--but in solemn, moral, and religious thought, to all of good or
+evil befalling his brethren of mankind. "A sparrow cannot fall to the
+ground"--a flower of the field cannot wither immediately before his
+eyes--without awakening in his heart such thoughts as we may believe God
+intended should be awakened even by such sights as these; for the fall
+of a sparrow is a Scriptural illustration of His providence, and His
+hand framed the lily, whose array is more royal than was that of Solomon
+in all his glory. Herein he resembles Wordsworth--less profound
+certainly--less lofty; for in its highest moods the genius of Wordsworth
+walks by itself--unapproachable--on the earth it beautifies. But
+Montgomery's poetical piety is far more prevalent over his whole
+character; it belongs more essentially and permanently to the man.
+Perhaps, although we shall not say so, it may be more simple, natural,
+and true. More accordant it certainly is, with the sympathies of
+ordinary minds. The piety of his poetry is far more Christian than that
+of Wordsworth. It is in all his feelings, all his thoughts, all his
+imagery; and at the close of most of his beautiful compositions, which
+are so often avowals, confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, we feel, not
+the moral, but the religion of his song. He "improves" all the
+"occasions" of this life, because he has an "eye that broods on its own
+heart;" and that heart is impressed by all lights and shadows, like a
+river or lake whose waters are pure--pure in their sources and in their
+course. He is, manifestly, a man of the kindliest home-affections; and
+these, though it is to be hoped the commonest of all, preserved to him
+in unabated glow and freshness by innocence and piety, often give vent
+to themselves in little hymns and ode-like strains, of which the rich
+and even novel imagery shows how close is the connection between a pure
+heart and a fine fancy, and that the flowers of poetry may be brought
+from afar, nor yet be felt to be exotics--to intertwine with the very
+simplest domestic feelings and thoughts--so simple, so perfectly human,
+that there is a touch of surprise on seeing them capable of such
+adornment, and more than a touch of pleasure on feeling how much that
+adornment becomes them--brightening without changing, and adding
+admiration to delight--wonder to love.
+
+Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an egotist as Wordsworth; and
+thence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances of
+external nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length,
+that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either in
+the garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce
+a strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease and
+freedom--they shall be cold and stiff--and both passion and imagination
+shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain or
+the man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves or
+admires--themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows--who is
+himself still the centre of the enchanted circle--who, in the delusion
+of a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die,
+all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with him--who not
+only sees
+
+    "Poetic visions swarm on every bough,"
+
+but the history of all his own most secret emotions written on the very
+rocks--who gathers up the many beautiful things that in the prodigality
+of nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and the
+more dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are now
+appropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymy
+so further brighten them that the thousands of eyes that formerly passed
+them by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their rare and
+transcendent beauty--he is the "prevailing Poet!" Montgomery neither
+seeks nor shuns those dark thoughts that will come and go, night and
+day, unbidden, forbidden, across the minds of all men--fortified
+although the main entrances may be; but when they do invade his secret,
+solitary hours, he turns even such visitants to a happy account, and
+questions them, ghost-like as they are, concerning both the future and
+the past. Melancholy as often his views are, we should not suppose him a
+man of other than a cheerful mind; for whenever the theme allows or
+demands it, he is not averse to a sober glee, a composed gaiety that,
+although we cannot say it ever so far sparkles out as to deserve to be
+called absolutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his lighter-toned
+compositions, which it is peculiarly pleasant now and then to feel in
+the writings of a man whose genius is naturally, and from the course of
+life, not gloomy indeed, but pensive, and less disposed to indulge
+itself in smiles than in tears.
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+People nowadays will write, because they see so many writing; the
+impulse comes upon them from without, not from within; loud voices from
+streets and squares of cities call on them to join the throng, but the
+still small voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute;
+and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, or
+linnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at the
+worst an oratorio of ganders and bubbleys?
+
+At this particular juncture or crisis, the disease would fain assume the
+symptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious--all
+smitten with sanctity--Christian all over--and crossing and jostling on
+the Course of Time--as they think, on the high road to Heaven and
+Immortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites.
+Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shops, and, crowned with
+foolscap, repeat to Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggrel to the
+Deity! They bandy about the Bible as if it were an Album. They forget
+that the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well as a set of
+verses to be damned; they look forward to the First of the Month with
+more fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and beseech a critic to be
+merciful upon them with far more earnestness than they ever beseeched
+their Maker. They pray through the press--vainly striving to give some
+publicity to what must be private for evermore; and are seen wiping
+away, at tea-parties, the tears of contrition and repentance for capital
+crimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily,
+that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it is
+felt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowls
+with their own unsaleable sheets. They are frequently so singed; yet
+singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed;
+and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still
+gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe with
+their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner,
+and are no more seen among bipeds.
+
+Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spirit
+of imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two--who for the
+present must be nameless--have shown feeling; and would they but obey
+their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own free
+feet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings,
+they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditable
+reputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands
+the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his
+Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household
+words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song.
+For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those
+pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with
+religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine.
+The study of THE BOOK must have been begun in the simplicity of
+childhood, when it was felt to be indeed divine--and carried on through
+all those silent intervals in which the soul of manhood is restored,
+during the din of life, to the purity and peace of its early being. The
+Bible must be to such a poet even as the sky--with its sun, moon, and
+stars--its boundless blue with all its cloud-mysteries--its peace deeper
+than the grave, because of realms beyond the grave--its tumult louder
+than that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He who
+begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himself
+to it--night and day--and with a humble and a contrite heart as well as
+an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what he
+understands, or to understand what he feels--thoughts and feelings
+breathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery,
+between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly venture
+on the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thought
+of doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem irreverent; it
+would convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, and
+the world.
+
+They alone, therefore, to whom God has given genius as well as faith,
+zeal, and benevolence--will, of their own accord, fix their Pindus
+either on Lebanon or Calvary--and of these but few. The genius must be
+high--the faith sure--and human love must coalesce with divine, that the
+strain may have power to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they are
+in matter, and with all their apprehensions and conceptions blended with
+material imagery, and the things of this moving earth and this restless
+life.
+
+So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen his
+subject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. His
+work, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependent
+on creeds, but out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestly
+moulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry will
+outlive every other; for the time will come when Christian Poetry will
+be deeper and higher far than any that has ever yet been known among
+men. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto have been either religious or
+superstitious; and as "the day-spring from on High that has visited us"
+spreads wider and wider over the earth, "the soul of the world, dreaming
+of things to come," shall assuredly see more glorified visions than have
+yet been submitted to her ken. That poetry has so seldom satisfied the
+utmost longings and aspirations of human nature, can only have been
+because Poetry has so seldom dealt in its power with the only mysteries
+worth knowing--the greater mysteries of religion, into which the
+Christian is initiated only through faith, an angel sent from heaven to
+spirits struggling by supplications and sacrifices to escape from sin
+and death.
+
+These, and many other thoughts and feelings concerning the "Vision and
+the Faculty divine," when employed on divine subjects, have arisen
+within us, on reading--which we have often done with delight--"The
+Christian Year," so full of Christian poetry of the purest character. Mr
+Keble is a poet whom Cowper himself would have loved--for in him piety
+inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialised by religion. We
+peruse his book in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that which is
+breathed upon us by some calm day in spring, when all imagery is serene
+and still--cheerful in the main--yet with a touch and a tinge of
+melancholy, which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once more
+endearing and more profound. We should no more think of criticising such
+poetry than of criticising the clear blue skies--the soft green
+earth--the "liquid lapse" of an unpolluted stream, that
+
+    "Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
+    Giving a gentle kiss to every flower
+    It overtaketh on its pilgrimage."
+
+All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, we partake of the
+universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it
+emanated. Indeed, we do not remember any poetry nearly so beautiful as
+this, which reminds one so seldom of the poet's art. We read it without
+ever thinking of the place which its author may hold among poets, just
+as we behold a "lily of the field" without comparing it with other
+flowers, but satisfied with its own pure and simple loveliness; or each
+separate poem may be likened, in its
+unostentatious--unambitious--unconscious beauty--to
+
+    "A violet by a mossy stone,
+    Half hidden to the eye."
+
+Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair earth, the violet is indeed
+the most delightful in itself--form, fragrance, and colour--nor less in
+the humility of its birthplace, and its haunts in the "sunshiny shade."
+Therefore, 'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that may be said to
+blossom on Mount Sion.
+
+The most imaginative poetry inspired by Nature, and dedicated to her
+praise, is never perfectly and consummately beautiful till it ascends
+into the religious; but then religion breathes from, and around, and
+about it, only at last when the poet has been brought, by the leading of
+his own aroused spirit, to the utmost pitch of his inspiration. He
+begins, and continues long, unblamed in mere emotions of beauty; and he
+often pauses unblamed, and brings his strain to a close, without having
+forsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feelings which belong alone to
+this earth. But poetry like that of the "Christian Year" springs at
+once, visibly and audibly, from religion as its fount. If it, indeed,
+issue from one of the many springs religion opens in the human heart, no
+fear of its ever being dried up. Small indeed may seem the silver line,
+when first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! But how soon it
+begins to sing with a clear loud voice in the solitude! Bank and
+brae--tree, shrub, and flower--grow greener at each successive
+waterfall--the rains no more disturb that limpid element than the
+dews--and never does it lose some reflection of the heavens.
+
+In a few modest words, Mr Keble states the aim and object of his volume.
+He says truly, that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of
+England to possess in her authorised formularies an ample and secure
+provision, both for a sound rule of faith and a sober standard of
+feeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publication
+will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his
+own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended
+and exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has been
+attained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in a
+thousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deaf
+yet to lovely sights and sounds--and a true poet is as certain of
+recognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we have
+no prayer-book printed on paper--perhaps it would be better if we had;
+but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr Keble, is compiled and
+composed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotland
+than in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is
+felt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said,
+no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, and
+which in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inward
+observances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling _here_; and
+therefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart,
+will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration--for the
+Christian creed is "wide and general as the casing air," and felt as
+profoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms is
+heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities of
+England, where so often
+
+    "Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
+    The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."
+
+Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about--to
+show off upon--as if the writing and the reading of it were to be
+reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets
+have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most
+unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy--for it implies
+much voluntary self-degradation--is mere popularity. Against all such
+low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the
+muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on
+the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry is
+praise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from some
+unseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer or
+wanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holier
+solemnity in the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed _got by
+heart_; and memory is then tenacious to the death, for her hold on what
+she loves is strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, when even
+hope itself is dead--if, indeed, hope ever dies--the trust is committed
+to despair. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless thoughts; they
+become very thoughts themselves, and _are_ what they represent. How are
+many of the simply, rudely, but fervently and beautifully rhymed Psalms
+of David, very part and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of the
+Scottish peasant's being!
+
+    "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want.
+      He makes me down to lie
+    In pastures green: he leadeth me
+      The quiet waters by."
+
+These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful shepherd on the braes every
+stream that glides through the solitary places--they have often given
+colours to the greensward beyond the brightness of all herbage and of
+all flowers. Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes us mortal
+creatures feel the union that subsists between the Book of Nature and
+the Book of Life!
+
+Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathers
+and mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring.
+Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest and
+wisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories;
+the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smoky
+day; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallow
+up the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as a
+separate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy,
+and forlorn! But he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees far
+into the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying--"Suffer
+little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the
+kingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that Poetry throws back upon the New
+Testament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortal
+brother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of Man. On a dead
+insensible flower--a lily--a rose--a violet--a daisy, poetry may pour
+out all its divinest power--just as the sun itself sometimes seems to
+look with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once made
+transparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all its
+leaves--and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves be
+dead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall change
+death into sleep--till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shall
+seem a bed of bright and celestial repose. From poetry, in words or
+marble--both alike still and serene as water upon grass--we turn to the
+New Testament, and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They were redeemed
+from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We
+look down into the depths of that text--and we then turn again to
+Keble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon the
+uninspired page! Yet not uninspired--if that name may be given to
+strains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise,
+"whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets." Revelation has shown us
+that "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy of
+that Being for whom Godhead died!
+
+They who read the lines on the "Holy Innocents" in a mood of mind worthy
+of them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "The
+Epiphany." They are separated in the volume by some kindred and
+congenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy the
+still region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seem
+to occupy the entire sky.
+
+How far better than skilfully--how inspiredly does this Christian poet
+touch upon each successive holy theme--winging his way through the
+stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving
+one place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding and
+unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attempted
+the theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on such
+a subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of
+Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he
+will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching
+their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the
+sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger.
+Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few
+words--"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them,
+till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the
+star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."
+
+The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to a
+strain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism." How soon the
+infant spirit is touched with love--another name for religion--none may
+dare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling and
+thought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration--so strong it
+often is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of natural
+processes going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often been
+seen in the simplicity of childhood--creatures but five or six years
+old--soon perhaps about to disappear--astonishing, and saddening, and
+subliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by a
+holy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into a
+mysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink of
+death and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine
+unfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influences should not be
+rare--nor are they rare--in truly Christian households. Almost as soon
+as the heart is moved by filial affection, that affection grows reverent
+even to earthly parents--and, ere long, becomes piety towards the name
+of God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must not
+be too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No--let
+religion--a myriad-meaning word--be whispered and breathed round about
+them, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens their
+ears, while enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yet
+multitudinous world.
+
+Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read with
+tears by many a grateful heart--on the "Churching of Women." What would
+become of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen the
+piety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holy
+and divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify the
+affections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before a
+father's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the father
+yearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving after
+childbirth!
+
+"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither
+do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
+was not arrayed like one of these." What is all the poetry that genius
+ever breathed over all the flowers of this earth to that one divine
+sentence! It has inspired our Christian poet--and here is his heartfelt
+homily.
+
+
+FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
+
+    "Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies,
+      Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew,
+    What more than magic in you lies
+      To fill the heart's fond view?
+    In childhood's sports companions gay,
+    In sorrow, on Life's downward way,
+    How soothing! in our last decay
+      Memorials prompt and true.
+
+    Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,
+      As pure, as fragrant, and as fair,
+    As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours
+      Of happy wanderers there.
+    Fall'n all beside--the world of life,
+    How is it stain'd with fear and strife!
+    In Reason's world what storms are rife,
+      What passions rage and glare!
+
+    But cheerful and unchanged the while
+      Your first and perfect form ye show,
+    The same that won Eve's matron smile
+      In the world's opening glow
+    The stars of Heaven a course are taught
+    Too high above our human thought;--
+    Ye may be found if ye are sought,
+      And as we gaze we know.
+
+    Ye dwell beside our paths and homes,
+      Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow,
+    And guilty man, where'er he roams,
+      Your innocent mirth may borrow.
+    The birds of air before us fleet,
+    They cannot brook our shame to meet--
+    But we may taste your solace sweet,
+      And come again to-morrow.
+
+    Ye fearless in your nests abide--
+      Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise,
+    Your silent lessons undescried
+      By all but lowly eyes;
+    For ye could draw th' admiring gaze
+    Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys:
+    Your order wild, your fragrant maze,
+      He taught us how to prize.
+
+    Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour,
+      As when he paused and own'd you good;
+    His blessing on earth's primal bower,
+      Yet felt it all renew'd.
+    What care ye now, if winter's storm
+    Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form?
+    Christ's blessing at your heart is warm,
+      Ye fear no vexing mood.
+
+    Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,
+      That daily court you and caress,
+    How few the happy secret find
+      Of your calm loveliness!
+    'Live for to-day! to-morrow's light
+    To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight.
+    Go, sleep like closing flowers at night,
+      And Heaven thy morn will bless.'"
+
+Such poetry as this must have a fine influence on all the best human
+affections. Sacred are such songs to sorrow--and sorrow is either a
+frequent visitor, or a domesticated inmate, in every household.
+Religion may thus be made to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours,
+into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not the mother unhappy who
+closes the eyes of her dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in the
+house, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed among other flowers, now
+all drooping for its sake--nor yet call the father unhappy who lays his
+sweet son below the earth, and returns to the home where his voice is to
+be heard never more. That affliction brings forth feelings unknown
+before in his heart; calming all turbulent thoughts by the settled peace
+of the grave. Then every page of the Bible is beautiful--and beautiful
+every verse of poetry that thence draws its inspiration. Thus in the
+pale and almost ghost-like countenance of decay, our hearts are not
+touched by the remembrance alone of beauty which is departed, and by the
+near extinction of loveliness which we behold fading before our
+eyes--but a beauty, fairer and deeper far, lies around the hollow eye
+and the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air of the untroubled
+spirit that has heard resigned the voice that calls it away from the dim
+shades of mortality. Well may that beauty be said to be religious; for
+in it speaks the soul, conscious, in the undreaded dissolution of its
+earthly frame, of a being destined to everlasting bliss. With every deep
+emotion arising from our contemplation of such beauty as this--religious
+beauty beaming in the human countenance, whether in joy or sadness,
+health or decay--there is profoundly interfused a sense of the soul's
+spirituality, which silently sheds over the emotion something celestial
+and divine, rendering it not only different in degree, but altogether
+distinct in kind, from all the feelings that things merely perishable
+can inspire--so that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feeling of
+beauty is but a vivid recognition of its own deathless being and
+ethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly
+known to the human heart in those ages of the world when all other
+feelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the
+most pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over the
+beauty intensely worshipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever over
+its now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the living
+lustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone a
+beauty in his latest smile, which spoke not alone of a brief scene
+closed, but of an endless scene unfolding; while its cessation, instead
+of leaving him in utter darkness, seemed to be accompanied with a burst
+of light.
+
+Much of our most fashionable Modern Poetry is at once ludicrously and
+lamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthful
+creatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins of
+shameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and by
+persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to that
+vulgar altitude--the gallows. The darker--the stronger passions,
+forsooth! And what hast thou to do--my dove-eyed Margaret, with the
+darker and stronger passions? Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still,
+serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and the
+weaker passions thine--brighter indeed--yet say not _weaker_, for they
+are strong as death;--Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, and
+Sorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears--be these all thy own--and
+sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imagination
+be spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescence--a Lunar
+Rainbow.
+
+There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christian Year"--such perfect
+sincerity, and consequently such simplicity--that though the production
+of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot doubt that it will some day or
+other find its way into many of the dwellings of humble life. Such
+descent, if descent it be, must be of all receptions the most delightful
+to the heart of a Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more widely
+over the land, why fear that it will deaden religion? Let us believe
+that it will rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time true poetry,
+such as this, of a character somewhat higher than probably can be yet
+felt, understood, and appreciated by the people, will come to be easy
+and familiar, and blended with all the other benign influences breathed
+over their common existence by books. Meanwhile the "Christian Year"
+will be finding its way into many houses where the inmates read from the
+love of reading--not for mere amusement only, but for instruction and a
+deeper delight; and we shall be happy if our recommendation causes its
+pages to be illumined by the gleams of a few more peaceful hearths, and
+to be rehearsed by a few more happy voices in the "parlour twilight."
+
+We cannot help expressing the pleasure it has given us to see so much,
+true poetry coming from Oxford. It is delightful to see that classical
+literature, which sometimes, we know not how, certainly has a chilling
+effect on poetical feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, and
+causing it to produce itself in song. Oxford has produced many true
+poets; Collins, Warton, Bowles, Heber, Milman, and now Keble--are all
+her own--her inspired sons. Their strains are not steeped in "port and
+prejudice;" but in the--Isis. Heaven bless Iffley and Godstow--and many
+another sweet old ruined place--secluded, but not far apart from her own
+inspiring Sanctities! And those who love her not, never may the Muses
+love!
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+In his Poem, entitled, "The Omnipresence of the Deity," Mr Robert
+Montgomery writes thus,--
+
+    "Lo! there, in yonder fancy-haunted room,
+    What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom,
+    When pale, and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear,
+    The dying sceptic felt his hour drew near!
+    From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell,
+    No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell;
+    As the last throes of death convulsed his cheek,
+    He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek,
+    Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare,
+    Lock'd his white lips--and all was mute despair!
+    Go, child of darkness, see a Christian die;
+    No horror pales his lip, or rolls his eye;
+    No dreadful doubts, or dreamy terrors, start
+    The hope Religion pillows on his heart,
+    When with a dying hand he waves adieu
+    To all who love so well, and weep so true:
+    Meek as an infant to the mother's breast
+    Turns fondly longing for its wonted rest,
+    He pants for where congenial spirits stray,
+    Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away."
+
+First, as to the execution of this passage. "Fancy-haunted" may do, but
+it is not a sufficiently strong expression for the occasion. In every
+such picture as this, we demand appropriate vigour in every word
+intended to be vigorous, and which is important to the effect of the
+whole.
+
+    "From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell,
+    No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell."
+
+How could they?--The line but one before is,
+
+    "What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom."
+
+This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot doubt that Mr Montgomery
+will confess that it is so; but independently of that, he is describing
+the deathbed of a person who, _ex hypothesi_, could have no bright
+hopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. He might as well, in a
+description of a negress, have told us that she had no long, smooth,
+shining, yellow locks--no light-blue eyes--no ruddy and rosy cheeks--nor
+yet a bosom white as snow. The execution of the picture of the Christian
+is not much better--it is too much to use, in the sense here given to
+them, no fewer than three verbs--"pales"--"rolls"--"starts," in four
+lines.
+
+    "The hope Religion pillows on his heart,"
+
+is not a good line, and it is a borrowed one.
+
+    "When with a dying hand he waves adieu,"
+
+conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do not act so. Not thus are taken
+eternal farewells. The motion in the sea-song was more natural--
+
+    "She waved adieu, and kiss'd her lily hand."
+
+"_Weeps so true_," means nothing, nor is it English. The grammar is not
+good of,
+
+    "He _pants for where_ congenial spirits"--
+
+Neither is the word _pants_ by any means the right one; and in such an
+awful crisis, admire who may the simile of the infant longing for its
+mother's breast, we never can in its present shape; while there is the
+line,
+
+    "Turns to his God, _and sighs his soul away_;"
+
+a prettiness we very much dislike--alter one word, and it would be
+voluptuous--nor do we hesitate to call the passage a puling one
+altogether, and such as ought to be expunged from all paper.
+
+But that is not all we have to say against it--it is radically and
+essentially bad, because it either proves nothing of what it is meant to
+prove--or what no human being on earth ever disputed. Be fair--be just
+in all that concerns religion. Take the best--the most moral, if the
+word can be used--the most enlightened Sceptic, and the true Christian,
+and compare their deathbeds. That of the Sceptic will be disturbed or
+disconsolate--that of the Christian confiding or blessed. But to
+contrast the deathbed of an absolute maniac, muttering curses, gnashing
+and scowling, and "raising a hideous shriek," and "rounding his eyes
+with a ghastly glare," and convulsed, too, with severe bodily
+throes--with that of a convinced, confiding, and conscientious
+Christian, a calm, meek, undoubting believer, happy in the "hope
+religion pillows on his heart," and enduring no fleshly agonies, can
+serve no purpose under the sun. Men who have the misery of being
+unbelievers, are at all times to be pitied--most of all in their last
+hours; but though theirs be then dim melancholy, or dark despair, they
+express neither the one state nor the other by mutterings, curses, and
+hideous shrieks. Such a wretch there may sometimes be--like him "who
+died and made no sign;" but there is no more sense in seeking to
+brighten the character of the Christian by its contrast with that of
+such an Atheist, than by contrast with a fiend to brighten the beauty of
+an angel.
+
+Finally, are the deathbeds of all good Christians so calm as this--and
+do they all thus meekly
+
+    "Pant for where congenial spirits stray,"
+
+a line, besides its other vice, most unscriptural? Congenial spirit is
+not the language of the New Testament. Alas! for poor weak human nature
+at the dying hour! Not even can the Christian always then retain
+unquaking trust in his Saviour! "This is the blood that was shed for
+thee," are words whose mystery quells not always nature's terror. The
+Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is renewed in vain--and he remembers, in
+doubt and dismay, words that, if misunderstood, would appal all the
+Christian world--"My God--my God--why hast thou forsaken me?" Perhaps,
+before the Faith, that has waxed dim and died in his brain distracted by
+pain, and disease, and long sleeplessness, and a weight of woe--for he
+is a father who strove in vain to burst those silken ties, that winding
+all round and about his very soul and his very body, bound him to those
+dear little ones, who are of the same spirit and the same flesh,--we
+say, before that Faith could, by the prayers of holy men, be restored
+and revivified, and the Christian once more comforted by thinking on
+Him, who for all human beings did take upon him the rueful burden and
+agonies of the Cross--Death may have come for his prey, and left the
+chamber, of late so hushed and silent, at full liberty to weep! Enough
+to know, that though Christianity be divine, we are human,--that the
+vessel is weak in which that glorious light may be enshrined--weak as
+the potter's clay--and that though Christ died to save sinners, sinners
+who believe in Him, and therefore shall not perish, may yet lose hold of
+the belief when their understandings are darkened by the shadow of
+death, and, like Peter losing faith and sinking in the sea, feel
+themselves descending into some fearful void, and cease here to be, ere
+they find voice to call on the name of the Lord--"Help, or I perish!"
+
+What may be the nature of the thoughts and feelings of an Atheist,
+either when in great joy or great sorrow, full of life and the spirit of
+life, or in mortal malady and environed with the toils of death, it
+passes the power of our imagination even dimly to conceive; nor are we
+convinced that there ever was an utter Atheist. The thought of a God
+will enter in, barred though the doors be both of the understanding and
+the heart, and all the windows supposed to be blocked up against the
+light. The soul, blind and deaf as it may often be, cannot always resist
+the intimations all life long, day and night, forced upon it from the
+outer world; its very necessities, nobler far than those of the body,
+even when most degraded, importunate when denied their manna, are to it
+oftentimes a silent or a loud revelation. Then, not to feel and think as
+other beings do with "discourse of reason," is most hard and difficult
+indeed, even for a short time, and on occasions of very inferior moment.
+Being men, we are carried away, willing or unwilling, and often
+unconsciously, by the great common instinct; we keep sailing with the
+tide of humanity, whether in flow or ebb--fierce as demons and the sons
+of perdition, if that be the temper of the congregating hour--mild and
+meek as Pity, or the new-born babe, when the afflatus of some divine
+sympathy has breathed through the multitude, nor one creature escaped
+its influence, like a spring day that steals through a murmuring forest,
+till not a single tree, even in the darkest nook, is without some touch
+of the season's sunshine. Think, then, of one who would fain be an
+Atheist, conversing with the "sound, healthy children of the God of
+heaven!" To his reason, which is his solitary pride, arguments might in
+vain be addressed, for he exults in being "an Intellectual All in All,"
+and is a bold-browed sophist to daunt even the eyes of Truth--eyes which
+can indeed "outstare the eagle" when their ken is directed to heaven,
+but which are turned away in aversion from the human countenance that
+would dare to deny God. Appeal not to the intellect of such a man, but
+to his heart; and let not even that appeal be conveyed in any fixed form
+of words--but let it be an appeal of the smiles and tears of
+affectionate and loving lips and eyes--of common joys and common griefs,
+whose contagion is often felt, beyond prevention or cure, where two or
+three are gathered together--among families thinly sprinkled over the
+wilderness, where, on God's own day, they repair to God's own house, a
+lowly building on the brae, which the Creator of suns and systems
+despiseth not, nor yet the beatings of the few contrite hearts therein
+assembled to worship Him--in the cathedral's "long-drawn aisles and
+fretted vaults"--in mighty multitudes all crowded in silence, as beneath
+the shadow of a thunder-cloud, to see some one single human being
+die--or swaying and swinging backwards and forwards, and to and fro, to
+hail a victorious armament returning from the war of Liberty, with him
+who hath "taken the start of this majestic world" conspicuous from afar
+in front, encircled with music, and with the standard of his unconquered
+country afloat above his head. Thus, and by many thousand other potent
+influences for ever at work, and from which the human heart can never
+make its safe escape, let it flee to the uttermost parts of the earth,
+to the loneliest of the multitude of the isles of the sea, are men, who
+vainly dream that they are Atheists, forced to feel God. Nor happens
+this but rarely--nor are such "angel-visits few and far between." As the
+most cruel have often, very often, thoughts tender as dew, so have the
+most dark often, very often, thoughts bright as day. The sun's golden
+finger writes the name of God on the clouds, rising or setting, and the
+Atheist, falsely so called, starts in wonder and in delight, which his
+soul, because it is immortal, cannot resist, to behold that Bible
+suddenly opened before his eyes on the sky. Or some old, decrepit,
+greyhaired crone, holds out her shrivelled hand, with dim eyes patiently
+fixed on his, silently asking charity--silently, but in the holy name of
+God; and the Atheist, taken unawares, at the very core of his heart bids
+"God bless her," as he relieves her uncomplaining miseries.
+
+If then Atheists do exist, and if their deathbeds may be described for
+the awful or melancholy instruction of their fellow-men, let them be
+such Atheists as those whom, let us not hesitate to say, we may
+blamelessly love with a troubled affection; for our Faith may not have
+preserved us from sins from which they are free--and we may give even to
+many of the qualities of their most imperfect and unhappy characters
+almost the name of virtues. No curses on their deathbeds will they be
+heard to utter. No black scowlings--no horrid gnashing of teeth--no
+hideous shriekings will there appal the loving ones who watch and weep
+by the side of him who is dying disconsolate. He will hope, and he will
+fear, now that there is a God indeed everywhere present--visible now in
+the tears that fall, audible now in the sighs that breathe for his
+sake--in the still small voice. That Being forgets not those by whom he
+has been forgotten; least of all, the poor "Fool who has said in his
+heart there is no God," and who knows at last that a God there is, not
+always in terror and trembling, but as often perhaps in the assurance of
+forgiveness, which, undeserved by the best of the good, may not be
+withheld even from the worst of the bad, if the thought of a God and a
+Saviour pass but for a moment through the darkness of the departing
+spirit--like a dove shooting swiftly, with its fair plumage, through the
+deep but calm darkness that follows the subsided storm.
+
+So, too, with respect to Deists. Of unbelievers in Christianity there
+are many kinds--the reckless, the ignorant, the callous, the confirmed,
+the melancholy, the doubting, the despairing--the _good_. At their
+deathbeds, too, may the Christian poet, in imagination, take his
+stand--and there may he even hear
+
+    "The still sad music of humanity,
+    Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power
+    To soften and subdue!"
+
+Oftener all the sounds and sights there will be full of most rueful
+anguish; and that anguish will groan in the poet's lays when his human
+heart, relieved from its load of painful sympathies, shall long
+afterwards be inspired with the pity of poetry, and sing in elegies,
+sublime in their pathos, the sore sufferings and the dim distress that
+clouded and tore the dying spirit, longing, but all unable--profound
+though its longings be--as life's daylight is about to close upon that
+awful gloaming, and the night of death to descend in oblivion--to
+believe in the Redeemer.
+
+Why then turn but to such deathbed, if indeed religion, and not
+superstition, described that scene--as that of Voltaire? Or even of
+Rousseau, whose dying eyes sought, in the last passion, the sight of the
+green earth, and the blue skies, and the sun shining so brightly, when
+all within the brain of his worshipper was fast growing dimmer and more
+dim--when all the unsatisfied spirit, that scarcely hoped a future life,
+knew not how it could ever take farewell of the present with tenderness
+enough, and enough of yearning and craving after its disappearing
+beauty, and when as if the whole earth were at that moment beloved even
+as his small peculiar birthplace--
+
+    "Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."
+
+The Christian poet, in his humane wisdom, will, for instruction's sake
+of his fellow-men, and for the discovery and the revealment of
+ever-sacred truth, keep aloof from such death-beds as these, or take his
+awful stand beside them to drop the perplexed and pensive tear. For we
+know not what it is that we either hear or see; and holy Conscience,
+hearing through a confused sound, and seeing through an obscure light,
+fears to condemn, when perhaps she ought only to pity--to judge another,
+when perhaps it is her duty but to use that inward eye for her own
+delinquencies. He, then, who designs to benefit his kind by strains of
+high instruction, will turn from the deathbed of the famous Wit, whose
+brilliant fancy hath waxed dim as that of the clown--whose malignant
+heart is quaking beneath the Power it had so long derided, with terrors
+over which his hated Christian triumphs--and whose intellect, once so
+perspicacious that it could see but too well the motes that are in the
+sun, the specks and stains that are in the flowing robe of nature
+herself--prone, in miserable contradiction to its better being, to turn
+them as proofs against the power and goodness of the Holy One who
+inhabiteth eternity--is now palsy-stricken as that of an idiot, and
+knows not even the sound of the name of its once vain and proud
+possessor--when crowded theatres had risen up with one rustle to honour,
+and then, with deafening acclamations,
+
+    "Raised a mortal to the skies!"
+
+There he is--it matters not now whether on down or straw--stretched,
+already a skeleton, and gnashing--may it be in senselessness, for
+otherwise what pangs are these!--gnashing his teeth, within lips once so
+eloquent, now white with foam and slaver; and the whole mouth, of yore
+so musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painted
+death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of
+God of all His beams?--with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of
+the Cross?--with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood
+and water came from the wound in His blessed side?--with wit, to drive
+away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the
+stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?--with wit, to
+deride the ineffable glory of transfigured Godhead on the Mount, and the
+sweet and solemn semblance of the Man Jesus in the garden?--with wit, to
+darken all the decrees of Providence?--and with wit,
+
+    "To shut the gates of Mercy on mankind?"
+
+Nor yet will the Christian poet long dwell in his religious strains,
+though awhile he may linger there, "and from his eyelids wipe the tears
+that sacred pity hath engendered," beside the dying couch of Jean Jaques
+Rousseau--a couch of turf beneath trees--for he was ever a lover of
+Nature, though he loved all things living or dead as madmen love. His
+soul, while most spiritual, was sensual still, and with tendrils of
+flesh and blood embraced--even as it did embrace the balm-breathing form
+of voluptuous woman--the very phantoms of his most etherealised
+imagination. Vice stained all his virtues--as roses are seen, in some
+certain soils, and beneath some certain skies, always to be blighted,
+and their fairest petals to bear on them something like blots of blood.
+Over the surface of the mirror of his mind, which reflected so much of
+the imagery of man and nature, there was still, here and there, on the
+centre or round the edges, rust-spots, that gave back no image, and
+marred the proportions of the beauty and the grandeur that yet shone
+over the rest of the circle set in the rich carved gold. His disturbed,
+and distracted, and defeated friendships, that all vanished in insane
+suspicions, and seemed to leave his soul as well satisfied in its fierce
+or gloomy void, as when it was filled with airy and glittering visions,
+are all gone for ever now. Those many thoughts and feelings--so
+melancholy, yet still fair, and lovely, and beautiful--which, like
+bright birds encaged, with ruffled and drooping wings, once so apt to
+soar, and their music mute, that used to make the wide woods to wring,
+were confined within the wires of his jealous heart--have now all flown
+away, and are at rest! Who sits beside the wild and wondrous genius,
+whose ravings entrance the world? Who wipes the death-sweat from that
+capacious forehead, once filled with such a multitude of disordered but
+aspiring fancies? Who, that his beloved air of heaven may kiss and cool
+it for the last time, lays open the covering that hides the marble
+sallowness of Rousseau's sin-and-sorrow-haunted breast? One of Nature's
+least-gifted children--to whose eyes nor earth nor heaven ever beamed
+with beauty--to whose heart were known but the meanest charities of
+nature; yet mean as they were, how much better in such an hour than all
+his imaginings most magnificent! For had he not suffered his own
+offspring to pass away from his eyes, even like the wood-shadows, only
+less beloved and less regretted? And in the very midst of the
+prodigality of love and passion, which he had poured out over the
+creations of his ever-distempered fancy, let his living children, his
+own flesh and blood, disappear as paupers in a chance-governed world? A
+world in which neither parental nor filial love were more than the names
+of nonentities--Father, Son, Daughter, Child, but empty syllables, which
+philosophy heeded not--or rather loved them in their emptiness, but
+despised, hated, or feared them, when for a moment they seemed pregnant
+with a meaning from heaven, and each in its holy utterance signifying
+God!
+
+No great moral or religious lesson can well be drawn, or say rather so
+well, from such anomalous deathbeds, as from those of common
+unbelievers. To show, in all its divine power, the blessedness of the
+Christian's faith, it must be compared, rather than contrasted, with the
+faith of the best and wisest of Deists. The ascendancy of the heavenly
+over the earthly will then be apparent--as apparent as the superior
+lustre of a star to that of a lighted-up window in the night. For above
+all other things in which the Christian is happier than the Deist--with
+the latter, the life beyond the grave is but a dark hope--to the former,
+"immortality has been brought to light by the Gospel." That difference
+embraces the whole spirit. It may be less felt--less seen when life is
+quick and strong; for this earth alone has much and many things to
+embrace and enchain our being--but in death the difference is as between
+night and day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE.--In the later editions of "The Omnipresence of the Deity," the
+passage animadverted on in the preceding chapter has been altered as
+follows:--
+
+    "Lo! there, in yonder spectre-haunted room,
+    What sightless demons horrified the gloom,
+    When pale and shivering, and bedew'd with fear,
+    The dying Sceptic felt his hour draw near!
+    Ere the last throes with anguish lined his cheek,
+    He yell'd for mercy with a hollow shriek,
+    Mutter'd some accents of unmeaning prayer,
+    Lock'd his white lips--let God the rest declare.
+    Go, child of Darkness! see a Christian die;
+    No horror pales his lip, or dims his eye;
+    No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start
+    The hope Religion pillows on his heart,
+    When with a falt'ring hand he waves adieu
+    To hearts as tender as their tears are true;
+    Meek as an infant to the mother's breast
+    Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest,
+    So to our God the yielding soul retires,
+    And in one sigh of sainted peace expires."
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+FIRST CANTICLE.
+
+
+The present Age, which, after all, is a very pretty and pleasant one, is
+feelingly alive and widely awake to the manifold delights and advantages
+with which the study of Natural History swarms, and especially that
+branch of it which unfolds the character and habits, physical, moral,
+and intellectual, of those most interesting and admirable
+creatures--Birds. It is familiar not only with the shape and colour of
+beak, bill, claw, talon, and plume, but with the purposes for which they
+are designed, and with the instincts which guide their use in the
+beautiful economy of all-gracious Nature. We remember the time when the
+very word Ornithology would have required interpretation in mixed
+company; when a naturalist was looked on as a sort of out-of-the-way but
+amiable monster. Now, one seldom meets with man, woman, or child, who
+does not know a hawk from a handsaw, or even, to adopt the more learned
+reading, from a heron-shew; a black swan is no longer erroneously
+considered a _rara avis_ any more than a black sheep; while the Glasgow
+Gander himself, no longer apocryphal, has taken his place in the
+national creed, belief in his existence being merely blended with wonder
+at his magnitude, and some surprise perhaps among the scientific that he
+should be as yet the sole specimen of that enormous Anser.
+
+The chief cause of this advancement of knowledge in one of its most
+delightful departments, has been the gradual extension of its study from
+stale books written by men, to that book ever fresh from the hand of
+God. And the second--another yet the same--has been the gradual change
+wrought by a philosophical spirit in the observation, delineation, and
+arrangement of the facts and laws with which the science is conversant,
+and which it exhibits in the most perfect harmony and order. Neophytes
+now range for themselves, according to their capacities and
+opportunities, the fields, woods, rivers, lakes, and seas; and
+proficients, no longer confining themselves to mere nomenclature, enrich
+their works with anecdotes and traits of character, which, without
+departure from truth, have imbued bird-biography with the double charm
+of reality and romance.
+
+Compare the intensity and truth of any natural knowledge insensibly
+acquired by observation in very early youth, with that corresponding to
+it picked up in later life from books! In fact, the habit of
+distinguishing between things as different, or of similar forms,
+colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and childhood, and boyhood,
+in a free intercourse and communion with Nature, while we are merely
+seeking and finding the divine joy of novelty and beauty, perpetually
+occurring before our eyes in all her haunts, may be made the foundation
+of an accuracy of judgment of inappreciable value as an intellectual
+endowment. So entirely is this true, that we know many observant
+persons--that is, observant in all things intimately related with their
+own pursuits, and with the experience of their own early education--who,
+with all the pains they could take in after life, have never been able
+to distinguish by name, when they saw them, above half-a-dozen, if so
+many, of our British singing-birds; while as to knowing them by their
+song, that is wholly beyond the reach of their uninstructed ear, and a
+shilfa chants to them like a yellow yoldrin. On seeing a small bird
+peeping out of a hole in the eaves, and especially on hearing him
+chatter, they shrewdly suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does not
+by any means follow that their suspicions are always verified; and
+though, when sitting with her white breast so lovely out of the "auld
+clay bigging" in the window-corner, he cannot mistake Mistress Swallow,
+yet when flitting in fly-search over the stream, and ever and anon
+dipping her wing-tips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance that
+he misnames her Miss Marten.
+
+What constant caution is necessary during the naturalist's perusal even
+of the very best books! From the very best we can only obtain knowledge
+at second-hand, and this, like a story circulated among village gossips,
+is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it passes from one to
+another; but in field-study we go at once to the fountain-head, and
+obtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the theories and opinions of
+previous observers. Hence it is that the utility of books becomes
+obvious. You witness with your own eyes some puzzling, perplexing,
+strange, and unaccountable--fact; twenty different statements of it have
+been given by twenty different ornithologists; you consult them all, and
+getting a hint from one, and a hint from another, here a glimmer of
+light to be followed, and there a gloom of darkness to be avoided--why,
+who knows but that in the end you do yourself solve the mystery, and
+absolutely become not only happy but illustrious? People sitting in
+their own parlour with their feet on the fender, or in the sanctum of
+some museum, staring at stuffed specimens, imagine themselves
+naturalists; and in their presumptuous and insolent ignorance, which is
+often total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have
+for many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiar
+with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, and
+set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and
+perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a
+system in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion with
+nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied--nor is he anything else than a
+slave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons in the
+fields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation everywhere
+displays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder,
+and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. The
+rich boy is to be envied, nor is he anything else than a king. The one
+sits bewildered among words, the other walks enlightened among things;
+the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substance--the
+very essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve years old he may be a
+better naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to
+outlive old Tommy Balmer.
+
+In education--late or early--for heaven's sake let us never separate
+things and words! They are married in nature; and what God hath put
+together let no man put asunder--'tis a fatal divorce. Without things,
+words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than drag
+out an useless existence in the dark; without words, their stay and
+support, things unaccountably disappear out of the store-house, and may
+be for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, stronger
+than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for
+ever happy in its bright prison-house. On this principle, it is indeed
+surprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the most
+interesting parts of natural history--ay, even a babe in arms. Remember
+Coleridge's beautiful lines to the Nightingale:--
+
+                  "That strain again!
+    Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
+    Who, capable of no articulate sound,
+    Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
+    How he would place his hand beside his ear,
+    His little hand, the small forefinger up,
+    And bid us listen! _and I deem it wise
+    To make him Nature's child_."
+
+How we come to love the Birds of Bewick, and White, and the two Wilsons,
+and Montague, and Mudie, and Knapp, and Selby, and Swainson, and
+Audubon, and many others familiar with their haunts and habits, their
+affections and their passions, till we feel that they are indeed our
+fellow-creatures, and part of one wise and wonderful system! If there be
+sermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin and
+vesper, of the lark, who at heaven's gate sings--of the wren, who pipes
+her thanksgivings as the slant sunbeam shoots athwart the mossy portal
+of the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above the
+waterfall! In cave-roof? Yea--we have seen it so--just beneath the
+cornice. But most frequently we have detected her procreant cradle on
+old mossy stump, mouldering walls or living rock--sometimes in cleft of
+yew-tree or hawthorn--for hang the globe with its imperceptible orifice
+in the sunshine or the storm, and St. Catharine sits within heedless of
+the outer world, counting her beads with her sensitive breast that
+broods in bliss over the priceless pearls.
+
+Ay, the men we have named, and many other blameless idolaters of Nature,
+have worshipped her in a truly religious spirit, and have taught us
+their religion. All our great poets have loved the _Minnesingers_ of the
+woods--Thomson, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, as dearly as Spenser, and
+Shakespeare, and Milton. From the inarticulate language of the groves,
+they have inhaled the enthusiasm that inspired some of the finest of
+their own immortal strains. "Lonely wanderer of Nature" must every poet
+be--and though often self-wrapt his wanderings through a spiritual world
+of his own, yet as some fair flower silently asks his eye to look on it,
+some glad bird his ear solicits with a song, how intense is then his
+perception--his emotion how profound--while his spirit is thus appealed
+to, through all its human sensibilities, by the beauty and the joy
+perpetual even in the most solitary places!
+
+Our moral being owes deep obligation to all who assist us to study
+nature aright; for believe us, it is high and rare knowledge to know and
+to have the true and full use of our eyes. Millions go to the grave in
+old age without ever having learned it; they were just beginning,
+perhaps, to acquire it when they sighed to think that "they who look out
+of the windows were darkened;" and that, while they had been instructed
+how to look, sad shadows had fallen on the whole face of Nature, and
+that the time for those intuitions was gone for ever. But the science of
+seeing has now found favour in our eyes; and blessings be with them who
+can discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest of
+Nature's works--who can see as distinctly the finger of God in the
+lustre of the humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that of
+the star of Jove shining sole in heaven.
+
+Take up now almost any book you may on any branch of Natural History,
+and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and
+classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain
+ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelation
+of the sublime varieties of the inferior--as we choose to call
+it--creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit rather
+to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and
+design. With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
+day gone by showed us a science that was but a skeleton--little but dry
+bones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
+day that is now, have been desirous to show us a living, breathing, and
+moving body--to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and its
+spirit. Ere another century elapse, how familiar may men be with all the
+families of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, with
+all the interdependencies of their characters and their kindreds,
+perhaps even with the mystery of that instinct which now is seen working
+wonders, not only beyond the power of reason to comprehend, but of
+imagination to conceive!
+
+How deeply enshrouded are felt to be the mysteries of Nature, when,
+thousands of years after Aristotle, we hear Audubon confess his utter
+ignorance of what migrations and non-migrations mean--that 'tis hard to
+understand why such general laws as these should be--though their benign
+operation is beautifully seen in the happiness provided alike for
+all--whether they reside in their own comparatively small localities,
+nor ever wish to leave them--or at stated seasons instinctively fly away
+over thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for a while on some
+spot adapted to their necessities, of which they had prescience afar
+off, though seemingly wafted thither like leaves upon the wind! Verily,
+as great a mystery is that Natural Religion by the theist studied in
+woods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as that Revelation which
+philosophers will not believe because they do not understand--"the
+blinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest and holiest
+happiness--Faith!
+
+We must not now go a bird-nesting, but first time we do we shall put
+Bishop Mant's "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop--who must have
+been an indefatigable bird-nester in his boyhood--though we answer for
+him that he never stole but one egg out of four, and left undisturbed
+the callow young--treats of those beauteous and wondrous structures in a
+style that might make Professor Rennie jealous, who has written like a
+Vitruvius on the architecture of birds. He expatiates with uncontrolled
+delight on the unwearied activity of the architects, who, without any
+apprenticeship to the trade, are journeymen, nay, master-builders, the
+first spring of their full-fledged lives; with no other tools but a
+bill, unless we count their claws, which however seem, and that only in
+some kinds, to be used but in carrying materials. With their breasts and
+whole bodies, indeed, most of them round off the soft insides of their
+procreant cradles, till they fit each brooding bunch of feathers to a
+hairbreadth, as it sits close and low on eggs or eyeless young, a
+_leetle_ higher raised up above their gaping babies, as they wax from
+downy infancy into plumier childhood, which they do how swiftly! and
+how soon have they flown! You look some sunny morning into the bush, and
+the abode in which they seemed so _cosy_ the day before is utterly
+forsaken by the joyous ingrates--now feebly fluttering in the narrow
+grove, to them a wide world teeming with delight and wonder--to be
+thought of never more. With all the various materials used by them in
+building their different domiciles, the Bishop is as familiar as with
+the sole material of his own wig--though, by the by, last time we had
+the pleasure of seeing and sitting by him, he wore his own hair--"but
+that not much;" for, like our own, his sconce was bald, and, like it,
+showed the organ of constructiveness as fully developed as Christopher
+or a Chaffinch. He is perfectly well acquainted, too, with all the
+diversities of their modes of building--their orders of
+architecture--and eke with all those of situation chosen by the
+kinds--whether seemingly simple, in cunning that deceives by a show of
+carelessness and heedlessness of notice, or with craft of concealment
+that baffles the most searching eye--hanging their beloved secret in
+gloom not impervious to sun and air--or, trustful in man's love of his
+own home, affixing the nest beneath the eaves, or in the flowers of the
+lattice, kept shut for their sakes, or half-opened by fair hands of
+virgins whose eyes gladden with heart-born brightness as each morning
+they mark the growing beauty of the brood, till they smile to see one
+almost as large as its parent sitting on the rim of the nest, when all
+at once it hops over, and, as it flutters away like a leaf, seems
+surprised that it can fly!
+
+Yet there are still a few wretched quacks among us whom we may some day
+perhaps drive down into the dirt. There are idiots who will not even
+suffer sheep, cows, horses, and dogs, to escape the disgusting
+perversions of their anile anecdotage--who, by all manner of drivelling
+lies, libel even the common domestic fowl, and impair the reputation of
+the bantam. Newspapers are sometimes so infested by the trivial trash,
+that in the nostrils of a naturalist they smell on the breakfast-table
+like rotten eggs; and there are absolutely volumes of the slaver bound
+in linen, and lettered with the names of the expectorators on the
+outside, resembling annuals--we almost fear with prints. In such hands,
+the ass loses his natural attributes, and takes the character of his
+owner; and as the anecdote-monger is seen astride on his cuddy, you
+wonder what may be the meaning of the apparition, for we defy you to
+distinguish the one donk from the other, the rider from the ridden,
+except by the more inexpressive countenance of the one, and the ears of
+the other in uncomputed longitude dangling or erect.
+
+We can bear this libellous gossip least patiently of all with birds. If
+a ninny have some stories about a wonderful goose, let him out with
+them, and then waddle away with his fat friend into the stackyard--where
+they may take sweet counsel together in the "fause-house." Let him, with
+open mouth and grozet eyes, say what he chooses of "Pretty Poll," as she
+clings in her cage, by beak or claws, to stick or wire, and in her
+naughty vocabulary let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Aspasia
+inspiring a Pericles. But, unless his crown itch for the Crutch, let him
+spare the linnet on the briery bush among the broom--the laverock on the
+dewy braird or in the rosy cloud--the swan on her shadow--the eagle in
+his eyrie, in the sun, or at sea.
+
+The great ornithologists and the true are the authorities that are
+constantly correcting those errors of popular opinion about the fowls of
+the air, which in every country, contrary to the evidence of the senses,
+and in spite of observations that may be familiar to all, gain credence
+with the weak and ignorant, and in process of time compose even a sort
+of system of the vilest superstition. It would be a very curious inquiry
+to trace the operation of the causes that, in different lands, have
+produced with respect to birds national prejudices of admiration or
+contempt, love or even hatred; and in doing so, we should have to open
+up some strange views of the influence of imagination on the head and
+heart. It may be remarked that an excuse will be generally found for
+such fallacies in the very sources from which they spring; but no excuse
+can be found--on the contrary, in every sentence the fool scribbles, a
+glaring argument is shown in favour of his being put to a lingering and
+cruel death--the fool who keeps gossiping every week in the year,
+penny-a-line-wise, with a gawky face and a mawkish mind, about God's
+creatures to whom reason has been denied, but instinct given, in order
+that they may be happy on moor and mountain, in the hedge-roots and on
+the tops of heaven-kissing trees--by the side of rills whose sweet low
+voice gives no echo in the wild, and on the hollow thunder of seas on
+which they sit in safety around the sinking ship, or from all her
+shrieks flee away to some island and are at rest.
+
+Turn to the true Ornithologist, and how beautiful, each in the
+adaptation of its own structure to its own life, every bird that walks
+the land, wades the water, or skims the air! In his pages, pictured by
+pen or pencil, all is wondrous--as nature ever is to
+
+                  "The quiet eye
+    That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"
+
+even while gazing on the inferior creatures of that creation to which we
+belong, and are linked in being's mysterious chain--till our breath,
+like theirs, expire. All is wondrous--but nothing monstrous in his
+delineations--for the more we know of nature in her infinite varieties,
+her laws reveal themselves to us in more majestic simplicity, and we are
+inspired with awe, solemn but sweet, by the incomprehensible, yet in
+part comprehended, magnificence of Truth. The writings of such men are
+the gospel of nature--and if the apocrypha be bound up along with
+it--'tis well; for in it, too, there is felt to be inspiration--and
+when, in good time, purified from error, the leaves all make but one
+Bible.
+
+Hark to the loud, clear, mellow, bold song of the BLACKBIRD. There he
+flits along upon a strong wing, with his yellow bill visible in
+distance, and disappears in the silent wood. Not long silent. It is a
+spring-day in our imagination--his clay-wall nest holds his mate at the
+foot of the Silver-fir, and he is now perched on its pinnacle. That
+thrilling hymn will go vibrating down the stem till it reaches her
+brooding breast. The whole vernal air is filled with the murmur and the
+glitter of insects; but the blackbird's song is over all other symptoms
+of love and life, and seems to call upon the leaves to unfold into
+happiness. It is on that one Tree-top, conspicuous among many thousands
+on the fine breast of wood--here and there, a pine mingling not unmeetly
+with the prevailing oak--that the forest-minstrel sits in his
+inspirations. The rock above is one which we have often climbed. There
+lies the glorious Loch and all its islands--one dearer than the rest to
+eye and imagination, with its old Religious House--year after year
+crumbling away unheeded into more entire ruin. Far away, a sea of
+mountains, with all their billowing summits distinct in the sky, and now
+uncertain and changeful as the clouds. Yonder Castle stands well on the
+peninsula among the trees which the herons inhabit. Those coppice-woods
+on the other shore, stealing up to the heathery rocks and sprinkled
+birches, are the haunts of the roe. That great glen, that stretches
+sullenly away into the distant darkness, has been for ages the birth and
+the death-place of the red-deer. The cry of an Eagle! There he hangs
+poised in the sunlight, and now he flies off towards the sea. But again
+the song of our BLACKBIRD rises like "a steam of rich distilled
+perfumes," and our heart comes back to him upon the pinnacle of his own
+Home-tree. The source of song is yet in the happy creature's heart--but
+the song itself has subsided, like a rivulet that has been rejoicing in
+a sudden shower among the hills; the bird drops down among the balmy
+branches, and the other faint songs which that bold anthem had drowned,
+are heard at a distance, and seem to encroach every moment on the
+silence.
+
+You say you greatly prefer the song of the THRUSH. Pray, why set such
+delightful singers by the ears? We dislike the habit that very many
+people have of trying everything by a scale. Nothing seems to them to be
+good positively--only relatively. Now, it is true wisdom to be charmed
+with what is charming, to live in it for the time being, and compare the
+emotion with no former emotion whatever--unless it be unconsciously in
+the working of an imagination set agoing by delight. Although,
+therefore, we cannot say that we prefer the Thrush to the Blackbird, yet
+we agree with you in thinking him a most delightful bird. Where a Thrush
+is, we defy you to anticipate his song in the morning. He is indeed an
+early riser. By the way, Chanticleer is far from being so. You hear him
+crowing away from shortly after midnight, and, in your simplicity, may
+suppose him to be up and strutting about the premises. Far from it;--he
+is at that very moment perched in his polygamy, between two of his
+fattest wives. The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for several hours
+to come; while all the time the Thrush, having long ago rubbed his eyes,
+is on his topmost twig, broad awake, and charming the ear of dawn with
+his beautiful vociferation. During mid-day he disappears, and is mute;
+but again, at dewy even, as at dewy morn, he pours his pipe like a
+prodigal, nor ceases sometimes when night has brought the moon and
+stars.
+
+Best beloved, and most beautiful of all Thrushes that ever broke from
+the blue-spotted shell!--thou who, for five springs, hast "hung thy
+procreant cradle" among the roses, and honeysuckles, and ivy, and
+clematis that embower in bloom the lattice of our Cottage-study--how
+farest thou now in the snow? Consider the whole place as your own, my
+dear bird; and remember, that when the gardener's children sprinkle food
+for you and yours all along your favourite haunts, that it is done by
+our orders. And when all the earth is green again, and all the sky blue,
+you will welcome us to our rural domicile, with light feet running
+before us among the winter leaves, and then skim away to your new nest
+in the old spot, then about to be somewhat more cheerful in the
+undisturbing din of the human life within the flowery walls.
+
+Nay--how can we forget what is for ever before our eyes! Blessed be
+Thou--on thy shadowy bed, belonging equally to earth and heaven--O Isle!
+who art called the Beautiful! and who of thyself canst make all the Lake
+one floating Paradise--even were her shore-hills sylvan no
+more--groveless the bases of all her remoter mountains--effaced that
+loveliest splendour, sun-painted on their sky-piercing cliffs. And can
+it be that we have forsaken Thee! Fairy-land and Love-land of our youth!
+Hath imagination left our brain, and passion our heart, so that we can
+bear banishment from Thee and yet endure life! Such loss not yet is
+ours--witness these gushing tears. But Duty, "stern daughter of the
+voice of God," dooms us to breathe our morning and evening orisons far
+from hearing and sight of Thee, whose music and whose light continue
+gladdening other ears and other eyes--as if ours had there never
+listened--and never gazed. As if thy worshipper--and sun! moon! and
+stars! he asks ye if he loved not you and your images--as if thy
+worshipper--O Windermere! were--dead! And does duty dispense no reward
+to them who sacrifice at her bidding what was once the very soul of
+life? Yes! an exceeding great reward--ample as the heart's desire--for
+contentment is borne of obedience--where no repinings are, the wings of
+thought are imped beyond the power of the eagle's plumes; and happy are
+we now--with the human smiles and voices we love even more than thine,
+thou fairest region of nature! happier than when we rippled in our
+pinnace through the billowy moonlight--than when we sat alone on the
+mountain within the thunder-cloud.
+
+Why do the songs of the Blackbird and Thrush make us think of the
+songless STARLING? It matters not. We do think of him, and see him
+too--a lovable bird, and his abode is majestic. What an object of wonder
+and awe is an old Castle to a boyish imagination! Its height how
+dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear carries him, and hangs
+him over the battlements! What beauty in those unapproachable wall
+flowers, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice,
+and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below, is the sound of a
+stream the eye cannot reach--of a waterfall echoing for ever among the
+black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of
+the old Castle--but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and
+imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals
+him--he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There and
+then it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard something wild and
+wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of the
+battlements, or flew out of the chinks and crannies. There were Martens
+too, so different in their looks from the pretty
+House-Swallows--Jack-daws clamouring afresh at every time we waved our
+caps, or vainly slung a pebble towards their nests--and one grove of
+elms, to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, ever and anon,
+some noiseless Heron from the Muirs.
+
+Ruins! Among all the external objects of imagination, surely they are
+most affecting! Some sumptuous edifice of a former age, still standing
+in its undecayed strength, has undoubtedly a great command over us, from
+the ages that have flowed over it; but the mouldering edifice which
+Nature has begun to win to herself, and to dissolve into her own bosom,
+is far more touching to the heart, and more awakening to the spirit. It
+is beautiful in its decay--not merely because green leaves, and wild
+flowers, and creeping mosses soften its rugged frowns, but because they
+have sown themselves on the decay of greatness; they are monitors to our
+fancy, like the flowers on a grave, of the untroubled rest of the dead.
+Battlements riven by the hand of time, and cloistered arches reft and
+rent, speak to us of the warfare and of the piety of our ancestors, of
+the pride of their might, and the consolations of their sorrow: they
+revive dim shadows of departed life, evoked from the land of
+forgetfulness; but they touch us more deeply when the brightness which
+the sun flings on the broken arches, and the warbling of birds that are
+nestled in the chambers of princes, and the moaning of winds through the
+crevices of towers, round which the surges of war were shattered and
+driven back, lay those phantoms again to rest in their silent bed, and
+show us, in the monuments of human life and power, the visible footsteps
+of Time and Oblivion coming on in their everlasting and irresistible
+career, to sweep down our perishable race, and to reduce all the forms
+of our momentary being into the undistinguishable elements of their
+original nothing.
+
+What is there below the skies like the place of mighty and departed
+cities? the vanishing or vanished capitals of renowned empires? There is
+no other such desolation. The solitudes of nature may be wild and drear,
+but they are not like the solitude from which human glory is swept away.
+The overthrow or decay of mighty human power is, of all thoughts that
+can enter the mind, the most overwhelming. The whole imagination is at
+once stirred by the prostration of that, round which so many high
+associations have been collected for so many ages. Beauty seems born but
+to perish, and its fragility is seen and felt to be inherent in it by a
+law of its being. But power gives stability, as it were, to human
+thought, and we forget our own perishable nature in the spectacle of
+some abiding and enduring greatness. Our own little span of years--our
+own confined region of space--are lost in the endurance and far-spread
+dominion of some mighty state, and we feel as if we partook of its
+deep-set and triumphant strength. When, therefore, a great and ancient
+empire falls into pieces, or when fragments of its power are heard rent
+asunder, like column after column disparting from some noble edifice, in
+sad conviction, we feel as if all the cities of men were built on
+foundations beneath which the earthquake sleeps. The same doom seems to
+be imminent over all the other kingdoms that still stand; and in the
+midst of such changes, and decays, and overthrows--or as we read of
+them of old--we look, under such emotions, on all power as
+foundationless, and in our wide imagination embrace empires covered only
+with the ruins of their desolation. Yet such is the pride of the human
+spirit, that it often unconsciously, under the influence of such
+imagination, strives to hide from itself the utter nothingness of its
+mightiest works. And when all its glories are visibly crumbling into
+dust, it creates some imaginary power to overthrow the fabrics of human
+greatness--and thus attempts to derive a kind of mournful triumph even
+in its very fall. Thus, when nations have faded away in their sins and
+vices, rotten at the heart and palsied in all their limbs, we strive not
+to think of that sad internal decay, but imagine some mighty power
+smiting empires and cutting short the records of mortal magnificence.
+Thus Fate and Destiny are said in our imagination to lay our glories
+low. Thus, even, the calm and silent air of Oblivion has been thought of
+as an unsparing Power. Time, too, though in moral sadness wisely called
+a shadow, has been clothed with terrific attributes, and the sweep of
+his scythe has shorn the towery diadem of cities. Thus the mere sigh in
+which we expire, has been changed into active power--and all the nations
+have with one voice called out "Death!" And while mankind have sunk, and
+fallen, and disappeared in the helplessness of their own mortal being,
+we have still spoken of powers arrayed against them--powers that are in
+good truth only another name for their own weaknesses. Thus imagination
+is for ever fighting against truth--and even when humbled, her visions
+are sublime--conscious even amongst saddest ruin of her own immortality.
+
+Higher and higher than ever rose the tower of Belus, uplifted by
+ecstasy, soars the LARK, the lyrical poet of the sky. Listen, listen!
+and the more remote the bird the louder seems his hymn in heaven. He
+seems, in such altitude, to have left the earth for ever, and to have
+forgotten his lowly nest. The primroses and the daisies, and all the
+sweet hill-flowers, must be unremembered in that lofty region of light.
+But just as the Lark is lost--he and his song together--as if his
+orisons had been accepted--both are seen and heard fondly wavering
+earthwards, and in a little while he is walking with his graceful crest
+contented along the furrows of the brairded corn, or on the clover lea
+that in man's memory has not felt the ploughshare; or after a pause, in
+which he seems dallying with a home-sick passion, drooping down like one
+dead, beside his mate in her shallow nest.
+
+Of all birds to whom is given dominion over the air, the Lark alone lets
+loose the power that is in his wings only for the expression of love and
+gratitude. The eagle sweeps in passion of hunger--poised in the sky his
+ken is searching for prey on sea or sward--his flight is ever animated
+by destruction. The dove seems still to be escaping from something that
+pursues--afraid of enemies even in the dangerless solitudes where the
+old forests repose in primeval peace. The heron, high over houseless
+moors, seems at dusk fearful in her laborious flight, and weariedly
+gathers her long wings on the tree-top, as if thankful that day is done,
+and night again ready with its rest. "The blackening trains o' craws to
+their repose" is an image that affects the heart of "mortal man who
+liveth here by toil," through sympathy with creatures partaking with him
+a common lot. The swallow, for ever on the wing, and wheeling fitfully
+before fancy's eyes in element adapted for perpetual pastime, is flying
+but to feed--for lack of insects prepares to forsake the land of its
+nativity, and yearns for the blast to bear it across the sea. Thou
+alone, O Lark! hast wings given thee that thou mayest be perfectly
+happy--none other bird but thou can at once soar and sing--and
+heavenward thou seemest to be borne, not more by those twinkling pinions
+than by the ever-varying, ever-deepening melody effusing from thy heart.
+
+How imagination unifies! then most intensive when working with and in
+the heart. Who thinks, when profoundly listening with his eyes shut to
+the warbling air, that there is another lark in creation? _The_
+lark--sole as the season--or the rainbow. We can fancy he sings to charm
+our own particular ear--to please us descends into silence--for our
+sakes erects his crest as he walks confidingly near our feet. Not till
+the dream-circle, of which ourselves are the centre, dissolves or
+subsides, do the fairest sights and sweetest sounds in nature lose their
+relationship to us the beholder and hearer, and relapse into the common
+property of all our kind. To self appertains the whole sensuous as well
+as the whole spiritual world. Egoism is the creator of all beauty and
+all bliss, of all hope and of all faith. Even thus doth imagination
+unify Sabbath worship. All our beloved Scotland is to the devout breast
+on that day one House of God. Each congregation--however far
+apart--hears but one hymn--sympathy with all is an all-comprehensive
+self--and Christian love of our brethren is evolved from the conviction
+that we have ourselves a soul to be saved or lost.
+
+Yet, methinks, imagination loveth just as well to pursue an opposite
+process, and to furnish food to the heart in separate picture after
+separate picture, one and all imbued not with the same but congenial
+sentiment, and therefore succeeding one another at her will, be her will
+intimated by mild bidding or imperial command. In such mood imagination,
+in still series, visions a thousand parish-kirks, each with its own
+characteristic localities, Sabbath-sanctified; distributes the beauty of
+that hallowed day in allotments all over the happy land--so that in one
+Sabbath there are a thousand Sabbaths.
+
+Keep carolling, then, all together, ye countless Larks, till heaven is
+one hymn! Imagination thinks she sees each particular field that sends
+up its own singer to the sky--the spot of each particular nest. And of
+the many hearts all over loveliest Scotland in the sweet vernal season
+a-listening your lays, she is with the quiet beatings of the happy, with
+the tumult in them that would wish to break! The little maiden by the
+well in the brae-side above the cottage, with the Bible on her knees,
+left in tendance of an infant--the palsied crone placed safely in the
+sunshine till after service--the sickly student meditating in the shade,
+and somewhat sadly thinking that these spring flowers are the last his
+eyes may see--lovers walking together on the Sabbath before their
+marriage to the house of God--life-wearied wanderers without a
+home--remorseful men touched by the innocent happiness they cannot help
+hearing in heaven--the sceptic--the unbeliever--the atheist to whom
+"hope comes not that comes to all." What different meanings to such
+different auditors hath the same music at the same moment filling the
+same sky!
+
+Does the Lark ever sing in winter? Ay, sometimes January is visited with
+a May-day hour; and in the genial glimpse, though the earth be yet barer
+than the sky, the Lark, mute for months, feels called on by the sun to
+sing, not so near to heaven's gate, and a shorter than vernal lyric, or
+during that sweetest season when neither he nor you can say whether it
+is summer or but spring. Unmated yet, nor of mate solicitous, in pure
+joy of heart he cannot refrain from ascent and song; but the snow-clouds
+look cold, and ere he has mounted as high again as the church-spire, the
+aimless impulse dies, and he comes wavering down silently to the yet
+unprimrosed brae.
+
+In our boyish days, we never felt that the Spring had really come till
+the clear-singing Lark went careering before our gladdened eyes away up
+to heaven. Then all the earth wore a vernal look, and the ringing sky
+said, "Winter is over and gone." As we roamed, on a holiday, over the
+wide pastoral moors, to angle in the lochs and pools, unless the day
+were very cloudy the song of some lark or other was still warbling
+aloft, and made a part of our happiness. The creature could not have
+been more joyful in the skies than we were on the greensward. We, too,
+had our wings, and flew through our holiday. Thou soul of glee! who
+still leddest our flight in all our pastimes--representative child of
+Erin!--wildest of the wild--brightest of the bright--boldest of the
+bold!--the lark-loved vales in their stillness were no home for thee.
+The green glens of ocean, created by swelling and subsiding storms, or
+by calms around thy ship transformed into immeasurable plains, they
+filled thy fancy with images dominant over the memories of the steadfast
+earth. The petterel and the halcyon were the birds the sailor loved, and
+he forgot the songs of the inland woods in the moanings that haunt the
+very heart of the tumultuous sea. Of that ship nothing was ever known
+but that she perished. He, too, the grave and thoughtful English boy,
+whose exquisite scholarship we all so enthusiastically admired, without
+one single particle of hopeless envy--and who accompanied us on all our
+wildest expeditions, rather from affection to his playmates than any
+love of their sports--he who, timid and unadventurous as he seemed to
+be, yet rescued little Marian of the Brae from a drowning death when so
+many grown-up men stood aloof in selfish fear--gone, too, for ever art
+thou, our beloved Edward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant years in
+the Oriental clime,
+
+                  ----"on Hoogley's banks afar,
+    Looks down on thy lone tomb the Evening Star."
+
+How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet how pale thou ever wast;
+thou who sat'st then by the Sailor's side, and listened to his sallies
+with a mournful smile--friend! dearest to our soul! loving us far better
+than we deserved; for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all our
+frailties--and in those days of hope from thy lips how elevating was
+praise! Yet how seldom do we think of thee! For months--years--not at
+all--not once--sometimes not even when by some chance we hear your name!
+It meets our eyes written on books that once belonged to you and that
+you gave us--and yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we sank down
+to the floor on hearing thou wast dead--ungrateful to thy memory for
+many years we were not--but it faded away till we forgot thee utterly,
+except when sleep showed thy grave!
+
+Methinks we hear the song of the GREY LINTIE, the darling bird of
+Scotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. When
+the simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied to
+the maiden the words, "my bonnie burdie," they must have been thinking
+of the Grey Lintie--its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure--its shape
+elegant yet unobtrusive--and its song various without any effort--now
+rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor riotous--now tender, almost
+mournful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, are all its habits,
+endearing and delightful. It is social, yet not averse to solitude,
+singing often in groups, and as often by itself in the furze brake, or
+on the briery knoll. You often find the lintie's nest in the most
+solitary places--in some small self-sown clump of trees by the brink of
+a wild hill-stream, or on the tangled edge of a forest; and just as
+often you find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden, or in a bower
+within, or even in an old gooseberry bush that has grown into a sort of
+tree.
+
+One wild and beautiful place we well remember--ay, the very bush, in
+which we first found a grey lintie's nest--for in our parish, from some
+cause or other, it was rather a rarish bird. That far-away day is as
+distinct as the present NOW. Imagine, friend, first, a little well
+surrounded with wild cresses on the moor; something like a rivulet flows
+from it, or rather you see a deep tinge of verdure, the line of which,
+you believe, must be produced by the oozing moisture--you follow it, and
+by-and-by there is a descent palpable to your feet--then you find
+yourself between low broomy knolls, that, heightening every step, become
+ere long banks, and braes, and hills. You are surprised now to see a
+stream, and look round for its source--and there seem now to be a
+hundred small sources in fissures and springs on every side--you hear
+the murmurs of its course over beds of sand and gravel--and hark, a
+waterfall! A tree or two begins to shake its tresses on the horizon--a
+birch or a rowan. You get ready your angle--and by the time you have
+panniered three dozen, you are at a wooden bridge--you fish the pool
+above it with the delicate dexterity of a Boaz, capture the monarch of
+the flood, and on lifting your eyes from his starry side as he gasps his
+last on the silvery shore, you behold a Cottage, at one gable-end an
+ash, at the other a sycamore, and standing perhaps at the lonely door, a
+maiden like a fairy or an angel.
+
+This is the Age of Confessions; and why, therefore, may we not make a
+confession of first-love? We had finished our sixteenth year--and we
+were almost as tall as we are now; for our figure was then straight as
+an arrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. We had given over
+bird-nesting--but we had not ceased to visit the dell where first we
+found the Grey Lintie's brood. Tale-writers are told by critics to
+remember that the young shepherdesses of Scotland are not beautiful as
+the fictions of a poet's dream. But SHE was beautiful beyond poetry. She
+was so then, when passion and imagination were young--and her image, her
+undying, unfading image, is so now, when passion and imagination are
+old, and when from eye and soul have disappeared much of the beauty and
+glory both of nature and life. We loved her from the first moment that
+our eyes met--and we see their light at this moment--the same soft,
+burning light, that set body and soul on fire. She was but a poor
+shepherd's daughter; but what was that to us, when we heard her voice
+singing one of her old plaintive ballads among the braes?--When we sat
+down beside her--when the same plaid was drawn over our shoulders in the
+rain-storm--when we asked her for a kiss, and was not refused--for what
+had she to fear in her beauty, and her innocence, and her filial
+piety?--and were we not a mere boy, in the bliss of passion, ignorant of
+deceit or dishonour, and with a heart open to the eyes of all as to the
+gates of heaven? What music was in that stream! Could "Sabean odours
+from the spicy shores of Araby the Blest" so penetrate our soul, as that
+breath, balmier than the broom on which we sat, forgetful of all other
+human life! Father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts, and
+cousins, and all the tribe of friends that would throw us off--if we
+should be so base and mad as to marry a low-born, low-bred, ignorant,
+uneducated, crafty, ay, crafty and designing beggar--were all forgotten
+in our delirium--if indeed it were delirium--and not an
+everlastingly-sacred devotion to nature and to truth. For in what were
+we deluded? A voice--a faint and dewy voice--deadened by the earth that
+fills up her grave, and by the turf that, at this very hour, is
+expanding its primroses to the dew of heaven--answers, "In nothing!"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" exclaims some reader in derision. "Here's an attempt at
+the pathetic!--a miserable attempt indeed; for who cares about the death
+of a mean hut girl?--we are sick of low life." Why, as to that matter,
+who cares for the death of any one mortal being? Who weeps for the death
+of the late Emperor of all the Russias? Who wept over Napoleon the
+Great? When Chatham or Burke, Pitt or Fox died--don't pretend to tell
+lies about a nation's tears. And if yourself, who, perhaps, are not in
+low life, were to die in half an hour (don't be alarmed), all who knew
+you--except two or three of your bosom friends, who, partly from being
+somewhat dull, and partly from wishing to be decent, might whine--would
+walk along George Street, at the fashionable hour of three, the very day
+after your funeral. Nor would it ever enter their heads to abstain from
+a dinner at the Club, ordered perhaps by yourself a fortnight ago, at
+which time you were in rude health, merely because you had foolishly
+allowed a cold to fasten upon your lungs, and carry you off in the prime
+and promise of your professional life. In spite of all your critical
+slang, therefore, Mr Editor, or Master Contributor to some Literary
+Journal, SHE, though a poor _Scottish Herd_, was most beautiful; and
+when, but a week after taking farewell of her, we went, according to our
+tryst, to fold her in our arms, and was told by her father that she was
+dead,--ay, dead--that she had no existence--that she was in a
+coffin,--when we awoke from the dead-fit in which we had lain on the
+floor of that cottage, and saw her in her grave-clothes within an hour
+to be buried--when we stood at her burial--and knew that never more were
+we or the day to behold her presence--we learned then how immeasurably
+misery can surpass happiness--that the soul is ignorant of its own
+being, till all at once a thunder-stone plunges down its depths, and
+groans gurgle upwards upbraiding heaven.
+
+How easily can the heart change its mood from the awful to the
+solemn--from the solemn to the sweet--and from the sweet to the
+gay--while the mirth of this careless moment is unconsciously tempered
+by the influence of that holy hour that has subsided but not died, and
+continues to colour the most ordinary emotion, as the common things of
+earth look all lovelier in imbibed light, even after the serene moon
+that had yielded it is no more visible in her place! Most gentle are
+such transitions in the calm of nature and of the heart; all true poetry
+is full of them; and in music how pleasant are they, or how affecting!
+Those alternations of tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and of
+quiet thoughts! The organ and the Æolian harp! As the one has ceased
+pealing praise, we can list the other whispering it--nor feels the soul
+any loss of emotion in the change--still true to itself and its wondrous
+nature--just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it turns its eyes
+to admire the beauty of a dewdrop or an insect's wing.
+
+Now, we hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity of
+confining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. Gentle
+readers, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if you
+are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs
+to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold--three
+brace of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock pheasant, poor
+fellow,--a man and his wife of the aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock,
+vainly presenting his long Christmas bill,--
+
+        "Some sleeping kill'd--
+    All murder'd."
+
+Why, you are indeed a most logical reasoner, and a most considerate
+Christian, when you launch out into an invective against the cruelty
+exhibited in our Cages. Let us leave this den of murder, and have a
+glass of our home-made frontignac in our own Sanctum. Come, come,
+sir,--look on this newly-married couple of CANARIES.--The architecture
+of their nest is certainly not of the florid order, but my Lady
+Yellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. Come back in a day or two,
+and you will see her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear the ear-piercing
+fife of the bridegroom!--Where will you find a set of happier people,
+unless perhaps it be in our parlour, or our library, or our nursery?
+For, to tell you the truth, there is a cage or two in almost every room
+of the house. Where is the cruelty--here, or in your blood-stained
+larder? But you must eat, you reply. We answer--not necessarily birds.
+The question is about birds--cruelty to birds; and were that sagacious
+old wild-goose, whom one single moment of heedlessness brought last
+Wednesday to your hospitable board, at this moment alive, to bear a part
+in our conversation, can you dream that, with all your ingenuity and
+eloquence, you could persuade him--the now defunct and disjected--that
+you had been under the painful necessity of eating him with stuffing and
+apple-sauce?
+
+It is not in nature that an ornithologist should be cruel--he is most
+humane. Mere skin-stuffers are not ornithologists--and we have known
+more than one of that tribe who would have had no scruple in strangling
+their own mothers, or reputed fathers. Yet if your true ornithologist
+cannot catch a poor dear bird alive, he must kill it--and leave you to
+weep for its death. There must be a few victims out of myriads of
+millions--and thousands and tens of thousands are few; but the
+ornithologist knows the seasons when death is least afflictive--he is
+merciful in his wisdom--for the spirit of knowledge is gentle--and
+"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," reconcile him to the
+fluttering and ruffled plumage blood-stained by death. 'Tis hard, for
+example, to be obliged to shoot a Zenaida dove! Yet a Zenaida dove must
+die for Audubon's Illustrations. How many has he loved in life, and
+tenderly preserved! And how many more pigeons of all sorts, cooked in
+all styles, have you devoured--ay, twenty for his one--you being a
+glutton and epicure in the same inhuman form, and he being contented at
+all times with the plainest fare--a salad perhaps of water-cresses
+plucked from a spring in the forest glade, or a bit of pemmican, or a
+wafer of portable soup melted in the pot of some squatter--and shared
+with the admiring children before a drop has been permitted to touch his
+own abstemious lips.
+
+The intelligent author of the "Treatise on British Birds" does not
+condescend to justify the right we claim to encage them; but he shows
+his genuine humanity in instructing us how to render happy and
+healthful their imprisonment. He says very prettily, "What are town
+gardens and shrubberies in squares, but an attempt to ruralise the city?
+So strong is the desire in man to participate in country pleasures, that
+he tries to bring some of them even to his room. Plants and birds are
+sought after with avidity, and cherished with delight. With flowers he
+endeavours to make his apartments resemble a garden; and thinks of
+groves and fields, as he listens to the wild sweet melody of his little
+captives. Those who keep and take an interest in song-birds, are often
+at a loss how to treat their little warblers during illness, or to
+prepare the proper food best suited to their various constitutions; but
+that knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve these little
+creatures in health: for want of it, young amateurs and bird-fanciers
+have often seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds perish."
+
+Now, here we confess is a good physician. In Edinburgh we understand
+there are about five hundred medical practitioners on the human
+race--and we have dog-doctors, and horse-doctors, who come out in
+numbers--but we have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the
+whole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of children
+teething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on his
+perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his
+lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food
+skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our
+treadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians,
+we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to die
+unattended. Why do not the ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into a
+Society for this purpose?
+
+Not one of all the philosophers in the world has been able to tell us
+what is happiness. Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have been
+miserable. Probably he was one of the most contented birds in the
+universe. Does confinement--the closest, most uncompanioned
+confinement--make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker, sitting
+with his head on his knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to night,
+in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day
+sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out
+washing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurkling
+over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it
+so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions
+circumscribed within the narrowest imaginable limits? Nonsense all!
+
+Then, gentle reader, were you ever in a Highland shieling? Often since
+you read our Recreations. It is built of turf, and is literally alive;
+for the beautiful heather is blooming, wildflowers and walls and roof
+are one sound of bees. The industrious little creatures must have come
+several long miles for their balmy spoil. There is but one human
+creature in that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He no more
+wearies of that lonesome place than do the sunbeams or the shadows. To
+himself alone he chants his old Gaelic songs, or frames wild ditties of
+his own to the raven or red-deer. Months thus pass on; and he descends
+again to the lower country. Perhaps he goes to the
+wars--fights--bleeds--and returns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and once
+more, blending in his imagination the battles of his own regiment, in
+Egypt, Spain, or Flanders, with the deeds done of yore by Ossian sung,
+sits contented by the door of the same shieling, restored and
+beautified, in which he had dreamt away the summers of his youth.
+
+What has become--we wonder--of Dartmoor Prison? During that long war its
+huge and hideous bulk was filled with Frenchmen--ay,
+
+    "Men of all climes--attach'd to none--were there;"
+
+--a desperate race--robbers and reavers, and ruffians and rapers, and
+pirates and murderers--mingled with the heroes who, fired by freedom,
+had fought for the land of lilies, with its vine-vales and "hills of
+sweet myrtle"--doomed to die in captivity, immured in that doleful
+mansion on the sullen moor. There thousands pined and wore away and
+wasted--and when not another groan remained within the bones of their
+breasts, they gave up the ghost. Young heroes prematurely old in baffled
+passions--life's best and strongest passions, that scorned to go to
+sleep but in the sleep of death. These died in their golden prime. With
+them went down into unpitied and unhonoured graves--for pity and honour
+dwell not in houses so haunted--veterans in their iron age--some
+self-smitten with ghastly wounds that let life finally bubble out of
+sinewy neck or shaggy bosom--or the poison-bowl convulsed their giant
+limbs unto unquivering rest. Yet there you saw a wild strange tumult of
+troubled happiness--which, as you looked into its heart, was
+transfigured into misery. There volatile spirits fluttered in their
+cage, like birds that seem not to hate nor to be unhappy in confinement,
+but, hanging by beak or claws, to be often playing with the glittering
+wires--to be amusing themselves, so it seems, with drawing up, by small
+enginery, their food and drink, which soon sickens, however, on their
+stomachs, till, with ruffled plumage, they are often found in the
+morning lying on their backs, with clenched feet, and neck bent as if
+twisted, on the scribbled sand, stone-dead. There you saw pale
+youths--boys almost like girls, so delicate looked they in that hot
+infected air which, ventilate it as you will, is never felt to breathe
+on the face like the fresh air of liberty--once bold and bright
+midshipmen in frigate or first-rater, and saved by being picked up by
+the boats of the ship that had sunk her by one double-shotted broadside,
+or sent her in one explosion splintering into the sky, and splashing
+into the sea, in less than a minute the thunder silent, and the fiery
+shower over and gone--there you saw such lads as these, who used almost
+to weep if they got not duly the dear-desired letter from sister or
+sweetheart, and when they did duly get it, opened it with trembling
+fingers, and even then let drop some natural tears--there we saw them
+leaping and dancing, with gross gesticulations and horrid oaths obscene,
+with grim outcasts from nature, whose mustached mouths were rank with
+sin and pollution--monsters for whom hell was yawning--their mortal mire
+already possessed with a demon. There, wretched, woe-begone, and wearied
+out with recklessness and desperation, many wooed Chance and Fortune,
+who they hoped might yet listen to their prayers--and kept rattling the
+dice--cursing them that gave the indulgence--even in their cells of
+punishment for disobedience or mutiny. There you saw some, who in the
+crowded courts "sat apart retired,"--bringing the practised skill that
+once supported, or the native genius that once adorned life, to bear on
+beautiful contrivances and fancies elaborately executed with meanest
+instruments, till they rivalled or outdid the work of art assisted by
+all the ministries of science. And thus won they a poor pittance
+wherewithal to purchase some little comfort or luxury, or ornament to
+their persons; for vanity had not forsaken some in their rusty squalor,
+and they sought to please her, their mistress or their bride. There you
+saw accomplished men conjuring before their eyes, on the paper or the
+canvass, to feed the longings of their souls, the lights and the shadows
+of the dear days that far away were beautifying some sacred spot of "_la
+belle France_"--perhaps some festal scene, for love in sorrow is still
+true to remembered joy, where once with youths and maidens
+
+    "They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire."
+
+There you heard--and hushed then was all the hubbub--some clear silver
+voice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths,
+singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the best
+and noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!"
+And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, men
+with minds that had sounded the profounds of science, and, seemingly
+undisturbed by all that clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines and
+numbers--conversing with the harmonies and lofty stars of heaven, deaf
+to all the discord and despair of earth. Or religious still even more
+than they--for those were mental, these spiritual--you beheld there men,
+whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on their
+own souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if not
+yet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come!
+
+To return to Birds in Cages;--they are, when well, uniformly as happy as
+the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no,
+to burst out into song--to hop about so pleased and pert--to play such
+fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs--to sleep so soundly, and to
+awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of
+light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other
+sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing
+to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been
+flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand
+inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not
+the slightest idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to the
+meaning of his words, would have been shocked at his ungrateful folly.
+Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest," how
+they amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then,
+finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up to
+their cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more at
+home. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duet
+or a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly tranquil and cheerful life
+than that of a Goldfinch in a cage in spring, with his wife and his
+children. All his social affections are cultivated to the utmost. He
+possesses many accomplishments unknown to his brethren among the
+trees;--he has never known what it is to want a meal in times of the
+greatest scarcity; and he admires the beautiful frostwork on the
+windows, when thousands of his feathered friends are buried in the snow,
+or, what is almost as bad, baked up into pies, and devoured by a large
+supper-party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and flirtation by
+such viands, and, remorseless, swallow dozens upon dozens of the
+warblers of the woods.
+
+Ay, ay, Mr Goldy! you are wondering what we are now doing, and
+speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if
+you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better
+wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine
+goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his
+inquisitive nose within the wires--or when a strange cat glides round
+and round the room, fascinating thee with the glare of his fierce fixed
+eyes;--but what is all that to the woes of an Editor?--Yes, sweet
+simpleton! do you not know that we are the editor of _Blackwood's
+Magazine_--Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that very man--that
+self-same much-calumniated man-monster and Ogre. There, there!--perch on
+our shoulder, and let us laugh together at the whole world.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+SECOND CANTICLE.
+
+
+The golden eagle leads the van of our Birds of Prey--and there she sits
+in her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirst
+have been appeased--her wings are folded up in a dignified
+tranquillity--her talons, grasping a leafless branch, are almost hidden
+by the feathers of her breast--her sleepless eye has lost something of
+its ferocity--and the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary state
+in the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors and
+mosses--the blackbird whistles in the birken shaw--and the cony erects
+his ears at the mouth of his burrow, and whisks away frolicsome among
+the whins or heather.
+
+There is no index to the hour--neither light nor shadow--no cloud. But
+from the composed aspect of the Bird, we may suppose it to be the hush
+of evening after a day of successful foray. The imps in the eyrie have
+been fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. The
+mother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may
+glide up to her brood--the sire is somewhere sitting within her view
+among the rocks--a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in
+exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as
+if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to
+wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler of sheep-walk and
+forest-chase.
+
+Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow lustre of her keen, wild,
+fierce eye is veiled, even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhaps
+sickness has been at the heart of the dejected bird, or fever wasted her
+wing. The sun may have smitten her, or the storm driven her against a
+rock. Then hunger and thirst--which in pride of plumage she scorned, and
+which only made her fiercer on the edge of her unfed eyrie, as she
+whetted her beak on the flint-stone, and clutched the strong
+heather-stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating prey--quell
+her courage, and in famine she eyes afar off the fowls she is unable to
+pursue, and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight is heavier and
+heavier each succeeding day--she ventures not to cross the great glens
+with or without lochs--but flaps her way from rock to rock, lower and
+lower down along the same mountain-side--and finally, drawn by her
+weakness into dangerous descent, she is discovered at grey dawn far
+below the region of snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest carrion;
+till a bullet whizzing through her heart, down she topples, and soon is
+despatched by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd stretching out his
+foe's carcass on the sward, eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, with
+leg thick as his own wrist, and foot broad as his own hand.
+
+But behold the Golden Eagle, as she has pounced, and is exulting over
+her prey! With her head drawn back between the crescent of her uplifted
+wings, which she will not fold till that prey be devoured, eye glaring
+cruel joy, neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, and talons
+driven through the victim's entrails and heart--there she is new lighted
+on the ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell and its echo. Beak
+and talons, all her life long, have had a stain of blood, for the
+murderess observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips them in loch or sea,
+except when dashing down suddenly among the terrified water-fowl from
+her watch-tower in the sky. The week-old fawn had left the doe's side
+but for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice; a rustle and a
+shadow--and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis. In an
+instant the small animal is dead--after a short exultation torn into
+pieces, and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its unswallowed or
+undigested bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumbering
+the eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which the
+young demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine.
+
+Oh for the life of an eagle written by himself! It would outsell the
+Confessions even of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would he, or she,
+write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened his
+eyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light.
+The Great Glen of Scotland--hath it not been the inheritance of his
+ancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignoble
+blood, from intermarriages of necessity or convenience with kite,
+buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the Golden Eagles of Glen-Falloch,
+surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed alliances with the Golden Eagles
+of Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair--the
+Lightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm-wheelers, the
+Cloud-cleavers, ever since the deluge. The education of the
+autobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes,
+beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in that
+capacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from the
+desert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion of
+his instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man.
+What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College of
+the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of all
+inferior creatures, he speedily made himself master--ours included. Nor
+was his knowledge confined to theory, but reduced to daily practice. He
+kept himself in constant training--taking a flight of a couple of
+hundred miles before breakfast--paying a forenoon visit to the farthest
+of the Hebride Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In one day he
+has flown to Norway on a visit to his uncle by the mother's side, and
+returned the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying sick at the Head
+of the Cambrian Dee. He soon learned to despise himself for having once
+yelled for food, when food was none; and to sit or sail, on rock or
+through ether, athirst and an hungered, but mute. The virtues of
+patience, endurance, and fortitude, have become with him, in strict
+accordance with the Aristotelian Moral Philosophy--habits. A Peripatetic
+Philosopher he could hardly be called--properly speaking, he belongs to
+the Solar School--an airy sect, who take very high ground, indulge in
+lofty flights, and are often lost in the clouds. Now and then a light
+chapter might be introduced, setting forth how he and other youngsters
+of the Blood Royal were wont to take an occasional game at High-Jinks,
+or tourney in air lists, the champions on opposite sides flying from the
+Perthshire and from the Argyllshire mountains, and encountering with a
+clash in the azure common, six thousand feet high. But the fever of love
+burned in his blood, and flying to the mountains of another continent,
+in obedience to the yell of an old oral tradition, he wooed and won his
+virgin bride--a monstrous beauty, wider-winged than himself, to kill or
+caress, and bearing the proof of her noble nativity in the radiant Iris
+that belongs in perfection of fierceness but to the Sun-starers, and in
+them is found, unimpaired by cloudiest clime, over the uttermost parts
+of the earth. The bridegroom and his bride, during the honey-moon, slept
+on the naked rock--till they had built their eyrie beneath its
+cliff-canopy on the mountain-brow. When the bride was "as Eagles wish to
+be who love their lords"--devoted unto her was the bridegroom, even as
+the cushat murmuring to his brooding mate in the central pine-grove of a
+forest. Tenderly did he drop from his talons, close beside her beak, the
+delicate spring lamb, or the too early leveret, owing to the hurried and
+imprudent marriage of its parents before March, buried in a living tomb
+on April's closing day. Through all thy glens, Albyn! hadst thou reason
+to mourn, at the bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had been
+cherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven wheeled the Royal Pair,
+from rising to setting sun. Among the bright-blooming heather they
+espied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creeping like a lizard, and from
+behind the vain shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the flight he
+would fain see shorn of its beams. The flocks were thinned--and the
+bleating of desolate dams among the woolly people heard from many a
+brae. Poison was strewn over the glens for their destruction, but the
+Eagle, like the lion, preys not on carcasses; and the shepherd dogs
+howled in agony over the carrion in which they devoured death. Ha! was
+not that a day of triumph to the Sun-starers of Cruachan, when
+sky-hunting in couples, far down on the greensward before the ruined
+gateway of Kilchurn Castle, they saw, left all to himself in the
+sunshine, the infant heir of the Campbell of Breadalbane, the child of
+the Lord of Glenorchy and all its streams! Four talons in an instant
+were in his heart. Too late were the outcries from all the turrets; for
+ere the castle-gates were flung open, the golden head of the royal babe
+was lying in gore, in the Eyrie on the iron ramparts of Ben-Slarive--his
+blue eyes dug out--his rosy cheeks torn--and his brains dropping from
+beaks that revelled yelling within the skull!--Such are a few hints for
+"Some Passages in the Life of the Golden Eagle, written by
+Himself,"--in one volume crown octavo--Blackwoods, Edinburgh and
+London.
+
+O heavens and earth!--forests and barn-yards! what a difference with a
+distinction between a GOLDEN EAGLE and a GREEN GOOSE! There, all neck
+and bottom, splay-footed, and hissing in miserable imitation of a
+serpent, lolling from side to side, up and down like an ill-trimmed
+punt, the downy gosling waddles through the green mire, and, imagining
+that King George the Fourth is meditating mischief against him, cackles
+angrily as he plunges into the pond. No swan that "on still St Mary's
+lake floats double, swan and shadow," so proud as he! He prides himself
+on being a gander, and never forgets the lesson instilled into him by
+his parents, soon as he chipt the shell in the nest among the nettles,
+that his ancestors saved the Roman Capitol. In process of time, in
+company with swine, he grazes on the common, and insults the Egyptians
+in their roving camp. Then comes the season of plucking--and this very
+pen bears testimony to his tortures. Out into the houseless winter is he
+driven--and, if he escapes being frozen into a lump of fat ice, he is
+crammed till his liver swells into a four-pounder--his cerebellum is cut
+by the cruel knife of a phrenological cook, and his remains buried with
+a cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of apoplectic aldermen, eating
+against each other at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for "Some
+Passages in the Life of a Green Goose," written by himself--in foolscap
+octavo--published by Quack and Co., Ludgate Lane, and sold by all
+booksellers in town and country.
+
+Poor poets must not meddle with eagles. In the "Fall of Nineveh," Mr
+Atherstone describes a grand review of his army by Sardanapalus. Two
+million men are put into motion by the moving of the Assyrian flag-staff
+in the hand of the king, who takes his station on a mount conspicuous to
+all the army. This flag-staff, though "tall as a mast"--Mr Atherstone
+does not venture to go on to say with Milton, "hewn on Norwegian hills,"
+or "of some tall ammiral," though the readers' minds supply the
+deficiency--this mast was, we are told, for "_two strong men_ a task;"
+but it must have been so for twenty. To have had the least chance of
+being all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have been
+less than fifty feet high--and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standard
+of Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke to
+him. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Such
+shouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firm
+ground made tremble." But this was not all.
+
+                              "At his height,
+    A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard,
+    And felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck,
+    Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank--
+    Down through the quivering air: another shout,--
+    His talons droop--his sunny eye grows dark--
+    His strengthless pennons fail--plump down he falls,
+    Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills,
+    With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd,
+    The sleeping lion in his den sprang up;
+    Listen'd awhile--then laid his monstrous mouth
+    Close to the floor, and breathed hot roarings out
+    In fierce reply."
+
+What think ye of that, John Audubon, Charles Buonaparte, J. Prideaux
+Selby, James Wilson, Sir William Jardine, and ye other European and
+American ornithologists? Pray, Mr Atherstone, did you ever see an
+eagle--a speck in the sky? Never again suffer yourself, oh, dear sir! to
+believe old women's tales of men on earth shooting eagles with their
+mouths; because the thing is impossible, even had their mouthpieces had
+percussion-locks--had they been crammed with ammunition to the muzzle.
+Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly have
+got a fright, and probably a fall--nor would there have been any hope
+for a tom-tit. But an eagle--an eagle ever so many thousand feet
+aloft--poo, poo!--he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude,
+and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string of
+wild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they would
+merely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered
+the earth-born shout with an air-born gabble--clangour to clangour.
+Where were Mr Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, and all his
+acoustics? Two shouts slew an eagle. What became of all the other
+denizens of air--especially crows, ravens, and vultures, who, seeing two
+millions of men, must have come flocking against a day of battle? Every
+mother's son of them must have gone to pot. Then what scrambling among
+the allied troops! And what was one eagle doing by himself "up-by
+yonder?" Was he the only eagle in Assyria--the secular bird of ages? Who
+was looking at him, first a speck--then faltering--then fluttering and
+wildly screaming--then plump down like a stone? Mr Atherstone talks as
+if he saw it. In the circumstances he had no business with his "sunny
+eye growing dark." That is entering too much into the medical, or rather
+anatomical symptoms of his apoplexy, and would be better for a medical
+journal than an epic poem. But to be done with it--two shouts that slew
+an eagle a mile up the sky, must have cracked all the tympana of the two
+million shouters. The entire army must have become as deaf as a post.
+Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the mount, must have been blown into the
+air as by the explosion of a range of gunpowder-mills; the campaign
+taken a new turn; and a revolution been brought about, of which, at this
+distance of place and time, it is not easy for us to conjecture what
+might have been the fundamental features on which it would have
+hinged--and thus an entirely new aspect given to all the histories of
+the world.
+
+What is said about the lion, is to our minds equally picturesque and
+absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles?
+If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the
+huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion
+to hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be
+altered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannot
+believe that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot of
+Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"--and
+Semiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unduly upon
+a mere matter of police, is it the nature of lions, lying in their dens
+among far-off hills, to start up from their sleep, and "breathe hot
+roarings out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr
+Atherstone shows off his knowledge of natural history, in telling us
+that the said lion, in roaring, "laid his monstrous mouth close to the
+floor." We believe he does so; but did Mr Atherstone learn the fact from
+Cuvier or from Wombwell? It is always dangerous to a poet to be too
+picturesque; and in this case, you are made, whether you will or no, to
+see an old, red, lean, mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy den
+in a menagerie, bathing his beard in the sawdust, and from his toothless
+jaws "breathing hot roarings out," to the terror of servant-girls and
+children, in fierce reply to a man in a hairy cap and full suit of
+velveteen, stirring him up with a long pole, and denominating him by the
+sacred name of the great asserter of Scottish independence.
+
+Sir Humphry Davy--in his own science the first man of his age--does not
+shine in his "Salmonia"--pleasant volume though it be--as an
+ornithologist. Let us see.
+
+"POIET.--The scenery improves as we advance nearer the lower parts of
+the lake. The mountains become higher, and that small island or
+peninsula presents a bold craggy outline; and the birch-wood below it,
+and the pines above, make a scene somewhat Alpine in character. But what
+is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the end of
+the lake? Surely it is an eagle!
+
+"HAL.--You are right; it is an eagle, and of a rare and peculiar
+species--the grey or silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of the
+animal, it must be the female; and her eyrie is in that high rock. I
+dare say the male is not far off."
+
+Sir Humphry speaks in his introductory pages of Mr Wordsworth as a lover
+of fishing and fishermen; and we cannot help thinking and feeling that
+he intends Poietes as an image of that great Poet. What! William
+Wordsworth, the very high-priest of nature, represented to have seen an
+eagle for the first time of his life only then, and to have boldly
+ventured on a conjecture that such was the name and nature of the bird!
+"But what is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the
+end of the lake? Surely it is an eagle!" "Yes, you are right--it is an
+eagle." Ha--ha--ha--ha--ha--ha! Sir Humphry--Sir Humphry--that guffaw
+was not ours--it came from the Bard of Rydal--albeit unused to the
+laughing mood--in the haunted twilight of that beautiful--that solemn
+Terrace.
+
+Poietes having been confirmed, by the authority of Halieus, in his
+belief that the bird is an eagle, exclaims, agreeably to the part he
+plays, "Look at the bird! She dashes into the water, _falling like a
+rock_ and raising a column of spray--she has _fallen from a great
+height_. And now she rises again into the air--_what an extraordinary
+sight_!" Nothing is so annoying as to be ordered to look at a sight
+which, unless you shut your eyes, it is impossible for you not to see. A
+person behaving in a boat like Poietes, deserved being flung overboard.
+"Look at the bird!" Why, every eye was already upon her; and if Poietes
+had had a single spark of poetry in his composition, he would have been
+struck mute by such a sight, instead of bawling out, open-mouthed and
+goggle-eyed, like a Cockney to a rocket at Vauxhall. Besides, an eagle
+does not, when descending on her prey, fall like a rock. There is
+nothing like the "_vis inertiæ_" in her precipitation. You still see the
+self-willed energy of the ravenous bird, as the mass of plumes flashes
+in the spray--of which, by the by, there never was, nor will be, a
+column so raised. She is as much the queen of birds as she sinks as when
+she soars--her trust and her power are still seen and felt to be in her
+pinions, whether she shoots to or from the zenith--to a falling star she
+might be likened--just as any other devil--either by Milton or
+Wordsworth--for such a star seems to our eye and our imagination ever
+instinct with spirit, not to be impelled by exterior force, but to be
+self-shot from heaven.
+
+Upon our word, we begin to believe that we ourselves deserve the name of
+Poietes much better than the gentleman who at threescore had never seen
+an eagle. "She has fallen from a great height," quoth the
+gentleman--"What an extraordinary sight!" he continueth--while we are
+mute as the oar suspended by the up-gazing Celt, whose quiet eye
+brightens as it pursues the Bird to her eyrie in the cliff over the cove
+where the red-deer feed.
+
+Poietes having given vent to his emotions in such sublime
+exclamations--"Look at the bird!" "What an extraordinary sight!" might
+have thenceforth held his tongue, and said no more about eagles. But
+Halieus cries, "There! you see her rise with a fish in her talons"--and
+Poietes, very simply, or rather like a simpleton, returns for answer,
+"She _gives an interest which I hardly expected to have found in this
+scene_. Pray, are there _many of these animals_ in this country?" A poet
+hardly expecting to find interest in such a scene as a great Highland
+loch--Loch Maree! "Pray, are there many _of these hanimals in this
+country_?" Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an animal;
+like Mr Cobbett or Mr O'Connell--"a very fine animal;" but we
+particularly, and earnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry Davy
+not to call her so again--but to use the term bird, or any other term he
+chooses, except animal. Animal, a living creature, is too general, too
+vague by far; and somehow or other it offends our ear shockingly when
+applied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in a trifling matter of this
+kind Sir Humphry surely will not refuse our supplication. Let him call a
+horse an animal, if he chooses--or an ass--or a cow--but not an
+eagle--as he loves us, not an eagle; let him call it a bird--the Bird of
+Jove--the Queen or King of the Sky--or anything else he chooses--but not
+an animal--no--no--no--not an animal, as he hopes to prosper, to be
+praised in Maga, embalmed and immortalised.
+
+Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there were "_many_ of these
+animals" in this country. He ought to have known that there are not
+_many_ of these animals in any country. Eagles are proud--apt to hold
+their heads very high--and to make themselves scarce. A great many
+eagles all flying about together would look most absurd. They are aware
+of that, and fly in "ones and twos"--a couple perhaps to a county.
+Poietes might as well have asked Mungo Park if there were a great many
+lions in Africa. Mungo, we think, saw but one; and that was one too
+much. There were probably a few more between Sego and Timbuctoo--but
+there are not a "great many of those animals in that country"--though
+quite sufficient for the purpose. How the Romans contrived to get at
+hundreds for a single show, perplexes our power of conjecture.
+
+Halieus says--with a smile on his lip surely--in answer to the query of
+Poietes--"Of this species I have seen but these two; and, I believe, the
+young ones migrate as soon as they can provide for themselves; for this
+solitary bird requires a large space to move and feed in, and does not
+allow its offspring to partake its reign, or to live near it." This is
+all pretty true, and known to every child rising or risen six, except
+poor Poietes. He had imagined that there were "many of these animals in
+this country," that they all went a-fishing together as amicably as five
+hundred sail of Manksmen among a shoal of herrings.
+
+Throughout these Dialogues we have observed that Ornither rarely opens
+his mouth. Why so taciturn? On the subject of birds he ought, from his
+name, to be well informed; and how could he let slip an opportunity,
+such as will probably never be afforded him again in this life, of being
+eloquent on the Silver Eagle? Ornithology is surely the department of
+Ornither. Yet there is evidently something odd and peculiar in his
+idiosyncrasy; for we observe that he never once alludes to "these
+animals," birds, during the whole excursion. He has not taken his gun
+with him into the Highlands, a sad oversight indeed in a gentleman who
+"is to be regarded as generally fond of the sports of the field."
+Flappers are plentiful over all the moors about the middle of July; and
+hoodies, owls, hawks, ravens, make all first-rate shooting to sportsmen
+not over anxious about the pot. It is to be presumed, too, that he can
+stuff birds. What noble specimens might he not have shot for Mr Selby!
+On one occasion, "the SILVER EAGLE" is preying in a pool within slug
+range, and there is some talk of shooting him--we suppose with an oar,
+or the butt of a fishing-rod, for the party have no firearms--but
+Poietes insists on sparing his life, because "these animals" are a
+picturesque accompaniment to the scenery, and "give it an interest which
+he had not expected to find" in mere rivers, lochs, moors, and
+mountains. Genus Falco must all the while have been laughing in his
+sleeve at the whole party--particularly at Ornither--who, to judge from
+his general demeanour, may be a fair shot with number five at an old
+newspaper expanded on a barn-door twenty yards off, but never could have
+had the audacity to think in his most ambitious mood of letting off his
+gun at an Eagle.
+
+But further, Halieus, before he took upon him to speak so
+authoritatively about eagles, should have made himself master of their
+names and natures. He is manifestly no scientific ornithologist. We are.
+The general question concerning Eagles in Scotland may now be squeezed
+into very small compass. Exclusive of the true Osprey (Falco Haliætus),
+which is rather a larger fishing-hawk than an eagle, there are two
+kinds, viz.--the GOLDEN EAGLE (F. Chrysaëtos), and the WHITE-TAILED or
+CINEROUS EAGLE (F. Albicilla). The other two _nominal_ species are
+disposed of in the following manner:--First, the RING-TAILED EAGLE (F.
+Fulvus) is the young of the Golden Eagle, being distinguished in early
+life by having the basal and central portion of the tail white, which
+colour disappears as the bird attains the adult state. Second, the SEA
+EAGLE (F. Ossifragus), commonly so called, is the young of the
+White-tailed Eagle above named, from which it differs in having a brown
+tail; for in this species the white of the tail becomes every year more
+apparent as the bird increases in age, whereas, in the Golden Eagle, the
+white altogether disappears in the adult.
+
+It is to the RING-TAILED EAGLE, and, by consequence, to the GOLDEN
+EAGLE, that the name of BLACK EAGLE is applied in the Highlands.
+
+The White-tailed or Sea Eagle, as it becomes old, attains, in addition
+to the pure tail, a pale or bleached appearance, from which it may merit
+and obtain the name of Grey or SILVER EAGLE, as Sir Humphry Davy chooses
+to call it; but it is not known among naturalists by that name. There is
+no other species, however, to which the name can apply; and, therefore,
+Sir Humphry has committed the very gross mistake of calling the Grey or
+Silver Eagle (to use his own nomenclature) a very rare Eagle, since it
+is the most common of all the Scots, and also--_a fortiori_--of all the
+English Eagles--being in fact the SEA EAGLE of the Highlands.
+
+It preys often on fish dead or alive; but not exclusively, as it also
+attacks young lambs, and drives off the ravens from carrion prey, being
+less fastidious in its diet than the GOLDEN EAGLE, which probably kills
+its own meat--and has been known to carry off children; for a striking
+account of one of which hay-field robberies you have but a few minutes
+to wait.
+
+As to its driving off its young, its habits are probably similar in this
+respect to other birds of prey, none of which appear to keep together in
+families after the young can shift for themselves; but we have never met
+with any one who has seen them in the act of driving. It is stated
+vaguely, in all books, of all eagles.
+
+As to its requiring a large range to feed in--we have only to remark
+that, from the powerful flight of these birds, and the wild and barren
+nature of the countries which they inhabit, there can be no doubt that
+they fly far, and "prey in distant isles"--as Thomson has it; but
+Halieus needed not have stated this circumstance as a character of this
+peculiar eagle--for an eagle with a small range does not exist; and
+therefore it is to be presumed that they require a large one.
+
+Further, all this being the case, there seems to be no necessity for the
+old eagles giving themselves the trouble to drive off the young ones,
+who by natural instinct will fly off of their own accord, as soon as
+their wings can bear them over the sea. If an eagle were so partial to
+his native vale, as never on any account, hungry or thirsty, drunk or
+sober, to venture into the next parish, why then the old people would be
+forced, on the old principle of self-preservation, to pack off their
+progeny to bed and board beyond Benevis. But an Eagle is a Citizen of
+the World. He is friendly to the views of Mr Huskisson on the Wool
+Trade, the Fisheries, and the Colonies--and acts upon the old adage,
+
+    "Every bird for himself, and God for us all!"
+
+To conclude, for the present, this branch of our subject, we beg leave
+humbly to express our belief, that Sir Humphry Davy never saw the Eagle,
+by him called the Grey or Silver, hunting for fish in the style
+described in "Salmonia." It does not dislike fish--but it is not its
+nature to keep hunting for them so, not in the Highlands at least,
+whatever it may do on American continent or isles. Sir Humphry talks of
+the bird dashing down repeatedly upon a pool within shot of the anglers.
+We have angled fifty times in the Highlands for Sir Humphry's once, but
+never saw nor heard of such a sight. He has read of such things, and
+introduced them into this dialogue for the sake of effect--all quite
+right to do--had his reading lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. The
+common Eagle--which he ignorantly, as we have seen, calls so rare--is a
+shy bird, as all shepherds know--and is seldom within range of the
+rifle. Gorged with blood, they are sometimes run in upon and felled with
+a staff or club. So perished, in the flower of his age, that Eagle whose
+feet now form handles to the bell-ropes of our Sanctum at Buchanan
+Lodge--and are the subject of a clever copy of verses by Mullion,
+entitled "All the Talons."
+
+We said in "The Moors," that we envied not the eagle or any other bird
+his wings, and showed cause why we preferred our own feet. Had Puck
+wings? If he had, we retract, and would sport Puck.
+
+                  _Oberon._
+
+    "Fetch me this herb--and be thou here again,
+    Ere the Leviathan can swim a league."
+
+                  _Puck._
+
+    "I'll put a girdle round about the earth
+    In forty minutes."
+
+How infinitely more poetical are wings like these than seven-league
+boots! We declare, on our conscience, that we would not accept the
+present of a pair of seven-league boots to-morrow--or, if we did, it
+would be out of mere politeness to the genie who might press them on us,
+and the wisest thing we could do would be to lock them up in a drawer
+out of the reach of the servants. Suppose that we wished to walk from
+Clovenford to Innerleithen--why, with seven-league boots on, one single
+step would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Peebles! That would
+never do. By mincing one's steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop at
+Innerleithen; but suppose a gad-fly were to sting one's hip at the
+Pirn--one unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier,
+and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan water! Therefore,
+there is nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter--and glide--and
+float and soar--now like a humming-bird among the flowers--now like a
+swan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying adown a river--now like
+an eagle afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards,
+invisible in excess of light--and bidding farewell to earth and its
+humble shadows. "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee
+away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some heavy hour or other, from
+the depth of his very soul, devoutly--passionately--hopelessly--breathed
+that wish to escape beyond the limits of woe and sin--not into the world
+of dreamless death; for weary though the immortal pilgrim may have been,
+never desired he the doom of annihilation, untroubled although it be,
+shorn of all the attributes of being--but he has prayed for the wings of
+the dove, because that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away from
+the sight of human dwellings, has seemed to disappear to his imagination
+among old glimmering forests, wherein she foldeth her wing and falleth
+gladly asleep--and therefore, in those agitated times when the spirits
+of men acknowledge kindred with the inferior creatures, and would fain
+interchange with them powers and qualities, they are willing even to lay
+down their intelligence, their reason, their conscience itself, so that
+they could but be blessed with the faculty of escaping from all the
+agonies that intelligence, and reason, and conscience alone can know,
+and beyond the reach of this world's horizon to flee away and be at
+rest!
+
+Puck says he will put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.
+At what rate is that per second, taking the circumference of the earth
+at 27,000 miles, more or less? There is a question for the mechanics,
+somewhat about as difficult of solution as Lord Brougham's celebrated
+one of the Smuggler and the Revenue Cutter--for the solution of which he
+recommended the aid of algebra. It is not so quick as you would imagine.
+We forget the usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he is
+in training--and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we are
+sorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would take a good,
+stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to accomplish a journey to
+our planet from one of the fixed stars. The great difficulty, we
+confess, would be to get him safely conveyed thither. If that could be
+done, we should have no fear of his finding his way back, if not in our
+time, in that of our posterity. However red-hot he might have been on
+starting, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on his arrival at the goal;
+yet we should have no objection to back him against Time for a
+trifle--Time, we observe, in almost all matches being beat, often indeed
+by the most miserable hacks, that can with difficulty raise a gallop.
+Time, however, possibly runs booty; for when he does make play, it must
+be confessed that he is a spanker, and that nothing has been seen with
+such a stride since Eclipse.
+
+O beautiful and beloved Highland Parish! in whose dashing glens our
+beating heart first felt the awe of solitude, and learned to commune
+(alas! to what purpose?) with the tumult of its own thoughts! The
+circuit of thy skies was indeed a glorious arena spread over the
+mountain-tops for the combats of the great birds of prey! One wild cry
+or another was in the lift--of the hawk, or the glead, or the raven, or
+the eagle--or when those fiends slept, of the peaceful heron, and
+sea-bird by wandering boys pursued in its easy flight, till the
+snow-white child of ocean wavered away far inland, as if in search of a
+steadfast happiness unknown on the restless waves. Seldom did the eagle
+stoop to the challenge of the inferior fowl; but when he did, it was
+like a mailed knight treading down unknown men in battle. The hawks, and
+the gleads, and the ravens, and the carrion-crows, and the hooded-crows,
+and the rooks, and the magpies, and all the rest of the rural militia,
+forgetting their own feuds, sometimes came sallying from all quarters,
+with even a few facetious jackdaws from the old castle, to show fight
+with the monarch of the air. Amidst all that multitude of wings
+winnowing the wind, was heard the sough and whizz of those mighty vans,
+as the Royal Bird, himself an army, performed his majestic evolutions
+with all the calm confidence of a master in the art of aerial war, now
+shooting up half-a-thousand feet perpendicular, and now suddenly
+plump-down into the rear of the croaking, cawing, and chattering
+battalions, cutting off their retreat to the earth. Then the rout became
+general, the missing, however, far outnumbering the dead. Keeping
+possession of the field of battle, hung the eagle for a short while
+motionless--till with one fierce yell of triumph he seemed to seek the
+sun, and disappear like a speck in the light, surveying half of Scotland
+at a glance, and a thousand of her isles.
+
+Some people have a trick of describing incidents as having happened
+within their own observation, when in fact they were at the time lying
+asleep in bed, and disturbing the whole house with the snore of their
+dormitory. Such is too often the character of the eyewitnesses of the
+present age. Now, we would not claim personal acquaintance with an
+incident we had not seen--no, not for a hundred guineas per sheet; and,
+therefore, we warn the reader not to believe the following little story
+about an eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby crest, and a
+favourite sign of inns in the north of England) on our authority. "I
+tell the tale as 'twas told to me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws,
+in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he
+have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how
+to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many
+extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is
+believing," so likewise "believing is seeing," as every one must allow
+who reads these our Recreations.
+
+Almost all the people in the parish were leading in their meadow-hay
+(there were not in all its ten miles square twenty acres of ryegrass)
+on the same day of midsummer, so drying was the sunshine and the
+wind,--and huge heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view the horses
+that drew them along the sward, beginning to get green with second
+growth, were moving in all directions towards the snug farmyards. Never
+had the parish seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy air with
+laughter, whistle, and song. But the Tree-gnomons threw the shadow of
+"one o'clock" on the green dial-face of the earth--the horses were
+unyoked, and took instantly to grazing--groups of men, women, lads,
+lasses, and children collected under grove, and bush, and
+hedgerow--graces were pronounced, some of them rather too tedious in
+presence of the mantling milk-cans, bullion-bars of butter, and
+crackling cakes; and the great Being who gave them that day their daily
+bread, looked down from his Eternal Throne, well pleased with the piety
+of his thankful creatures.
+
+The great Golden Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped
+down, and away with something in his talons. One single sudden female
+shriek--and then shouts and outcries as if a church spire had tumbled
+down on a congregation at a sacrament. "Hannah Lamond's bairn! Hannah
+Lamond's bairn!" was the loud fast-spreading cry. "The Eagle's taen aff
+Hannah Lamond's bairn!" and many hundred feet were in another instant
+hurrying towards the mountain. Two miles of hill and dale, and copse and
+shingle, and many intersecting brooks, lay between; but in an incredibly
+short time the foot of the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was
+well known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. But who
+shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart the sailor, who had
+been at the storming of many a fort, once attempted in vain? All kept
+gazing, or weeping, or wringing of hands, rooted to the ground, or
+running back and forwards, like so many ants, essaying their new wings,
+in discomfiture. "What's the use--what's the use o' ony puir human
+means? We have nae power but in prayer!" And many knelt down--fathers
+and mothers thinking of their own babies--as if they would force the
+deaf heavens to hear.
+
+Hannah Lamond had been all this while sitting on a stone, with a face
+perfectly white, and eyes like those of a mad person, fixed on the
+eyrie. Nobody noticed her; for strong as all sympathies with her had
+been at the swoop of the Eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agony
+of eyesight. "Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee wean baptised in the
+name o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" and on uttering
+these words, she flew off through the brakes and over the huge stones,
+up--up--up--faster than ever huntsman ran in to the death--fearless as a
+goat playing among the precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt,
+that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk in
+their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb the
+walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the
+edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep as
+draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing
+eyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of the
+soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's
+passion--who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast,
+hurried off by a demon to a hideous death--bear her limbs aloft wherever
+there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercer
+and more furious than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in
+blood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wing would fain flap
+her down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance?
+
+No stop--no stay--she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her
+feet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands
+strengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear, then,
+but once crossed her heart, as up--up--up--to the little image made of
+her own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing--will
+not the same God save me when my child is at my breast?" Down came the
+fierce rushing of the Eagle's wings--each savage bird dashing close to
+her head, so that she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once
+they quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an
+ash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the
+Christian mother, falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and
+blood, clasped her child--dead--dead--no doubt--but unmangled and
+untorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleep
+among the fresh hay in a nook of the harvest-field. Oh! what pang of
+perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeble
+cry--"It lives! it lives! it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud
+laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious
+innocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love. "O, thou
+great and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me--one of the
+most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save me lest I perish, even for thy
+own name's sake! O Thou, who died to save sinners, have mercy upon me!"
+Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old
+trees--far--far down--and dwindled into specks a thousand creatures of
+her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of
+the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native
+strath?--and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands
+the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here
+must she die--and when her breast is exhausted--her baby too. And those
+horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her child
+will be devoured at last, even within the dead arms that can protect it
+no more.
+
+Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half-way up the
+cliffs. But his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart
+sick--and he who had so often reefed the topgallant-sail, when at
+midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with
+his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And who
+will take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, who,
+through exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in her
+grasp the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God."
+She looked round expecting to see a spirit; but nothing moved except a
+rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling
+rock. Her eye--by some secret sympathy with the inanimate
+object--watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far off, on a small
+platform. Her child was bound upon her shoulders--she knew not how or
+when--but it was safe--and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid
+down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm
+root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers
+suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by
+brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stone
+leapt over a ledge and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall.
+There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to
+follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them; but
+she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall
+of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy
+centuries old--long ago dead, and without a single green leaf--but with
+thousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as
+with a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck--and with hands and feet
+clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down,
+she saw the whole population of the parish--so great was the
+multitude--on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms--a hymn
+breathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn was the
+strain--but nothing dirge-like--sounding not of death, but deliverance.
+Often had she sung that tune--perhaps the very words--but them she heard
+not--in her own hut, she and her mother--or in the kirk, along with all
+the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the
+ribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to
+be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into
+a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth--the psalm
+was hushed--but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and a
+she-goat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights," thought she,
+"do these creatures climb--but the dam will lead down her kids by the
+easiest paths; for in the brute creatures holy is the power of a
+mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping
+baby, and for the first time she wept.
+
+Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before by
+human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the Golden
+Eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their
+eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part of
+the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet
+accessible--and more than one person in the parish had reached the
+bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it--and ere the
+cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, through
+among dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were
+traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and
+then the head of another, and she knew that God had delivered her and
+her child into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a word was
+spoken--she hushed her friends with her hands--and with uplifted eyes
+pointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where
+those creatures nibble the wildflowers, became now more
+frequent--trodden lines, almost as plain as sheep-paths, showed that the
+dam had not led her young into danger; and now the brushwood dwindled
+away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence
+above the stream, and forming part of the strath.
+
+There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing and many tears, among
+the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs--sublime was the
+shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie--then had
+succeeded a silence deep as death--in a little while arose that hymning
+prayer, succeeded by mute supplication--the wildness of thankful and
+congratulatory joy had next its sway--and now that her salvation was
+sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake
+was all this alternation of agony? A poor humble creature, unknown to
+many even by name--one who had had but few friends, nor wished for
+more--contented to work all day, here--there--anywhere--that she might
+be able to support her aged mother and her child--and who on Sabbath
+took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, in the kirk.
+
+"Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the
+parish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death.
+"Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother and
+then another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses,
+many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no a
+single scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun hae
+stuck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun
+they be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"
+
+Hannah started up from her swoon--and, looking wildly round, cried, "Oh!
+the Bird--the Bird!--the Eagle--the Eagle!--the Eagle has carried off my
+bonny wee Walter--is there nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her baby
+into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the
+sorely bewildered creature said in a low voice, "Am I wauken--oh! tell
+me if I'm wauken--or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever."
+
+Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was a
+mother--and you may guess what a mother--yet--frown not, fair and gentle
+reader--frown not, pure and stainless as thou art--to her belonged not
+the sacred name of wife--and that baby was the child of sin and of
+shame--yes--"the child of misery, baptised in tears!" She had
+loved--trusted--been betrayed--and deserted. In sorrow and
+solitude--uncomforted and despised--she bore her burden. Dismal had been
+the hour of travail--and she feared her mother's heart would have
+broken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing is
+forgiveness--alike to the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! And
+then Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not
+such as her fellow-creatures deemed it--for there were dreadful secrets
+which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she
+bowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes of
+repentance--walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the
+kirk--yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her
+sadness inspired a general pity--she was excluded from no house she had
+heart to visit--no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice
+people took of her baby--no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty;
+for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung
+the lullaby, forbade all such approach--and an universal sentiment of
+indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled
+seducer--if all had been known, too weak word for his crime--who left
+thus to pine in sorrow, and in shame far worse than sorrow, one who till
+her unhappy fall had been held up by every mother as an example to her
+daughters.
+
+Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer--but she had
+striven--and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do so--to think
+not of him now that he had deserted her for ever. Sometimes his image,
+as well in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart--but she
+closed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the
+love towards him that slept--but was not dead--arose in yearnings of
+still more exceeding love towards his child. Round its head was gathered
+all hope of comfort--of peace--of reward of her repentance. One of its
+smiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In her
+breast--on her knee--in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual
+prayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness of
+affection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the hand
+of God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after the
+hour of rescue and deliverance, stretched her on the greensward like a
+corpse.
+
+The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strange
+story without names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the
+Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious to know what truth there was
+in it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd,
+went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined,
+and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierce
+eyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side.
+
+His heart died within him, not in fear, but in remorse. What a worm he
+felt himself to be! And fain would he have become a worm, that, to
+escape all that united human scorn, he might have wriggled away in slime
+into some hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hannah met his in
+forgiveness--an un-upbraiding tear--a faint smile of love. All his
+better nature rose within him, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes,
+good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is your
+scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in the
+woods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her--but here I
+am--not to offer retribution--for that may not--will not--must not
+be--guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim that
+innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to
+deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder--I call on you to
+seize your prisoner."
+
+The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge and
+enlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Their
+anger subsided into a stern satisfaction--and that soon softened, in
+sight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness,
+into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been,
+had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in his
+uncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness. The old
+clergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers,
+whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer was
+over, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferior
+to a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation was
+freed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. And
+although the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much better
+than we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-ranger
+never became altogether a saint--nor acquired the edifying habit of
+pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his
+eyes--yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very
+serious laid to his prejudice--that he became in due time an elder of
+the Kirk--gave his children a religious education--erring only in making
+rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to
+manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+THIRD CANTICLE.
+
+
+The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roaming
+pedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has not
+yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional big
+rain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimes
+utters a sullen groan--the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise is
+repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak--croak--croak! manifestly from
+a thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser the
+croak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the black
+sultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird on
+the wing. By-and-by something black lifts itself slowly and heavily up
+from a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared the
+rock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be a
+Raven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and in
+his strong straight-forward flight aims at the head of another glen; but
+he wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alighting among the heather,
+folds his huge massy wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with the
+same savage croak--croak--croak! No other bird so like a demon--and
+should you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawl
+to a hut, your life is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was
+there a single hound in Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordship
+became a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered
+fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs or bristles, that grimly
+adorn a bill of formidable dimensions, and apt for digging out
+eye-socket and splitting skull-structure of dying man or beast. That
+bill cannot tear in pieces like the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so
+powerful to smite as to compress--but a better bill for
+cut-and-thrust--- push, carte, and tierce--the dig dismal and the plunge
+profound--belongs to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor needs
+the wound to be repeated on the same spot. Feeder foul and obscene! to
+thy nostril upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of thy quarry from
+afar," sweeter is the scent of carrion, than to the panting lover's
+sense and soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath and bosom, when,
+lying in her innocence in his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden
+with something more ethereally pure than "Sabean odours from the spicy
+shores of Araby the Blest."
+
+The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. It
+cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of
+life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the
+dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or
+sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof--hopping in a
+circle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keep
+dilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the
+prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing
+carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by
+claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled
+and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and
+turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a
+self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then
+folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to
+gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of
+consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about,
+round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost
+snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At
+last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is
+stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid
+instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and
+preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course
+of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and
+with difficulty able either to croak or to fly.
+
+The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundred
+years, perhaps a couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, girls
+into maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into old
+decrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at the
+head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages,
+deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is--at least so men say--that he is
+aware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings
+against door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity,
+or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As
+the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft
+in the air--or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse
+like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the
+house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse
+hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little
+grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is
+sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that
+he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of
+human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact,
+much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the
+punishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood bore
+the human shape, and who, soon as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, flew
+off to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude of
+the drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in
+burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs,
+as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse
+that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says
+the Celtic superstition--muttered to us in a dream--adding that there
+are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the
+forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak
+at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible.
+
+There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty years
+ago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom of
+Helvyllyn," was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because no
+adherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountains
+when the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathed
+and pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quaker
+as the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point, with what glee
+the few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club
+must have flocked to the Ordinary! Without asking each other to which
+part this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim
+which regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come,
+first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became
+animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the
+most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab.
+The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after
+going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled,
+and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black
+feather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue,
+pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox,
+and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of choking
+soft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was so
+provokingly insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak--then a drab
+wraprascal--then a drab broadcloth coat, made in the oldest
+fashion--then a drab waistcoat of the same--then a drab under-waistcoat
+of thinner mould--then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish--then a
+flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the
+members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days
+at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about
+eight A.M. on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve
+o'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat down
+to supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that the
+President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary,
+treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary and
+extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so
+tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead
+bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably
+fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh
+bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even
+although a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable
+difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of
+"Order!--order!--Chair!--chair!"--must have been frequent; and had the
+office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown
+it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles and obstructions
+having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well
+believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to
+their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously
+down to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the first
+half-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of
+his prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command
+of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system,
+exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen--there be's Mister Wudsworth--Ho, ho,
+ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale
+to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their
+orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath
+the moon and stars.
+
+But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood of
+rueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale
+of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet
+wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude,
+he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen
+mountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, and
+diamonds, beneath the resplendent night-heavens. The din of populous
+cities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in the
+presence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuing
+their multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The very
+sheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all
+their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had become
+hateful to his spirit--for what were they but the floating enginery of
+Mammon? Truth, integrity, honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gain
+by the friends he loved and had respected most--sacrificed without shame
+and without remorse--repentance being with them a repentance only over
+ill-laid schemes of villany--plans for the ruination of widows and
+orphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The brother of his bosom
+made him a bankrupt--and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother was
+unpaid. But she died before the second Christmas--and he was left alone
+in the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to him
+from a distant relation--almost the only one of his name--who died
+abroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on--and his enthusiastic
+spirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in some
+profound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her Great
+Laws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight,
+beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousand
+flat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which a
+great thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the first
+time, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himself
+alone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatry
+almost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and
+"stars that are the poetry of heaven."
+
+Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the lore that links the human heart
+to the gracious form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In early youth he
+had been intended for the Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful and
+ungenial toils had not extinguished the fine scholarship that native
+aptitude for learning had acquired in the humble school of the village
+in which he was born. He had been ripe for College when the sudden death
+of his father, who had long been at the head of a great mercantile
+concern, imposed it upon him, as a sacred duty owed to his mother and
+his sisters, to embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope ever to
+retrieve their fortunes--and for ten years for their sake he was a
+slave, till ruin set him free. Now he was master of his own destiny--and
+sought some humble hut in that magnificent scenery, where he might pass
+a blameless life, and among earth's purest joys prepare his soul for
+heaven. Many such humble huts had he seen during that one bold, bright,
+beautiful spring winter-day. Each wreath of smoke from the breathing
+chimneys, while the huts themselves seemed hardly awakened from sleep in
+the morning-calm, led his imagination up into the profound peace of the
+sky. In any one of those dwellings, peeping from sheltered dells, or
+perched on wind-swept eminences, could he have taken up his abode, and
+sat down contented at the board of their simple inmates. But in the very
+delirium of a new bliss, the day faded before him--twilight looked
+lovelier than dream-land in the reflected glimmer of the snow--and thus
+had midnight found him, in a place so utterly lonesome in its remoteness
+from all habitations, that even in summer no stranger sought it without
+the guidance of some shepherd familiar with the many bewildering passes
+that stretched away in all directions through among the mountains to
+distant vales. No more fear or thought had he of being lost in the
+wilderness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest to forest in the
+winter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to the
+instinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether.
+
+As he continued gazing on the heavens, the moon all at once lost
+something of her brightness--the stars seemed fewer in number--and the
+lustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The blue ethereal frame grew
+discoloured with streaks of red and yellow--and a sort of dim darkness
+deepened and deepened on the air, while the mountains appeared higher,
+and at the same time further off, as if he had been transported in a
+dream to another region of the earth. A sound was heard, made up of
+far-mustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging of trees, and the
+murmur as of a great lake or sea beginning to break on the shore. A few
+flakes of snow touched his face, and the air grew cold. A clear tarn had
+a few minutes before glittered with moonbeams, but now it had
+disappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, and ere long it was a storm
+of snow. "O God! my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he hear his own
+voice in the roaring tempest.
+
+Men have died in dungeons--and their skeletons been found long years
+afterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through what
+hideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eye
+saw, no ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders,
+but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day in
+spring--long after the snows were melted--except here and there a patch
+like a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure--a huge Raven rose
+heavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who,
+going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld a
+rotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, and
+began to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of its
+master--a name unknown in that part of the country--and weeks elapsed
+before any person could be heard of that could tell the history of the
+sufferer. A stranger came and went--taking the faithful creature with
+him that had so long watched by the dead--but long before his arrival
+the remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little way
+on from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yards
+from the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of----, not far from the foot
+of Ullswater.
+
+Gentle reader! we have given you two versions of the same story--and
+pray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the
+second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not
+decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that
+we are strongest in humour--others, that our power is in pathos. The
+judicious declare that our forte lies in both--in the two united, or
+alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims
+some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious
+an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated
+with such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, of
+the Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!"
+Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that--this--article
+confesses that he has more than once committed that capital crime. But
+no intelligent jury, taking into consideration the law as well as the
+fact--and it is often their duty to do so, let high authorities say what
+they will--would for a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded to,
+to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homicide." The gentleman or lady
+who has honoured us so far with perusal, knows enough of human life, and
+of their own hearts, to know also that there is no other subject which
+men of genius--and who ever denied that we are men of genius?--have been
+accustomed to view in so many ludicrous lights as this same subject of
+death; and the reason is at once obvious--yet _recherché_--videlicet,
+Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild,
+dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times men
+talking about it cannot choose but laugh!
+
+Too-hoo--too-hoo--too-whit-too-hoo!--we have got among the OWLS.
+Venerable personages, in truth, they are--perfect Solomons! The
+spectator, as in most cases of very solemn characters, feels himself at
+first strongly disposed to commit the gross indecorum of bursting out
+a-laughing in their face. One does not see the absolute necessity either
+of man or bird looking at all times so unaccountably wise. Why will an
+Owl persist in his stare? Why will a Bishop never lay aside his wig?
+
+People ignorant of Ornithology will stare like the Bird of Wisdom
+himself on being told that an OWL is an Eagle. Yet, bating a little
+inaccuracy, it is so. Eagles, kites, hawks, and owls, all belong to the
+genus Falco. We hear a great deal too much in poetry of the moping Owl,
+the melancholy Owl, the boding Owl, whereas he neither mopes nor bodes,
+and is no more melancholy than becomes a gentleman. We also hear of the
+Owl being addicted to spirituous liquors; and hence the expression, as
+drunk as an Owl. All this is mere Whig personality, the Owl being a Tory
+of the old school, and a friend of the ancient establishments of church
+and state. Nay, the same political party, although certainly the most
+shortsighted of God's creatures, taunt the Owl with being blind. As
+blind as an Owl, is a libel in frequent use out of ornithological
+society. Shut up Lord Jeffrey himself in a hay-barn with a well-built
+mow, and ask him in the darkness to catch you a few mice, and he will
+tell you whether or not the Owl be blind. This would be just as fair as
+to expect the Owl to see, like Lord Jeffrey, through a case in the
+Parliament House during daylight. Nay, we once heard a writer in Taylor
+and Hessey call the Owl stupid, he himself having longer ears than any
+species of Owl extant. What is the positive character of the Owl may
+perhaps appear by-and-by; but we have seen that, describing his
+character by negations, we may say that he resembles Napoleon Buonaparte
+much more than Joseph Hume or Alderman Wood. He is not moping--not
+boding--not melancholy--not a drunkard--not blind--not stupid; as much
+as it would be prudent to say of any man, whether editor or contributor,
+in her Majesty's dominions.
+
+We really have no patience with people who persist in all manner of
+misconceptions regarding the character of birds. Birds often appear to
+such persons, judging from, of, and by themselves, to be in mind and
+manners the reverse of their real character. They judge the inner bird
+by outward circumstances inaccurately observed. There is the owl. How
+little do the people of England know of him--even of him the barn-door
+and domestic owl--yea, even at this day--we had almost said the Poets!
+Shakespeare, of course, and his freres, knew him to be a merry
+fellow--quite a madcap--and so do now all the Lakers. But Cowper had his
+doubts about it; and Gray, as every schoolboy knows, speaks of him like
+an old wife. The force of folly can go no further, than to imagine an
+owl complaining to the moon of being disturbed by people walking in a
+country churchyard. And among all our present bardlings, the owl is
+supposed to be constantly on the eve of suicide. If it were really so,
+he ought in a Christian country to be pitied, not pelted, as he is sure
+to be when accidentally seen in sunlight--for melancholy is a
+misfortune, especially when hereditary and constitutional, as it is
+popularly believed to be in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was in
+Dr Johnson. In young masters and misses we can pardon any childishness;
+but we cannot pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained by the manly
+minds of grown-up English clodhoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. They
+keep terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they shoot the owls,
+any one of whom we would cheerfully back against the famous Billy. "The
+very commonest observation teaches us," says the author of the "Gardens
+of the Menagerie," "that they are in reality the best and most efficient
+protectors of our cornfields and granaries from the devastating pillage
+of the swarms of mice and other small _rodents_." Nay, by their constant
+destruction of these petty but dangerous enemies, the owls, he says,
+"earn an unquestionable title to be regarded as among the _most active
+of the friends of man_; a title which only one or two among them
+occasionally forfeit by their aggressions on the defenceless poultry."
+Roger or Dolly beholds him in the act of murdering a duckling, and, like
+other light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they forget all the
+service he has done the farm, the parish, and the state; he is shot _in
+the act_, and nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on the
+barn-door. Others again call him dull and shortsighted--nay, go the
+length of asserting that he is stupid--as stupid as an owl. Why, our
+excellent fellow, when you have the tithe of the talent of the common
+owl, and know half as well how to use it, you may claim the medal.
+
+The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. The Owl is the Nimrod of the
+Night. Then, like one who shall be nameless, he sails about seeking
+those whom he may devour. To do him justice, he has a truly ghost-like
+head and shoulders of his own. What horror to the "small birds rejoicing
+in spring's leafy bowers," fast-locked we were going to say in each
+other's arms, but sitting side by side in the same cosy nuptial nest, to
+be startled out of their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, beaked face
+of a horrible monster with horns, picked out of feathered bed, and
+wafted off in one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of hissing, and
+snappish, and shapeless powder-puffs, in the loophole of a barn? In a
+house where a cat is kept, mice are much to be pitied. They are so
+infatuated with the smell of a respectable larder, that to leave the
+premises, they confess, is impossible. Yet every hour--nay, every minute
+of their lives--must they be in the fear of being leaped out upon by
+four velvet paws--and devoured with kisses from a whiskered mouth, and a
+throat full of that incomprehensible music--a purr. Life, on such terms,
+seems to us anything but desirable. But the truth is, that mice in the
+fields are not a whit better off. Owls are cats with wings. Skimming
+along the grass tops, they stop in a momentary hover, let drop a talon,
+and away with Mus, his wife, and small family of blind children. It is
+the white, or yellow, or barn, or church, or Screech-Owl, or
+Gilley-Owlet, that behaves in this way; and he makes no bones of a
+mouse, uniformly swallowing him alive. Our friend, we suspect, though no
+drunkard, is somewhat of a glutton. In one thing we agree with him, that
+there is no sort of harm in a heavy supper. There, however, we are
+guilty of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, who rise in the
+morning, seems a supper, is to him who gets up at evening twilight, a
+breakfast. We therefore agree with him in thinking that there is no sort
+of harm in a heavy breakfast. After having passed a pleasant night in
+eating and flirting, he goes to bed betimes about four o'clock in the
+morning; and, as Bewick observes, makes a blowing hissing noise,
+resembling the snoring of a man. Indeed nothing can be more diverting to
+a person annoyed by blue devils, than to look at a white Owl and his
+wife asleep. With their heads gently inclined towards each other, there
+they keep snoring away like any Christian couple. Should the one make a
+pause, the other that instant awakes, and, fearing something may be
+wrong with his spouse, opens a pair of glimmering winking eyes, and
+inspects the adjacent physiognomy with the scrutinising stare of a
+village apothecary. If all be right, the concert is resumed, the snore
+sometimes degenerating into a sort of snivel, and the snivel into a
+blowing hiss. First time we heard this noise was in a churchyard when we
+were mere boys, having ventured in after dark to catch the minister's
+colt for a gallop over to the parish capital, where there was a
+dancing-school ball. There had been a nest of Owls in some hole in the
+spire; but we never doubted for a moment that the noise of snoring,
+blowing, hissing, and snapping proceeded from a testy old gentleman that
+had been buried that forenoon, and had come alive again a day after the
+fair. Had we reasoned the matter a little, we must soon have convinced
+ourselves that there was no ground for alarm to us at least; for the
+noise was like that of some one half stifled, and little likely to heave
+up from above him a six-feet-deep load of earth--to say nothing of the
+improbability of his being able to unscrew the coffin from the inside.
+Be that as it may, we cleared about a dozen of decent tombstones at
+three jumps--the fourth took us over a wall five feet high within and
+about fifteen without, and landed us, with a squash, in a
+cabbage-garden, enclosed on the other three sides by a house and a
+holly-hedge. The house was the sexton's, who, apprehending the stramash
+to proceed from a resurrectionary surgeon mistaken in his latitude,
+thrust out a long duck-gun from a window in the thatch, and swore to
+blow out our brains if we did not instantly surrender ourselves, and
+deliver up the corpse. It was in vain to cry out our name, which he knew
+as well as his own. He was deaf to reason, and would not withdraw his
+patterero till we had laid down the corpse. He swore that he saw the
+sack in the moonlight. This was a horse-cloth with which we had intended
+to saddle the "cowt," and that had remained, during the supernatural
+agency under which we laboured, clutched unconsciously and convulsively
+in our grasp. Long was it ere Davie Donald would see us in our true
+light--but at length he drew on his Kilmarnock nightcap, and coming out
+with a bouet, let us through the trance and out of the front door,
+thoroughly convinced, till we read Bewick, that old Southfield was not
+dead, although in a very bad way indeed. Let this be a lesson to
+schoolboys not to neglect the science of natural history, and to study
+the character of the White Owl.
+
+OWLS--both White and common Brown, are not only useful in a mountainous
+country, but highly ornamental. How serenely beautiful their noiseless
+flight; a flake of snow is not winnowed through the air more
+softly-silent! Gliding along the dark shadows of a wood, how spiritual
+the motion--how like the thought of a dream! And then, during the hushed
+midnight hours, how jocund the whoop and hollo from the heart of a
+sycamore--grey rock, or ivied Tower! How the Owls of Windermere must
+laugh at the silly Lakers, that under the garish eye of day, enveloped
+in clouds of dust, whirl along in rattling post-shays in pursuit of the
+picturesque! Why, the least imaginative Owl that ever hunted mice by
+moonlight on the banks of Windermere, must know the character of its
+scenery better than any poetaster that ever dined on char at Bowness or
+Lowood. The long quivering lines of light illumining some sylvan
+isle--the evening-star shining from the water to its counterpart in the
+sky--the glorious phenomenon of the double moon--the night-colours of
+the woods--and, once in the three years perhaps, that loveliest and most
+lustrous of celestial forms, the lunar rainbow--all these and many more
+beauteous and magnificent sights are familiar to the Owls of Windermere.
+And who know half so well as they do the echoes of Furness, and
+Applethwaite, and Loughrigg, and Landale, all the way on to Dungeon-Gill
+and Pavey-Ark, Scawfell and the Great Gable, and that sea of mountains,
+of which every wave has a name? Midnight--when asleep so still and
+silent--seems inspired with the joyous spirit of the Owls in their
+revelry--and answers to their mirth and merriment through all her
+clouds. The Moping Owl, indeed!--the Boding Owl, forsooth!--the
+Melancholy Owl, you blockhead!--why, they are the most
+cheerful--joy-portending--and exulting of God's creatures! Their flow of
+animal spirits is incessant--crowing-cocks are a joke to them--blue
+devils are to them unknown--not one hypochondriac in a thousand
+barns--and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one of
+them utter a complaint.
+
+But what say ye to an Owl, not only like an eagle in plumage, but equal
+to the largest eagle in size--and therefore named, from the King of
+Birds, the EAGLE OWL. Mr Selby! you have done justice to the monarch of
+the Bubos. We hold ourselves to be persons of tolerable courage, as the
+world goes--but we could not answer for ourselves showing fight with
+such a customer, were he to waylay us by night in a wood. In comparison,
+Jack Thurtell looked harmless. No--that bold, bright-eyed murderer, with
+Horns on his head like those on Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, would
+never have had the cruel cowardice to cut the weasand, and smash out the
+brains of such a miserable wretch as Weare! True, he is fond of
+blood--and where's the harm in that? It is his nature. But if there be
+any truth in the science of Physiognomy--and be that of Phrenology what
+it will, most assuredly there is truth in it--the original of that Owl,
+for whose portrait the world is indebted to Mr Selby, and Sir Thomas
+Lawrence never painted a finer one of Prince or Potentate of any Holy or
+Unholy Alliance, must have despised Probert from the very bottom of his
+heart. No prudent Eagle but would be exceedingly desirous of keeping on
+good terms with him--devilish shy, i' faith, of giving him any offence
+by the least hauteur of manner, or the slightest violation of etiquette.
+An Owl of this character and calibre is not afraid to show his horns at
+mid-day on the mountain. The Fox is not over and above fond of him--and
+his claws can kill a cub at a blow. The Doe sees the monster sitting on
+the back of her fawn, and, maternal instinct overcome by horror, bounds
+into the brake, and leaves the pretty creature to its fate. Thank
+Heaven, he is, in Great Britain, a rare bird! Tempest-driven across the
+Northern Ocean from his native forests in Russia, an occasional visitant
+he "frightens this isle from its propriety," and causes a hideous
+screaming through every wood he haunts. Some years ago, one was killed
+in the upland moors in the county of Durham--and, of course, paid a
+visit to Mr Bullock's Museum. Eagle-like in all its habits, it builds
+its nest on high rocks--sometimes on the loftiest trees--and seldom lays
+more than two eggs. One is one more than enough--and we who fly by night
+trust never to fall in with a live specimen of the Strix-Bubo of
+Linnæus.
+
+But largest and loveliest of all the silent night-gliders--the SNOWY
+OWL! Gentle reader--if you long to see his picture, we have told you
+where it may be found;--and in the College Museum, within a glass vase
+on the central table in the Palace of Stuffed Birds, you may admire his
+outward very self--the semblance of the Owl he was when he used to eye
+the moon shining over the Northern Sea:--but if you would see the noble
+and beautiful Creature himself, in all his living glory, you must seek
+him through the long summer twilight among the Orkney or the Shetland
+Isles. The Snowy Owl dearly loves the snow--and there is, we believe, a
+tradition among them, that their first ancestor and ancestress rose up
+together from a melting snow-wreath on the very last day of a Greenland
+winter, when all at once the bright fields reappear. The race still
+inhabits that frozen coast--being common, indeed, through all the
+regions of the Arctic Circle. It is numerous on the shores of Hudson's
+Bay, in Norway, Sweden, and Lapland--but in the temperate parts of
+Europe and America "rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno."
+
+We defy all the tailors on the face of the habitable globe; and what
+countless cross-legged fractional parts of men--who, like the beings of
+whom they are constituents, are thought to double their numbers every
+thirty years--must not the four quarters of the earth, in their present
+advanced state of civilisation, contain!--we defy, we say, all the
+tailors on the face of the habitable globe to construct such a surtout
+as that of the Snowy Owl, covering him, with equal luxury and comfort,
+in summer's heat and winter's cold. The elements, in all their freezing
+fury, cannot reach the body of the bird through that beautiful
+down-mail. Well guarded are the opening of those great eyes. Neither the
+driving dust, nor the searching sleet, nor the sharp frozen snow-stour,
+give him the ophthalmia. Gutta Serena is to him unknown--no Snowy Owl
+was ever couched for cataract--no need has he for an oculist, should he
+live an hundred years; and were they to attempt any operation on his
+lens or iris, how he would hoot at Alexander and Wardrope!
+
+Night, doubtless, is the usual season of his prey; but he does not shun
+the day, and is sometimes seen hovering unhurt in the sunshine. The red
+or black grouse flies as if pursued by a ghost; but the Snowy Owl,
+little slower than the eagle, in dreadful silence overtakes his flight,
+and then death is sudden and sure. Hawking is, or was, a noble
+pastime--and we have now prevented our eyes from glancing at
+Jer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk; but Owling, we do not doubt, would be
+noways inferior sport; and were it to become prevalent in modern times,
+as Hawking was in times of old, why, each lady, as Venus already fair,
+with an Owl on her wrist, would look as wise as Minerva.
+
+But our soul sickens at all those dreams of blood! and fain would turn
+away from fierce eye, cruel beak, and tearing talon--war-weapons of them
+that delight in wounds and death--to the contemplation of creatures
+whose characteristics are the love of solitude--shy gentleness of
+manner--the tender devotion of mutual attachment--and, in field or
+forest, a lifelong passion for peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+FOURTH CANTICLE.
+
+
+Welcome then the RING-DOVE--the QUEST--or CUSHAT, for that is the very
+bird we have had in our imagination. There is his full-length portrait,
+stealthily sketched as the Solitary was sitting on a tree. You must
+catch him napping, indeed, before he will allow you an opportunity of
+colouring him on the spot from nature. It is not that he is more jealous
+or suspicious of man's approach than other bird; for never shall we
+suffer ourselves to believe that any tribe of the descendants of the
+Dove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings of reappearing earth, can
+in their hearts hate or fear the race of the children of man. But Nature
+has made the Cushat a lover of the still forest-gloom; and therefore,
+when his lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, he flies to some
+yet profounder, some more central solitude, and folds his wing in the
+hermitage of a Yew, sown in the time of the ancient Britons.
+
+It is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the Ring-Dove, from whom are
+descended all the varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer praise
+can we give them all, than that the Dove is the emblem of Innocence, and
+that the name of innocence--not of frailty--is Woman? When Hamlet said
+the reverse, he was thinking, you know, of the Queen--not of Ophelia. Is
+not woman by nature chaste as the Dove--as the Dove faithful? Sitting
+all alone with her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove devoted to
+her own nest? Murmureth she not a pleasant welcome to her wearied
+home-returned husband, even like the Dove among the woodlands when her
+mate re-alights on the pine? Should her spouse be taken from her and
+disappear, doth not her heart sometimes break, as they say it happens to
+the Dove? But oftener far, findeth not the widow that her orphans are
+still fed by her own hand, that is filled with good things by
+Providence; till grown up, and able to shift for themselves, away they
+go--just as the poor Dove lamenteth for her mate in the snare of the
+fowler, yet feedeth her young continually through the whole day, till
+away too go they--alas, in neither case, perhaps, ever more to return!
+
+We dislike all favouritism, all foolish and capricious partiality for
+particular bird or beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will
+_tell_ upon all one thinks or feels towards any place or person in this
+world of ours, near or remote. God forbid we should criticise the
+Cushat! We desire to speak of him as tenderly as of a friend buried in
+our early youth. Too true it is, that often and oft, when schoolboys,
+have we striven to steal upon him in his solitude, and to shoot him to
+death. In morals, and in religion, it would be heterodox to deny that
+the will is as the deed. Yet in cases of high and low-way robbery and
+murder, there does seem, treating the subject not in philosophical but
+popular style, to be some little difference between the two; at least we
+hope so, for otherwise we can with difficulty imagine one person not
+deserving to be ordered for execution, on Wednesday next, between the
+hours of eight and nine ante-meridian. Happily, however, for our future
+peace of mind, and not improbably for the whole confirmation of our
+character, our Guardian Genius--(every boy has one constantly at his
+side, both during school and play hours, though it must be confessed
+sometimes a little remiss in his duty, for the nature even of angelical
+beings is imperfect)--always so contrived it, that with all our cunning
+we never could kill a Cushat. Many a long hour--indeed whole
+Saturdays--have we lain perdue among broom and whins, the beautiful
+green and yellow skirting of sweet Scotia's woods, watching his egress
+or ingress, our gun ready cocked, and finger on trigger, that on the
+flapping of his wings not a moment might be lost in bringing him to the
+ground. But couch where we might, no Cushat ever came near our insidious
+lair. Now and then a Magpie--birds who, by the by, when they suspect you
+of any intention of shooting them, are as distant in their manners as
+Cushats themselves, otherwise as impudent as Cockneys--would come,
+hopping in continual tail-jerks, with his really beautiful plumage, if
+one could bring oneself to think it so, and then sport the pensive
+within twenty yards of the muzzle of Brown-Bess, impatient to let fly.
+But our soul burned, our heart panted for a Cushat; and in that strong
+fever-fit of passion, could we seek to slake our thirst for that wild
+blood with the murder of a thievish eavesdropper of a Pye? The
+Blackbird, too, often dropt out of the thicket into an open glade in the
+hazel-shaws, and the distinctness of his yellow bill showed he was far
+within shot-range. Yet, let us do ourselves justice, we never in all our
+born days dreamt of shooting a Blackbird--him that scares away sadness
+from the woodland twilight gloom, at morn or eve; whose anthem, even in
+those dim days when Nature herself it might be well thought were
+melancholy, forceth the firmament to ring with joy. Once "the snow-white
+cony sought its evening meal," unconscious of our dangerous vicinity,
+issuing with erected ears from the wood edge. That last was, we confess,
+such a temptation to touch the trigger, that had we resisted it we must
+have been either more or less than boy. We fired; and kicking up his
+heels, doubtless in fright, but as it then seemed to us, during our
+disappointment, much rather in frolic--nay, absolute derision--away
+bounced Master Rabbit to his burrow, without one particle of soft
+silvery wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our unerring aim. As
+if the branch on which he had been sitting were broken, away then went
+the crashing Cushat through the intermingling sprays. The free flapping
+of his wings was soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and ere we
+could recover from our almost bitter amazement, the creature was
+murmuring to his mate on her shallow nest--a far-off murmur, solitary
+and profound--to reach unto which, through the tangled mazes of the
+forest, would have required a separate sense, instinct, or faculty,
+which we did not possess. So, skulking out of our hiding-place, we made
+no comment on the remark of homeward-plodding labourer, who had heard
+the report, and now smelt the powder--"Cushats are geyan kittle birds to
+kill"--but returned, with our shooting-bag as empty as our stomach, to
+the Manse.
+
+"Why do the birds sing on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us--and we
+answered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although the
+birds certainly do sing on Sunday--behaviour that with our small gentle
+Calvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being so
+innocent as during the week-days they appeared to be--we cannot set
+down their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in the holy
+superstition of the world-wearied heart that man believes the inferior
+creatures to be conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that they know
+it to be the day of our rest? Or is it that we transfer the feeling of
+our inward calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus imbue them with
+a character of reposing sanctity, existing only in our own spirits? Both
+solutions are true. The instincts of those creatures we know only in
+their symptoms and their effects, in the wonderful range of action over
+which they reign. Of the instincts themselves--as feelings or ideas--we
+know not anything, nor ever can know; for an impassable gulf separates
+the nature of those that may be to perish, from ours that are to live
+for ever. But their power of memory, we must believe, is not only
+capable of minutest retention, but also stretches back to afar--and some
+power or other they do possess, that gathers up the past experience into
+rules of conduct that guide them in their solitary or gregarious life.
+Why, therefore, should not the birds of Scotland know the Sabbath-day?
+On that day the Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler among the
+murmurs of his own waterfall; and, as he flits down the banks and braes
+of the burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound about the cottage that
+is the boundary of his furthest flight--for "the dizzying mill-wheel
+rests." The merry-nodding rooks, that in spring-time keep following the
+very heels of the ploughman--may they not know it to be Sabbath, when
+all the horses are standing idle in the field, or taking a gallop by
+themselves round the head-rig? Quick of hearing are birds--one and
+all--and in every action of their lives are obedient to sounds. May they
+not, then--do they not connect a feeling of perfect safety with the
+tinkle of the small kirk-bell? The very jay himself is not shy of people
+on their way to worship. The magpie, that never sits more than a minute
+at a time in the same place on a Saturday, will on the Sabbath remain on
+the kirkyard wall with all the composure of a dove. The whole feathered
+creation know our hours of sleep. They awake before us; and ere the
+earliest labourer has said his prayers, have not the woods and valleys
+been ringing with their hymns? Why, therefore, may not they, who know,
+each week-day, the hour of our lying down and our rising up, know also
+the day of our general rest? The animals whose lot is labour, shall
+they not know it? Yes; the horse on that day sleeps in shade or sunshine
+without fear of being disturbed--his neck forgets the galling collar,
+"and there are forty feeding like one," all well knowing that their
+fresh meal on the tender herbage will not be broken in upon before the
+dews of next morning, ushering in a new day to them of toil or travel.
+
+So much for our belief in the knowledge, instinctive or from a sort of
+reason, possessed by the creatures of the inferior creation of the
+heaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. But it is also true that we
+transfer our inward feelings to their outward condition, and with our
+religious spirit imbue all the ongoings of animated and even inanimated
+life. There is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of pensiveness, a
+touch of pathos, in all profound rest. Perhaps because it is so much in
+contrast with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Perhaps because the
+soul, when undisturbed, will, from the impulse of its own divine nature,
+have high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such state, it transmutes all
+things into a show of sympathy with itself. The church-spire, rising
+high above the smoke and stir of a town, when struck by the sun-fire,
+seems, on a market-day, a tall building in the air, that may serve as a
+guide to people from a distance flocking into the bazaars. The same
+church-spire, were its loud-tongued bell to call from aloft on the
+gathering multitude below, to celebrate the anniversary of some great
+victory, Waterloo or Trafalgar, would appear to stretch up its stature
+triumphantly into the sky--so much the more triumphantly, if the
+standard of England were floating from its upper battlements. But to the
+devout eye of faith, doth it not seem to express its own character, when
+on the Sabbath it performs no other office than to point to heaven?
+
+So much for the second solution. But independently of both, no wonder
+that all nature seems to rest on the Sabbath; for it doth rest--all of
+it, at least, that appertains to man and his condition. If the Fourth
+Commandment be kept--at rest is all the household--and all the fields
+round it are at rest. Calm flows the current of human life, on that
+gracious day, throughout all the glens and valleys of Scotland, as a
+stream that wimples in the morning sunshine, freshened but not flooded
+with the soft-falling rain of a summer night. The spiral smoke-wreath
+above the cottage is not calmer than the motion within. True, that the
+wood warblers do not cease their songs; but the louder they sing, the
+deeper is the stillness. And what perfect blessedness, when it is only
+joy that is astir in rest!
+
+Loud-flapping Cushat! it was thou that inspiredst these solemn fancies;
+and we have only to wish thee, for thy part contributed to our
+Recreations, now that the acorns of autumn must be well-nigh consumed,
+many a plentiful repast, amid the multitude of thy now congregated
+comrades, in the cleared stubble lands--as severe weather advances, and
+the ground becomes covered with snow, regales undisturbed by fowler, on
+the tops of turnip, rape, and other cruciform plants, which all of thy
+race affect so passionately--and soft blow the sea-breezes on thy
+unruffled plumage, when thou takest thy winter's walk with kindred
+myriads on the shelly shore, and for a season minglest with gull and
+seamew--apart every tribe, one from the other, in the province of its
+own peculiar instinct--yet all mysteriously taught to feed or sleep
+together within the roar or margin of the main.
+
+Sole-sitting Cushat! We see thee through the yew-tree's shade, on some
+day of the olden time, but when or where we remember not--for what has
+place or time to do with the vision of a dream? That we see thee is all
+we know, and that serenely beautiful thou art! Most pleasant is it to
+dream, and to know we dream! By sweet volition we keep ourselves half
+asleep and half awake; and all our visions of thought, as they go
+swimming along, partake at once of reality and imagination. Fiction and
+truth--clouds, shadows, phantoms and phantasms--ether, sunshine,
+substantial forms and sounds that have a being, blending together in a
+scene created by us, and partly impressed upon us, and which one motion
+of the head on the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more oppressive
+delight! In some such dreaming state of mind are we now; and, gentle
+reader, if thou art broad awake, lay aside the visionary volume, or read
+a little longer, and likely enough is it that thou too mayest fall half
+asleep. If so, let thy drowsy eyes still pursue the glimmering
+paragraphs--and wafted away wilt thou feel thyself to be into the heart
+of a Highland forest, that knows no bounds but those of the uncertain
+sky.
+
+Away from our remembrance fades the noisy world of men into a silent
+glimmer--and now it is all no more than a mere faint thought.
+On--on--on! through briery brake--matted thicket--grassy
+glade--On--on--on! further into the Forest! What a confusion of huge
+stones, rocks, knolls, all tumbled together into a chaos--not without
+its stern and sterile beauty! Still are there, above, blue glimpses of
+the sky--deep though the umbrage be, and wide-flung the arms of the
+oaks, and of pines in their native wilderness gigantic as oaks, and
+extending as broad a shadow. Now the firmament has vanished--and all is
+twilight. Immense stems, "in number without number
+numberless,"--bewildering eye and soul--all
+still--silent--steadfast--and so would they be in a storm. For what
+storm--let it rage aloft as it might, till the surface of the forest
+toss and roar like the sea--could force its path through these many
+million trunks? The thunder-stone might split that giant there--how
+vast! how magnificent!--but the brother by his side would not tremble;
+and the sound--in the awful width of the silence--what more would it be
+than that of the woodpecker alarming the insects of one particular tree!
+
+Poor wretch that we are!--to us the uncompanioned silence of the
+solitude hath become terrible. More dreadful is it than the silence of
+the tomb; for there, often arise responses to the unuttered soliloquies
+of the pensive heart. But this is as the silence, not of Time, but of
+Eternity. No burial heaps--no mounds--no cairns! It is not as if man had
+perished here, and been forgotten; but as if this were a world in which
+there had been neither living nor dying. Too utter is the solitariness
+even for the ghosts of dead! For they are thought to haunt the
+burial-places of what once was their bodies--the chamber where the
+spirit breathed its final farewell--the spot of its transitory love and
+delight, or of its sin and sorrow--to gaze with troubled tenderness on
+the eyes that once they worshipped--with cold ear to drink the music of
+the voices long ago adored; and in all their permitted visitations, to
+express, if but by the beckoning of the shadow of a hand, some
+unextinguishable longing after the converse of the upper world, even
+within the gates of the grave.
+
+A change comes over us. Deep and still as is the solitude, we are
+relieved of our awe, and out of the forest-gloom arise images of beauty
+that come and go, gliding as on wings, or, statue-like, stand in the
+glades, like the sylvan deities to whom of old belonged, by birthright,
+all the regions of the woods. On--on--on!--further into the Forest!--and
+let the awe of imagination be still further tempered by the delight
+breathed even from any one of the lovely names sweet-sounding through
+the famous fables of antiquity. Dryad, Hamadryad! Faunus!
+Sylvanus!--Now, alas! ye are but names, and no more! Great Pan himself
+is dead, or here he would set up his reign. But what right has such a
+dreamer to dream of the dethroned deities of Greece? The language they
+spoke is not his language; yet the words of the great poets who sang of
+gods and demigods, are beautiful in their silent meanings as they meet
+his adoring eyes; and, mighty Lyrists! has he not often floated down the
+temple-crowned and altar-shaded rivers of your great Choral Odes?
+
+On--on--on!--further into the Forest!--unless, indeed, thou dreadest
+that the limbs that bear on thy fleshy tabernacle may fail, and the
+body, left to itself, sink down and die. Ha! such fears thou laughest to
+scorn; for from youth upwards thou hast dallied with the wild and
+perilous: and what but the chill delight in which thou hast so often
+shivered in threatening solitude brought thee here! These dens are not
+dungeons, nor are we a thrall. Yet if dungeons they must be called--and
+they are deep, and dark, and grim--ten thousand gates hath this great
+prison-house, and wide open are they all. So on--on--on!--further into
+the Forest! But who shall ascend to its summit? Eagles and dreams. Round
+its base we go, rejoicing in the new-found day, and once more cheered
+and charmed with the music of birds. Say whence came, ye scientific
+world-makers, these vast blocks of granite? Was it fire or water, think
+ye, that hung in air the semblance of yon Gothic cathedral, without
+nave, or chancel, or aisle--a mass of solid rock? Yet it looks like the
+abode of Echoes; and haply when there is thunder, rolls out its
+lengthening shadow of sound to the ear of the solitary shepherd afar off
+on Cairngorm.
+
+On--on--on!--further into the Forest! Now on all sides leagues of
+ancient trees surround us, and we are safe as in the grave from the
+persecuting love or hatred of friends or foes. The sun shall not find us
+by day, nor the moon by night. Were our life forfeited to what are
+called the laws, how could the laws discover the criminal? How could
+they drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? And
+if here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death--and famine is a
+natural death--what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but so
+it often is with us in severest solitude--our dreams will be hideous
+with sin and death.
+
+Hideous, said we, with sin and death? Thoughts that came flying against
+us like vultures, like vultures have disappeared, disappointed of their
+prey, and afraid to fix their talons in a thing alive. Hither--by some
+secret and sacred impulse within the soul, that often knoweth not the
+sovereign virtue of its own great desires--have we been led as into a
+penitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, we may lay down the
+burden of guilt or remorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven-pardoned
+man. What guilt?--O my soul! canst thou think of Him who inhabiteth
+eternity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?--For the dereliction of duty
+every day since thou received'st from Heaven the understanding of good
+and of evil. All our past existence gathers up into one dread
+conviction, that every man that is born of woman is a sinner, and worthy
+of everlasting death. Yet with the same dread conviction is interfused a
+knowledge, clear as the consciousness of present being, that the soul
+will live for ever. What was the meaning, O my soul! of all those
+transitory joys and griefs--of all those fears, hopes, loves, that so
+shook, each in its own fleeting season, the very foundations on which
+thy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, hatred, pride, and
+ambition--what are they all but so many shapes of sin coeval with thy
+birth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light into the Forest, was like
+the opening of the eye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed of its
+nakedness, because of the foulness and pollution of sin. But the awful
+thoughts that have travelled through its chambers have ventilated,
+swept, and cleansed them--and let us break away from beneath the weight
+of confession.
+
+Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears--of abject
+superstitions--and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages
+been laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them--and, without
+violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear
+testimony to the truth. But think of the calm, purified, enlightened,
+and elevated conscience of the highest natures--from which objectless
+fear has been excluded--and which hears, in its stillness, the eternal
+voice of God. What calm celestial joy fills all the being of a good man,
+when conscience tells him he is obeying God's law! What dismal fear and
+sudden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves but one single step out
+of the right path that is shining before his feet! It is not a mere
+selfish terror--it is not the dread of punishment only that appals
+him--for, on the contrary, he can calmly look on the punishment which he
+knows his guilt has incurred, and almost desires that it should be
+inflicted, that the incensed power may be appeased. It is the
+consciousness of offence that is unendurable--not the fear of consequent
+suffering; it is the degradation of sin that his soul deplores--it is
+the guilt which he would expiate, if possible, in torments; it is the
+united sense of wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and remorse, that
+renders a moment's pang of the conscience more terrible to the good than
+years of any other punishment--and it thus is the power of the human
+soul to render its whole life miserable by its very love of that virtue
+which it has fatally violated. This is a passion which the soul could
+not suffer--unless it were immortal. Reason, so powerful in the highest
+minds, would escape from the vain delusion; but it is in the highest
+minds where reason is most subjected to this awful power--they would
+seek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happiness
+that earth ever yielded--and would rejoice to pour out their heart's
+blood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deep
+transgression! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states of
+mind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation of
+the dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men's
+sons--and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, or
+found strength to support it, the conviction of their reasonableness and
+of their awful reality remains; nor can it be removed from the minds of
+the wise and virtuous, without the obliteration from the tablets of
+memory of all the moral judgments which conscience has there recorded.
+
+It is melancholy to think that even in our own day, a philosopher, and
+one of high name too, should have spoken slightingly of the universal
+desire of immortality, as no argument at all in proof of it, because
+arising inevitably from the regret with which all men must regard the
+relinquishment of this life. By thus speaking of the desire as a
+delusion necessarily accompanying the constitution of mind which it has
+pleased the Deity to bestow on us, such reasoners but darken the mystery
+both of man and of Providence. But this desire of immortality is not of
+the kind they say it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of the
+character of a blind and weak feeling of regret at merely leaving this
+present life. "I would not live alway," is a feeling which all men
+understand--but who can endure the momentary thought of annihilation?
+Thousands, and tens of thousands--awful a thing as it is to die--are
+willing to do so--"passing through nature to eternity"--nay, when the
+last hour comes, death almost always finds his victim ready, if not
+resigned. To leave earth, and all the light both of the sun and of the
+soul, is a sad thought to us all--transient as are human smiles, we
+cannot bear to see them no more--and there is a beauty that binds us to
+life in the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees gushing for his
+sake. But between that regret for departing loves and affections, and
+all the gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth--between that love and
+the dread of annihilation, there is no connection. The soul can bear to
+part with all it loves--the soft voice--the kindling smile--the starting
+tear--and the profoundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved; but it
+cannot bear to part with its existence. It cannot even believe the
+possibility of that which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves--its
+passions--its joys--its agonies are _not itself_. They may perish, but
+it is imperishable. Strip it of all it has seen, touched, enjoyed, or
+suffered--still it seems to survive; bury all it knew, or could know in
+the grave--but itself cannot be trodden down into the corruption. It
+sees nothing like itself in what perishes, except in dim analogies that
+vanish before its last profound self-meditation--and though it parts
+with its mortal weeds at last, as with a garment, its life is felt at
+last to be something not even in contrast with the death of the body,
+but to flow on like a flood, that we believe continues still to flow
+after it has entered into the unseen solitude of some boundless desert.
+
+                  "Behind the cloud of death,
+    Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt
+    That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold.
+    How the grave's alter'd! fathomless as hell!
+    A real hell to those who dream'd of heaven,
+    ANNIHILATION! How it yawns before me!
+    Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,
+    The privilege of angels and of worms,
+    An outcast from existence! and this spirit,
+    This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,
+    This particle of energy divine,
+    Which travels nature, flies from star to star,
+    And visits gods, and emulates their powers,
+    _For ever is extinguish'd._"
+
+If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to perish, why may not we ask
+God, in that deep despair which, in that case, must inevitably flow from
+the consciousness of those powers with which He has at once blessed and
+cursed us--why that intellect, whose final doom is death, and that final
+doom within a moment, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that of
+Life, and no idea in which its flight can be lost but that of Eternity?
+If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why should
+that cradle have been hung amid the stars, and that tomb illumined by
+their eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not this
+earth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capacious
+enough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be
+extinguished in the darkness of its bosom? What had we to do with
+planets, and suns, and spheres, "and all the dread magnificence of
+heaven?" Were we framed merely that we might for a few years rejoice in
+the beauty of the stars, as in that of the flowers beneath our feet? And
+ought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, as
+for the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idle
+show, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the work
+of the Eternal God, and He has given us power therein to read and to
+understand His glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by the
+face of heaven--our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face is
+overspread by its celestial smiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits is
+already in the heavens. Well are we entitled to give names unto the
+stars; for we know the moment of their rising and their setting, and
+can be with them at every part of their shining journey through the
+boundless ether. While generations of men have lived, died, and are
+buried, the astronomer thinks of the golden orb that shone centuries ago
+within the vision of man, and lifts up his eye undoubting, at the very
+moment when it again comes glorious on its predicted return. Were the
+Eternal Being to slacken the course of a planet, or increase even the
+distance of the fixed stars, the decree would be soon known on earth.
+Our ignorance is great, because so is our knowledge; for it is from the
+mightiness and vastness of what we do know that we imagine the
+illimitable unknown creation. And to whom has God made these
+revelations? To a worm that next moment is to be in darkness? To a piece
+of earth momentarily raised into breathing existence? To a soul
+perishable as the telescope through which it looks into the gates of
+heaven?
+
+    "Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander'd there
+    To waft us home--the message of despair?"
+
+No; there is no despair in the gracious light of heaven. As we travel
+through those orbs, we feel indeed that we have no power, but we feel
+that we have mighty knowledge. We can create nothing, but we can dimly
+understand all. It belongs to God only to _create_, but it is given to
+man to _know_--and that knowledge is itself an assurance of immortality.
+
+    "Renounce St Evremont, and read St Paul.
+    Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd,
+    His mounting mind made long abode in heaven.
+    This is freethinking, unconfined to parts,
+    To send the soul, on curious travel bent,
+    Through all the provinces of human thought:
+    To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man;
+    Of this vast universe to make the tour;
+    In each recess of space and time, at home;
+    Familiar with their wonders: diving deep;
+    And like a prince of boundless interests there,
+    Still most ambitious of the most remote;
+    To look on truth unbroken, and entire;
+    Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths,
+    By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford
+    An archlike, strong foundation, to support
+    Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete
+    Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand
+    More firm; who most examine, most believe.
+    Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole
+    Conveys the sense, and GOD is understood,
+    Who not in fragments writes to human race.
+    Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply."
+
+Renounce St Evremont! Ay, and many a Deistical writer of high repute now
+in the world. But how came they by the truths they did know? Not by the
+work of their own unassisted faculties--for they lived in a Christian
+country; they had already been imbued with many high and holy beliefs,
+of which--had they willed it--they could never have got rid; and to the
+very last the light which they, in their pride, believed to have
+emanated from the inner shrine--the penetralia of Philosophy--came from
+the temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long---
+though they knew it not, or strived to forget it--in the light of
+revelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds from
+earth, was still shining strong in heaven. Had the New Testament never
+been--think ye that men in their pride, though
+
+    "Poor sons of a day,"
+
+could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a _religion
+of humility_? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell--so by pride
+man, after his miserable fall, strove to lift up his helpless being from
+the dust; and though trailing himself, soul and body, along the soiling
+earth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here his
+very sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors,
+murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they had
+forgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foul
+imaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their own
+idolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame," while they
+were the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should
+we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in
+moral speculation we hear but little--too little--of the confession of
+what it owes to the Christian religion--in all the Philosophy,
+nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we _see_ that "the
+dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there
+is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exaltation of itself--which the
+spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to say
+that a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so--for seldom
+indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly of
+humility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our great
+divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but when
+we listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given.
+
+    "It is as if an angel shook his wings."
+
+Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is now
+the air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of that
+religion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that of
+the humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it--and
+the lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling on the mountain-side, or
+in the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing to
+the Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount--and saying, "I see my duties to
+man and God _here_!" The religious establishments of Christianity,
+therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but to
+show all its springs and sources, than all the works of all the
+Philosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice.
+
+Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou wide-antlered king of the
+red-deer of Braemar, from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Ere
+now we have beheld thee, or one stately as thee, gazing abroad, from a
+rock over the heather, to all the points of heaven, and soon as our
+figure was seen far below, leading the van of the flight thou went'st
+haughtily away into the wilderness. But now thou glidest softly and
+slowly through the gloom--no watchfulness, no anxiety in thy large
+beaming eyes; and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest thyself down
+in unknown fellowship with one of those human creatures, a glance of
+whose eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send thee belling through the
+forest, terrified by the flash or sound that bespoke a hostile nature
+wont to pursue thy race unto death.--The hunter is upon
+thee--away--away! Sudden as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, and
+in the gloom as suddenly is lost.
+
+On--on--on! further into the Forest!--and now a noise as of "thunder
+heard remote." Waterfalls--hundreds of waterfalls sounding for
+ever--here--there--everywhere--among the remoter woods. Northwards one
+fierce torrent dashes through the centre--but no villages--only a few
+woodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of
+precipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out of
+the reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is in
+flood.
+
+Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again
+for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by
+our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters--wilt
+thou--short as hitherto has been thy journeying--wilt thou be our guide
+out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more
+of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the
+labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of
+silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind
+without entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases of
+the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, the
+small rivulet now gives utterance to a song; and sliding down shelving
+rocks, so low in their mossy verdure as hardly to deserve that name,
+glides along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a little
+hermit flower. No danger now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirsty
+earth; for it has a channel and banks of its own--and there is a
+waterfall! Thenceforwards the rivulet never loses its merry voice--and
+in an hour it is a torrent. What beautiful symptoms now of its approach
+to the edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and whispering airs are here
+visitants--and there the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from the
+ground! The glades are more frequent--more frequent open spaces cleared
+by the woodman's axe--and the antique Oak-Tree all alone by itself,
+itself a grove. The torrent may be called noble now; and that deep blue
+atmosphere--or say rather, that glimmer of purple air--lies over the
+Strath in which a great River rolls along to the Sea.
+
+Nothing in all nature more beautiful than the boundary of a great
+Highland Forest. Masses of rocks thrown together in magnificent
+confusion, many of them lichened and weather-stained with colours
+gorgeous as the eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the rainbow,
+or the barred and clouded glories of setting suns--some towering aloft
+with trees sown in the crevices by bird or breeze, and checkering the
+blue sky--others bare, black, abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shattered
+as if by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, places of perfect
+peace--circles among the tall heather, or taller lady-fern, smoothed
+into velvet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet--rocks where
+the undisturbed linnet hangs her nest among the blooming briers, all
+floating with dew-draperies of honeysuckle alive with bees--glades green
+as emerald, where lie the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a lovely
+doe reposes with her fawn; and further down, where the fields half
+belong to the mountain and half to the strath, the smoke of hidden
+huts--a log-bridge flung across the torrent--a hanging-garden, and a
+little broomy knoll, with a few laughing children at play, almost as
+wild-looking as the wanderers of the woods!
+
+Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely wilderness, and behold down
+along a mile-broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, floweth the
+noblest of Scotia's rivers, the strong-sweeping Spey! Let Imagination
+launch her canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman--for need is none of
+oar or sail; keep the middle course while all the groves go by, and ere
+the sun has sunk behind yon golden mountains--nay, mountains they are
+not, but a transitory pomp of clouds--thou mayest list the roaring, and
+behold the foaming of the Sea.
+
+Was there ever such a descriptive dream of a coloured engraving of the
+Cushat, Quest, or Ring-Dove, dreamt before? Poor worn-out and glimmering
+candle!--whose wick of light and life in a few more flickerings will be
+no more--what a contrast dost thou present with thyself of eight hours
+ago! Then, truly, wert thou a shining light, and high aloft in the
+room-gloaming burned thy clear crest like a star--during its midnight
+silence, a _memento mori_ of which our spirit was not afraid. Now thou
+art dying--dying--dead! Our cell is in darkness. But methinks we see
+another--a purer--a clearer light--one more directly from Heaven. We
+touch but a spring in a wooden shutter--and lo! the full blaze of day.
+Oh! why should we mortal beings dread that night-prison--the Grave?
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+FIRST COURSE.
+
+
+It greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died before
+our numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining with
+him, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claims
+to immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, a
+dread of Us--not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner to
+Us, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knew
+and felt must have hung his reputation with posterity--his posthumous
+fame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinner
+among the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet,
+perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have died
+without attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It might
+have been a failure. How liable to imperfection the _matériel_ on which
+he would have had to work! How defective the instruments!
+Yes--yes!--happier far was it for the good old man that he should have
+fallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in his
+imagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent in
+matter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died of
+a broken heart!
+
+"Travelling," it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his
+"Traveller's Oracle," "is a recreation to be recommended, especially to
+those whose employments are sedentary--who are engaged in abstract
+studies--whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy by
+hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domestic
+felicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; and
+therefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life to
+undertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be exposed to long
+and violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed to
+drink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine."
+
+Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by
+"long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown in
+England, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, some
+occasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes and
+cross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy the
+most sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in an
+easy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriage
+spinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows all
+galloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. The
+truth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentary
+life, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch of
+M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on the
+roof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only look
+at that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in
+between a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races.
+Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?
+
+We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no man
+who has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, be
+afraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear or
+trembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne--the Navy--and the Army.
+These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objection
+whatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of the
+Whigs--the Angler's delight--the cause of Liberty all over the
+World--Christopher North--Maga the Immortal.--"Nature will not suffer
+any sudden transition!" Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! His
+very own mother could not know him--he has lost all resemblance to his
+twin-brother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not have
+distinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow--so completely is
+his apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for him
+to establish an _alibi_. He sees a figure in the mirror above the
+chimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced
+Bacchanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then he takes care to
+imitate the manual exercise of the phantom--lifting his glass to his
+lips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul.
+
+The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down any
+rule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in a
+day, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; but
+that nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude,
+which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating."
+
+We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for the
+rule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating.
+What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued--quite done up
+as it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark in
+heaven--tira-lira--or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, who
+forthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, the
+sunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day--or tripping along, all
+by her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs,
+the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand,
+to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on the
+meridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak,
+beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry!
+Where is your "sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide in
+exercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed both
+in mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy," you continue to pass over
+houseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, through
+villages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower,
+till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all the
+west, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday
+Night--for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream--and know
+not, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather,
+that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," is yet among the number
+of our bosom friends--alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune,
+the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor,
+puny, idle, and unmeaning word!
+
+Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." It is produced in us by
+three platefuls of hotch-potch--and, to the eyes of an ordinary
+observer, our dinner would seem to be at an end. But no--strictly
+speaking, it is just going to begin. About an hour ago did we, standing
+on the very beautiful bridge of Perth, see that identical salmon, with
+his back-fin just visible above the translucent tide, arrowing up the
+Tay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubting that he should spend his
+honeymoon among the gravel-beds of Kinnaird or Moulinearn, or the rocky
+sofas of the Tummel, or the green marble couches of the Tilt. What has
+become now of "the sense of satiety in eating?" John--the
+castors!--mustard--vinegar--cayenne--catchup--pease and potatoes, with a
+very little butter--the biscuit called "rusk"--and the memory of the
+hotch-potch is as that of Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton,
+exquisite though much of the five-year-old blackfaced must assuredly be,
+can, with any rational hopes of success, contend against a haunch of
+venison, will be asserted by no devout lover of truth. Try the two by
+alternate platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you leave off
+after the venison. That "sense of satiety in eating," of which Dr
+Kitchiner speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon devoured above--but of
+all the transitory feelings of us transitory creatures on our transit
+through this transitory world, in which the Doctor asserts nature will
+not suffer any sudden transitions, the most transitory ever experienced
+by us is "the sense of satiety in eating." Therefore, we have now seen
+it for a moment existing on the disappearance of the hotch-potch--dying
+on the appearance of the Tay salmon--once more noticeable as the last
+plate of the noble fish melted away--extinguished suddenly by the vision
+of the venison--again felt for an instant, and but for an instant--for a
+brace and a half of as fine grouse as ever expanded their voluptuous
+bosoms to be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety in eating indeed!
+If you please, my dear friend, one of the backs--pungent with the most
+palate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heart-warming, soul-exalting of all
+tastes--the wild bitter-sweet.
+
+But the Doctor returns to the subject of travelling--and fatigue. "When
+one begins," he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn often
+and be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movement
+occasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and is
+sensible of a bitter taste, _seek refreshment and repose_, if you wish
+to PREVENT ILLNESS, already beginning to take place." Why, our dear
+Doctor, illness in such a deplorable case as this, is just about to end,
+and death is beginning to take place. Thank Heaven, it is a condition to
+which we do not remember having very nearly approximated! Who ever saw
+us yawn? or drowsy? or with our appetite impaired, except on the
+withdrawal of the table-cloth? or low-spirited, but when the Glenlivet
+was at ebb? Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensible
+of a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringer
+on our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, from
+January to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's or
+Kendal's chronometer.
+
+But the Doctor proceeds--"By raising the temperature of my room to about
+65°, a broth diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a
+pint of warm water, and repeating it every half-hour till it moves the
+bowels twice or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or two sooner than
+usual, I have often very speedily got rid of colds, &c."
+
+Why, there may be no great harm in acting as above; although we should
+far rather recommend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea-spoonful of Epsom
+salts in half a pint of warm water, reminds one, somehow or other, of
+Tims. A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so easy--and that the
+Cockneys well know--to move the bowels of old Christopher North. We do
+not believe that a tea-spoonful of anything in this world would have any
+serious effect on old "Ironsides." We should have no hesitation in
+backing him against so much corrosive sublimate. He would dine out on
+the day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic;--and would, we verily
+believe, rise triumphant from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid.
+
+We could mention a thousand cures for "colds, et cetera," more
+efficacious than a broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of Epsom
+salts, or early roosting. What say you, our dear Dean, to half-a-dozen
+tumblers of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to the same amount? Or
+an equal quantity, in its gradual decrease revealing deeper and deeper
+still the romantic Welsh scenery of the Devil's Punch-Bowl? _Adde tot_
+small-bearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea foam, and worthy, as
+they stud the Ambrosial brodd, to be licked off all at once by the
+lambent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated calumny against the
+character of toasted cheese--that, forsooth, it is indigestible--has
+been trampled under the march of mind; and therefore, you may tuck in a
+pound of double Gloucester. Other patients, labouring under catarrh,
+may, very possibly, prefer the roasted how-towdy--or the green goose
+from his first stubble-field--or why not, by way of a little variety, a
+roasted maukin, midway between hare and leveret, tempting as maiden
+between woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, between a frock
+and a gown? Go to bed--no need of warming-pans--about a quarter before
+one;--you will not hear that small hour strike--you will sleep sound
+till sunrise, sound as the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings of
+Scotland were crowned of old. And if you contrive to carry a cold about
+you next day, you deserve to be sent to Coventry by all sensible
+people--and may, if you choose, begin taking, with Tims, a tea-spoonful
+of Epsom salts in a half-pint of warm water every half-hour, till it
+moves your bowels twice or thrice; but if you do, be your sex, politics,
+or religion what they may, never shall ye be suffered to contribute even
+a bit of Balaam to the Magazine.
+
+The Doctor then treats of the best Season for travelling, and very
+judiciously observes that it is during these months when there is no
+occasion for a fire--that is, just before and after the extreme heat. In
+winter, Dr Kitchiner, who was a man of extraordinary powers of
+observation, observed, "that the ways are generally bad, and often
+dangerous, especially in hilly countries, by reason of the snow and ice.
+The days are short--a traveller comes late to his lodging, and is often
+forced to rise before the sun in the morning--besides, the country looks
+dismal--nature is, as it were, half dead. The summer corrects all these
+inconveniences." Paradoxical as this doctrine may at first sight
+appear--yet we have verified it by experience--having for many years
+found, without meeting with one single exception, that the fine, long,
+warm days of summer are an agreeable and infallible corrective of the
+inconveniences attending the foul, short, cold days of winter--a season
+which is surly without being sincere, blustering rather than bold--an
+intolerable bore--always pretending to be taking his leave, yet
+domiciliating himself in another man's house for weeks together--and, to
+be plain, a season so regardless of truth, that nobody believes him till
+frost has hung an ice-padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd voice
+is dumb under the wreathed snows.
+
+"Cleanliness when travelling," observes the Doctor, "is doubly
+necessary; to sponge the body every morning with tepid water, and then
+rub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly contribute to preserve
+health. To put the feet into warm water for a couple of minutes just
+before going to bed, is very refreshing, and inviting to sleep; for
+promoting tranquillity, both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may be
+regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience."
+
+Far be it from us to seek to impugn such doctrine. A dirty dog is a
+nuisance not to be borne. But here the question arises--who--what--is a
+dirty dog? Now there are men (no women) naturally--necessarily--dirty.
+They are not dirty by chance--or accident--say twice or thrice per diem;
+but they are always dirty--at all times and in all places--and never and
+nowhere more disgustingly so than when figged out for going to church.
+It is in the skin, in the blood--in the flesh, and in the bone--that
+with such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon--no
+less in the hair. Now, such persons do not know that they are
+dirty--that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often think
+themselves pinks of purity--incarnations of carnations--impersonations
+of moss-roses--the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form of
+that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons to change their linen every
+half-hour, night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight clean
+shirts in the twenty-four hours--and it might not be reasonable,
+perhaps, to demand more of them under a government somewhat too
+Whiggish--yet though we cheerfully grant that one and all of the shirts
+would be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given moment from sunrise
+to sunset, and over again, the wearer would be clean. He would be just
+every whit and bit as dirty as if he had known but one single shirt all
+his life--and firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the universe.
+
+Men again, on the other hand, there are--and, thank God, in great
+numbers--who are naturally so clean, that we defy you to make them _bonâ
+fide_ dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, and
+expect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing of
+swans--that is, Poets--when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the
+ditch,--
+
+    "He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,
+    But soars far off among the swans of Thames."
+
+Pleasant people of this kind of constitution you see going about of a
+morning rather in dishabille--hair uncombed haply--face and hands even
+unwashed--and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are
+they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to be
+among the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake
+hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger that
+their heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of the
+highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail on
+the large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as unclouded
+skies--the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree--what need,
+in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though,
+from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little toozy? It
+is not dim--dull--oily--like half-withered sea-weeds! It will soon comb
+itself with the fingers of the west wind--that tent-like tree its
+toilette--its mirror that pool of the clear-flowing Tweed.
+
+Some streams, just like some men, are always dirty--you cannot possibly
+tell why--unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet
+weather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds,
+infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so many
+common-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, and
+threatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet,
+soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed into filth.
+The sun sees his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out of his
+senses. He shines no more that day. The clouds have no notion of being
+caricatured, and the trees keep cautiously away from the brink of such
+streams--save, perchance, now and then, here and there, a weak
+well-meaning willow--a thing of shreds and patches--its leafless wands
+covered with bits of old worsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle
+(see Dr Jamieson), and the remains of a pair of corduroy breeches, long
+hereditary in the family of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm Gypsies.
+
+Some streams, just like some men, are always clean--you cannot well tell
+why--producible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In
+dry, the pearly waters are singing among the freshened flowers--so that
+the trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. In wet, they grow, it
+is true, dark and drumly--and at midnight, when heaven's candles are put
+out, loud and oft the angry spirit of the water shrieks. But Aurora
+beholds her face in the clarified pools and shallows--far and wide
+glittering with silver or with gold. All the banks and braes reappear
+green as emerald from the subsiding current--into which look with the
+eye of an angler, and you behold a Fish--a twenty-pounder--steadying
+himself--like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George Scougal's leister
+to strike him through the spine! Yes, these are the images of trees far
+down, as if in another world; and, whether you look up or look down,
+alike in all its blue, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morning
+sky!
+
+Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus illustrated--generally
+sweet--at least in their own green Isle; and that was the best argument
+in favour of Catholic Emancipation.--So are Scotsmen. Whereas,
+blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand,
+immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to your
+nose--and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit has
+substituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetid
+fives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of the
+plague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantly
+denominated dirt--one week's earth--washed off the feet of a pretty
+young girl on a Saturday night, at a single sitting in the little
+rivulet that runs almost round about her father's hut, as would have
+served him to raise his mignonette in, or his crop of cresses. How
+beautifully glowed the crimson-snow of the singing creature's new-washed
+feet! First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucid
+waters--and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of the
+heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes of
+the stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the
+Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow
+her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic
+accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of
+the Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fifty
+glorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forests
+from the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs of Cairngorm.
+
+It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truth
+than perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm--"that a clean
+skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience." But the
+Doctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words
+"clean skin"--his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-hand
+basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give a
+Cockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin--just as many good people think
+that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clear
+conscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in both
+cases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass through
+nature to eternity clean-skinned and pious--with slight expense either
+in soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodily
+scrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in bad
+odour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, and
+finally go out like the stink of a candle.
+
+Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and a
+note-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliterated
+by the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, or
+read, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it--do this
+upon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you--at all
+events do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity."
+
+Suppose all people behaved in this way--and what an absurd world we
+should have of it--every man, woman, and child who could write, jotting
+away at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see,
+hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this one
+especially--in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. The
+memory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we have
+observed, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does not
+bear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds
+himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the
+Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the
+Memory--each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by
+itself, is in a very awkward predicament--gets comatose--snores loudly,
+and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination
+and our Judgment--nay, our very Reason itself--than our Memory--provided
+we were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy.
+Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or they
+carelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receive
+impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a
+bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.
+
+The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never,
+properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in
+the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of
+its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in
+the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from
+understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of
+which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and
+the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees,
+hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge,
+either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in
+their very being spontaneous and free--the mind being even unconscious
+of them as they are going on--while the edifice has all the time been
+silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent
+workers--Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind
+or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and
+Foreman--had not only originally planned, but had even daily
+superintended the building of the Temple.
+
+Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple
+question--Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most
+various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney,
+without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could.
+Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth,
+what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad--a moon to a mutton chop--a
+comet to a curry--a planet to a pâté! What gross ingratitude to the
+Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to
+remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made
+with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but
+then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature
+gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the
+slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the
+tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but
+which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their
+miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever--yea, even to the great Day
+of Judgment.
+
+If men will but look and listen, and feel and think--they will never
+forget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, that
+to our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget our
+wives--unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimes
+will be? Do we forget our triumphs--our defeats--our ecstasies, our
+agonies--the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"--the ghost-like
+voice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes--or her seraph
+hymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we may
+enter in among the white-robed spirits, and
+
+    "Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"
+
+What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by
+the most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparison
+with the Library of Useful Knowledge, that _every_ man--who is a
+man--carries within the Ratcliffe--the Bodleian of his own breast?
+
+What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebub
+of a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in the
+ceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp--vanished like a
+thought!
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+SECOND COURSE.
+
+
+Above all things, continues Dr Kitchiner, "avoid travelling through the
+night, which, by interrupting sleep, and exposing the body to the night
+air, is always prejudicial, even in the mildest weather, and to the
+strongest constitutions." Pray, Doctor, what ails you at the night air?
+If the night air be, even in the mildest weather, prejudicial to the
+strongest constitutions, what do you think becomes of the cattle on a
+thousand hills? Why don't all the bulls in Bashan die of the asthma--or
+look interesting by moonlight in a galloping consumption? Nay, if the
+night air be so very fatal, how do you account for the longevity of
+owls? Have you never read of the Chaldean shepherds watching the courses
+of the stars? Or, to come nearer our own times, do you not know that
+every blessed night throughout the year, thousands of young lads and
+lasses meet, either beneath the milk-white thorn--or on the lea-rig,
+although the night be ne'er sae wet, and they be ne'er sae weary--or
+under a rock on the hill--or--no uncommon case--beneath a frozen
+stack--not of chimneys, but of corn-sheaves--or on a couch of snow--and
+that they are all as warm as so many pies; while, instead of feeling
+what you call "the lack of vigour attendant on the loss of sleep, which
+is as enfeebling and as distressing as the languor that attends the want
+of food," they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, "neither to haud
+nor bind;" the eyes of the young lads being all as brisk, bold, and
+bright as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of the young lasses
+shine with a soft, faint, obscure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewy
+Pleiades, over which nature has insensibly been breathing a mist almost
+waving and wavering into a veil of clouds?
+
+Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion for those unfortunate blades,
+who, _nolentes-volentes_, must remain out perennially all night--we mean
+the blades of grass, and also the flowers? Their constitutions seem
+often far from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty night, and you
+will hear them--we have done so many million times--shivering, ay,
+absolutely shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the night air be
+indeed what Dr Kitchiner has declared it to be--Lord have mercy on the
+vegetable world! What agonies in that field of turnips! Alas, poor
+Swedes! The imagination recoils from the condition of that club of
+winter cabbages--and of what materials, pray, must the heart of that man
+be made, who could think but for a moment on the case of those carrots,
+without bursting into a flood of tears!
+
+The Doctor avers that the firm health and fine spirits of persons who
+live in the country, are not more from breathing a purer air, than from
+enjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the most distressing misery of "this
+Elysium of bricks and mortar," is the rareness with which we enjoy "the
+sweets of a slumber unbroke."
+
+Doctor--in the first place, it is somewhat doubtful whether or not
+persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits
+than persons who live in towns--even in London. What kind of persons do
+you mean? You must not be allowed to select some dozen or two of the
+hairiest among the curates--a few chosen rectors whose faces have been
+but lately elevated to the purple--a team of prebends issuing sleek from
+their golden stalls--a picked bishop--a sacred band the élite of the
+squirearchy--with a corresponding sprinkling of superior noblemen from
+lords to dukes--and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with an equal
+number of external objects taken from the common run of Cockneys. This,
+Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at--but you must clap your
+hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural
+population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes
+first--be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag,
+tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age
+(for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and
+perennial poverty;--Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced
+in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the
+overseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn bastard, is
+about to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;--Be it a
+landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ruby cheeks, the
+whole machinery of his mouth so deranged by tippling that he
+simultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers and
+snores--pot-bellied--shanked like a spindle-strae--and bidding fair to
+be buried on or before Saturday week;--Be it a half-drunk horse-cowper,
+swinging to and fro in a wraprascal on a bit of broken-down blood that
+once won a fifty, every sentence, however short, having but two
+intelligible words, an oath and a lie--his heart rotten with falsehood,
+and his bowels burned up with brandy, so that sudden death may pull him
+from his saddle before he put spurs to his sporting filly that she may
+bilk the turnpike man, and carry him more speedily home to beat or
+murder his poor, pale, industrious char-woman of a wife;--Be it--not a
+beggar, for beggars are prohibited from this parish--but a pauper in the
+sulks, dying on her pittance from the poor-rates, which altogether
+amount in merry England but to about the paltry sum of, more or less,
+six millions a-year--her son, all the while, being in a thriving way as
+a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits
+from his business of £300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore
+him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the
+bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw
+had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously
+as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters,
+and stumbling every foot-fall down that other flight of steps that
+consist of flags that are mortal damp and mortal cold, and lead to
+nothing but a parcel of rotten planks, and overhead a vault dripping
+with perpetual moisture, green and slobbery, such as toads delight in
+crawling heavily through with now and then a bloated leap, and hideous
+things more worm-like, that go wriggling briskly in and out among the
+refuse of the coffins, and are heard, by imagination at least, to emit
+faint angry sounds, because the light of day has hurt their eyes, and
+the air from the upper world weakened the rank savoury smell of
+corruption, clothing, as with a pall, all the inside walls of the
+tombs;--Be it a man yet in the prime of life as to years, six feet and
+an inch high, and measuring round the chest forty-eight inches (which is
+more, reader, than thou dost by six, we bet a sovereign, member
+although thou even be'st of the Edinburgh Six Feet Club), to whom
+Washington Irving's Jack Tibbuts was but a Tims--but then ever so many
+gamekeepers met him all alone in my lord's pheasant preserve, and though
+two of them died within the month, two within the year, and two are now
+in the workhouse--one a mere idiot, and the other a madman--both
+shadows--so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so sorely were their
+skulls fractured;--yet the poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and there
+he sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the edge of the wood whose
+haunts he must thread no more--for the keepers were grim bone-breakers
+enough in their way--and when they had gotten him on his back, one
+gouged him like a Yankee, and the other bit off his nose like a Bolton
+Trotter--and one smashed his _os frontis_ with the nailed heel of a
+two-pound wooden clog, a Preston Purrer;--so that Master Allonby is now
+far from being a beauty, with a face of that description attached to a
+head wagging from side to side under a powerful palsy, while the
+Mandarin drinks damnation to the Lord of the Manor in a horn of
+eleemosynary ale, handed to him by the village blacksmith, in days of
+old not the worst of the gang, and who, but for a stupid jury, a
+merciful judge, and something like prevarication in the circumstantial
+evidence, would have been hanged for a murderer--as he was--dissected,
+and hung in chains;--Be it a red-haired woman, with a pug nose, small
+fiery eyes, high cheekbones, bulging lips, and teeth like
+swine-tusks,--bearded--flat-breasted as a man--tall, scambling in her
+gait, but swift, and full of wild motions in her weather-withered arms,
+all starting with sinews like whipcord--the Pedestrian Post to and fro
+the market town twelve miles off--and so powerful a pugilist that she
+hit Grace Maddox senseless in seven minutes--tried before she was
+eighteen for child-murder, but not hanged, although the man-child, of
+which the drab was self-delivered in a ditch, was found with blue
+finger-marks on its windpipe, bloody mouth, and eyes forced out of their
+sockets, buried in the dunghill behind her father's hut--not hanged,
+because a surgeon, originally bred a sow-gelder, swore that he believed
+the mother had unconsciously destroyed her offspring in the throes of
+travail, if indeed it had ever breathed, for the lungs would not swim,
+he swore, in a basin of water--so the incestuous murderess was let
+loose; her brother got hanged in due time after the mutiny at the
+Nore--and her father, the fishmonger--why, he went red raving mad as if
+a dog had bitten him--and died, as the same surgeon and sow-gelder
+averred, of the hydrophobia, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth,
+and some said cursing, but that was a calumny, for something seemed to
+be the matter with his tongue, and he could not speak, only
+splutter--nobody venturing, except his amiable daughter--and in that
+particular act of filial affection she was amiable--to hold in the
+article of death the old man's head;--Be it that moping idiot that would
+sit, were she suffered, on, on, on--night and day for ever, on the
+self-same spot, whatever that spot might be on which she happened to
+squat at morning, mound, wall, or stone--motionless, dumb, and, as a
+stranger would think, also blind, for the eyelids are still shut--never
+opened in sun or storm;--yet that figure--that which is now, and has for
+years been, an utter and hopeless idiot, was once a gay, laughing,
+dancing, singing girl, whose blue eyes seemed full of light, whether
+they looked on earth or heaven, the flowers or the stars--her
+sweetheart--a rational young man, it would appear--having leapt out upon
+her suddenly, as she was passing through the churchyard at night, from
+behind a tombstone, in a sack which she, having little time for
+consideration, and being naturally superstitious, supposed to be a
+shroud, and the wearer thereof, who was an active stripling of sound
+flesh and blood, to be a ghost or skeleton, all one horrid rattle of
+bones; so that the trick succeeded far beyond the most sanguine
+expectation of the Tailor who played the principal part--and sense,
+feeling, memory, imagination, and reason, were all felled by one blow of
+fear--as butcher felleth ox--while by one of those mysteries, which
+neither we, nor you, nor anybody else, can understand, life remained not
+only unimpaired, but even invigorated; and there she sits, like a clock
+wound up to go a certain time, the machinery of which being good, has
+not been altogether deranged by the shock that sorely cracked the case,
+and will work till the chain is run down, and then it will tick no
+more;--Be it that tall, fair, lovely girl, so thin and attenuated that
+all wonder she can walk by herself--that she is not blown away even by
+the gentle summer breeze that wooes the hectic of her cheek--dying all
+see--and none better than her poor old mother--and yet herself
+thoughtless of the coming doom, and cheerful as a nest-building
+bird--while her lover, too deep in despair to be betrayed into tears, as
+he carries her to her couch, each successive day feels the dear and
+dreadful burden lighter and lighter in his arms. Small strength will it
+need to support her bier! The coffin, as if empty, will be lowered
+unfelt by the hands that hold those rueful cords!
+
+In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we shall endeavour to prevent
+ourselves from pursuing this argument any further--and perhaps quite
+enough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that persons
+who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than the
+inhabitants of towns--is exceedingly problematical. But even admitting
+the fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he has
+attributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "their
+enjoying plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is entirely out in
+his conjecture. The working classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubt
+it, sound sleep--but not plenty of it. They have but a short allowance
+of sleep--and whether it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themselves;
+while as to the noises in towns and cities, they are nothing to what one
+hears in the country--unless, indeed, you perversely prefer private
+lodgings at a pewterer's. Did we wish to be personal, we could name a
+single waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all the visitors from
+town awake within a circle of four miles diameter; and in wet weather,
+not only keeps them all awake, but impresses them with a constantly
+recurring conviction during the hours of night, that there is something
+seriously amiss about the foundation of the river, and that the whole
+parish is about to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the old
+castle that over-looks the linn. Then, on another point, we are
+certain--namely, that rural thunder is many hundred times more powerful
+than villatic. London porter is above admiration--but London thunder
+below contempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it hollow. But, my
+faith! a thunderstorm in the country--especially if it be mountainous,
+with a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inevitably think of that
+land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and even our town readers
+will acknowledge that country thunder much more frequently proves mortal
+than the thunder you meet with in cities. In the country, few
+thunderstorms are contented to pass over without killing at least one
+horse, some milch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or turkeys, an old
+woman or two, perhaps the Minister of the parish, a man about forty,
+name unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, the child escaping with
+singed eyebrows, and a singular black mark on one of its great toes. We
+say nothing of the numbers stupified, who awake the day after, as from a
+dream, with strange pains in their heads, and not altogether sure about
+the names or countenances of the somewhat unaccountable people whom they
+see variously employed about the premises, and making themselves pretty
+much at home. In towns, not one thunderstorm in fifty that performs an
+exploit more magnanimous than knocking down an old wife from a
+chimney-top--singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an
+ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to
+dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called--or cutting a
+few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had
+been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of
+some still higher preferment.
+
+Our dear deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat and
+drink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they may
+indulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travelling
+itself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment is
+required than in a state of rest. What you might not consider
+intemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatal
+inflammations, &c., in situations where you are least able to obtain
+medical assistance."
+
+All this is very loosely stated, and must be set to rights. If you shut
+yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that keeps
+wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and changes horses in
+half a minute, certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat and drink
+the better; and perhaps an hourly hundred drops of laudanum, or
+equivalent grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the transit from
+London to Edinburgh might be performed in a phantasma. But the free
+agent ought to live well on his travels--some degrees better, without
+doubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There is
+always something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost,
+which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an
+unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many
+unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of
+domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one
+of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling
+at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and,
+except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an
+agreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of the
+dishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus--but false that
+therefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if now
+alive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all day
+with his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the
+afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise forty
+or fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was our
+nourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What we
+want, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, under
+such circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach and
+constitution cannot over-eat himself--no, not for his immortal soul.
+
+We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of the
+most free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how to
+disturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literary
+characters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained," quoth
+he slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works."
+
+The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rather
+more common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comes
+to--and know better what is the province of their profession. Any one
+man may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any third
+man in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author--or his
+bookseller--or his parish minister--or his butcher--or his baker--or his
+"man of business"--or his house-builder--may, one and all, give such
+travellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to the
+said eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimes
+done--but fortunately we cannot speak from experience, not being
+ourselves an eminent author. The more general the intercourse between
+men of taste, feeling, cultivation, learning, genius, the better; but
+that intercourse should be brought about freely and of its own accord,
+as fortunate circumstances permit, and there should be no impertinent
+interference of selfish or benevolent go-betweens. It would seem that Dr
+Kitchiner thought the commonest traveller, one who was almost, as it
+were, bordering on a Bagman, had nothing to do but call on the publisher
+of any great writer, and get a free admission into his house. Had the
+Doctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing and
+blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only to
+hope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will not
+degrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence," by thrusting
+their ugly or comely faces--both are equally odious--into the privacy of
+gentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from the
+protection of the laws of civilised society--or subject their fire-sides
+to be infested by one-half of the curious men of the country, two-thirds
+of the clever, and all the blockheads.
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+THIRD COURSE.
+
+
+Having thus briefly instructed travellers how to get a look at Lions,
+the Doctor suddenly exclaims--"IMPRIMIS, BEWARE OF DOGS!" "There have,"
+he says, "been many arguments, _pro_ and _con_, on the dreadful disease
+their bite produces--it is enough to prove that multitudes of men,
+women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten by
+dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily
+disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is
+of more value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic
+say otherwise?"
+
+Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise of
+one kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why,
+then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog
+leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when so
+afflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left at
+pedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fear
+hydrophobia--though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of a
+tolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "the
+rabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, to
+dread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the very
+sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have
+died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not
+run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely
+deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a
+multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical--having
+died, it is true, _in_, but not _of_ hydrophobia--states of mind and
+body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure
+spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies
+_in_ a state of hydrophobia--for he abhorred water, and knew
+instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies
+at all _of_ hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty
+years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess
+the other two--why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was
+dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself
+bitten--and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and
+measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created,
+would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its
+education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an
+impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible
+disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily
+disposed of--eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged
+at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable
+the industrious to live--two having died of drinking--one of extreme old
+age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood,
+their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by
+neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women,
+and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?
+
+Gentle reader--a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times
+the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe--along
+all roads, public and private--with stiles or turnpikes--metropolitan
+streets and suburban paths--and at all seasons of the revolving year and
+day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken
+by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many
+million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a
+yard--their sides panting--flag struck--and the whole dog showing
+symptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do not
+assert--they may have been mad--but they certainly were fatigued; and
+the difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness and
+insanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, would
+have fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against the
+harmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun,
+and the flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming a
+levy _en masse_, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor,
+sitting in his coach--like Napoleon at Waterloo--would have cried "_Tout
+est perdu--sauve, qui peut!_"--and re-galloping to a provincial town,
+would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens.
+
+"The life of the most humble human being," quoth the Doctor, "is of more
+value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic say
+otherwise?"
+
+This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutal
+Cynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all--being an Eclectic,
+and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
+Peripateticism--with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. The
+most brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer for
+himself--while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him,
+that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than all
+the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there is
+many a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of many
+men, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a question
+in philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt on
+the subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question,
+as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as the
+human soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an old
+woman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity,
+either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogs
+now alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a human
+soul should be lost;--but not a single human soul is going to be lost,
+although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now,
+would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on his
+Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of a
+century and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a mad
+dog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs of
+harriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, and
+cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all the
+Newfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the
+infinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great Britain
+and Ireland--to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and in
+the realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument at
+once--What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, and
+one-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one of
+Christopher North's Newfoundland dogs--Fro--Bronte--or O'Bronte?
+Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brute
+creation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses,
+hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses,
+mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese,
+and how-towdies?
+
+"Semi-drowning in the sea"--he continues--"and all the pretended
+specifics, are mere delusions--there is no real remedy but cutting the
+part out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannot
+always be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always prevent
+the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might
+St Paul tell us to '_beware of dogs_.' First Epistle to Philippians,
+chap. iii., v. 2."
+
+Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to
+be administered. It is not possible to tell, _a priori_, how much
+drowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning to
+James, is total drowning to John;--Tom is easy of resuscitation--Bob
+will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United
+Kingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, who
+turns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriest
+bungler in the anatomy of the human frame--to scarify the fleshless
+spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity,
+might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large
+blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the
+wound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to be
+attempted"--but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousand
+other cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always be
+prevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain than
+horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of
+sane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army,
+therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be
+no flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?
+
+Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is,
+at times, sensible on dogs.
+
+"Therefore," quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn in
+your Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be marked
+the Inches, and so it may serve for a measure.
+
+"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, when
+they hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwary
+visitors. Whenever _Counsellor Cautious_ went to a house, &c., where he
+was not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at the
+door, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against the
+Enemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, that
+it might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House till
+it was.
+
+"_Sword_ and _Tuck Sticks_, as commonly made, are hardly so good a
+weapon as a stout Stick--the Blades are often inserted into the Handles
+in such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;--if
+you wish for a _Sword-Cane_, you must have one made with a good
+Regulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged for
+the entire Stick.--I have seen a Cane made by Mr PRICE, _of the Stick
+and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand_, near Temple Bar, which was
+excellently put together.
+
+"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is _an
+Iron Stick_ of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook
+next the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about five
+inches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted the
+colour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, while
+it is in fact a most formidable Instrument."
+
+We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen one
+once, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berenger
+in his _Helps and Hints_ prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usually
+carried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry.
+So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke.
+
+"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walking
+alone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned upon
+me, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more than
+judgment, I gave point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was,
+which, screening me at the same time, _was an article from which he did
+not expect thrusts_; but which, although made at guess, for I could not
+see him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself,
+his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole being
+the work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors of
+hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."
+
+There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a word
+or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog,
+but a young lady of our own species. "If," says the Colonel, "you can
+seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, he
+cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping him
+thus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, with
+the other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus
+without danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at
+extrication." But here comes the Colonel's infallible _vade-mecum_.
+
+"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the
+skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below,
+stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so
+strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c.,
+are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are
+glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never
+tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them;
+though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other
+kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."
+
+Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our
+Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments
+for drawing--a sketch and note-book--paper--ink--and PINS--NEEDLES--AND
+THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond
+Street--pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street--a folding
+one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches--a
+hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement,
+in good strong silver cases--a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass--a
+night-lamp--a tinder-box--two pair of spectacles, with strong silver
+frames--an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck--a
+traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for
+taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers,
+and long corkscrew--galoches or paraloses--your own knife and fork, and
+spoon--a Welsh wig--a spare hat--umbrella--two great-coats, one for cool
+and fair weather (_i.e._ between 45° and 55° of Fahrenheit), and another
+for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and
+denominated a "dreadnought."
+
+Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will
+provide himself before leaving _Dulce Domum_ to brave the perils of a
+Tour through the Hop-districts.
+
+"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the
+outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up
+the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have
+plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."
+
+In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the
+outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the
+discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to
+London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers _sans_
+drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in
+proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than
+true--no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly
+frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the
+united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to
+separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel.
+All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us--and it
+underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice.
+For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt--then with a
+flannel one--and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts.
+This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A
+plain woollen waistcoat without buttons--with hooks and eyes--took the
+lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver,
+called an under-waistcoat--the body being flannel, the breast-edges
+bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars--then came a natty red
+waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect
+on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember was
+irresistible--and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of
+our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre--the
+double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine--so that
+between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of
+our dress--"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began
+the coats, which--as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats--never
+exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had
+lived to moralise over the mutability of human
+affairs--thread-bare--napless--and what ignorant people might have
+called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest,
+unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat--and not, perhaps, of
+the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty,
+what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in
+Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured
+great-coat--not braided and embroidered _à la militaire_--for we scorned
+to sham travelling-captain--but _simplex munditiis_, plain in its
+neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening
+that its wearer was up to snuff--and to close this strange eventful
+history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the
+sleets and snows--held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus,
+and "the rest"--and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.
+
+The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No
+stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth--beginning with singles--and then
+getting into the full uncut squares--the amount of the whole being
+somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion,
+and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an
+attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty
+to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the
+bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle--and beneath the
+cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had
+kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we
+always found sufficient--and that a black beaver--for a lily castor
+suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and
+hereditary monarchy."
+
+As to our lower extremities--One pair only of roomy shoes--one pair of
+stockings of the finest lamb's-wool--another of common close worsted,
+knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch--thirdly, Shetland hose. All
+three pair reaching well up towards the fork--each about an
+inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers--one pair
+only--within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep--then one pair of
+elderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls--one pair of Manchester white
+cords--ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"--and
+at or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as
+"Johnny's grey breeks"--neat but not gaudy--mud-repellers--themselves a
+host--never in all their lives "thoroughly wet
+through"--frost-proof--and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold,
+as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibeg
+of Phoebus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell to
+some star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured the
+cerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in the
+Western Sea.
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+FOURTH COURSE.
+
+
+Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue if
+you are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive," says the Doctor,
+"and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance of
+getting a good bed--this done, order your luggage to your room. A
+travelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very
+necessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes of
+linen--a night-shirt--shaving apparatus--comb, clothes, tooth and hair
+brushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that you
+can fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the first
+unostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord.
+However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen your
+flint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-hole
+every night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with spring
+bayonets."
+
+Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistols
+with spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace of
+black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausages
+for the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, and
+far safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duelling
+black-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;--and, that
+etiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist's
+weapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have
+to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, than
+according to the present fashion.
+
+The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout--a prodigious
+fuss--all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see
+the chambermaid, and overlook the airing with his own hands and eyes.
+He is also an advocate of the warming-pan--and for the adoption, indeed,
+of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goes
+on the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns--and often
+reminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers never
+can be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were not
+afflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they should
+carry their own sheets with them--namely, a "light eider-down quilt, and
+two dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder the
+disagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's own
+sheets--and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm,
+his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If the
+traveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimes
+be prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters,
+shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened."
+
+Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes that
+it is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water,
+fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again,
+they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reeking
+state, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams of
+that pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotest
+thing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies has
+refreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore,
+to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plenty
+of flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsome
+consideration for the liberty of choosing your bed."
+
+Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles,
+what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens,
+back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed
+choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords,
+Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay
+Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the
+headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting
+fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance
+to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal
+establishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment,
+to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in
+the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist,
+think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system,
+if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitory
+life of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where all
+travellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept in
+inns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This would
+be inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark,
+in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of following
+the sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings of
+love and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this world
+and its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinkling
+of an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearance
+would a bedroom then exhibit!
+
+The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder.
+We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a few
+other occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes put
+to the fire in their presence," merely at the expense of subjugating
+themselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions,
+boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employed
+in inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As the
+Director-General would say--he deals in buttery touches.) Their feverish
+and restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on damps
+and deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They
+become the groundwork of practical jokes--perhaps are bitten to death by
+fleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel,
+has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. The
+Doctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but the
+insidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn the
+tormentor--and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair of
+blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for
+years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer
+that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable
+temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of
+one of the plagues of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from top
+to bottom absolutely tattooed!
+
+The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe that
+unless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformly
+robbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during the
+midnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes down
+stairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or--what is almost as
+noiseless--worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breeches
+are beneath your bolster--but that trick of travellers has long been "as
+notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of your
+breeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this
+world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cry
+out--for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is on
+your mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses your
+windpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah
+Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from
+a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off
+all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians,
+whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton
+wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar--swearing by Satan
+and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before
+daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your
+brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore you
+must use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts of
+doors, and on many occasions save the property and life of the
+traveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the
+simplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, and
+unites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door so
+fastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weight
+does not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom should
+always be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, it
+will be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table and
+chair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into the
+closets, and every place where concealment is possible--of course,
+although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend of
+the Doctor's used to place a bureau against the door, and "thereon he
+set a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, on
+being shook, they instantly became _molto agitato_." Upon one alarming
+occasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or some
+other Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of the
+travelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath the
+bolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnight
+assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockery
+gave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned."
+
+With all these fearful apprehensions--in his mind, Dr Kitchiner must
+have been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, to
+have slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers must
+we have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in the
+bed, or scamp below it--closet and chimney uninspected, door unbolted
+and unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying to
+think that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female,
+thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay,
+forgotten by the whole world--till the crowing of cocks, or the ringing
+of bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a Manchester
+Bagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose,
+and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed us
+the floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. We
+really know not whether to be most proud of having been the favourite
+child of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution did
+we ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills that
+flesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly a
+short fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all the
+happiness--let us trust it was innocent--of the day; and humbly
+imploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the time
+we speak of, we were young--and every morning, whatever the atmosphere
+might be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes of
+the soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life's
+horizon!
+
+But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted and
+screwed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there had
+suddenly rung through the house the cry of FIRE--FIRE--FIRE! how was Dr
+Kitchiner to get out? Tables, bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the
+only door--all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the whole
+crockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistols
+with spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction of
+persons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaring
+flames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and over
+and above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplest
+that we have seen." The wind-board is in like manner, and by the same
+unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, so
+egress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied--no fire-engine in the
+town--but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for a
+month, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element is
+growling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling with
+something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard
+crying--"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive!
+Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor
+falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length
+fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord,
+landlady, chambermaid, and boots--each in a different key--from manly
+bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a
+madman--for, gentle reader, it has been a--Dream.
+
+We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of our
+journey on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with
+"Observations on Pedestrians." Here we are at home--and could, we
+imagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. The
+strength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is
+"in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is as
+the quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy of
+that organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes." This statement of
+the strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophical
+to those who are up to it--but to us it resembles a definition we have
+heard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter."
+It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of a
+strong man--but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strong
+back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With
+a strong stomach alone--yea, even the stomach of a horse--a man will
+make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems
+himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more
+on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on
+the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce
+that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off
+superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up
+fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of
+the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus,
+he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man,
+suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk
+ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the
+action of the body has exonerated the mind."
+
+The Doctor warms as he walks--and is very near leaping over the fence of
+Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but
+expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be
+laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce
+its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they
+are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ
+more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by
+the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more
+miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ
+themselves in that VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE."
+Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor
+throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of
+walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by
+the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when
+he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus,
+he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately
+after any great exertion, either of mind or body--that is, one might
+say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia.
+Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion,
+especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and
+remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been
+dispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach,
+when it is required." To all this we say--Fudge! The sooner you get hold
+of a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with
+a pot of porter--then leisurely on with a clean shirt--wash your face
+and hands in gelid--none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if
+you should shave--then keep walking up and down the parlour rather
+impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act
+agreeably to nature--stir up the waiter with some original jest by way
+of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare--and
+never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the
+extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name
+fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till
+there is no vestige left of the first--a second course being looked on
+by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which
+the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,--
+
+    "Nor fame I slight--nor for her favours call--
+    She comes unlook'd for--if she comes at all."
+
+To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence,
+the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned
+from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why,
+better--better, thank ye--I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the
+return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before
+yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put
+on one of my stockings myself?"
+
+The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man
+can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this
+sentence to Will Whipcord--"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor
+of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir--a man can beat a
+horse!"
+
+Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a
+horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism
+on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon
+as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse--only mind, the horse
+carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We
+know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender,
+arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles
+a-day, for many days--and that for four days they have gone a hundred
+miles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, the
+Prince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparative
+pedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained by
+any accredited match in England.
+
+The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a
+Mr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall
+be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of the
+inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says,
+"that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it
+is almost impossible to proceed;"--"at other times you are exposed to
+the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a
+hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an
+uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is
+necessarily more confined--a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an
+important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be
+considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it
+may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian
+excursion--_in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not
+apprised of these things till we had experienced them_." What! Mr
+Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not
+apprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality,
+that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, either
+in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof
+positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the
+weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge
+when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene
+atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory
+studies _sub dio_? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under the
+shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown
+friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin?
+Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had
+there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of
+you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and
+hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the
+palm of your hand? Button your jacket, good sir--scorn an
+umbrella--emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at the
+pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm--poor spite indeed in Densissimus
+Imber--and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour
+against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till
+you have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England
+(we forget the county)--ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your
+first-born.
+
+Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's picture
+of a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one great
+inconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons," quoth he, "who take a
+pedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to the
+uncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visiting
+unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a _piece of
+oil-skin_ to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they
+will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the
+breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here
+a question of great difficulty and importance arises--Breeches or
+trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he,
+"should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers.
+The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were
+exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my
+astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has
+to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more
+inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are
+collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing
+garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These
+should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the
+upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is
+much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you
+always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up
+the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to
+those who walk long distances."
+
+We are strongly inclined to agree with the Doctor in his panegyric on
+breeches. True, that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark colour,
+such as black, and worn with white, or even grey or bluish, stockings,
+they are apt, in the present state of public taste, to stamp you a
+schoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress, or an exciseman going to
+a ball. We could dispense too with the knee-buckles and plush
+lining--though we allow the one might be ornamental and the other
+useful. But what think you, gentle reader, of walking with a Pedometer?
+A Pedometer is an instrument cunningly devised to tell you how far and
+how fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a "perambulator in
+miniature." The box containing the wheels is made of the size of a
+watch-case, and goes into the breeches pocket, and by means of a string
+and hook, fastened at the waistband or at the knee, the number of steps
+a man takes, in his regular paces, are registered from the action of the
+spring upon the internal wheel-work at every step, to the amount of
+30,000. It is necessary, to ascertain the distance walked, that the
+average length of one pace be precisely known, and that multiplied by
+the number of steps registered on the dial-plate.
+
+All this is very ingenious; and we know one tolerable pedestrian who is
+also a Pedometrist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fortune in a
+mountainous island, like Great Britain, where pedestrianism is
+indigenous to the soil. A good walker is as regular in his going as
+clock-work. He has his different paces--three, three and a half--four,
+four and a half--five, five and a half--six miles an hour--toe and heel.
+A common watch, therefore, is to him, in the absence of milestones, as
+good as a Pedometer, with this great and indisputable advantage, that a
+common watch continues to go even after you have yourself stopped,
+whereas, the moment you sit down on your oil-skin patch, why, your
+Pedometer (which, indeed, from its name and construction, is not
+unreasonable) immediately stands still. Neither, we believe, can you
+accurately note the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer.
+
+What pleasure on this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile
+walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the
+gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a long
+summer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyes
+with honey-dew, and stretches out, under the loving hands of nourrice
+Nature, the whole elongated animal economy, steeped in rest divine from
+the organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, be it on a bed
+of down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? If in
+an inn, nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neither
+landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots;--you are left to yourself
+without being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by all
+the menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer
+appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your
+dinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by the
+rumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at your
+departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise.
+
+
+
+
+SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.
+
+FIRST RHAPSODY.
+
+
+No weather more pleasant than that of a mild WINTER day. So gracious the
+season, that Hyems is like Ver--Januarius like Christopher North. Art
+thou the Sun of whom Milton said,--
+
+    "Looks through the horizontal misty air,
+    Shorn of his beams,"
+
+an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian on
+a June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by the
+sleeping though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, and
+murmurs--the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake,
+her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods be
+leafless--they look as alive as when laden, with umbrage; and who can
+tell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? The
+fields laugh not now--but here and there they smile. If we see no
+flowers we think of them--and less of the perished than of the unborn;
+for regret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace there is the promise of
+joy--and therefore in the silent pastures a perfect beauty how
+restorative to man's troubled heart!
+
+The Shortest Day in all the year--yet is it lovelier than the Longest.
+Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancy
+filled the sky--with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In the
+air life is audible--circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by
+happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar--the self-same Robin
+Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the
+gable of the school-house his sweet winter song!
+
+In company we are silent--in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do we
+love our own voice that we cannot bear to hear it mixed with that of
+others--perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the
+hush expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the
+speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling
+itself in Neæra's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country,
+among trees standing still among untrodden leaves--as now--how we do
+speak! All thoughts--all feelings--desire utterance; left to themselves
+they are not happy till they have evolved into words--winged words that
+sometimes settle on the ground, like moths on flowers--sometimes seek
+the sky, like eagles above the clouds.
+
+No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours--the act of
+composition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is at
+such solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among the
+clouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperceptible
+transformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spirit
+of beauty.
+
+Who but Him who made it knoweth aught of the Laws of Spirit? All of us
+may know much of what is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," in
+obedience to them; but leaving the open day, we enter at once into
+thickest night. Why at this moment do we see a spot once only visited by
+us--unremembered for ever so many flights of black or bright winged
+years--see it in fancy as it then was in nature, with the same dewdrops
+on that wondrous myrtle beheld but on that morning--such a myrtle as no
+other eyes beheld ever on this earth but ours, and the eyes of one now
+in heaven?
+
+Another year is about to die--and how wags the world? "What great events
+are on the gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule--their guidance
+is but over the outer world, and almost powerless their folly or their
+wisdom over the inner region in which we mortals live, and move, and
+have our being, where the fall of a throne makes no more noise than that
+of a leaf!
+
+Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are both dead and buried at last, and
+white lie the snow on their graves! Youth is the season of all sorts of
+insolence, and therefore we can forgive and forget almost anything in
+SPRING. He has always been a privileged personage; and we have no doubt
+that he played his pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets you
+unexpectedly on the hill-side; and was there ever a face in this world
+so celestialised by smiles! All the features are framed of light. Gaze
+into his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there is
+something more sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, or
+in the depths of the waveless seas. More sublime, because essentially
+spiritual. There stands the young Angel, entranced in the conscious
+mystery of his own beautiful and blessed being; and the earth becomes
+all at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of the Morning. So
+might some great painter image the First-born of the Year, till nations
+adored the picture.--To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to the
+Mount of the Vision, and,
+
+    "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
+
+Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers of frost; blashes a
+storm of sleet in your face, and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a
+winding-sheet of snow, in which you would infallibly perish but for a
+pocket-pistol of Glenlivet.--The day after to-morrow, you behold
+him--Spring--walking along the firmament, sad, but not sullen--mournful,
+but not miserable--disturbed, but not despairing--now coming out towards
+you in a burst of light--and now fading away from you in a gathering of
+gloom--even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. On
+Thursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of his
+Springship. There he is, stripped to the buff--playing at hide-and-seek,
+hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-down
+waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. You turn up the whites
+of your eyes, and the browns of your hands in amazement, till the Two,
+by way of change of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and, like a
+couple of hawks diverting themselves with an owl, in conclusion buffet
+you off the premises. You insert the occurrence, with suitable
+reflections, in your Meteorological Diary, under the head--Spring.--On
+Friday, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your nose, for you
+are confined to bed by rheumatism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless
+sanctum but your condoling Mawsey. 'Tis a pity. For never since the
+flood-greened earth on her first resurrection morn laughed around
+Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! By all that is various and
+vanishing, the arch seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and all
+creation to be gladly and gloriously gathered together without being
+crowded--plains, woods, villages, towns, hills, and clouds, beneath the
+pathway of Spring, once more an Angel--an unfallen Angel! While the
+tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fading and
+fluctuating--deepening and dying--now gone, as if for ever--and now back
+again in an instant, as if breathing and alive--is felt, during all that
+wavering visitation, to be of all sights the most evanescent, and yet
+inspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung the
+image on the cloud--profound as the gloom it illumines--that it shone
+and is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabiteth eternity.--The
+grim noon of Saturday, after a moaning morning, and one silent
+intermediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins to gleam fitfully with
+lightning like a maniac's eye; and is not that
+
+                    "The sound
+    Of thunder heard remote?"
+
+On earth wind there is none--not so much as a breath. But there is a
+strong wind in heaven--for see how that huge cloud-city, a night within
+a day, comes moving on along the hidden mountain-tops, and hangs over
+the loch all at once black as pitch, except that here and there a sort
+of sullen purple heaves upon the long slow swell, and here and there
+along the shores--how caused we know not--are seen, but heard not, the
+white melancholy breakers! Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! But
+ere the thanksgiving has been worded, an airquake has split asunder the
+cloud-city, the night within the day, and all its towers and temples are
+disordered along the firmament, to a sound that might waken the dead.
+Where are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to purchase gunpowder
+explosions on Lowood bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See!
+there are our artillerymen stalking from battery to battery--all hung up
+aloft facing the west--or "each standing by his gun" with lighted match,
+moving or motionless, Shadow-figures, and all clothed in black-blue
+uniform, with blood-red facings portentously glancing in the sun, as he
+strives to struggle into heaven. The Generalissimo of all the forces,
+who is he but--Spring?--Hand in hand with Spring, Sabbath descends from
+heaven unto earth; and are not their feet beautiful on the mountains?
+Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from that humble spire,
+overtopped by its coeval trees, yet is it heard in the heart of
+infinitude. So is the bleating of these silly sheep on the braes--and
+so is that voice of psalms, all at once rising so spirit-like, as if the
+very kirk were animated, and singing a joyous song in the wilderness to
+the ear of the Most High. For all things are under his care--those that,
+as we dream, have no life--the flowers, and the herbs, and the
+trees--those that some dim scripture seems to say, when they die,
+utterly perish--and those that all bright scripture, whether written in
+the book of God, or the book of Nature, declares will live for ever!
+
+If such be the character and conduct of Spring during one week, wilt
+thou not forget and forgive--with us--much occasional conduct on his
+part that appears not only inexplicable, but incomprehensible? But we
+cannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn. SUMMER is a
+season come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himself
+like a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing,
+his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way
+to make his best friends ashamed of him--in a way absolutely disgraceful
+to a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with the
+Sun--his benefactor, nay, his father--what else could he expect but that
+that enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenance
+from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel along
+the mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky--and
+sullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By-and-by, like
+a great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper--and when he found
+that would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Still
+the Sun would not look on him--or if he did, 'twas with a sudden and
+short half-smile half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last the
+Summer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving, the one burst out into a
+flood of tears, the other into a flood of light. In simple words, the
+Summer wept and the Sun smiled--and for one broken month there was a
+perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! How beautiful is penitence!
+How beautiful forgiveness! For one week the Summer was restored to his
+pristine peace and old luxuriance, and the desert blossomed like the
+rose.
+
+Therefore ask we the Summer's pardon for thanking Heaven that he was
+dead. Would that he were alive again, and buried not for ever beneath
+the yellow forest leaves! O thou first, faint, fair, finest tinge of
+dawning Light that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking face of
+the morn, Light and no-Light, a shadowy Something, that as we gaze is
+felt to be growing into an emotion that must be either Innocence or
+Beauty, or both blending together into devotion before Deity, once more
+duly visible in the divine colouring that forebodes another day to
+mortal life--before Thee what holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward in
+some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble with dewdrops, and the
+happy little birds are beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the
+boughs--before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, and breathe deeper and
+deeper--as the lustre waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more bright,
+till range after range arise of crimson clouds in altitude sublime, and
+breast above breast expands of yellow woods softly glittering in their
+far-spread magnificence--then what holy bliss to breathe deeper and
+deeper unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand the heavens and the
+earth, our high but most humble orisons! But now it is Day, and broad
+awake seems the whole joyful world. The clouds--lustrous no more--are
+all anchored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for the wind. Time is
+not felt--and one might dream that the Day was to endure for ever. Yet
+the great river rolls on in the light--and why will he leave those
+lovely inland woods for the naked shores? Why--responds some
+voice--hurry we on our own lives--impetuous and passionate far more than
+he with all his cataracts--as if anxious to forsake the regions of the
+upper day for the dim place from which we yet recoil in fear--the dim
+place which imagination sometimes seems to see even through the
+sunshine, beyond the bourne of this our unintelligible being, stretching
+sea-like into a still more mysterious night! Long as a Midsummer Day is,
+it has gone by like a Heron's flight. The sun is setting!--and let him
+set without being scribbled upon by Christopher North. We took a
+pen-and-ink sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere." Poor nature is much
+to be pitied among painters and poets. They are perpetually falling into
+
+    "Such perusal of her face
+    As they would draw it."
+
+And often must she be sick of the Curious Impertinents. But a Curious
+Impertinent are not we--if ever there was one beneath the skies, a
+devout worshipper of Nature; and though we often seem to heed not her
+shrine--it stands in our imagination, like a temple in a perpetual
+Sabbath.
+
+It was poetically and piously said by the Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes,
+that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. Take Summer, which
+early in our soliloquy we abused in good set terms. Its weather was
+broken, but not bad; and much various beauty and sublimity is involved
+in the epithet "broken," when applied to the "season of the year."
+Commonplace people, especially town-dwellers, who _flit_ into the
+country for a few months, have a silly and absurd idea of Summer, which
+all the atmospherical phenomena fail to drive out of their foolish
+fancies. They insist on its remaining with us for half a year at least,
+and on its being dressed in its Sunday's best every day in the week as
+long as they continue in country quarters. The Sun must rise, like a
+labourer, at the very earliest hour, shine all day, and go to bed late,
+else they treat him contumeliously, and declare that he is not worth his
+meat. Should he retire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems most
+natural and reasonable for one to do who lives so much in the public
+eye, why, a whole watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfied
+expostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is the Sun? Are we never to
+have any Sun?" They also insist that there shall be no rain of more than
+an hour's duration in the daytime, but that it shall all fall by night.
+Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and is
+shining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred green
+parasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in his
+chariot. A _broken_ summer for us. Now and then a few continuous
+days--perhaps a whole week--but, if that be denied, now and then,
+
+    "Like angels' visits, few and far between,"
+
+one single Day--blue-spread over heaven, green-spread over earth--no
+cloud above, no shade below, save that dove-coloured marble lying
+motionless like the mansions of peace, and that pensive gloom that falls
+from some old castle or venerable wood--the stillness of a sleeping joy,
+to our heart profounder than that of death, in the air, in the sky, and
+resting on our mighty mother's undisturbed breast--no lowing on the
+hills, no bleating on the braes--the rivers almost silent as lochs, and
+the lochs, just visible in their aerial purity, floating dream-like
+between earth and sky, imbued with the beauty of both, and seeming to
+belong to either, as the heart melts to human tenderness, or beyond all
+mortal loves the imagination soars! Such days seem now to us--as memory
+and imagination half restore and half create the past into such weather
+as may have shone over the bridal morn of our first parents in
+Paradise--to have been frequent--nay, to have lasted all the Summer
+long--when our boyhood was bright from the hands of God. Each of those
+days was in itself a life! Yet all those sunny lives melted into one
+Summer--and all those Summers formed one continuous bliss. Storms and
+snows vanished out of our ideal year; and then morning, noon, and night,
+wherever we breathed, we _felt_, what now we but _know_, the inmost
+meaning of that profound verse of Virgil the Divine--
+
+    "Devenere locos lætos, et amoena vireta
+    Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.
+    Largior hîc campos æther et lumine vestit
+    Purpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt."
+
+Few--no such days as those seem now ever to be born. Sometimes we indeed
+gaze through the face into the heart of the sky, and for a moment feel
+that the ancient glory of the heavens has returned on our dream of life.
+But to the perfect beatitude of the skies there comes from the soul
+within us a mournful response, that betokens some wide and deep--some
+everlasting change. Joy is not now what joy was of yore; like a fine
+diamond with a flaw is now Imagination's eye; other motes than those
+that float through ether cross between its orb and the sun; the "fine
+gold has become dim," with which morning and evening of old embossed the
+skies; the dewdrops are not now the pearls once they were, left on
+
+    "Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers,"
+
+by angels' and by fairies' wings; knowledge, custom, experience, fate,
+fortune, error, vice, and sin, have dulled, and darkened, and deadened
+all things; and the soul, unable to bring over the Present the ineffable
+bliss and beauty of the Past, almost swoons to think what a ghastly
+thunder-gloom may by Providence be reserved for the Future!
+
+Nay--nay--things are not altogether so bad with us as this
+strain--sincere though it be as a stream from the sacred
+mountains--might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a _broken_ Summer. It
+would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the
+Highland hills, _sans_ great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower,
+aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny
+blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs.
+Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the
+thermometer keeps ranging between 60° and 70°, three times a-day. What
+refreshment in the very sound--Soaking! Old bones wax dry--nerves
+numb--sinews stiff--flesh frail--and there is a sad drawback on the
+Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our
+craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the
+approach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizens
+of heaven; how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee are
+streaming, and gleaming athwart the sunny mountain-gloom, while ever as
+they descend on earth, lift up the streams along the wilderness louder
+and louder a choral song. Look now at the heather--and smile whenever
+henceforth you hear people talk of _purple_. You have been wont to call
+a gold guinea or a sovereign _yellow_--but if you have got one in your
+pocket, place it on your palm, and in the light of that broom is it not
+a _dirty brown_? You have an emerald ring on your finger--but how grey
+it looks beside the _green_ of those brackens, that pasture, that wood!
+Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, sir, for the first time in
+your life. Widening and widening over your head, all the while you have
+been gazing on the heather, the broom, the bracken, the pastures, and
+the woods, have the eternal heavens been preparing for you a vision of
+the sacred _Blue_. Is not that an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn that
+mercantile and manufacturing image, steal that blue from the sky, and
+let the lady of your love tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and a
+saintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as she beseeches Heaven to
+bless thee in her prayers! Set slowly--slowly--slowly--O Sun of Suns! as
+may be allowed by the laws of Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunk
+behind those mountains into the sea, will that celestial ROSY-RED be
+tabernacled in the heavens!
+
+Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have so soaked and steeped our old
+crazy carcass in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of youth,
+that we should not be surprised were we to outlive that raven croaking
+in pure _gaieté du coeur_ on the cliff. Threescore and ten years!
+Poo--'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers--for twenty
+years more keep to the Highland fling--and at the close of other twenty,
+jig it into the grave to that matchless strathspey, the Reel of
+Tullochgorum!
+
+Having thus made our peace with last Summer, can we allow the Sun to go
+down on our wrath towards the AUTUMN, whose back we yet see on the
+horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I
+meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season,
+and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two
+smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell,
+and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat,
+and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener
+and greener--reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and
+cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill,
+with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, and
+with unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dream
+of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvest
+treading on the heels of Christmas,
+
+    "And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"
+
+when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions of foolish and false
+prophets, came rustling from all the airts, far, far and wide over the
+rain-drenched kingdom, the great armament of the Autumnal Winds! Groaned
+the grain, as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its head, and knew
+that again the Sun was in Heaven. Death became life; and the hearts of
+the husbandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the reapers brandished
+their sickles in the breezy light, and every field glittered with
+Christian crescents. Auld wives and bits o' weans mingled on the
+rig--kilted to the knees, like the comely cummers, and the handsome
+hizzies, and the lo'esome lassies wi' their silken snoods--among the
+heather-legged Highlandmen, and the bandy Irishers, brawny all, and with
+hook, scythe, or flail, inferior to none of the children of men. The
+scene lies in Scotland--but now, too, is England "Merry England"
+indeed, and outside passengers on a thousand coaches see stooks rising
+like stacks, and far and wide, over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice
+in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest
+of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last
+ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over
+in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields
+now--but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or
+stony soil--are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, but
+some stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, as
+the huge wains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by the gates they
+hide, and then, crested perhaps with laughing boys and girls,
+
+    "Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings,"
+
+no--not rings--for Beattie, in that admirable line, lets us hear a cart
+going out empty in the morning--but with a _cheerful dull_ sound,
+ploughing along the black soil, _the clean dirt_ almost up to the
+axletree, and then, as the wheels, rimmed you might always think with
+silver, reach the road, macadamised till it acts like a railway, how
+glides along downhill the moving mountain! And see now, the growing
+Stack glittering with a charge of pitchforks! The trams fly up from
+Dobbin's back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the mire. Up they go,
+tossed from sinewy arms like feathers, and the Stack grows before your
+eyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, without line or measure, but
+shaped by the look and the feel, true almost as the spring instinct of
+the nest-building bird. And are we not heartily ashamed of ourselves,
+amidst this general din of working mirthfulness, for having, but an hour
+ago, abused the jovial and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven that he
+was dead? Let us retire into the barn with Shoosy, and hide our blushes.
+
+Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore for one paragraph let us
+compare AUTUMN with SPRING. Suppose ourselves sitting beneath THE
+SYCAMORE of Windermere! Poets call Spring Green-Mantle--and true it is
+that the groundwork of his garb is green--even like that of the proud
+peacock's changeful neck, when the creature treads in the circle of his
+own splendour, and the scholar who may have forgotten his classics, has
+yet a dream of Juno and of her watchful Argus with his hundred, his
+thousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, like that of Joseph, is a coat of
+many colours. Call it patch-work if you choose,
+
+    "And be yourself the great sublime you draw."
+
+Some people look on nature with a milliner's or a mantua-maker's
+eye--arraying her in furbelows and flounces. But use your own eyes and
+ours, and from beneath THE SYCAMORE let us two, sitting together in
+amity, look lovingly on the SPRING. Felt ever your heart before, with
+such an emotion of harmonious beauty, the exquisitely delicate
+distinctions of character among the lovely tribes of trees! That is
+BELLE ISLE. Earliest to salute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of green
+gentle as its own, is the lake-loving ALDER, whose home, too, is by the
+flowings of all the streams. Just one degree fainter in its hue--or
+shall we rather say brighter--for we feel the difference without knowing
+in what it lies--stands, by the Alder's rounded softness, the spiral
+LARCH, all hung over its limber sprays, were you near enough to admire
+them, with cones of the Tyrian dye. That stem, white as silver, and
+smooth as silk, seen so straight in the green sylvan light, and there
+airily overarching the coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy might
+picture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant as is her life on that
+Fortunate Isle, is yet said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadness
+to unsorrowing things--to belong to a Tree that _weeps_,--though a
+weight of joy it is, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses the
+BIRCH'S pendent beauty, till it droops--as we think--like that of a
+being overcome with grief! Seen standing all along by themselves, with
+something of a foreign air, and an exotic expression, yet not unwelcome
+or obtrusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, twinkling to the
+touch of every wandering wind, and restless even amidst what seemeth now
+to be everlasting rest, we cannot choose but admire that somewhat darker
+grove of columnar Lombardy POPLARS. How comes it that some SYCAMORES so
+much sooner than others salute the Spring? Yonder are some but budding,
+as if yet the frost lay on the honey-dew that protects the beamy germs.
+There are others warming into expansion, half-budded and half-leaved,
+with a various light of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly from
+afar. And in that nook of the still sunnier south, trending eastward, a
+few are almost in their full summer foliage, and soon will the bees be
+swarming among their flowers. A HORSE CHESTNUT has a grand oriental air,
+and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yellowing in the light--that
+shows he belongs to the line of the Prophet. ELMS are then most
+magnificent--witness Christ-Church walk--when they hang over head in
+heaven like the chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are the
+august--and methinks "a dim religious light" is in that vault of
+branches just vivifying to the Spring, and though almost bare, tinged
+with a coming hue that ere long will be majestic brightness. Those old
+OAKS seem sullen in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their power,
+like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. But they, too, are relaxing
+from their wonted sternness--soon will that faint green be a glorious
+yellow; and while the gold-laden boughs stoop boldly to the storms with
+which they love to dally, bounds not the heart of every Briton to the
+music of his national anthem,
+
+    "Rule, Britannia,
+    Britannia rules the waves!"
+
+The ASH is a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and
+yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the
+docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town of Kilkenny
+
+    "It shines well where it stands;"
+
+and the bare grey-blue of the branches, apart but not repulsive, like
+some cunning discord in music, deepens the harmony of the Isle of
+Groves. Contrast is one of the finest of all the laws of association, as
+every philosopher, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment, it brings, by
+the bonds of beauty, though many glades intervene, close beside that
+pale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-green PINE Clan,
+whose "leaf fadeth never," a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the
+English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest
+that BELLE ISLE is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all
+over--bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some
+tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns,
+on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and
+gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of
+nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substance
+purer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night on
+the mountain-top! Trees are they--fruit-trees--The WILD CHERRY, that
+grows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood--and can
+that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of old
+in the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens into
+pink--yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purity
+of the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virgin
+lips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a glad
+fond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his arms
+open to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smiles
+that are almost tears, within her father's bosom.
+
+              "As when to those who sail
+    Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
+    Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
+    Sabæan odours from the spicy shore
+    Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
+    Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,
+    Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."
+
+Shut your eyes--suppose five months gone--and lo! BELLE ISLE in Autumn,
+like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frost
+in the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still as
+midnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand Robin
+Redbreast--God bless him!--is warbling on the copestone of that old barn
+gable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct the
+clank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its
+slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of the
+Queen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness,
+yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and how close
+together seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two opposite
+shores! But we wish you to look at BELLE ISLE, though we ourselves are
+almost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that we
+know will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured.--Could you
+not think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the
+Isle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yet
+they burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, as
+in a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, and
+reigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all the
+canopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hung with
+the richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forth
+in gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in the
+air of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of these
+Palaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living and
+dying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration,
+with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No names
+of trees are remembered--a glorious confusion comprehends in one the
+whole leafy race--orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all
+seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye
+felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable
+in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trance
+goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takes
+down all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment with
+less of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses each
+one of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less and
+less glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all the
+happiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoples
+the melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may return
+never more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in the
+dust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips have
+declared--melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets--till the
+pensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac and
+foreboding hymns--as is the Race of Leaves--now old Homer speaks--so is
+the Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any
+creature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those mysterious
+misgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysterious
+still, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God,
+and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these--the earthly, in
+its sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:--
+
+    "But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?
+    Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"
+
+
+
+
+SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.
+
+SECOND RHAPSODY.
+
+
+Have we not been speaking of all the Seasons as belonging to the
+masculine gender? They are generally, we believe, in this country,
+painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, as may be daily seen in the
+pretty prints that bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns.
+Spring is always there represented as a spanker in a blue symar, very
+pertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, in
+a style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of that
+shamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She
+holds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, or
+primrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubt
+does look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood of
+the Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey, _in
+puris naturalibus_, meant to image Musidora, or the Medicean, or rather
+the Hottentot Venus.
+
+    "So stands the statue that enchants the world!"
+
+She seems, at the very lightest, a good round half hundred heavier than
+Spring; and, when you imagine her plunging into the pool, you think you
+hear a porpus. May no Damon run away with her clothes, leaving behind in
+exchange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dogdays, and should one
+"imparadise himself in form of that sweet flesh," there will be a cry in
+the woods that will speedily bring to her assistance Pan and all his
+Satyrs. Autumn is a motherly matron, evidently _enceinte_, and, like
+Love and Charity, who probably are smiling on the opposite wall, she has
+a brace of bouncing babies at her breast--in her right hand a formidable
+sickle, like a Turkish scymitar--in her left an extraordinary utensil,
+bearing, we believe, the heathenish appellation of cornucopia--on her
+back a sheaf of wheat--and on her head a diadem--planted there by John
+Barleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as ugly a customer as a lonely man
+would wish to encounter beneath the light of a September moon. On her
+feet are bauchles--on her legs huggers--and the breadth of her soles,
+and the thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own conjectures. Her
+fine bust is conspicuous in an open laced boddice--and her huge hips are
+set off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket that she seems to have
+picked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from a
+long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid
+of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less
+resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old
+beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble
+fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the
+melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated
+with frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained in iciness, and
+an old stump, half buried in the drift. Poor old, miserable, cowering
+crone! One cannot look at her without unconsciously putting one's hand
+in his pocket, and fumbling for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in the
+picture, especially while, on turning round your head, you behold a big
+blockhead of a vulgar bagman, with his coat-tails over his arms, warming
+his loathsome hideousness at a fire that would roast an ox.
+
+Such are the Seasons! And though we have spoken of them, as mere critics
+on art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always no
+inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, or
+prose-works, that--pardon our tautology--are popular with the people.
+The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations of
+persons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the old
+masters; so that, though the conception is good, the execution is, in
+general, far from perfect. Yet many a time, when lying at our ease in a
+Wayside Inn, stretched on three wooden chairs, with a little round
+deal-table before us, well laden with oatmeal cakes and cheese and
+butter, nor, you may be sure, without its "tappit hen"--have we after a
+long day's journey--perhaps the longest day--
+
+    "Through moors and mosses many, O,"
+
+regarded with no imaginative spirit--when Joseph and his brethren were
+wanting--even such symbols of the Seasons as these--while arose to
+gladden us many as fair an image as ever nature sent from her woods and
+wildernesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimage
+to her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop
+his head below the lowest lintel, and held all men his equal who earned
+by honest industry the scanty fare which they never ate without those
+holy words of supplication and thanksgiving, "Give us this day our daily
+bread!"
+
+Our memory is a treasure-house of written and unwritten poetry--the
+ingots, the gifts of the great bards, and the bars of bullion--much of
+the coin our own--some of it borrowed mayhap, but always on good
+security, and repaid with interest--a legal transaction, of which even a
+not unwealthy man has no need to be ashamed--none of it stolen, nor yet
+found where the Highlandman found the tongs. But our riches are like
+those that encumbered the floor of the Sanctum of the Dey of Algiers,
+not very tidily arranged; and we are frequently foiled in our efforts to
+lay our hand, for immediate use or ornament, on a ducat or a diamond, a
+pistole or a pearl, a sovereign, or only his crown. We feel ourselves at
+this moment in that predicament, when trying to recollect the genders of
+Thomson's "Seasons"--
+
+    "Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
+    And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
+    While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
+    Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!"
+
+That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination,
+and there is not a syllable about sex--though "ethereal mildness," which
+is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a
+Virgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that dwell between heaven and
+earth must love. Never to our taste--but our taste is inferior to our
+feeling and our genius--though you will seldom go far wrong even in
+trusting it--never had a poem a more beautiful beginning. It is not
+simple--nor ought it to be--it is rich, and even gorgeous--for the Bard
+came to his subject full of inspiration; and as it was the inspiration,
+here, not of profound thought, but of passionate emotion, it was right
+that music at the very first moment should overflow the page, and that
+it should be literally strewed with roses. An imperfect Impersonation is
+often proof positive of the highest state of poetical enthusiasm. The
+forms of nature undergo a half humanising process under the intensity of
+our love, yet still retain the character of the insensate creation, thus
+affecting us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, blended emotion
+that scarcely belongs to either separately, but to both together clings
+as to a phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, because only the
+soul of genius can give it a presence--though afterwards all eyes dimly
+recognise it, on its being shown to them, as something more vivid than
+their own faint experience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually one
+and the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understand
+and feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarest
+genius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break their
+harps, and go drown themselves in Helicon.
+
+    "From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
+    Child of the Sun, refulgent SUMMER comes,
+    In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
+    He comes attended by the sultry hours,
+    And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;
+    While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
+    Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,
+    All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."
+
+Here the Impersonation is stronger--and perhaps the superior strength
+lies in the words "child of the Sun." And here in the words describing
+Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other
+passage--averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The
+poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine;
+and 'tis a jewel of a picture--for ladies should always avert their
+blushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed,
+elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks of
+his mistress,--
+
+    "From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
+    Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
+    With sighing languishment."
+
+This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as
+delicate as it is natural; but for our own simple and single selves, we
+never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we
+cannot deny--if we did, the most credulous would not credit us--much
+agitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixing
+upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which
+the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the
+better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her
+affianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all our
+long lives got we absolutely _sick_--nor even _squeamish_--never were we
+obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth--but, on the contrary,
+we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too
+luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring for
+a few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself
+down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals.
+However, we are not now writing our Confessions--and what we wished to
+say about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented as
+turning away the face from that of the other, which may be all natural
+enough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and,
+had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would have
+read better in poetry. But for Spring to avert _his_ blushful face from
+the ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasons
+seem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness," was
+unquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to the
+toe," and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed his
+boyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of his
+own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not
+fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful
+of cold water.
+
+    "Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
+    While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
+    Comes jovial on," &c.,
+
+is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the
+sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So
+far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'er
+the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature--and
+descriptive of the growing and ripening or ripened harvest--whereas it
+is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is
+not obscurity--or indistinctness--which, as we have said before, is
+often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a
+contradiction--and therefore indefensible on any ground either of
+conception or expression.
+
+"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle of
+Indolence"--for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration to
+thought--and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, became
+celestial as an angel's song.
+
+    "See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
+    Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,
+    Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
+    These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
+    And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
+    Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
+    Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
+    When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,
+    And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
+    Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;
+    Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
+    Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;
+    Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd
+    In the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,
+    Till through the lucid chambers of the south
+    Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"
+
+Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read by the bedside of a
+dying lover of nature, might
+
+    "Create a soul
+    Under the ribs of death!"
+
+What in the name of goodness makes us suppose that a mean, and miserable
+November day, even while we are thus Rhapsodising, is drizzling all
+Edinburgh with the worst of all imaginable Scottish mists--an Easterly
+Haur? We know that he infests all the year, but shows his poor spite in
+its bleakest bitterness in March and in November. Earth and heaven are
+not only not worth looking at in an Easterly Haur, but the Visible is
+absolute wretchedness, and people wonder why they were born. The
+visitation begins with a sort of characterless haze, waxing more and
+more wetly obscure, till you know not whether it be rain, snow, or
+sleet, that drenches your clothes in dampness, till you feel it in your
+skin, then in your flesh, then in your bones, then in your marrow, and
+then in your mind. Your blinking eyes have it too--and so, shut it as
+you will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, though looking blue,
+are not puddled, and the dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is no
+eavesdropping--no gushing of waterspouts. To say it rained would be no
+breach of veracity, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy fact. The
+truth is, that _the weather cannot rain_, but keeps spit, spit,
+spitting, in a style sufficient to irritate Socrates--or even Moses
+himself; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, and authentic Rain
+could not--or if he could would not--so thoroughly soak you and your
+whole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day to do it, as that shabby
+imitation of a tenth-rate shower, in about the time of a usual sized
+sermon. So much cold and so much wet, with so little to show for it, is
+a disgrace to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the sunniest
+the weather can afford to wipe off. But the stores of sunniness which it
+is in the power of Winter in this northern latitude to accumulate,
+cannot be immense; and therefore we verily believe that it would be too
+much to expect that it ever can make amends for the hideous horrors of
+this Easterly Haur. The Cut-throat!
+
+On such days suicides rush to judgment. That sin is mysterious as
+insanity--their graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh!
+the brain and the heart of man! Therein is the only Hell. Small these
+regions in space, and of narrow room--but haunted may they be with all
+the Fiends and all the Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul despair
+or bliss. At the touch of something--whence and wherefore sent, who can
+say--something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars--she soars up
+into life and light, just as you may have seen a dove suddenly cleave
+the sunshine--or down she dives into death and darkness, like a shot
+eagle tumbling into the sea!
+
+Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should mortals, whom conscience tells
+that they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon the
+dust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dust
+dies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not that
+spirit its immortality in each sacred thought? When did ever religious
+soul fear annihilation? Or shudder to think that, having once known, it
+could ever forget God? Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternal
+death. Therefore is eternal death impossible to us who can hold
+communion with our Maker. Our knowledge of Him--dim and remote though it
+be--is a God-given pledge that He will redeem us from the doom of the
+grave.
+
+Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with Coleridge, in his
+beautiful poem of the "Nightingale," that
+
+    "In Nature there is nothing melancholy,"
+
+not even November. The disease of the body may cause disease in the
+soul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful--not the
+less strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which is
+within us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like an
+earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead.
+Heaven seems to have placed a power in our Will as mighty as it is
+mysterious. Call it not Liberty, lest you should wax proud; call it not
+Necessity, lest you should despair. But turn from the oracles of
+man--still dim even in their clearest responses--to the Oracles of God,
+which are never dark; or if so, but
+
+    "Dark with excessive bright"
+
+to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain the splendour. Bury all
+your books, when you feel the night of scepticism gathering around
+you--bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spells to
+illuminate the unfathomable--open your Bible, and all the spiritual
+world will be as bright as day.
+
+The disease of the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Some
+rapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingering
+death;--some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence life
+worse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of the
+grave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of meaning that
+ever was written, is--
+
+    "Mens sana in corpore sano."
+
+When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, what
+unutterable gladness bathes the spirit in that one feeling of--health!
+Then the mere consciousness of existence is like that emotion which
+Milton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Paradise--
+
+    "Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
+    All sadness but despair"
+
+It does more--for despair itself cannot prevail against it. What a dawn
+of bliss rises upon us with the dawn of light, when our life is
+healthful as the sun! Then
+
+    "It feels that it is greater than it knows."
+
+God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and at
+the uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in upon
+the spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if the
+enjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, and
+her absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over the
+ethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disordered
+matter!--from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the last
+scowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed the
+fatal fetters upon them--they see even that a link may be open, and that
+one effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery,
+and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a sudden
+sunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence is
+changed, and they see the very vanishing of their most dismal and
+desperate dream.
+
+"Somewhat too much of this"--so let us strike the chords to a merrier
+measure--to a "livelier lilt"--as suits the variable spirit of our
+Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting
+rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not
+suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes
+their very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation,
+which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will
+these dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with the
+proceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worst
+comes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escape
+the galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the
+shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like a
+criminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from hand to
+hand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of the
+most impatient of men--and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, the
+most patient of men and women--we often stand shut up in that
+sentry-looking canvass box, dexterously and sinistrously fingering the
+string, perhaps for five shrinking, and shuddering, and _grueing_
+minutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down upon ourselves
+the rushing waterfall! Soon as the agony is over, we bounce out the
+colour of beetroot, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with an
+amazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as fresh as when
+we first experienced it,
+
+    "In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."
+
+By-and-by we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that has
+leapt out of the pan--and then, seeming for a while to be an
+emblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we sober
+down into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside into
+our own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back upon
+ourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, reminds
+us of that line in Cowper descriptive of the November Moon--
+
+    "Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"
+
+Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed--we feel strong as the
+horse in Homer--a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the
+subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self--not
+self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world
+from selfishness--elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest
+regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of
+which every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the
+dogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot than
+Grimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficulties
+seem now--what they really are--facilities of which we are by far too
+much elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to appear appalling
+are felt now to be lulling securities--obstacles, like mountains, lying
+in our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus,
+we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and we
+kick them aside like an old footstool. Let the country ask us for a
+scheme to pay off the national debt--_there she has it_; do you request
+us to have the kindness to leap over the moon--here we go; excellent Mr
+Blackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article is
+in his hand, promotive of the sale of countless numbers of "my
+Magazine," and of the happiness of countless numbers of mankind. We
+feel--and the feeling proves the fact--as bold as Joshua the son of
+Nun--as brave as David the son of Jesse--as wise as Solomon the son of
+David--and as proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopolazzar. We survey
+our image in the mirror--and think of Adam. We put ourselves into the
+posture of the Belvidere Apollo.
+
+    "Then view the Lord of the unerring bow,
+    The God of life, and poesy, and light,
+    The Sun in human arms array'd, and brow
+    All radiant from his triumph in the fight.
+    The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright
+    With an immortal vengeance; in his eye
+    And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
+    And majesty flash their full lightnings by,
+    Developing in that one glance the Deity."
+
+Up four flight of stairs we fly--for the bath is in the double-sunk
+story--ten steps at a bound--and in five minutes have devoured one
+quartern loaf, six eggs, and a rizzar, washing all over with a
+punch-bowl of congou and a tea-bowl of coffee.
+
+                      "Enormous breakfast,
+    Wild without rule or art! Where nature plays
+    Her virgin fancies."
+
+And then, leaning back on our Easy-chair, we perform an exploit beyond
+the reach of Euclid--why, WE SQUARE THE CIRCLE, and to the utter
+demolition of our admirable friend Sir David Brewster's diatribe, in a
+late number of the _Quarterly Review_, on the indifference of Government
+to men of science, chuckle over our nobly-won order K.C.C.B., Knight
+Companion of the Cold Bath.
+
+Many analogies between the seasons of the year and the seasons of life,
+being natural, have been a frequent theme of poetry in all countries.
+Had the gods made us poetical, we should now have poured forth, a few
+exquisite illustrations of some that are very affecting and impressive.
+It has, however, often been felt by us, that not a few of those one
+meets with in the lamentations of whey-faced sentimentalists, are false
+or fantastic, and do equal violence to all the seasons, both of the year
+and of life. These gentry have been especially silly upon the similitude
+of Old Age to Winter. Winter, in external nature, is not the season of
+decay. An old tree, for example, in the very _dead_ of winter, as it is
+figuratively called, though bare of leaves, is full of life. The sap,
+indeed, has sunk down from his bole and branches--down into his toes or
+roots. But there it is, ready, in due time, to reascend. Not so with an
+old man--the present company always excepted;--his sap is not sunk down
+to his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the system--therefore,
+individual natural objects in Winter are not analogically emblematical
+of people stricken in years. Far less does the Winter itself of the
+year, considered as a season, resemble the old age of life considered as
+a season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the character and conduct of
+aged gentlemen in general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow,
+winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occasional thunder and lightning,
+bear analogy? We pause for a reply. Old men's heads, it is true, are
+frequently white, though more frequently bald, and their blood is not so
+hot as when they were springalds. But though there be no great harm in
+likening a sprinkling of white hair on mine ancient's temples to the
+appearance of the surface of the earth, flat or mountainous, after a
+slight fall of snow--and indeed, in an impassioned state of mind, we
+feel a moral beauty in such poetical expression as "sorrow shedding on
+the head of youth its untimely snows"--yet the natural propriety of such
+an image, so far from justifying the assertion of a general analogy
+between Winter and Old Age, proves that the analogies between them are
+in fact very few, and felt to be analogies at all, only when touched
+upon very seldom, and very slightly, and, for the most part, very
+vaguely--the truth being, that they scarcely exist at all in reality,
+but have an existence given to them by the power of creative passion,
+which often works like genius. Shakespeare knew this well--as he knew
+everything else; and, accordingly, he gives us Seven Ages of Life--not
+Four Seasons. But how finely does he sometimes, by the mere use of the
+names of the Seasons of the Year, intensify to our imagination the
+mental state to which they are for the moment felt to be analogous?--
+
+    "Now is the winter of our discontent
+    Made glorious summer by the sun of York!"
+
+That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, is inspired; and the
+further analogical images which follow add nothing to _our_ feeling,
+though they show the strength and depth of _his_ into whose lips they
+are put. A bungler would have bored us with ever so many ramifications
+of the same idea, on one of which, in our weariness, we might have
+wished him hanged by the neck till he was dead.
+
+We are an Old Man, and though single not singular; yet, without vanity,
+we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like Winter, in
+particular, than we are like Spring, Summer, or Autumn. The truth is,
+that we are much less like any one of the Seasons, than we are like the
+whole Set. Is not Spring sharp? So are we. Is not Spring snappish? So
+are we. Is not Spring boisterous? So are we. Is not Spring "beautiful
+exceedingly?" So are we. Is not Spring capricious? So are we. Is not
+Spring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest,
+modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures that
+steal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for our
+similitude--a staring and striking one--to Spring. But were you to stop
+there, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For only
+ask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer.
+Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes
+cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does not Summer love the shade? So
+do we. Is not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too much i' the sun?" So
+are we. Is not Summer famous for its thunder and lightning? So are we.
+Is not Summer, when he chooses, still, silent, and serene as a sleeping
+seraph? And so too--when Christopher chooses--are not we? Though, with
+keen remorse we confess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are too
+often more like a fury or a fiend--and that completes the likeness; for
+all who know a Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaim--"So is he!" But
+our portrait is but half-drawn; you know but a moiety of our character.
+Is Autumn jovial?--ask Thomson--so are we. Is Autumn melancholy?--ask
+Alison and Gillespie--so are we. Is Autumn bright?--ask the woods and
+groves--so are we. Is Autumn rich?--ask the whole world--so are we. Does
+Autumn rejoice in the yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, stored
+up in his great Magazine of Nature, are lavishly thence dispensed to all
+that hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? So do we. After that,
+no one can be so pur-and-bat-blind as not see that North is, in very
+truth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his Likeness or Eidolon.
+But--
+
+    "Lo, Winter comes to rule th' inverted year!"
+
+So do we,
+
+    "Sullen and sad, with all his rising train--
+    Vapours, and clouds, and storms!"
+
+So are we. The great author of the "Seasons" says, that Winter and his
+train
+
+        "Exalt the soul to solemn thought,
+    And heavenly musing!"
+
+So do we. And, "lest aught less great should stamp us mortal," here we
+conclude the comparison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of a great
+master, and ask, Is not North, Winter? Thus, listener after our own
+heart! thou feelest that we are imaged aright in all our attributes
+neither by Spring, nor Summer, nor Autumn, nor Winter; but that the
+character of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected by the Entire
+Year.
+
+
+
+
+A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON.
+
+
+Poetry, one might imagine, must be full of Snow-scenes. If so, they have
+almost all dissolved--melted away from our memory--as the transiencies
+in nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's "Winter," of course,
+we do not include in our obliviousness--and from Cowper's "Task" we
+might quote many a most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost and snow
+been done full justice to by them or any other of our poets? They have
+been well spoken of by two--Southey and Coleridge--of whose most
+poetical compositions respectively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner,"
+in some future volume we may dissert. Thomson's genius does not so often
+delight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature as
+that of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objects
+off sweepingly by bold strokes--such, indeed, as have almost always
+distinguished the mighty masters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper
+sets nature before your eyes--Thomson before your imagination. Which do
+you prefer? Both. Be assured that both poets had pored night and day
+upon her--in all her aspects--and that she had revealed herself fully to
+both. But they, in their religion, elected different modes of
+worship--and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mind
+we love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are
+almost a Task--and sometimes the Task is out of Season. There is
+delightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard of
+Olney--glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam.
+Cowper paints trees--Thomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous
+lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Burrampooter--Cowper,
+in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, or
+awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to
+antithesis--a deceptive style of criticism--and see how Thomson sings
+of Snow. Why, in the following lines, as well as Christopher North in
+his Soliloquy on the Seasons--
+
+                    "The cherish'd fields
+    Put on their winter-robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current."
+
+Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature of an ocular spectrum.
+
+Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet
+"brown," where all that is motionless is white--
+
+                "The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their _brown_ inhabitants."
+
+That one word proves the poet. Does it not?
+
+The entire description from which these two sentences are selected by
+memory--a critic you may always trust to--is admirable; except in one or
+two places where Thomson seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic,
+and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceased
+to be perfectly natural. Thus--
+
+                          "Drooping, the ox
+    Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil."
+
+The image of the ox is as good as possible. We see him, and could paint
+him in oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the fruit of
+all his toils"--to which we freely acknowledge the worthy animal was
+well entitled--sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantastical. Call
+it doubtful--for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment.
+Again--
+
+                        "The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    _With looks of dumb despair._"
+
+The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepherd agreed with us--one
+night at Ambrose's--that the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreed
+with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any
+circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own
+feeling in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow
+their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds--
+
+                          "Then, sad dispersed,
+    Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow."
+
+For, as they disperse, they do look very sad--and no doubt are so; but
+had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and
+uniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging, but whole flocks
+had perished.
+
+You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines
+that occur soon after, and which are a noble example of the sweeping
+style of description which, we said above, characterises the genius of
+this sublime poet:--
+
+                  "From the bellowing east,
+    In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
+    Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains
+    At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
+    Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,
+    The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,
+    The valley to a shining mountain swells,
+    Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the sky."
+
+Well might the Bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when
+telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, addressed
+them in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast.
+"Shepherds," says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely by
+filling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up--
+
+    "Far off its coming _groan'd_,"
+
+and the poet was inspired. Had he not been so, he had not cried, "Baffle
+the raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurd
+expression.
+
+Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then
+try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet.
+People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. A
+line--two words--may show that they are the Muse's sons. How exquisitely
+does Burns picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change!
+
+    "The chilly frost beneath the silver beam,
+    Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!"
+
+Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit of perception--or
+conception--or memory--or whatever else you choose to call it; for our
+part, we call it genius--
+
+    "An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
+    _Breathes a blue film_, and in its mid career
+    Arrests the bickering stream."
+
+And afterwards, having frozen the entire stream into a "crystal
+pavement," how strongly doth he conclude thus--
+
+    "_The whole imprison'd river growls below._"
+
+Here, again, 'tis pleasant to see the peculiar genius of Cowper
+contrasted with that of Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting, for the
+most part, in tranquil images--for his life was passed amidst tranquil
+nature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power.
+Cowper says--
+
+                        "On the flood,
+    Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight
+    Lies undissolved, _while silently beneath,
+    And unperceived, the current steals away_."
+
+How many thousand times the lines we are now going to quote have been
+quoted, nobody can tell; but we quote them once more for the purpose of
+asking you, if you think that any one poet of this age could have
+written them--could have chilled one's very blood with such intense
+feeling of cold! Not one.
+
+    "In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,
+    _And to the stony deep his idle ship
+    Immediate seal'd_, he with his hapless crew,
+    Each full exerted at his several task,
+    _Froze into statues; to the cordage glued
+    The sailor, and the pilot to the helm!_"
+
+The oftener--the more we read the "Winter"--especially the last two or
+three hundred lines--the angrier is our wonder with Wordsworth for
+asserting that Thomson owed the national popularity that his "Winter"
+immediately won, to his "commonplace sentimentalities, and his vicious
+style!" Yet true it is, that he was sometimes guilty of both; and, but
+for his transcendent genius, they might have obscured the lustre of his
+fame. But such sins are not very frequent in the "Seasons," and were all
+committed in the glow of that fine and bold enthusiasm, which to his
+imagination arrayed all things, and all words, in a light that seemed to
+him at the time to be poetry--though sometimes it was but "false
+glitter." Admitting, then, that sometimes the style of the "Seasons" is
+somewhat too florid, we must not criticise single and separate passages,
+without holding in mind the character of the poet's genius and his
+inspirations. He luxuriates--he revels--he wantons--at once with an
+imaginative and a sensuous delight in nature. Besides, he was but young;
+and his great work was his first. He had not philosophised his poetical
+language, as Wordsworth himself has done, after long years of
+profoundest study of the laws of thought and speech. But in such study,
+while much is gained, may not something be lost? And is there not a
+charm in the free, flowing, chartered libertinism of the diction and
+versification of the "Seasons"--above all, in the closing strains of the
+"Winter," and in the whole of the "Hymn," which inspires a delight and
+wonder seldom breathed upon us--glorious poem, on the whole, as it
+is--from the more measured march of the "Excursion?"
+
+All those children of the Pensive Public who have been much at school,
+know Thomson's description of the wolves among the Alps, Apennines, and
+Pyrenees,
+
+    "Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!
+    Burning for blood, bony and gaunt and grim!" &c.
+
+The first fifteen lines are equal to anything in the whole range of
+English descriptive poetry; but the last ten are positively bad. Here
+they are:--
+
+    "The godlike face of man avails him nought!
+    Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance
+    The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze,
+    Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey.
+    But if, apprised of the severe attack,
+    The country be shut up, lured by the scent,
+    On churchyard drear (inhuman to relate!)
+    The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig
+    The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,
+    Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."
+
+Wild beasts do not like the look of the human eye--they think us ugly
+customers--and sometimes stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in an
+awkward but alarming attitude, of hunger mixed with fear. A single wolf
+seldom or never attacks a man. He cannot stand the face. But a person
+would need to have a godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an army of
+wolves some thousand strong. It would be the height of presumption in
+any man, though beautiful as Moore thought Byron, to attempt it. If so,
+then
+
+    "The godlike face of man avails him nought,"
+
+is, under the circumstances, ludicrous. Still more so is the trash about
+"beauty, force divine!" It is too much to expect of an army of wolves
+some thousand strong, "and hungry as the grave," that they should all
+fall down on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh and blood,
+merely because the young lady was so beautiful that she might have sat
+to Sir Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr Watts's "Souvenir." 'Tis
+all stuff, too, about the generous lion standing in softened gaze at
+beauty's bright glance. True, he has been known to look with a certain
+sort of soft surliness upon a pretty Caffre girl, and to walk past
+without eating her--but simply because, an hour or two before, he had
+dined on a Hottentot Venus. The secret lay not in his heart, but in his
+stomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely has
+Spenser changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of the
+attendant lion of
+
+    "Heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb!"
+
+But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it in this passage, has
+vulgarised and blurred by it the natural and inevitable emotion of
+terror and pity. Famished wolves _howking_ up the dead is a dreadful
+image--but "_inhuman to relate_," is not an expression heavily laden
+with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel,
+unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, is
+revolting, and miserably mars the terrible _truth_.
+
+    "Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."
+
+Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts only frightened? And
+wherein lies the specific difference between a shade and a ghost?
+Besides, if the ghosts were frightened, which they had good reason to
+be, why were not they off? We have frequently read of their wandering
+far from home, on occasions when they had no such excellent excuse to
+offer. This line, therefore, we have taken the liberty to erase from our
+pocket-copy of the "Seasons"--and to draw a few keelavine strokes over
+the rest of the passage--beginning with "man's godlike face."
+
+Go read, then, the opening of "Winter," and acknowledge that, of all
+climates and all countries, there are none within any of the zones of
+the earth that will bear a moment's comparison with those of Scotland.
+Forget the people if you can, and think only of the region. The lovely
+Lowlands undulating away into the glorious Highlands--the spirit of
+sublimity and the spirit of beauty one and the same, as it blends them
+in indissoluble union. Bury us alive in the dungeon's
+gloom--incommunicable with the light of day as the grave--it could not
+seal our eyes to the sight of Scotland. We should see it still by rising
+or by setting suns. Whatever blessed scene we chose to call on would
+become an instant apparition. Nor in that thick-ribbed vault would our
+eyes be deaf to her rivers and her seas. We should say our prayers to
+their music, and to the voice of the thunder on a hundred hills. We
+stand now in no need of senses. They are waxing dim--but our spirit may
+continue to brighten long as the light of love is allowed to dwell
+therein, thence proceeding over nature like a victorious morn.
+
+There are many beautiful passages in the poets about RAIN; but who ever
+sang its advent so passionately as in these strains?--
+
+                          "The effusive south
+    Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
+    Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
+    At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
+    Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees,
+    In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails
+    Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep
+    Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom:
+    Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,
+    Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
+    And full of every hope and every joy,
+    The wish of nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
+    Into a perfect calm, that not a breath
+    Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
+    Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
+    Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods diffused
+    In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
+    Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all
+    And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
+    Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
+    The falling verdure!"
+
+All that follows is, you know, as good--better it cannot be--till we
+come to the close, the perfection of poetry, and then sally out into the
+shower, and join the hymn of earth to heaven--
+
+    "The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
+    By such as wander through the forest walks,
+    Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves.
+    But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends
+    In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
+    And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap?
+    Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth;
+    And, while the milky nutriment distils,
+    Beholds the kindling country colour round."
+
+Thomson, they say, was too fond of epithets. Not he, indeed. Strike out
+one of the many there--and your sconce shall feel the crutch. A poet
+less conversant with nature would have feared to say, "sits on the
+horizon round _a settled gloom_," or rather, he would not have seen or
+thought it was a settled gloom; and, therefore, he could not have said--
+
+        ----"But lovely, gentle, kind,
+    And full of every hope and every joy,
+    _The wish of Nature._"
+
+Leigh Hunt--most vivid of poets, and most cordial of critics--somewhere
+finely speaks of a ghastly line in a poem of Keats'--
+
+    "Riding to Florence with the murder'd man;"
+
+that is, the man about to be murdered--imagination conceiving as one,
+doom and death. Equally great are the words--
+
+                      "Herds and flocks
+    Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
+    The falling verdure."
+
+The verdure is seen in the shower--to be the very shower--by the poet at
+least--perhaps by the cattle, in their thirsty hunger forgetful of the
+brown ground, and swallowing the dropping herbage. The birds had not
+been so sorely distressed by the drought as the beasts, and therefore
+the poet speaks of them, not as relieved from misery, but as visited
+with gladness--
+
+                "Hush'd in short suspense,
+    The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
+    To throw the lucid moisture trickling off,
+    And wait th' approaching sign, to strike, at once,
+    Into the general choir."
+
+Then, and not till then, the _humane_ poet bethinks him of the insensate
+earth--insensate not; for beast and bird being satisfied, and lowing and
+singing in their gratitude, so do the places of their habitation yearn
+for the blessing--
+
+              "E'en mountains, vales,
+    And forests, seem impatient, to demand
+    The promised sweetness."
+
+The _religious_ Poet then speaks for his kind--and says devoutly--
+
+            "Man superior walks
+    Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
+    And looking lively gratitude."
+
+In that mood he is justified to feast his fancy with images of the
+beauty as well as the bounty of nature; and genius in one line has
+concentrated them all--
+
+    "Beholds the kindling country colour round."
+
+'Tis "an a' day's rain"--and "the well-showered earth is deep-enriched
+with vegetable life." And what kind of an evening? We have seen many
+such--and every succeeding one more beautiful, more glorious to our eyes
+than another--because of these words in which the beauty and the glory
+of one and all are enshrined--
+
+    "Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
+    Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
+    Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
+    The rapid radiance, instantaneous, strikes
+    Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams,
+    Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
+    Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,
+    In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
+    Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
+    Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
+    Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks
+    Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
+    And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
+    Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.
+    Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
+    Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
+    Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds
+    In fair proportion, running from the red
+    To where the violet fades into the sky."
+
+How do you like our recitation of that surpassing strain? Every shade of
+feeling should have its shade of sound--every pause its silence. But
+these must all come and go, untaught, unbidden, from the fulness of the
+heart. Then indeed, and not till then, can words be said to be set to
+music--_to a celestial sing-song_.
+
+The mighty Minstrel recited old Ballads with a warlike march of sound
+that made one's heart leap, while his usually sweet smile was drawn in,
+and disappeared among the glooms that sternly gathered about his
+lowering brows, and gave his whole aspect a most heroic character. Rude
+verses, that from ordinary lips would have been almost meaningless, from
+his came inspired with passion. Sir Philip Sidney, who said that "Chevy
+Chase" roused him like the sound of a trumpet, had he heard Sir Walter
+Scott recite it, would have gone distracted. Yet the "best judges" said
+he murdered his own poetry--we say about as much as Homer. Wordsworth
+recites his own Poetry (catch him reciting any other)
+magnificently--while his eyes seem blind to all outward objects, like
+those of a somnambulist. Coleridge was the sweetest of sing-songers--and
+his silver voice "warbled melody." Next to theirs, we believe our own
+recitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times,
+though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have pronounced it
+detestable, and the long-eared ludicrous; their delight being in what is
+called Elocution, as it is taught by player-folk.
+
+O friendly reader of these our Recreations! thou needst not to be
+told--yet in love let us tell thee--that there are a thousand ways of
+dealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; but
+sentiment there always must be, else it is stark nought. You may infuse
+the sentiment by a single touch--by a ray of light no thicker, nor one
+thousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded by
+lady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or you
+may splash it in as with a gorgeous cloud-stain stolen from sunset; or
+you may bathe it in with a shred of the rainbow. Perhaps the highest
+power of all possessed by the sons of song, is to breathe it in with the
+breath, to let it slip in with the light of the common day!
+
+Then some poets there are, who show you a scene all of a sudden, by
+means of a few magical words--just as if you opened your eyes at their
+bidding--and in place of a blank, a world. Others, again, as good and as
+great, create their world gradually before your eyes, for the delight of
+your soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost
+in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap image
+upon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they were
+ransacking and robbing, and red-reavering earth, sea, and sky; yet all
+things there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, when
+consummated, is a Whole that seems to typify the universe. Others give
+you but fragments--but such as awaken imaginations of beauty and of
+power transcendent, like that famous Torso. And some show you Nature
+glimmering beneath a veil which, nunlike, she has religiously taken; and
+then call not Nature ideal only in that holy twilight, for then it is
+that she is spiritual, and we who belong to her feel that we shall live
+for ever.
+
+Thus--and in other wondrous ways--the great poets are the great
+painters, and so are they the great musicians. But how they are so, some
+other time may we tell; suffice it now to say, that as we listen to the
+mighty masters--"sole or responsive to each other's voice"--
+
+    "Now, 'tis like all instruments,
+    Now like a lonely lute;
+    And now 'tis like an angel's song
+    That bids the heavens be mute!"
+
+Why will so many myriads of men and women, denied by nature "the vision
+and the faculty divine," persist in the delusion that they are
+poetising, while they are but versifying "this bright and breathing
+world?" They see truly not even the outward objects of sight. But of all
+the rare affinities and relationships in Nature, visible or audible to
+Fine-ear-and-Far-eye the Poet, not a whisper--not a glimpse have they
+ever heard or seen, any more than had they been born deaf-blind.
+
+They paint a landscape, but nothing "prates of their whereabouts," while
+they were sitting on a tripod, with their paper on their knees,
+drawing--their breath. For, in the front ground is a castle, against
+which, if you offer to stir a step, you infallibly break your head,
+unless providentially stopped by that extraordinary vegetable-looking
+substance, perhaps a tree, growing bolt upright out of an intermediate
+stone, that has wedged itself in long after there had ceased to be even
+standing-room in that strange theatre of nature. But down from "the
+swelling instep of a mountain's foot," that has protruded itself through
+a wood, while the body of the mountain prudently remains in the extreme
+distance, descends on you, ere you have recovered from your unexpected
+encounter with the old Roman cement, an unconscionable cataract. There
+stands a deer or goat, or rather some beast with horns, "strictly
+anonymous," placed for effect, contrary to all cause, in a place where
+it seems as uncertain how he got in as it is certain that he never can
+get out till he becomes a hippogriff.
+
+The true poet, again, has such potent eyes, that when he lets down the
+lids, he sees just as well, perhaps better than when they were up; for
+in that deep, earnest, inward gaze, the fluctuating sea of scenery
+subsides into a settled calm, where all is harmony as well as
+beauty--order as well as peace. What though he have been fated, through
+youth and manhood, to dwell in city smoke? His childhood--his
+boyhood--were overhung with trees, and through its heart went the murmur
+of waters. Then it is, we verily believe, that in all poets, is filled
+with images up to the brim, Imagination's treasury. Genius, growing, and
+grown up to maturity, is still a prodigal. But he draws on the Bank of
+Youth. His bills, whether at a short or long date, are never
+dishonoured; nay, made payable at sight, they are as good as gold. Nor
+cares that Bank for a run, made even in a panic, for besides bars and
+billets, and wedges and blocks of gold, there are, unappreciable beyond
+the riches which against a time of trouble
+
+    "The Sultaun hides in his ancestral tombs,"
+
+jewels and diamonds sufficient
+
+    "To ransom great kings from captivity."
+
+We sometimes think that the power of painting Nature to the life,
+whether in her real or ideal beauty (both belong to _life_,) is seldom
+evolved to its utmost, until the mind possessing it is withdrawn in the
+body from all rural _environment_. It has not been so with Wordsworth,
+but it was so with Milton. The descriptive poetry in "Comus" is indeed
+rich as rich may be, but certainly not so great, perhaps not so
+beautiful, as that in "Paradise Lost."
+
+It would seem to be so with all of us, small as well as great; and were
+_we_--Christopher North--to compose a poem on Loch Skene, two thousand
+feet or so above the level of the sea, and some miles from a house, we
+should desire to do so in a metropolitan cellar. Desire springs from
+separation. The spirit seeks to unite itself to the beauty it loves, the
+grandeur it admires, the sublimity it almost fears; and all these being
+o'er the hills and far away, or on the hills cloud-hidden, why it--the
+spirit--makes itself wings--or rather wings grow up of themselves in its
+passion, and naturewards it flies like a dove or an eagle. People
+looking at us believe us present, but they never were so far mistaken in
+their lives; for in the Seamew are we sailing with the tide through the
+moonshine on Loch Etive--or hanging o'er that gulf of peril on the bosom
+of Skyroura.
+
+We are sitting now in a dusky den--with our eyes shut--but we see the
+whole Highlands. Our Highland Mountains are of the best possible
+magnitude--ranging between two and four thousand feet high--and then in
+what multitudes! The more familiar you become with them, the mightier
+they appear--and you feel that it is all sheer folly to seek to dwindle
+or dwarf them, by comparing them as they rise before your eyes with your
+imagination of Mont Blanc and those eternal glaciers. If you can bring
+them under your command, you are indeed a sovereign--and have a noble
+set of subjects. In some weather they are of any height you choose to
+put them--say thirty thousand feet--in other states of the atmosphere
+you think you could walk over their summits and down into the region
+beyond in an hour. Try. We have seen Cruachan, during a whole black day,
+swollen into such enormous bulk, that Loch Awe looked like but a sullen
+river at his base, her woods bushes, and Kilchurn no bigger than a
+cottage. The whole visible scene was but he and his shadow. They seemed
+to make the day black, rather than the day to make them so--and at
+nightfall he took wider and loftier possession of the sky--the clouds
+congregated round without hiding his summit, on which seemed to twinkle,
+like earth-lighted fires, a few uncertain stars. Rain drives you into a
+shieling--and you sit there for an hour or two in eloquent confabulation
+with the herdsman, your English against his Gaelic. Out of the door you
+creep--and gaze in astonishment on a new world. The mist is slowly
+rolling up and away in long lines of clouds, preserving, perhaps, a
+beautiful regularity on their ascension and evanescence, and between
+them
+
+    "Tier above tier, a wooded theatre
+    Of stateliest view,"
+
+or cliff galleries with strange stone-images sitting up aloft; and yet
+your eyes have not reached the summits, nor will they reach them, till
+all that vapoury ten-mile-long mass dissolve, or be scattered, and then
+you start to see them, as if therein had been but their bases, THE
+MOUNTAINS, with here and there a peak illumined, reposing in the blue
+serene that smiles as if all the while it had been above reach of the
+storm.
+
+The power of Egoism accompanies us into solitude; nay, is even more
+life-pervading there than in the hum of men. There the stocks and stones
+are more impressible than those we sometimes stumble on in human
+society, and, moulded at our will, take what shape we choose to give
+them; the trees follow our footsteps, though our lips be mute, and we
+may have left at home our fiddle--more potent we in our actuality than
+the fabled Orpheus. Be hushed, ye streams, and listen unto Christopher!
+Be chained, ye clouds, and attentive unto North! And at our bidding
+silent the cataract on the cliff--the thunder on the sky. The sea
+beholds us on the shore--and his one huge frown transformed into a
+multitudinous smile, he turns flowing affections towards us along the
+golden sands--and in a fluctuating hindrance of lovely foam-wreaths
+envelopes our feet!
+
+To return to Thomson. Wordsworth labours to prove, in one of his
+"postliminious prefaces," that the true spirit of "The Seasons," till
+long after their publication, was neither felt nor understood. In the
+conduct of his argument he does not shine. That the poem was at once
+admired he is forced to admit; but then, according to him, the
+admiration was false and hollow--it was regarded but with that wonder
+which is the "natural product of ignorance." After having observed that,
+excepting the "Nocturnal Reverie" of Lady Winchilsea, and a passage or
+two in the "Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the period
+intervening between the publication of the "Paradise Lost" and "The
+Seasons" does not contain a single new image of external nature, he
+proceeds to call the once well-known verses of Dryden in the "Indian
+Emperor," descriptive of the hush of night, "vague, bombastic, and
+senseless," and Pope's celebrated translation of the moonlight scene in
+the "Iliad," altogether "absurd,"--and then, without ever once dreaming
+of any necessity of showing them to be so, or even, if he had succeeded
+in doing so, of the utter illogicality of any argument drawn from their
+failure to establish the point he is hammering at, he all at once says,
+with the most astounding assumption, "_having shown_ that much of what
+his [Thomson's] biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact,
+have been blind wonderment--how is the rest to be accounted for?"
+_"Having shown"!!!_ Why, he has shown nothing but his own arrogance in
+supposing that his mere _ipse dixit_ will be taken by the whole world as
+proof that Dryden and Pope had not the use of their eyes. "Strange to
+think of an enthusiast," he says (alluding to the passage in Pope's
+translation of the "Iliad"), "as may have been the case with thousands,
+reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having
+his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their
+_absurdity_!" We are no enthusiasts--we are far too old for that folly;
+but we have eyes in our head, though sometimes rather dim and motey, and
+as good eyes, too, as Mr Wordsworth, and we often have recited--and hope
+often will recite them again--Pope's exquisite lines, not only without
+any "suspicion of their absurdity," but with the conviction of a most
+devout belief that, with some little vagueness perhaps, and repetition,
+and a word here and there that might be altered for the better, the
+description is most beautiful. But grant it miserable--grant all Mr
+Wordsworth has so dictatorially uttered--and what then? Though
+descriptive poetry did not flourish during the period between "Paradise
+Lost" and "The Seasons," nevertheless, did not mankind enjoy the use of
+their seven senses? Could they not see and hear without the aid of those
+oculists and aurists, the poets? Were all the shepherds and
+agriculturists of England and Scotland blind and deaf to all the sights
+and sounds of nature, and all the gentlemen and ladies too, from the
+king and queen upon the throne, to the lowest of their subjects? Very
+like a whale! Causes there were why poetry flowed during that era in
+another channel than that of the description of natural scenery; and if
+it flowed too little in that channel then--which is true--equally is it
+true that it flows now in it too much--especially among the poets of the
+Lake School, to the neglect, not of sentiments and affections--for there
+they excel--but of strong direct human passion applied to the stir and
+tumult--of which the interest is profound and eternal--of all the great
+affairs of human life. But though the descriptive poets during the
+period between Milton and Thomson were few and indifferent, no reason is
+there in this world for imagining, with Mr Wordsworth, that men had
+forgotten both the heavens and the earth. They had not--nor was the
+wonder with which they must have regarded the great shows of nature, the
+"natural product of ignorance," then, any more than it is now, or ever
+was during a civilised age. If we be right in saying so--then neither
+could the admiration which "The Seasons," on the first appearance of
+that glorious poem, excited, be said, with any truth, to have been but a
+"wonder, the natural product of ignorance."
+
+Mr Wordsworth having thus signally failed in his attempt to show that
+"much of what Thomson's biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in
+fact, have been blind wonderment," let us accompany him in his equally
+futile efforts to show "how the rest is to be accounted for." He
+attempts to do so after this fashion: "Thomson was fortunate in the very
+title of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared
+sympathies of every one; in the next place, notwithstanding his high
+powers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ornaments are exactly
+of that kind which would be most likely to strike the undiscerning. He
+likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in
+which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any
+well-used copy of 'The Seasons,' the book generally opens of itself with
+the Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon and
+Musidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, and
+are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient
+in first recommending the author to general notice."
+
+Thomson, in one sense, _was fortunate_ in the _title_ of his poem. But a
+great poet like Wordsworth might--nay, ought to have chosen another
+word--or have given of that word a loftier explanation, when applied to
+Thomson's _choice_ of the Seasons for the subject of his immortal poem.
+Genius made that choice--not fortune. The "Seasons" are not merely the
+"_title_" of his poem--they are his poem, and his poem is the Seasons.
+But how, pray, can Thomson be said to have been _fortunate_ in the
+_title_ or the subject either of his poem, in the sense that Mr
+Wordsworth means? Why, according to him, people knew little, and cared
+less, about the Seasons. "The art of seeing had in some measure been
+learned!" That he allows--but that was all--and that all is but
+little--and surely far from being enough to have disposed people in
+general to listen to the strains of a poet who painted nature in all her
+moods, and under all her aspects. Thomson, then, we say, was either most
+_unfortunate_ in the title of his poem, or there was not with the many
+that indifference to, and ignorance of natural scenery, on which Mr
+Wordsworth so strenuously insists as part, or rather whole, of his
+preceding argument.
+
+The title, Mr Wordsworth says, seemed "to bring the poem home to the
+_prepared sympathies_ of every one!" What! to the prepared sympathies of
+those who had merely, in some measure, learned the "art of seeing," and
+who had "paid," as he says in another sentence, "little accurate
+attention to the appearances of nature!" Never did the weakest mind ever
+fall into grosser contradictions than does here one of the strongest, in
+vainly labouring to bolster up a silly assertion, which he has
+desperately ventured on from a most mistaken conceit that it was
+necessary to account for the kind of reception which his own poetry had
+met with from the present age. The truth is, that had Mr Wordsworth
+known, when he indited these luckless and helpless sentences, that his
+own poetry was, in the best sense of the word, a thousand times more
+popular than he supposed it to be--and Heaven be praised, for the honour
+of the age, it was and is so!--never had they been written, nor had he
+here and elsewhere laboured to prove that in proportion as poetry is
+bad, or rather as it is no poetry at all, is it, has been, and always
+will be, more and more popular in the age contemporary with the writer.
+That Thomson, in "The Seasons," _sometimes_ writes a _vicious style_,
+may be true; but it is not true that he _often_ does so. His style has
+its faults, no doubt, and some of them inextricably interwoven with the
+web of his composition. It is a dangerous style to imitate--especially
+to dunces. But its _virtue is divine_; and that _divine virtue_, even in
+this low world of ours, wins admiration more surely and widely than
+_earthly vice_--be it in words, thoughts, feelings, or actions--is a
+creed that we will not relinquish at the beck or bidding even of the
+great author of "The Excursion."
+
+That many did--do--and will admire the bad or indifferent passages in
+"The Seasons"--won by their false glitter or commonplace sentimentalism,
+is no doubt true: but the delight, though as intense as perhaps it may
+be foolish, with which boys and virgins, woman-mantuamakers and
+man-milliners, and "the rest," peruse the Rhapsody on Love--one passage
+of which we ventured to be facetious on in our Soliloquy on the
+Seasons--and hang over the picture of Musidora undressing, while Damon
+watches the process of disrobement, panting behind a tree, will never
+account for the admiration with which the whole world hailed the
+"Winter," the first published of "The Seasons;" during which, Thomson
+had not the barbarity to plunge any young lady naked into the cold bath,
+nor the ignorance to represent, during such cold weather, any young lady
+turning her lover sick by the ardour of her looks, and the vehemence of
+her whole enamoured deportment. The time never was--nor could have
+been--when such passages were generally esteemed the glory of the poem.
+Indeed, independently of its own gross absurdity, the assertion is at
+total variance with that other assertion, equally absurd, that people
+admired most in the poem what they least understood; for the Rhapsody on
+Love is certainly very intelligible, nor does there seem much mystery in
+Musidora going into the water to wash and cool herself on a hot day. Is
+it not melancholy, then, to hear such a man as Mr Wordsworth,
+earnestly, and even somewhat angrily, trying to prove that "these are
+the parts of the work which, after all, were probably most efficient in
+first recommending the author to general notice?"
+
+With respect to the "sentimental commonplaces with which Thomson
+abounds," no doubt they were and are popular; and many of them deserve
+to be so, for they are on a level with the usual current of human
+feeling, and many of them are eminently beautiful. Thomson had not the
+philosophical genius of Wordsworth, but he had a warm human heart, and
+its generous feelings overflow all his poem. These are not the most
+poetical parts of "The Seasons," certainly, where such effusions
+prevail; but still, so far from being either _vicious_ or _worthless_,
+they have often a virtue and a worth that must be felt by all the
+children of men. There is something not very credible in the situation
+of the parties in the story of the "lovely young Lavinia," for example,
+and much of the sentiment is commonplace enough; but will Mr Wordsworth
+say--in support of his theory, that the worst poetry is always at first
+(and at last too, it would seem, from the pleasure with which that tale
+is still read by all simple minds) the most popular--that that story is
+a bad one? It is a very beautiful one.
+
+Mr Wordsworth, in all his argumentation, is so blinded by his
+determination to see everything in but one light, and that a most
+mistaken one, that he is insensible to the conclusion to which it all
+leads, or rather, which is involved in it. Why, according to him, _even
+now_, when people have not only learned the "art of seeing"--a blessing
+for which they can never be too thankful--but when descriptive poetry
+has long flourished far beyond its palmiest state in any other era of
+our literature, still are we poor common mortals who admire "The
+Seasons," just as deaf and blind now, or nearly so, to their real
+merits--allowed to be transcendent--as our unhappy forefathers were when
+that poem first appeared, "a glorious apparition." The Rhapsody on Love,
+and Damon and Musidora, are still, according to him, its chief
+attraction--its false ornaments--and its sentimental commonplaces--such
+as those, we presume, on the benefits of early rising, and,
+
+    "Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!"
+
+What a nest of ninnies must people in general be in Mr Wordsworth's
+eyes! And is "The Excursion" not to be placed by the side of "Paradise
+Lost," till the Millennium?
+
+Such is the _reasoning (!)_ of one of the first of our English poets,
+against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentence
+there is which we had forgotten--but now remember--which is to help us
+to distinguish, in the case of the reception "The Seasons" met with,
+between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work is
+the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of
+the year; _and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself
+to treat his subject as became a poet_!" How original and profound!
+Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public,
+returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is
+the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the
+people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to
+regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of
+ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All
+poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are
+wretchedly prosaic--die and are buried, or what is worse, protract a
+miserable existence, in spite of their sentimental commonplaces, false
+ornaments, and a vicious style. But Thomson, in spite of all these,
+leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still more glorious
+immortality.
+
+There is no mystery in the matter. Thomson--a great poet--poured his
+genius over a subject of universal interest; and "The Seasons" from that
+hour to this--then, now, and for ever--have been, are, and will be
+loved, and admired by all the world. All over Scotland "The Seasons" is
+a household book. Let the taste and feeling shown by the Collectors of
+Elegant Extracts be poor as possible; yet Thomson's countrymen, high and
+low, rich and poor, have all along not only gloried in his illustrious
+fame, but have made a very manual of his great work. It lies in many
+thousand cottages. We have ourselves seen it in the shepherd's shieling,
+and in the woodsman's bower--small, yellow-leaved, tatter'd, mean,
+miserable, calf-skin-bound, smoked, _stinking_ copies--let us not fear
+to utter the word, ugly but true--yet perused, pored, and pondered over
+by those humble dwellers, by the winter ingle or on the summer brae,
+perhaps with as enlightened--certainly with as imagination-overmastering
+a delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born and
+highly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly-carved tables,
+and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of painting
+strives to embody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lend its
+beauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortal
+spirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for many
+centuries in Scotland. Men, women, and children, all look up to her
+loveful blue or wrathful black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keeps
+growing from the cradle to the grave. Say not that 'tis alone
+
+    "The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
+    Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind!"
+
+In Scriptural language, loftier even than that, the same imagery is
+applied to the sights seen by the true believer. Who is it "that maketh
+the clouds His chariot?" The Scottish peasantry--Highland and
+Lowland--look much and often on nature thus; and they live in the heart
+of the knowledge and of the religion of nature. Therefore do they love
+Thomson as an inspired bard--only a little lower than the Prophets. In
+like manner have the people of Scotland--from time immemorial--enjoyed
+the use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not
+deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we
+have quoted--we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his
+boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far
+away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not
+thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the
+mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here
+eternise on earth" his joy--but many millions have had souls to join
+religiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one
+mighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded,
+
+    "These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
+      Are but the varied God!"
+
+
+
+
+THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.
+
+
+Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how
+grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that
+glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more
+delightful even than the green--and we prayed that the fine fleecy
+flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No
+sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles.
+Then, it was a year in itself--a whole life. We remember slides a
+quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down
+the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one
+leg now--not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of
+skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain
+for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of
+its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream.
+They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry
+of "swoop-swoop" is heard still--but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned
+cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make
+the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars--those
+in the sky, as well as those below the ice--till again the tumult
+subsided--and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as
+a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a
+pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on
+the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray,
+seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of
+him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his
+awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single
+crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep,
+like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!
+
+Again we see--again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of a
+drift in the minister's glebe, a drift--judging by the steeple, which
+was sixty--about twenty feet high--and purer than any marble. The roof
+was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch
+of the palace was pillared--and the character of the building outside
+was, without any servile imitation--for we worked in the glow of
+original genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or its
+picture--wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in
+a superb hall, lighted up--not with gas, for up to that era gas had not
+been used except in Pandemonium--but with a vast multitude of farthing
+candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall--while a chandelier of
+frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in
+a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North--then
+the king of boys, as now of men--and proud were his subjects to do him
+homage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered with
+hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins--furnished by these animals slain
+by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland
+parish--the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from
+Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung--in sweet single
+voice--or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on
+his way to the lone Kings-well; and then in the intermediate hush, old
+tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the
+Barns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling--or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring
+in caves among the Cartlane Craigs--or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on
+his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on
+his thundering war-steed, armed cap-à-pie, while the King of Scotland
+had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of
+the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying
+song!
+
+Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With
+those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss
+of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in
+flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy
+frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people
+themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table
+stood a huge bowl--not of snow--steaming with nectar that made Hyems
+smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister
+himself--with his mother and sister--was with us in our fantastic
+festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering
+praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin
+scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle
+jig or strathspey--and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a
+confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and
+maddened by many a whoop and yell--so like savages were we in our glee,
+dancing at the marriage of some island king!
+
+Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away--and of all
+who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as
+then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever--let us
+then live well and wisely; and when death comes--from that sleep how
+blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost--no snow--but the sun of
+eternal life.
+
+Mercy on us! what a hubbub!--Can the harriers be hunting in such a
+snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous
+pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why--Imagination, thou art an
+ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a
+country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as
+in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his
+helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many
+of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet
+pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the
+Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce--all come alike to him; and
+of all the bards we have ever known--and the sum total cannot be under a
+thousand--he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye,
+labours under the blessing or the curse--we wot not whilk it be--of
+perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a
+springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil
+in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers
+up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements,
+to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The
+corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood;
+and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will
+bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels,
+by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be
+fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with
+guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground
+floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with
+a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we
+should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against
+the best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale,
+Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves--while, with the
+steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring
+would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?
+
+Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyes
+in your head--only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bash
+that shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue,
+_alias_ the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has
+chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of
+that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School.
+Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all
+foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux
+Booby--and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero.
+
+    "The combat deepens--on, ye brave,
+    Who rush to glory or the grave!
+    Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave,
+      And charge with all thy schoolery!"
+
+Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, in
+solid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the
+dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great
+Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last
+night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall--and a better day for a
+bicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, and
+prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up in
+drifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs, flung out in front,
+commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the
+yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the
+shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their
+places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, and
+scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close,
+
+    "Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!"
+
+"Let fly," cries a clear voice--and the snowball storm hurtles through
+the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the
+foe--their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked
+bat-like--and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower
+of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless
+School--silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some
+doughty champion in the adverse legion.
+
+See--see--the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens take ignominiously to
+flight--and the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie alone are left to bear the
+brunt of battle. A dreadful brotherhood! But the bashing balls are
+showered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms--and
+the day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men than
+devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at
+them!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and earocks!" No sooner
+said than done. Bob Howie is buried--and the whole School is trampling
+on its Master!
+
+    "Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,
+    On Fontarabian echoes borne,
+      That to King Charles did come,
+    When Rowland brave and Olivier,
+    And every paladin and peer,
+      On Roncesvalles died!"
+
+The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie,
+have echoed o'er the hill, and,
+
+    "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
+
+the runaways, shaking the snows of panic from their pows,
+
+    "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane,"
+
+come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The high
+heroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, and
+the sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. What
+bashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips what
+slittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, and
+claps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that drops
+unlaunched at his feet. The School are broken--their hearts die within
+them--and--can we trust our blasted eyes?--the white livers show the
+white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs
+and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them--and "happy in my
+mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the
+tidings of this wretched overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are flying
+before Six!--and half of sixty--oh! that we should record it!--_are
+pretending to be dead!!_ Would indeed that the snow were their
+winding-sheet, so that it might but hide our dishonour!
+
+Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the
+gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or
+rather--hear, spirit of Homer!--like some great, shaggy, outlandish
+wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a
+fortnight's famine on the bare sea-cliffs, been driven by the hunger
+that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only
+be slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till,
+snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like
+creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the
+woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless
+hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another--till, as it
+might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies
+down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the
+blood off his flews and paws--and then, looking and listening round with
+his red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious of
+crime and fearful of punishment, soon as he sees and hears that all the
+coast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind the
+ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till,
+sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and
+coiling himself up all his wiry length--now no longer lank, but swollen
+and knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake--he falls suddenly
+asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder.
+
+That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in
+that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie
+and the Mad Dominie--and the School like such silly sheep. Those other
+hell-dogs are leaping in the rear--and to the eyes of fear and flight
+each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their
+mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue the
+pell-mell of the panic.
+
+Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporeal fear. What
+though it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened--no, brightened
+by the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight--some
+hard as stones--some soft as slush--some blae and drippy in the cold-hot
+hand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are the
+teazers--some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken ere
+they reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria coeli"--and some useless
+from the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than the
+foziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly.
+
+Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School!
+Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods.
+Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer!
+Twos and threes in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And
+here and there--woefullest sight of all--single boys distractedly
+ettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses--with their heads all the
+while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their
+eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over
+neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall,
+and in a moment evanished from this upper world!
+
+Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent,--the
+magpies chatter pert even in alarm,--the lean kine, collected on the
+lown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet--their horns moving, but not
+their tails,--while the tempest-tamed bull--almost dull now as an
+ox--gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow.
+
+But who is he--the tall slender boy--slender, but sinewy--a wiry
+chap--five feet eight on his stocking-soles--and on his stocking-soles
+he stands--for the snow has sucked his shoes from his feet--that plants
+himself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, a
+juvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, and
+fiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls and
+rallies the shattered School, that he may re-lead them to victory? The
+phantom of a visionary dream! KIT NORTH HIMSELF--
+
+    "In life's morning march when his spirit was young."
+
+And once on a day was that figure--ours! Then like a chamois-hunter of
+the Alps! Now, alas! like--
+
+    "But be hush'd, my dark spirit--for wisdom condemns,
+      When the faint and the feeble deplore;
+    Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stems
+      A thousand wild waves on the shore.
+    Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain,
+      Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate;
+    _Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vain_
+    Shall awake not a pang of remembrance again;
+      _To bear, is to conquer our fate!_"
+
+Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if young
+Kit had become not old Kit--but were standing now as then front to
+front, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the Mad
+Dominie and Bob Howie--both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or
+Stone bicker--in street, lane, or muir fight--hand to hand,
+single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gypsies--or in irregular
+high-road row--two to twelve--with a gang of Irish horse-coupers from
+the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 'Tis a
+strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore--to
+lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past.
+Or rather to admire One's Self as he _was_, without consciousness of the
+mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt
+with which One regards One's Self as he _is_, shrivelled up into a sort
+of shrimp of a man--or blown out into a flounder.
+
+The Snowball bicker owns an armistice--and Kit North--that is, we of the
+olden and the golden time--advance into the debatable ground between the
+two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad
+Dominie loved us, because then-a-days--bating and barring the cock and
+the squint of his eye--we were like himself a poet, and while a goose
+might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of
+a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob--God bless him!--to guard us
+from scathe would have risked his life against a whole craal of tinkers.
+With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up--and
+we are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stain
+which must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys and
+men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed of
+everlasting fame! Even so is it now with us--when sternly eyeing the
+other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge--not at
+long bowls--but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the naked
+mawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with the
+carrots, who, by moonlight nights,
+
+    "Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play,"
+
+had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly our
+jackets and stocks--it is not a day for buff--and at it like bull-dogs.
+Twice before had we fought him--at our own option--over the bonnet; for
+'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, after
+the first close, in which we lose the fall--with straight right-handers
+we keep him at off-fighting--and that was a gush of blood from his
+smeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush,
+he makes a plunge with his heavy left--for he was ker-handed--at our
+stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud
+admiration of Bob Howie--and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not
+choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the
+ogles--and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School--and, lifted
+on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised at
+Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly a
+ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We know
+that we have him--and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" And
+now we play around him,
+
+    "Just like unto a trundling mop,
+    Or a wild-goose at play."
+
+He is brought down now to our own weight--then nine stone jimp--his
+eyes are getting momently more and more pig-like--water-logged, like
+those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of
+the old Abbey Church of Paisley--and bat-blind, he hits past our head
+and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn.
+Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple--and down
+he sinks like a poppy--deaf to the call of "time"--and victory smiles
+upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra--hurra--hurra! Christopher
+for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie--he,
+the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the
+shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an
+overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg
+Whitelaw--shake hands cordially, and
+
+    "Off to some other game we all together flew."
+
+And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised in
+our Prose-Poem.
+
+Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry
+with them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the world
+were there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we have
+heard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood--forgetting what our great
+Philosophical Poet--after Milton and Dryden--has told them, that
+
+    "The boy is father of the man,"
+
+and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must
+he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven.
+Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him
+on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven
+only knows how many million years old, every night sparkling in
+happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in
+his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face,
+was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in
+boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the
+ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire
+superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds
+nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or
+white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession.
+The soul afterwards perfects her palace--building up tier after tier of
+all imaginable orders of architecture--till the shadowy roof, gleaming
+with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the
+heavens ablaze.
+
+Gaze up on the highest idea--gaze down on the profoundest emotion--and
+you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You
+become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of
+metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious
+consciousness of the thought "BEFORE!" Try then to fix its date, and
+back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now
+in darkness visible--now launching along lines of steady lustre, such as
+the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes--now dazzled by
+sudden contrast--
+
+    "Blind with excess of light!"
+
+But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras
+after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet
+instant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath,
+during all that perilous pilgrimage--and perilous must it be, haunted by
+so many ghosts--never may it reach the shrine it seeks--the fountain
+from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out
+of the world of time--dare we say--in eternity!
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS DREAMS.
+
+
+How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifying
+the dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over the
+mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily
+before our eyes!--leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, that
+can bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier and
+steadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomable
+depth!--the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, the
+hours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a different living, and
+peopled, and haunted world. One life is a thousand lives, and each
+individual, as he fully renews the past, reappears in a thousand
+characters; yet all of them bearing a mysterious identity not to be
+misunderstood, and all of them, while every passion has been shifting
+and ceasing, and reascending into power, still under the dominion of the
+same Conscience, that feels and knows it is from God.
+
+Who will complain of the shortness of human life, that can re-travel all
+the windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden since
+the farthest back hour at which memory pauses, baffled and blindfolded,
+as she vainly tries to penetrate and illumine the palpable, the
+impervious darkness that shrouds the few first years of our inscrutable
+being? Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now remember
+it, the Time we first pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wondering
+in our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softness
+all their own--a yellowness nowhere else so vivid--"the bright
+consummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among the
+lowly grass--lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all the
+stars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the blue
+fields of heaven! Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand in
+hand with our golden-haired sister! Long, long, long ago, the day on
+which she died--the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that can now
+darken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, slowly into
+the horrid clay, and we were borne death-like, and wishing to die, out
+of the churchyard, that, from that moment, we thought we could enter
+never more! What a multitudinous being must ours have been, when, before
+our boyhood was gone, we could have forgotten her buried face! or at the
+dream of it, dashed off a tear, and away, with a bounding heart, in the
+midst of a cloud of playmates, breaking into fragments on the hill-side,
+and hurrying round the shores of those wild moorland lochs, in vain hope
+to surprise the heron that slowly uplifted his blue bulk, and floated
+away, regardless of our shouts, to the old castle woods. It is all like
+a reminiscence of some other state of existence.
+
+Then, after all the joys and sorrows of those few years, which we now
+call transitory, but which our BOYHOOD felt as if they would be
+endless--as if they would endure for ever--arose upon us the glorious
+dawning of another new life--YOUTH--with its insupportable sunshine, and
+its agitating storms. Transitory, too, we now know, and well deserving
+the same name of dream. But while it lasted, long, various, and
+agonising; as, unable to sustain the eyes that first revealed to us the
+light of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, looking up to
+moon and stars, invocated in sacred oaths, hugged the very heavens to
+our heart. Yet life had not then nearly reached its meridian, journeying
+up the sunbright firmament. How long hung it there exulting, when "it
+flamed on the forehead of the noontide sky!" Let not the Time be
+computed by the lights and shadows of the years, but by the innumerable
+array of visionary thoughts, that kept deploying as if from one eternity
+into another--now in dark sullen masses, now in long array, brightened
+as if with spear-points and standards, and moving along through chasm,
+abyss, and forest, and over the summits of the highest mountains, to the
+sound of ethereal music, now warlike and tempestuous--now, as "from
+flutes and soft recorders" accompanying not pæans of victory but hymns
+of peace. That Life, too, seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a
+thousand years. Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon.
+And is there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which men fear
+to face--Age, Old Age! Four dreams within a dream--and _where_ to awake?
+
+At dead of night--and it is now dead of night--how the heart quakes on a
+sudden at the silent resurrection of buried thoughts! Perhaps the
+sunshine of some one single Sabbath of more exceeding holiness comes
+first glimmering, and then brightening upon us, with the very same
+sanctity that filled all the air at the tolling of the kirk-bell, when
+all the parish was hushed, and the voice of streams heard more
+distinctly among the banks and braes. Then, all at once, a thunderstorm,
+that many years before, or many years after, drove us, when walking
+alone over the mountains, into a shieling, will seem to succeed; and we
+behold the same threatening aspect of the heavens that then quailed our
+beating hearts, and frowned down our eyelids before the lightning began
+to flash, and the black rain to deluge all the glens. No need now for
+any effort of thought. The images rise of themselves--independently of
+our volition--as if another being, studying the working of our minds,
+conjured up the phantasmagoria before us who are beholding it with love,
+wonder, and fear. Darkness and silence have a power of sorcery over the
+past; the soul has then, too, often restored to it feelings and thoughts
+that it had lost, and is made to know that nothing it once experiences
+ever perishes, but that all things spiritual possess a principle of
+immortal life.
+
+Why linger on the shadowy wall some of those phantasmagoria--returning
+after they have disappeared--and reluctant to pass away into their
+former oblivion? Why shoot others athwart the gloom, quick as spectral
+figures seen hurrying among mountains during a great storm? Why do some
+glare and threaten--why others fade away with a melancholy smile? Why
+_that one_--a Figure all in white, and with white roses in her
+hair--come forward through the haze, beautifying into distincter form
+and face, till her pale beseeching hands almost touch our neck--and
+then, in a moment, it is as nothing?
+
+But now the room is disenchanted--and feebly our lamp is glimmering,
+about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it is
+trimmed again--and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within
+us like a festal strain. And To-Morrow--To-Morrow is Merry Christmas;
+and when its night descends there will be mirth and music, and the
+light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy
+walls--and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room,
+will be banished far over the sea--and morning will be reluctant to
+allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.
+
+Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration,
+painted according to nature--what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a
+sameness would pervade them all--but only that kind of sameness that
+pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common
+eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon
+and some stars--a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few
+castellated, clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a family
+resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him
+who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and
+frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with
+the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that
+illumine those skies--and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be
+black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.
+
+    "Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"--
+
+is a fine line of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces
+the air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will last
+to the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor
+irrecoverable by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike;
+though many a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems
+to be buried among the dead. But they are not dead--but only sleep;
+though to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, and
+we, wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passing
+sweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in our
+solitude?--as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our
+youth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly
+stand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment,
+and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close
+upon our heart.
+
+My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in spring, with the
+din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds
+on earth. It is the Christmas Holidays--Christmas Day itself--Christmas
+Night--and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were we
+brothers and sisters so dear to one another--never before had our hearts
+so yearned towards the authors of our being--our blissful being! There
+they sit--silent in all that outcry--composed in all that
+disarray--still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp
+sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a
+prisoner--a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be
+felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy-flight. One
+old game treads on the heels of another--twenty within the hour--and
+many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the
+collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of
+genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is a
+hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a forest when
+the moon drops behind the mountain, and the small green-robed People of
+Peace at once cease their pastime, and evanish. For She--the
+Silver-Tongued--is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alike
+hundreds of years old--and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall,
+with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below--and, ere
+another Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be
+mute on earth--but to be hymning in Heaven.
+
+Of that House--to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings--with its
+old ivied turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and with
+flowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed its
+foundations has vanished along with them--and a crowd of other
+buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single
+tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne;
+which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for
+one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we
+ourselves--then so linked in love that the band which bound us all
+together was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood--to be
+scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wild
+parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought
+together no more! The old Abbey--it still survives; and there, in that
+corner of the burial-ground, below that part of the wall which was
+least in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers and
+nests--there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and
+Venerated--for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years have
+fled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to
+have ceased to weep--so seldom to have remembered!--And then, with a
+powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the
+floods we all wept together--at no long interval--on those pale and
+placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, in
+their coffins.
+
+We believe that there is genius in all childhood. But the creative joy
+that makes it great in its simplicity dies a natural death or is killed,
+and genius dies with it. In favoured spirits, neither few nor many, the
+joy and the might survive; for you must know that unless it be
+accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it
+brings before us must be inspired with beauty--that is, with affection
+or passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their
+youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that
+blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely
+recollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys--if any such
+there were--in which their childhood played, the torrents, the
+waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the rocks, the heaven's imperial
+dome, the raven floating only a little lower than the eagle in the sky.
+To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must imagine his own nature.
+He must collect from many vanished hours the power of his untamed heart,
+and he must, perhaps, transfuse also something of his maturer mind into
+these dreams of his former being, thus linking the past with the present
+by a continuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken.
+So is it too with the calmer affections that have grown within the
+shelter of a roof. We do not merely remember, we imagine our father's
+house, the fireside, all his features then most living, now dead and
+buried; the very manner of his smile, every tone of his voice. We must
+combine with all the passionate and plastic power of imagination the
+spirit of a thousand happy hours into one moment; and we must invest
+with all that we ever felt to be venerable such an image as alone can
+satisfy our filial hearts. It is thus that imagination, which first
+aided the growth of all our holiest and happiest affections, can
+preserve them to us unimpaired--
+
+    "For she can give us back the dead,
+    Even in the loveliest looks they wore."
+
+Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated one year in this
+family, another year in that--none present but those whom Charles Lamb
+the Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in all
+features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin
+from one root--relations all, happy, and with no reason either to be
+ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth--their lot being
+cast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean," where the dwellings
+are connecting-links between the hut and the hall--fair edifices
+resembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expands
+or contracts their dimensions--in which Competence is next-door
+neighbour to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk of
+Contentment.
+
+Merry Christmases they were indeed--one Lady always presiding, with a
+figure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but then
+somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most
+venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her
+grandchildren's ears. Nor did those solemn eyes, bedimmed into a
+pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbs
+that had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity. Dearly
+she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave;
+but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voice
+that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that its
+accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that was
+heard in the silence, as from another world.
+
+Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves--uncles,
+aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and "the rest," it
+might be presumptuous in us, who were considered by ourselves and a few
+others not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of time
+to decide--especially in the affirmative; but how the roof did ring with
+sally, pun, retort, and repartee! Ay, with pun--a species of
+impertinence for which we have therefore a kindness even to this day.
+Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the good fortune to have been born a
+cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone at
+those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its
+different branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears;
+and we think we hear ourselves--all those uncles and aunts, nephews and
+nieces, and cousins--singing now! Easy is it to "warble melody" as to
+breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to
+people in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts ours
+used to be at Seconds! Yet the most woeful failures were rapturously
+encored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most extraordinary
+voices indeed, every one hoarser than another, till at last, walking
+home with a fair cousin, there was nothing left for it but a tender
+glance of the eye--a tender pressure of the hand--for cousins are not
+altogether sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character,
+possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms of their own;
+as didst thou, Emily the "Wild-cap!"--That _sobriquet_ all forgotten
+now--for now thou art a matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elf
+fair and frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest and
+wisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancings, thy singings, and thy
+showering smiles.
+
+On rolled Suns and Seasons--the old died--the elderly became old--and
+the young, one after another, were wafted joyously away on the wings of
+hope, like birds almost as soon as they can fly ungratefully forsaking
+their nests and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed their
+pinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few days trimmed
+their snow-white sails in the land-locked bay, close to whose shores of
+silvery sand had grown the trees that furnished timber both for hull and
+mast, slip their tiny cables on some summer-day, and gathering every
+breeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in sunshine, and melt far
+off into the main. Or, haply, some were like fair young trees,
+transplanted during no favourable season, and never to take root in
+another soil, but soon leaf and branch to wither beneath the tropic sun,
+and die almost unheeded by those who knew not how beautiful they had
+been beneath the dews and mists of their own native climate.
+
+Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too painfully to touch
+the heart. For some hearts grow cold and forbidding with selfish
+cares--some, warm as ever in their own generous glow, were touched by
+the chill of Fortune's frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenly
+succeeding her smiles--some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took
+refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past--duty
+banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home--estrangements
+there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet ere long, though
+causeless, complete--changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in
+the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came
+thereby at last to be friends no more--unrequited love broke some
+bonds--requited love relaxed others--the death of one altered the
+conditions of many--and so--year after year--the Christmas Meeting was
+interrupted--deferred--till finally it ceased with one accord, unrenewed
+and unrenewable. For when Some Things cease for a time--that time turns
+out to be for ever.
+
+Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be--should these imperfect
+remembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life's
+busy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards the
+inditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts--for his,
+though "absent long and distant far," has never been utterly forgetful
+of the loves and friendships that charmed his youth. To be parted in
+body is not to be estranged in spirit--and many a dream and many a
+vision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pass before the mind of
+one whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather the
+expression of a doubt--of a fear--than of a belief or a conviction. The
+soul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through all
+intervening darkness--and of those more especially dear it keeps within
+itself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think it
+not, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishable
+as they are hallowed.
+
+All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists of
+morning--ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing that
+famous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnight
+hush--methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music--
+
+    "Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
+    The pealing anthem swells the note of praise!"
+
+How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale,
+pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with here
+and there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to the
+memory of the pious--the immortal dead. Some great clock is striking
+from one of many domes--from the majestic Tower of St Mary Magdalen--and
+in the deepened hush that follows the solemn sound, the mingling waters
+of the Cherwell and the Isis soften the severe silence of the holy
+night.
+
+Remote from kindred, and from all the friendships that were the native
+growth of the fair fields where our boyhood and our youth had roamed and
+meditated and dreamed, those were indeed years of high and lofty mood
+which held us in converse with the shades of great Poets and Sages of
+old in Rhedicyna's hallowed groves, still, serene, and solemn, as that
+Attic Academe where divine Plato, with all Hybla on his lips, discoursed
+such excellent music that his life seemed to the imagination
+spiritualised--a dim reminiscence of some former state of being. How
+sank then the Christmas Service of that beautiful Liturgy into our
+hearts! Not faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers had
+loved; but Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings that
+rose within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir of
+youthful voices so sweetly to join the diapason,--our eyes fixed all the
+while on that divine Picture over the Altar, of our Saviour
+
+    "Bearing his cross up rueful Calvary."
+
+The City of Palaces disappears--and in the setting sunlight we behold
+mountains of soft crimson snow! The sun hath set, and even more
+beautiful are the bright-starred nights of winter, than summer in all
+its glories beneath the broad moons of June. Through the woods of
+Windermere, from cottage to cottage, by coppice-pathways winding up to
+dwellings among the hill-rocks where the birch-trees cease to grow--
+
+    "Nodding their heads, before us go,
+    The merry minstrelsy."
+
+They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young by
+their Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales to
+the hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of the
+dancers ever and anon crossing the light of the star-like window, and
+the merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. Across those
+humble thresholds often did we on Christmas-week nights of
+yore--wandering through our solitary sylvan haunts, under the branches
+of trees within whose hollow trunk the squirrel slept--venture in,
+unasked perhaps, but not unwelcome, and, in the kindly spirit of the
+season, did our best to merrify the Festival by tale or song. And now
+that we behold them not, are all those woods, and cliffs, and rivers,
+and tarns, and lakes, as beautiful as when they softened and brightened
+beneath our living eyes, half-creating, as they gazed, the very world
+they worshipped? And are all those hearths as bright as of yore, without
+the shadow of our figure? And the roofs, do they ring as mirthfully,
+though our voice be forgotten? We hang over Westmoreland, an
+unobserved--but observant star. Mountains, hills, rocks, knolls, vales,
+woods, groves, single trees, dwellings--all asleep! O Lakes! but ye are,
+indeed, by far too beautiful! O fortunate Isles! too fair for human
+habitation, fit abode for the Blest! It will not hide itself--it will
+not sink into the earth--it will rise; and risen, it will stand steady
+with its shadow in the overpowering moonlight, that ONE TREE! that ONE
+HOUSE!--and well might the sight of ye two together--were it
+harder--break our heart. But hard at all it is not--therefore it is but
+crushed.
+
+Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higher
+than the Andes in heaven--but sole-sitting at midnight in a small
+chamber--a melancholy man are we--and there seems a smile of
+consolation, O Wordsworth! on thy sacred Bust.
+
+Alas! how many heavenly days, "seeming immortal in their depth of rest,"
+have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memory
+even of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Our
+spirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in her
+records--blanks are there that ought to have been painted with
+imperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning on
+life's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensation--for who
+can bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on the
+ghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come when
+we call on them to comfort us, are too often at our side when in our
+anguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion.
+Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary--they come and
+go like forms and shapes still imbued with life. Shall we vainly stretch
+out our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek to
+intrench ourselves by thoughts of this world against their visitation?
+The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love to
+resign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, they
+being dead! Shall we the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in
+other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on
+their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and
+show to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed by
+remorse and penitence!
+
+Sometimes we have fears about our memory--that it is decaying; for,
+lately, many ordinary yet interesting occurrences and events, which we
+regarded at the time with pain or pleasure, have been slipping away
+almost into oblivion, and have often alarmed us of a sudden by their
+return, not to any act of recollection, but of themselves, sometimes
+wretchedly out of place and season, the mournful obtruding upon the
+merry, and worse, the merry upon the mournful--confusion, by no fault of
+ours, of piteous and of gladsome faces--tears where smiles were a duty
+as well as a delight, and smiles where nature demanded, and religion
+hallowed, a sacrifice of tears.
+
+For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters as
+fine as frostwork filigree, which we could not break without destroying
+a whole world of endearment. That seems an obscure image; but it means
+what the Germans would call in English--our winter environment. We are
+imprisoned in a net of our own weaving--an invisible net; yet we can see
+it when we choose--just as a bird can see, when he chooses, the wires of
+his cage, that are invisible in his happiness, as he keeps hopping and
+fluttering about all day long, or haply dreaming on his perch with his
+poll under his plumes--as free in confinement as if let loose into the
+boundless sky. That seems an obscure image too; but we mean, in truth,
+the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is; and we have
+improved on that idea, for we have built our own--and are prisoner,
+turnkey, and jailer all in one, and 'tis noiseless as the house of
+sleep. Or what if we declare that Christopher North is a king in his
+palace, with no subjects but his own thoughts--his rule peaceful over
+those lights and shadows--and undisputed to reign over them his right
+divine.
+
+The opening year in a town, now, answers in all things to our heart's
+desire. How beautiful the smoky air! The clouds have a homely look as
+they hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they loved
+their birthplace; all unlike those heartless clouds that keep
+_stravaiging_ over mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the sky! Poets
+speak of living rocks, but what is their life to that of houses? Who
+ever saw a rock with eyes--that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, and
+stone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house
+without eyes--that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the good old
+Conservative grudges not the assessed taxes--his optics are as cheerful
+as the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the setting
+sun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a
+mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an
+avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you
+to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a
+Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A
+grove in winter, bole and branch--leaves it has none--is as dry as a
+volume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparks
+of heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the heart's blood
+circulates through the system like rosy wine.
+
+But a truce to comparisons; for we are beginning to feel contrition for
+our crime against the country, and, with humbled head and heart, we
+beseech you to pardon us--ye rocks of Pavey-Ark, the pillared palaces of
+the storms--ye clouds, now wreathing a diadem for the forehead of
+Helvellyn--ye trees, that hang the shadows of your undying beauty over
+the "one perfect chrysolite" of blessed Windermere!
+
+Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an apparition waving peace
+and goodwill to all dwellers in the land of dreams. In plainer but not
+simpler words (for words are like flowers, often rich in their
+simplicity--witness the Lily, and Solomon's Song)--Christian people all,
+we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New-Year, in town or in
+country--or in ships at sea.
+
+A Happy New-Year!--Ah! ere this ARIA, sung _sotto voce_, reach your ears
+(eyes are ears, and ears eyes), the week of all weeks will be over and
+gone, and the New-Year will seem growing out of the old year's
+ashes!--for the year is your only Phoenix. But what with time to do
+has a wish--a hope--a prayer! Their power is in the Spirit that gives
+them birth. And what is Spirit but the well-head of thoughts and
+feelings flowing and overflowing all life, yet leaving the well-head
+full of water as ever--so lucid, that on your gazing intently into its
+depths, it seems to become a large soft spiritual eye, reflecting the
+heavens and the earth; and no one knows what the heavens and the earth
+are, till he has seen them there--for that God made the heavens and the
+earth we feel from that beautiful revelation--and where feeling is not,
+knowledge is dead, and a blank the universe. Love is life. The unloving
+merely breathe. A single sweet beat of the heart is token of something
+spiritual that will be with us again in Paradise. "O, bliss and beauty!
+are these our feelings"--thought we once in a dream--"all circling in
+the sunshine--fair-plumed in a flight of doves!" The vision kept sailing
+on the sky--"to and fro for our delight"--no sound on their wings more
+than on their breasts; and they melted away in light as if they were
+composed of light--and in the hush we heard high-up and far-off
+music--as of an angel's song.
+
+That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broad
+awake--and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of the
+common day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof--and it
+inspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the whole
+world, then, promise henceforth to love us?--and we promise henceforth
+to love the whole world.
+
+It seems the easiest of all easy things to be kind and good--and then it
+is so pleasant! "Self-love and social are the same," beyond all
+question; and in that lies the nobility of our nature. The intensest
+feeling of self is that of belonging to a brotherhood. All selves then
+know they have duties which are in truth loves--and loves are
+joys--whether breathed in silence, or uttered in words, or embodied in
+actions; and if they filled all life, then all life would be good--and
+heaven would be no more than a better earth. And how may all men go to
+heaven? By making themselves a heaven on earth, and thus preparing their
+spirits to breathe empyreal air when they have dropped the dust. And how
+may they make for themselves a heaven on earth? By building up a happy
+HOME FOR THE HEART. Much, but not all--oh! not nearly all--is in the
+site. But it must be within the precincts of the holy ground--and within
+hearing of the waters of life.
+
+Pleasures of Imagination! Pleasures of Memory! Pleasures of Hope! All
+three most delightful poems; yet all the thoughts and all the feelings
+that inspired them--etherealised--will not make--FAITH! "The day-spring
+from on high hath visited us!" Blessed is he who feels that line--nor
+need his heart die within him, were a voice to be heard at midnight
+saying--"This New-Year's day shall be thy last!"
+
+One voice--one young voice--all by its sweet, sad, solitary self,
+singing to us a Christmas Hymn! Listening to that music is like looking
+at the sky with all its stars.
+
+Was it a spirit?
+
+    "Millions of spiritual creatures walk unseen,
+    Sole or responsive to each other's voice,
+    Hymning their great Creator."
+
+No, the singer, like ourselves, is mortal; and in that thought, to our
+hearts, lies the pathos of her prayers. The angels, veiling their faces
+with their wings, sing in their bliss hallelujahs round the throne of
+heaven; but she--a poor child of clay, with her face veiled but with the
+shades of humility and contrition, while
+
+    "Some natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon,"--
+
+sings, in her sorrow, supplications to be suffered to see afar-off its
+everlasting gates--opening not surely for her own sake--for all of woman
+born are sinful--and even she in what love calls her innocence feels
+that her fallen being does of itself deserve but to die. The hymn is
+fading away, liker and liker an echo, and our spirit having lost it in
+the distance, returns back holier to the heart-hush of home.
+
+The million hunger and thirst after the stronger and darker passions;
+nothing will go down with them but _the intense_. They are
+intolerant--or careless--or even ashamed of those emotions and
+affections that compose the blessing of our daily life, and give its
+lustre to the fire on the hearth of every Christian household. Yet, for
+all that, they are inexperienced in those same stronger and darker
+passions of which they prate, and know nothing of the import of those
+pictures of them painted, with background of gloom and foreground of
+fire, in the works of the truly great masters. The disturbed spirit of
+such delineations is far beyond the reaches of their souls; and they
+mistake their own senseless stupor for solemn awe--or their own mere
+physical excitement for the enthusiasm of imagination soaring through
+the storm on the wings of intellect. There are such things in "Satan's
+Invisible World Displayed" in poetry, as strong and dark passions; and
+they who are acquainted with their origin and end call them _bad_
+passions; but the good passions are not dark, but bright--and they are
+strong too, stronger than death or the grave.
+
+All human beings who know how to reap
+
+        "The harvest of a quiet eye,
+    That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"
+
+feel, by the touch, the flowers of affection in every handful of beauty
+they gather up from those fortunate fields on which shines, for ever
+through all seasons, the sun of life. How soft the leaves! and, as they
+meet the eye, how fair! Framed, so might it seem, of green dew
+consolidated into fragrance. Nor do they fade when gently taken from
+their stalk on its native bed. They flourish for ever if you bruise them
+not--sensitive indeed; and, if you are so forgetful as to treat them
+rashly, like those of the plant that bears that name, they shrink, and
+seem to shrivel for a time--growing pale, as if upbraiding your
+harshness; but cherished, they are seen to be all of
+
+    "Immortal amaranth, the tree that grows
+    Fast by the throne of God;"
+
+for the seeds have fallen from heaven to earth, and for eighteen hundred
+years have been spreading themselves over all soils fit for their
+reception--and what soil is not fit? Even fit are stony places, and
+places full of thorns. For they will live and grow there in spite of
+such obstruction--and among rank and matted weeds will often be seen
+peering out like primroses gladdening the desert.
+
+That voice again--"One of old Scotland's songs, so sad and slow!" Her
+heart is now blamelessly with things of earth. "Sad and slow!" and most
+purely sweet. Almost mournful although it be, it breathes of
+happiness--for the joy dearest to the soul has ever a faint tinge of
+grief. O innocent enchantress! thou encirclest us with a wavering haze
+of beautiful imagery, by the spell of that voice awakening after a mood
+of awe, but for thy own delight. From the long dim tracts of the past
+come strangely blended recognitions of woe and bliss, undistinguishable
+now to our own heart--nor knows that heart if it be a dream of
+imagination or of memory. Yet why should we wonder? In our happiest
+hours there may have been something in common with our most
+sorrowful--some shade of sadness cast over them by a passing cloud, that
+now allies them in retrospect with the sombre spirit of grief; and in
+our unhappiest hours there may have been gleams of gladness, that seem
+now to give the return the calm character of peace. Do not all thoughts
+and feelings, almost all events, seem to resemble each other--when they
+are dreamt of as all past? All receive a sort of sanctification in the
+stillness of the time that has gone by--just like the human being whom
+they adorned or degraded--when they, too, are at last buried together in
+the bosom of the same earth.
+
+Perhaps none among us ever wrote verses of any worth, who had not been,
+more or less, readers of our old ballads. All our poets have been
+so--and even Wordsworth would not have been the veritable and only
+Wordsworth, had he not in boyhood pored--oh, the miser!--over Percy's
+"Reliques." From the highest to the humblest, they have all drunk from
+those silver springs. Shepherds and herdsmen and woodsmen have been the
+masters of the mighty--their strains have, like the voice of a solitary
+lute, inspired a power of sadness into the hearts of great poets that
+gave their genius to be prevalent over all tears, or with a power of
+sublimity that gave it dominion over all terror, like the sound of a
+trumpet. "The Babes in the Wood!" "Chevy Chace!" Men become women while
+they weep--
+
+    "Or start up heroes from the glorious strain."
+
+Sing then "The Dirge," my Margaret, to the Old Man, "so tender and so
+true" to the spirit of those old ballads, which we might think were
+written by Pity's self.
+
+
+DIRGE.
+
+    "O dig a grave, and dig it deep,
+    Where I and my true love may sleep!
+      We'll dig a grave, and dig it deep,
+      Where thou and thy true love shall sleep!
+
+    And let it be five fathom low,
+    Where winter winds may never blow!--
+      And it shall be five fathom low,
+      Where winter winds shall never blow!
+
+    And let it be on yonder hill,
+    Where grows the mountain daffodil!--
+      And it shall be on yonder hill,
+      Where grows the mountain daffodil!
+
+    And plant it round with holy briers,
+    To fright away the fairy fires!--
+      We'll plant it round with holy briers!
+      To fright away the fairy fires!
+
+    And set it round with celandine,
+    And nodding heads of columbine!--
+      We'll set it round with celandine,
+      And nodding heads of columbine!
+
+    And let the ruddock build his nest
+    Just above my true love's breast!--
+      The ruddock he shall build his nest
+      Just above thy true love's breast!
+
+    And warble his sweet wintry song
+    O'er our dwelling all day long!
+      And he shall warble his sweet song
+      O'er your dwelling all day long.
+
+    Now, tender friends, my garments take,
+    And lay me out for Jesus' sake!
+      And we will now thy garments take,
+      And lay thee out for Jesus' sake!
+
+    And lay me by my true love's side,
+    That I may be a faithful bride!--
+      We'll lay thee by thy true love's side,
+      That thou may'st be a faithful bride!"
+
+Ay--ay--thou too art gone, WILLIAM STANLEY ROSCOE! What years have flown
+since we walked among the "alleys green" of Allerton with thee and thy
+illustrious father! and who ever conversed with him for a few hours in
+and about his own home--where the stream of life flowed on so full and
+clear--without carrying away impressions that never seemed to be
+remembrances--so vivid have they remained amidst the obscurations and
+obliterations of Time, that sweeps with his wings all that lies on the
+surface, but has no power to disturb, much less destroy, the record
+printed on the heart.
+
+We are all of us getting old--or older; nor would we, for our own
+part--if we could--renew our youth. Methinks the river of life is nobler
+as it nears the sea. The young are dancing in their skiffs on the
+pellucid shallows near the source on the Sacred Mountains of the Golden
+East. They whose lot it is to be in their prime, are dropping down the
+longer and wider reaches, that seem wheeling by with their sylvan
+amphitheatres, as if the beauty were moving morn-wards, while the
+voyagers are stationary among the shadows, or slowly descending the
+stream to meet the meridian day. Many forget
+
+    "The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,"
+
+and are lost in the roaring whirlpool. Under Providence, we see
+ourselves on the river expanded into a sea-like lake, or arm of the sea;
+and for all our soul has escaped and suffered, we look up to the stars
+in gratitude--and down to the stars--for the water too is full of stars
+as well as the sky--faint and dim indeed--but blended by the pervading
+spirit of beauty, with the brighter and bolder luminaries reposing on
+infinitude.
+
+
+
+
+OUR WINTER QUARTERS.
+
+
+BUCHANAN LODGE--for a few months--farewell! 'Tis the Twelfth of
+November; and for the City we leave thee not without reluctance, early
+in March by the blessing of Heaven again to creep into thy blooming
+bourne. Yet now and then we shall take a drive down, to while away a
+sunny forenoon among thy undecaying evergreens, to breathe the balm of
+thy Christmas roses, and for one _Gentle_ bosom to cull the earliest
+crocuses that may be yellowing through the thin snows of Spring.
+
+In truth, we know not well why we should ever leave thee, for thou art
+the Darling of all the Seasons; and Winter, so churlish elsewhere, is
+ever bland to thee, and, daily alighting in these gardens, loves to fold
+and unfold, in the cool sunshine, the stainless splendour of his
+pale-plumaged wings. But we are no hermit. Dear to us though Nature be,
+here, hand-in-hand with Art walking through our peaceful but not
+unpeopled POLICY, a voice comes to us from the city-heart--winning us
+away from the stillness of solitude into the stir of life. Milton speaks
+of a region
+
+    "Above the stir and smoke of this dim spot,
+    Which men call earth;"
+
+and oft have we visited it; but while yet we pursue the ends of this our
+mortal being, in the mystery of the brain whence ideas arise, and in the
+mystery of the heart whence emotions flow--kindred and congenial
+all--thought ever blending with feeling, reason with imagination, and
+conscience with passion--'tis our duty to draw our delight from
+intercommunion with the spirit of our kind. Weakest or wickedest of
+mortals are your soul-sick, life-loathing, world-wearied men. In
+solitude we are prone to be swallowed up in selfishness; and out of
+selfishness what sins and crimes may not grow! At the best, moral
+stagnation ensues--and the spirit becomes, like "a green-mantled pool,"
+the abode of reptiles. Then ever welcome to us be living faces, and
+living voices, the light and the music of reality--dearer far than any
+mere ideas or emotions hanging or floating aloof by themselves in the
+atmosphere of imagination. Blest be the cordial grasp of the hand of
+friendship--blest the tender embrace of the arms of love! Nay, smile
+not, fair reader, at an old man's fervour; for Love is a gracious
+spirit, who deserteth not declining age.
+
+The DROSKY is at the door--and, my eye! what a figure is Peter! There he
+sits, like a bear, with the ribbons in his paws--no part visible of his
+human face or form divine, but his small red eyes--and his ruby nose,
+whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the
+knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a
+Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish
+turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him
+like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland
+tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail--and the hair on his
+ears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely reminds us of Hogg's
+Bonassus. Ay, bless these patent steps--on the same principle as those
+by which we ascend our nightly couch--we are self-deposited in our
+Drosky. Oh! the lazy luxury of an air-seat! We seem to be sitting on
+nothing but a voluptuous warmth, restorative as a bath. And then what
+furry softness envelopes our feet! Yes--Mrs Gentle--Mrs Gentle--thy
+Cashmere shawl, twined round our bust, feels almost as silken-smooth as
+thine own, and scented is it with the balm of thy own lips. Boreas blows
+on it tenderly as a zephyr--and the wintry sunshine seems summery as it
+plays on the celestial colours. Thy pelisse, too, over our old happy
+shoulders, purple as the neck of the dove when careering round his mate.
+Thy comforter, too, in our bosom--till the dear, delightful, delicious,
+wicked worsted thrills through skin and flesh to our very heart. It
+dirls. Drive away, Peter. Farewell Lodge--and welcome, in a jiffy, Moray
+Place.
+
+And now, doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven by
+Peter, proud as Punch to tool along the staring streets the
+great-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet--yet--couldst thou lead the
+field, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day be
+not quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, a
+little further on in the solemn vista, the darkness of night; and
+therefore, like wise children of nature, not unproud of the past, not
+ungrateful for the present, and unfearful of the future, thus do we now
+skim along the road of life, broad and smooth to our heart's content,
+able to pay the turnpikes, and willing, when we shall have reached the
+end of our journey, to lie down, in hope, at the goal.
+
+What pretty, little, low lines of garden-fronted cottages! leading us
+along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and
+past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the
+full view of PITT Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight
+cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic--yea, call it at once
+magnificent--right up to the great city's heart. "There goes Old
+Christopher North!" the bright boys in the playground of the New Academy
+exclaim. God bless you, you little rascals!--We could almost find it in
+our heart to ask the Rector for a holiday. But, under him, all your days
+are holidays--for when the precious hours of study are enlightened by a
+classic spirit, how naturally do they melt into those of play!
+
+    "Gay hope is yours, by fancy fed,
+      Less pleasing when possest;
+    The tear forgot as soon as shed,
+      The sunshine of the breast;
+    Yours buxom health, of rosy hue,
+      Wild wit, invention ever new,
+    And lively cheer, of vigour born;
+      The thoughtless day, the easy night,
+    The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
+      That fly th' approach of morn."
+
+Descending from our Drosky, we find No. 99 Moray Place, exhibiting
+throughout all its calm interior the self-same expression it wore the
+day we left it for the Lodge, eight months ago. There is our venerable
+winter Hat--as like Ourselves, it is said, as he can stare--sitting on
+the Circular in the Entrance-hall. Everything has been tenderly dusted
+as if by hands that touched with a Sabbath feeling; and though the
+furniture cannot be said to be new, yet while it is in all sobered, it
+is in nothing faded. You are at first unaware of its richness on account
+of its simplicity--its grace is felt gradually to grow out of its
+comfort--and that which you thought but ease lightens into elegance,
+while there is but one image in nature which can adequately express its
+repose--that of a hill-sheltered field by sunset, under a fresh-fallen
+vest of virgin snow. For then snow blushes with a faint crimson--nay,
+sometimes when Sol is extraordinarily splendid, not faint, but with a
+gorgeousness of colouring that fears not to face in rivalry the western
+clouds.
+
+Let no man have two houses with one set of furniture. Home's deepest
+delight is undisturbance. Some people think no articles fixtures--not
+even grates. But sofas and ottomans, and chairs and footstools, and
+screens--and above all, beds--all are fixtures in the dwelling of a wise
+man, cognoscitive and sensitive of the blessings of this life. Each has
+its own place assigned to it by the taste, tact, and feeling of the
+master of the mansion, where order and elegance minister to comfort, and
+comfort is but a homely word for happiness. In various moods we vary
+their arrangement--nor is even the easiest of all Easy-chairs secure for
+life against being gently pushed on his wheels from chimney-nook to
+window-corner, when the sunshine may have extinguished the fire, and the
+blue sky tempts the _Paterfamilias_, or him who is but an uncle, to lie
+back with half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like a
+shepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements serve
+but to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which the
+very virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against the
+Lares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret to
+cellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, a
+Turkey or a Persian, or even a Wilton or a Kidderminster carpet, is as
+much the garb of the wooden floor inside, as the grass is of the earthen
+floor outside of your house. Would you lift and lay down the greensward?
+But without further illustration--be assured the cases are kindred--and
+so, too, with sofas and shrubs, tent-beds and trees. Independently,
+however, of these analogies, not fanciful, but lying deep in the nature
+of things, the inside of one's tabernacle, in town and country, ought
+ever to be sacred from all radical revolutionary movements, and to lie
+for ever in a waking dream of graceful repose. All our affections
+towards lifeless things become tenderer and deeper in the continuous and
+unbroken flow of domestic habit. The eye gets lovingly familiarised with
+each object occupying its own peculiar and appropriate place, and feels
+in a moment when the most insignificant is missing or removed. We say
+not a word about children, for fortunately, since we are yet unmarried,
+we have none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissenters
+from this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-kept
+parlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice do
+they glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as a
+_flitting_ ever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a long
+huge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors,
+moving along the dust-driving or mire-choked streets with furniture from
+a gutted town-house towards one standing in the rural shades with an
+empty stomach! All is dimmed or destroyed--chairs crushed on the
+table-land, and four-posted beds lying helplessly with their astonished
+feet up to heaven--a sight that might make the angels weep!
+
+People have wondered why we, an old barren bachelor, should live in such
+a large house. It is a palace; but never was there a greater mistake
+than to seek the solution in our pride. Silence can be had but in a
+large house. And silence is the chief condition of home happiness. We
+could now hear a leaf fall--a leaf of the finest wire-wove. Peter and
+Betty, Polly and the rest, inhabit the second sunk story--and it is
+delightful to know that they may be kicking up the most infernal
+disturbance at this blessed moment, and tearing out each other's hair in
+handfuls, without the faintest whisper of the uproar reaching us in our
+altitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there is
+regularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondly
+imagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years on
+the shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrown
+up both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew that
+he had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk story, immediately
+below _that_, having been for a season consumptive, we kept a Jenny ass
+and her daughter--and though we believe it was not unheard around Moray
+and Ainslie Places, and even in Charlotte Square, we cannot charge our
+memory with an audit of their bray. In the sunk story immediately below
+that again, that distinguished officer on half-pay, Captain Campbell of
+the Highlanders--when on a visit to us for a year or two--though we
+seldom saw him--got up a _Sma' still_--and though a more harmless
+creature could not be, there he used to sit for hours together, with the
+worm that never dies. On one occasion, it having been supposed by Peter
+that the Captain had gone to the East Neuk of Fife, weeks elapsed, we
+remember, ere he was found sitting dead, just as if he had been alive,
+in his usual attitude in his arm-chair, commanding a view of the
+precipice of the back court.
+
+Just as quiet are the Attics. They, too, are furnished; for the feeling
+of there being one unfurnished room, however small, in the largest
+house, disturbs the entire state of mind of such an occupant, and when
+cherished and dwelt on, which it must not unfrequently be, inspires a
+cold air of desolation throughout the domicile, till "thoughts of
+flitting rise." There is no lumber-room. The room containing
+Blue-Beard's murdered wives might in idea be entered without distraction
+by a bold mind.--But oh! the lumber-room, into which, on an early walk
+through the house of a friend on whom we had been sorning, all
+unprepared did we once set our foot! From the moment--and it was but for
+a moment, and about six o'clock--far away in the country--that appalling
+vision met our eyes--till we found ourselves, about another six o'clock,
+in Moray Place, we have no memory of the flight of time. Part of the
+journey--or voyage--we suspect, was performed in a steamer. The noise of
+knocking, and puffing, and splashing seems to be in our inner ears; but
+after all it may have been a sail-boat, possibly a yacht!--In the Attics
+an Aviary open to the sky. And to us below, the many voices, softened
+into one sometimes in the pauses of severer thought, are sometimes very
+affecting, so serenely sweet it seems, as the laverock's in our youth at
+the gates of heaven.
+
+At our door stand the Guardian Genii, Sleep and Silence. We had an ear
+to them in the building of our house, and planned it after a long summer
+day's perusal of the "Castle of Indolence." O Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy
+Thomson!--O that thou and we had been rowers in the same boat on the
+silent river! Rowers, indeed! Short the spells and far between that we
+should have taken--the one would not have turned round the other, but
+when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand--and the canoe
+would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our
+backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the
+slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove--the cloud-mountains,
+immovable as those of earth, and in spirit one world.
+
+Ay! Great noise as we have made in the world--our heart's desire is for
+silence--its delight is in peace. And is it not so with all men,
+turbulent as may have been their lives, who have ever looked into their
+own being? The soul longs for peace in itself; therefore, wherever it
+discerns it, it rejoices in the image of which it seeks the reality. The
+serene human countenance, the wide water sleeping in the moonlight, the
+stainless marble-depth of the immeasurable heavens, reflect to it that
+tranquillity which it imagines within itself, though it never long dwelt
+there, restless as a dove on a dark tree that cannot be happy but in the
+sunshine. It loves to look on what it loves, even though it cannot
+possess it; and hence its feeling, on contemplating such calm, is not of
+simple repose, but desire stirs in it, as if it would fain blend itself
+more deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would not
+so affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference--that attracts
+spirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised--but
+matter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imagination
+between earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there is
+apprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spirit
+throughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, the moon, the deep
+bright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower--none of them
+ever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical and
+unconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are; but we
+could have no pleasure in them, if we knew them as such. There is
+illusion, then, of some sort, and to what does it amount? We cannot well
+tell. But if there is really a love in human hearts to these distant
+orbs--if there is an emotion of tenderness to the fair, opening,
+breathing blossom that we would not crush it--"in gentleness of heart
+touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves"--it must be that we do not
+see them as they are, but "create a soul under the ribs of death." We
+could not be touched, or care for what has no affinity to ourselves--we
+make the affinity--we animate, we vivify them, and thenceforward,
+
+    "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
+    Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet."
+
+Now you do believe that we do love Silence--and every other thing worthy
+to be loved--you and yours--and even that romp, your shock-headed Coz,
+to whom Priscilla Tomboy was an Imogen.
+
+All our ceilings are deadened--we walk ankle-deep in carpeting--nobody
+is suffered to open a door but ourselves--and they are so constructed,
+that it is out of their power to _slam_. Our winter furniture is all
+massy--deepening the repose. In all the large rooms two fireplaces--and
+fires are kept perpetually burning day and night, in them all, which,
+reflected from spacious mirrors, give the mansion quite the appearance
+of a Pandemonium. _Not gas always._ Palm-oil burns scentless as
+moonlight; and when motion, not rest, in a place is signified, we
+accompany ourselves with a wax candle, or taper from time immemorial
+green. Yet think not that there is a blaze of light. We have seen the
+midnight heaven and earth nearly as bright, with but one moon and a
+small scatter of stars. And places of glimmer--and places of gloom--and
+places "deaf to sound and blind to light" there are in this our mansion,
+known but to ourselves--cells--penitentiaries--where an old man may sit
+sighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery--or at times almost
+happy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortal
+tribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, by
+its own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best."
+
+And thus is our domicile a domain--a kingdom. We should not care to be
+confined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave our
+own door--yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping
+like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range
+of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch.
+Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad step
+not above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-places
+illumined by the dim religious light of stained windows, on which
+pilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, are
+travelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores--or
+shepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles of
+Neæra's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrow
+bounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendid
+segments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of them
+ourselves--now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, now
+a Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise.
+
+Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point of
+sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through;
+and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;"
+such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary
+mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we
+observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one
+dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on
+being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency
+from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. They
+are all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; in
+number, nine--each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms--those on the
+same story communicating with one another, and with the parlours,
+drawing-rooms, and libraries--"a mighty maze, but not without a plan,"
+and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit of
+quietude by day and by night, awake or asleep--the chairs being
+couch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy,
+enveloped in a drapery of dreams.
+
+We go to bed at no stated hour--but when we are tired of sitting up,
+then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise,
+neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock,
+nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, nor
+Aurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, or
+crimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's
+visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of
+a certainty that _these_ are real web-and-woof damask curtains, _that_
+flock palpable on substantial walls.
+
+True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntary or inevitable
+change--but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however sudden
+and strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all its
+familiar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Place
+for a week--nay, not for two days and nights--till you might swear we
+had been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air of
+the Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan.
+You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that the
+eyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and who
+preserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress and
+demeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and his
+character. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish days
+served under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sable
+silvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten to
+our study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at our
+protracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes are
+old," we feel as if we had belonged to _this_ house alone, and it to us,
+from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, far
+away! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating upon
+the cheerful present--like birds of fairest plumage floating far inland
+from the main. But there is no idle longing--no vain regret. This, we
+say, is true wisdom. For each scene and season--each pleasure and
+place--ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, and
+to be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in the
+country are often restless to return to town--and people in town unhappy
+till they rush away into the country--thus cheating their entire
+existence out of its natural calm and satisfaction. Not so we. We give
+both their due--and that due is an almost undivided delight in each
+while we live under its reign. For Nature, believe us, is no jealous
+mistress. She is an affectionate wife, who, being assured of his
+fidelity, is not afraid to trust her husband out of her sight,
+
+    "When still the town affairs do call him thence,"
+
+and who waits with cheerful patience for his return, duly welcomed with
+a conjugal shower of smiles and kisses.
+
+But what is this we see before us? Winter--we declare--and in full fig
+with his powdered wig! On the mid-day of November, absolutely snow! a
+full, fair, and free fall of indisputable snow.
+
+Not the slightest idea had we, the day before, that a single flake had
+yet been formed in the atmosphere, which, on closing of our shutters,
+looked through the clear-obscure, indicative of a still night and a
+bright morning. But we had not seen the moon. She, we are told by an
+eyewitness, early in the evening, _stared_ from the south-east, "through
+the misty horizontal air," with a face of portentous magnitude and
+brazen hue, symptomatic, so weatherwise seers do say, of the approach of
+the Snow-king. On such occasions it requires all one's astronomical
+science to distinguish between sun and moon; for then sister resembles
+brother in that wan splendour, and you wonder for a moment, as the large
+beamless orb (how unlike Dian's silver bow!) is in ascension, what can
+have brought the lord of day, at this untimeous hour, from his sea-couch
+behind the mountains of the west. Yet during the night-calm we suspected
+snow--for the hush of the heavens had that downy feel, to our
+half-sleeping fancy, that belongs to the eider-pillow in which
+disappears our aged, honoured, and un-nightcap'd head. Looking out by
+peep of day--rather a ghostlike appearance in our long night-shirt,
+which trails a regal train--we beheld the fair feathers dimly descending
+through the glimmer, while momently the world kept whitening and
+whitening, till we knew not our home-returning white cat on what was
+yesterday the back-_green_, but by the sable tail that singularly shoots
+from the rump of that phenomenon. We were delighted. Into the cold
+plunge-bath we played plop like a salmon--and came out as red as a cut
+of that incomparable fish. One ply of leather--one of flannel--and one
+of the linen fine; and then the suit of pepper-and-salt over all; and
+you behold us welcoming, hailing, and blessing the return of day. Frost,
+too, felt at the finger and toe tips--and in unequivocal true-blue at
+the point, Pensive Public, of thy Grecian or Roman nose. Furs, at once,
+are all the rage; the month of muffs has come; and round the neck of
+Eve, and every one of all her daughters, is seen harmlessly coiling a
+boa-constrictor. On their lovely cheeks the Christmas roses are already
+in full blow, and the heart of Christopher North sings aloud for joy.
+Furred, muffed, and boa'd, Mrs Gentle adventures abroad in the blast;
+and, shouldering his Crutch, the rough, ready, and ruddy old man shows
+how widows are won, whispers in that delicate ear of the publication of
+bans, and points his gouty toe towards the hymeneal altar. In the
+bracing air, his frame is strung like Paganini's fiddle, and he is felt
+to be irresistible in the _piggicato_. "Lord of his presence, and small
+land beside," what cares he even for a knight of the Guelphic order? On
+his breast shines a star--may it never prove a cross--beyond bestowal by
+king or kaisar; nor is Maga's self jealous or envious of these wedded
+loves. And who knows but that ere another November snow sheets the
+Shotts, a curious little Kit, with the word North distinctly traceable
+in blue letters on the whites of his eyes, may not be playing antics on
+his mother's knee, and with the true Tory face in miniature, smiling
+upon the guardian of the merry fellow's own and his country's
+constitution?
+
+What kind of a Winter--we wonder--are we to have in the way of wind and
+weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual
+severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an
+occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come
+out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire,
+combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-day
+garb--we mean his garments of black and his garments of white frost. He
+looks best in the former, we think, on to about Christmas--and the
+latter become the old gentleman well from that festival season, on to
+about the day sacred to a class of persons who will never read our
+Recreations.
+
+Of all the months of the year, November--in our climate--whether in town
+or country, bears the worst character. He is almost universally thought
+to be a sour, sulky, sullen, savage, dim, dull, dark, disconsolate, yet
+designing month--in fewer words, a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorring
+all personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this national
+abuse of November. We know him well--and though we admit at once that he
+is no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worst
+repulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, his
+character continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they come
+at last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer his company "in
+the season of the year," to that of other more brilliant visitors. So
+true is it with months and men, that it requires only to know the most
+unpleasant of them, and to see them during a favourable phasis, in order
+to regard them with that Christian complacency which a good heart sheds
+over all its habits. 'Tis unlucky for November--poor fellow!--that he
+follows October. October is a month so much admired by the world, that
+we often wonder he has not been spoiled. "What a glorious October!"
+"Why, you will surely not leave us till October comes!" "October is the
+month of all months--and, till you see him, you have not seen the
+Lakes." We acknowledge his claims. He is often truly delightful; but,
+like other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only privileged to be
+at times extremely dull, but his intensest stupidity is panegyrised as
+wit of the first water--while his not unfrequent rudeness, of which many
+a common month would be ashamed, passes for the ease of high birth or
+the eccentricity of genius. A very different feeling indeed exists
+towards unfortunate November. The moment he shows his face, all other
+faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make
+himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and
+that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions,
+manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced
+is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will--yea, even more
+like an angel than a man or a month--every eyebrow arches--every nostril
+distends--every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over the
+ice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chill
+whisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozen
+atmosphere, eloquence would be congealed on the lips of an
+Ulysses--Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo.
+
+Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a far more solitary place than
+Glenetive, Glenevis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so much danger of
+being lost in it as in the Moor of Rannoch--for streets and squares,
+though then utterly tenantless, are useful as landmarks to the pilgrim
+passing through what seems to be
+
+    "A still forsaken City of the Dead!"
+
+But, like a frost-bound river suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, and
+coming down in spate from the mountains to the low lands, about the
+beginning of November life annually re-overflows our metropolis, with a
+noise like "the rushing of many chariots." The streets, that for months
+had been like the stony channels of dried-up streams--only not quite so
+well paved--are again all a-murmur, and people addicted to the study of
+political economy begin to hold
+
+    "Each strange tale devoutly true"
+
+in the Malthusian theory of population. What swarms keep hovering round
+the great Northern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, and still seems
+it too small to contain all the insects. Edinburgh is almost as large as
+London. Nay, don't stare! We speak comparatively; and as England is
+somewhere about six times more populous than Scotland, you may, by
+brushing up your arithmetic, and applying to the Census, discover that
+we are not so far wrong in our apparent paradox.
+
+Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburgh
+would nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all his gloom, even as a
+wood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows into the
+town--all its life seems to do so--and to leave nothing behind but the
+bare trees and hedges. Equipages again go glittering along all the
+streets, squares, circuses, and crescents; and one might think that the
+entire "nation of ladies and gentlemen"--for King George the Fourth, we
+presume, meant to include the sex in his compliment--were moving through
+their metropolis. Amusement and business walk hand-in-hand--you hardly
+know, from their cheerful countenances, which is which; for the Scots,
+though a high-cheeked, are not an ill-favoured folk in their
+features--and though their mouths are somewhat of the widest, their
+teeth are white as well as sharp, and on the opening of their ruddy
+lips, their ivory-cases are still further brightened by hearty smiles.
+'Twould be false to say that their figures are distinguished by an air
+of fashion--for we have no court, and our nobles are almost all
+absentees. But though, in one sense, the men are ugly customers, as they
+will find
+
+    "Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe,"
+
+yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions in
+marching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like
+
+                "That small infantry
+    Warr'd on by cranes."
+
+Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universally
+allowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism does
+not so readily recall to the imagination Virgil's picture of Camilla
+flying along the heads of corn without touching their ears, as the
+images of paviers with post-looking mallets driving down dislodged
+stones into the streets. Intermingling with the lighter and more elastic
+footsteps of your Southron dames, the ongoings of our native virgins
+produce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon mêlée that along
+the Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint.
+
+    "Amid the general dance and minstrelsy"
+
+who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his length
+of ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you cannot see the
+city for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and as for finding
+one particular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile,
+you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay.
+
+But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinct
+place--then a faint mixture of a clear chime that is almost music--now a
+tune--and at last, rousing the massy multitude to enthusiasm, a military
+march, swelling various, profound, and high, with drum, trombone,
+serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on
+(is it the measured tramp of the feet of men, or the confused trampling
+of horses?) banners floating over the procession, above the glitter of
+steel, and the golden glow of helmets. 'Tis a regiment of
+cavalry--hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!
+
+    "There England sends her men, of men the chief,"
+
+still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight
+forward from between sabres; while beneath the equable but haughty
+motion of their steeds, almost disciplined as their riders, with long
+black horse-hair flowing in martial majesty, nod their high Roman
+casques. The sweet storm of music has been passing by while we were
+gazing, and is now somewhat deadened by the retiring distance and by
+that mass of buildings (how the windows are alive, and agaze with
+faces!) while troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is felt by
+all, to the motion of the warlike tune, though now across the Waterloo
+Bridge sounding like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant is all gone
+by, and the dull day is deadened down again into the stillness and
+silence of an ignoble peace.
+
+    "Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!"
+
+All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind,
+invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in all
+professions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with
+a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the
+Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put
+Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter.
+The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long
+vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we
+seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more _gash_ than another,
+and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law,
+Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endless
+litigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends the
+prosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing of
+the great institution of Property! For without it, how could people go
+together by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? All
+the strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their natural
+element, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive to
+the commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to the
+lowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. Our
+Parliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foul
+steam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the State,
+blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how the
+engine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stephenson's
+Rocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then,
+such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collision
+into the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by the
+hoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent county, yet few or none are
+likely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket,
+like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shape
+of waggons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerce
+exult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion all over the world.
+
+But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lull
+at sea, or _lown_ on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's
+toilsome lot. The lull and the lown, what are they when most profound,
+but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and waters--a
+change wrought for an hour of peace in the heart of the hurricane!
+Therefore the sailor enjoys it on the green wave--the shepherd on the
+greensward; while the memory of mists and storms deepens the
+enchantment. Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those who are
+permitted to indulge it, while enduring the labours of an active or a
+contemplative life. To use another, and a still livelier image--see the
+pedlar toiling along the dusty road, with an enormous pack, on his
+excursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on the
+bank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys,
+like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through
+the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the
+wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or a
+botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with
+a mute prayer and a munching appetite--not idle, it must be confessed,
+in that sense--but in every other idle even as the shadow of the
+sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open--for by hypothesis he
+is a Scotsman--he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep.
+"Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you _idle_ fellow?" bawls some
+beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of
+those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly
+sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom--though the ant, Heaven
+bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sick-nurse.
+
+We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men.
+Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the
+self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars
+that move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was
+allowed by all the best watermen, that
+
+    "We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."
+
+But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has
+been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights,
+leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man
+himself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the things
+that ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated,
+or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy.
+They too have all an image-like appearance, and 'tis wondrous strange
+how silent they all are, actors and actresses on the stage of that
+revived drama, which sometimes seems to be a genteel comedy, and
+sometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfiguration
+into a tragedy deep as death.
+
+We presume that the Public read in her own papers--we cannot be but hurt
+that no account of it has appeared in the "Court Journal"--that on
+Thursday the 12th current, No. 99 Moray Place was illuminated by our
+annual Soireé, Conversazione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes--for
+Christopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite James
+Thomson,--
+
+                "No purpose gay,
+    Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns;
+    For happiness and true philosophy
+    Are of the social, still, and smiling kind."
+
+All the rooms in the house were thrown open, except the cellars and the
+Sanctum. To the people congregated outside, the building, we have been
+assured, had all the brilliancy of the Bude Light. It was like a palace
+of light, of which the framework or skeleton was of white unveined
+marble. So strong was the reflection on the nocturnal heavens, that a
+rumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place,
+nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of several
+engines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most part
+of the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while, in the Lothians, our
+illumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of the
+Aurora Borealis.
+
+                "From the arch'd roof,
+    Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
+    Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
+    With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
+    As from a sky. The hasty multitude
+    Admiring enter'd."
+
+We need not say who received the company, and with what grace SHE did
+so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sable
+stole; for the widow's weeds have not _yet_ been doffed for the robes of
+saffron--with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and
+ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her
+hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one star-bright diamond.
+Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then and
+there, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. The
+weeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairly
+entitled to; but the flowers--to speak figuratively--he would have
+cheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became both
+face and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room to
+another, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity of
+those Virgilian words,
+
+    "Incedit Regina."
+
+Surely there is something very poetical in the gradual flowing in of the
+tide of grace, elegance, and beauty, over the floors of a suite of
+regal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. Each party as it comes on
+has its own peculiar picturesqueness, and affects the heart or
+imagination by some novel charm, gently gliding onward a little while by
+itself, as if not unconscious of its own attractions, nor unproud of the
+gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive
+movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the
+radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and
+matrons--provided they be not "dumpy women"--tall, white, blue, and pink
+plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate,
+stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their
+cheeks--not with kisses--for they would be out of order both of time and
+place--but with words almost as tender as kisses, and awakening almost
+as tender a return--a few sweet syllables breathed in a silver voice,
+with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, are
+seen to be from heaven.
+
+A long hour ago, and all the mansion was empty and motionless--with us
+two alone sitting by each other's side affectionately and respectfully
+on a sofa. Now it is filled with life, and heard you ever such a happy
+murmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speaking
+much above breath, so gentle is true refinement, like a delightful
+fragrance
+
+    "From the calm manners quietly exhaled."
+
+Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great, big, hearty, huge, hulking,
+horse-laugh, in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gathered
+gracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, the
+urbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The pagan
+who perpetrates it should be burnt alive--not at a slow fire--though
+that would be but justice--but at a quick one--that all remnants of him
+and his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield has
+been loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema against
+laughter. But though often wrong, there his lordship was right, and for
+that one single rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having been
+one of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle--and that
+sweet, soft, low sound be heard, the _susurrus_. Let there be a
+many-voiced quiet music, like that of the summer moonlight sea when the
+stars are in its breast. But laughter--loud peals of laughter--are like
+breakers--blind breakers on a blind coast, where no verdure grows except
+that of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of all
+commodities, kelp.
+
+'Tis not a literary conversazione, mind ye, gentle reader; for we leave
+that to S. T. Coleridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But all
+speak--talk--whisper--or smile, of all the speakable, talkable,
+whisperable, and smileable little interesting affairs, incidents, and
+occurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, or
+demi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and melt
+away as fast in the stream of social pleasure,
+
+    "A moment white, then gone for ever!"
+
+Not a little scandal--much gossip, we daresay; but as for scandal, it
+is the vulgarest error in the world to think that it either means, or
+does any harm to any mortal. It does infinite good. It ventilates the
+atmosphere, and prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from becoming "a
+foul congregation of vapours." As for gossip, what other vindication
+does it need, than an order for you to look at a soirée of swallows in
+September on a slate-roof, the most innocent and white-breasted
+creatures that pay
+
+    "Their annual visits round the globe,
+    Companions of the sun,"
+
+but such gossipers that the whole air is a-twitter with their talk about
+their neighbours' nest--when--whew! off and away they go, winnowing
+their way westwards, through the setting sunlight, and all in perfect
+amity with themselves and their kind, while
+
+    "The world is all before them, where to choose,
+    And Providence their guide."
+
+And, madam, you do not matronise--and, sir, you do not
+patronise--_waltzing_? 'Tis very O fie-fieish, you think--and in danger
+of becoming very, very faux-papa-ish!
+
+    "Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old,"
+
+whose mind-motto was still--
+
+    "_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_"
+
+Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but be
+not terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your
+censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitely sensitive
+modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have
+suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged
+in even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where
+it is not--and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them open-armed,
+bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like
+the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish
+modesty and mouthing morality--for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite.
+Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling
+Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see the
+realisation of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours--
+
+    "Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance,
+    Lead on the eternal spring!"
+
+But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental
+Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for,
+blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE--so call we
+her who is our heart's-ease and heart's-delight--the granddaughter of
+one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned
+passion--but
+
+    "The course of true love never yet ran smooth"--
+
+comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed
+whisperingly into her ear--a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate
+as a leaf--just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost
+stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would
+have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand
+of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions
+of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings
+accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St
+Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A Hebrew melody! And now your heart
+feels the utter mournfulness of these words,
+
+    "By Babel's streams we sat and wept!"
+
+How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings!
+Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul
+that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance
+to her sway, but yields itself up entirely to all its moods and
+measures, led captive by each successive strain through the whole
+mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush.
+Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh--almost a
+sob--is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's self
+seems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine--
+
+    "Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"
+
+Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at the
+pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in
+her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!
+
+How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity
+to all who have roofs overhead--towards the houseless and them who
+huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets
+must have been a God-send indeed to not a few families, and your plan is
+preferable to a Fancy-Fair. Yet that is good too--nor do we find fault
+with them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give
+relief to misery--and the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the
+poor.
+
+Again, what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows,
+and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the night be about?
+and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He has
+driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our noddle--and to-morrow we
+must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to
+bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish
+acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power of
+King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not--though Ultra-Trimmers try
+to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we
+shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the devil,
+and the Chartists.
+
+
+
+
+STROLL TO GRASSMERE.
+
+FIRST SAUNTER.
+
+
+Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather
+of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been
+in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular
+intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on
+the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the
+fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we
+live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed
+that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the
+head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in
+thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls
+down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take to
+bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries them off, victims to their
+confidence in that treacherous tube. But we mean to ask have you an eye,
+an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all the
+prognosticating sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, of nature?
+Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, and
+spirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, come
+and go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from
+moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you
+listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them
+prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as
+that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when
+grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with
+the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes
+visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And
+know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are
+the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac? When a
+mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads
+every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when
+one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly
+off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty
+distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely
+lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of
+prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The
+prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when
+the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty
+for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is
+beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the
+blue of a midsummer's meridian day?
+
+Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser
+than ourselves; yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of
+the Mountains;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we know
+somewhat more than the vocabulary of the languages of calm and storm.
+Remember that we are now at Ambleside--and one week's residence there
+may let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St
+Cloud.
+
+One advice we give you, and by following it you cannot fail to be happy
+at Ambleside, and everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, love,
+admire, and delight in it, and vow that you would not change it for the
+atmosphere of a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be thankful for
+the faint air that comes down fitfully from cliff and chasm, or the
+breeze that ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. If the heavens
+are filled with sunshine, and you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool
+the sylvan shade for ever moistened by the murmurs of that fairy
+waterfall! Should it blow great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder
+magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements are warded even from the
+thunder-bolt by the dense umbrage of unviolated woods?
+Rain--rain--rain--an even-down pour of rain, that forces upon you
+visions of Noah and his ark, and the top of Mount Ararat--still, we
+beseech you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; the thing is
+impossible. Even this very afternoon will the rainbow span the blue
+entrance into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westering sun on
+his approach to the mountains--and a hundred hill-born torrents will be
+seen flashing out of the upfolding mists. What a delightful dazzle on
+the light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald;
+and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigality
+of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled
+Fairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest.
+
+You will not imagine, from anything we have ever said, that we are
+enemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embrace
+the new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At such
+hour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in the
+world. The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues
+everything to itself, and life is love.
+
+Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for having overslept the assignation
+hour, and allowed thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude,
+wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest
+phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us--for not
+clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead: the
+unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us--a loving murmur
+steals into our heart from thine--and pure as a child's, daughter of
+Heaven! is thy breath.
+
+In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the idea of
+morning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of common
+day"--the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during the
+night--enough, and no more, to enliven nature--the mists are ascending
+composedly with promise of gentle weather--and the sun, so mild that we
+can look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance that as he
+has risen so will he reign, and so will he set in peace.
+
+Yet we cannot help thinking it somewhat remarkable, that, to the best of
+our memory, never once were we the very first out into the dawn. We say
+nothing of birds--for they, with their sweet jargoning, anticipate it,
+and from their bed on the bough feel the forerunning warmth of the
+sunrise; neither do we allude to hares, for they are "hirpling hame," to
+sleep away the light hours, open-eyed, in the briery quarry in the
+centre of the trackless wood. Even cows and horses we can excuse being
+up before us, for they have bivouacked; and the latter, as they often
+sleep standing, are naturally somnambulists. Weasels, too, we can pardon
+for running across the road before us, and as they reach the
+hole-in-the-wall, showing by their clear eyes that they have been awake
+for hours, and have probably breakfasted on leveret. We have no spite at
+chanticleer, nor the hooting owls against whom he is so lustily crowing
+hours before the orient; nor do we care although we know that is not the
+first sudden plunge of the tyrant trout into the insect cloud already
+hovering over the tarn. But we confess that it is a little mortifying to
+our pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from the
+dust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her last
+night's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity,
+at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleeping
+on her pallet of straw. A pedlar, too, who has got through a portion of
+the Excursion before the sun has illumed the mountain-tops, is
+mortifying, with his piled pack and ellwand. There, as we are a
+Christian, is Ned Hurd, landing a pike on the margin of the Reed-pool,
+on his way from Hayswater, where he has been all night angling, till his
+creel is as heavy as a sermon; and a little further on, comes issuing
+like a Dryad's daughter, from the gate in the lane, sweet little Alice
+Elleray, with a basket dangling beneath her arm, going in her orphan
+beauty to gather, in their season, wild strawberries or violets in the
+woods.
+
+Sweet orphan of Wood-edge! what would many a childless pair give for a
+creature one-half so beautiful as thou, to break the stillness of a home
+that wants but one blessing to make it perfectly happy! Yet there are
+few or none to lay a hand on that golden head, or leave a kiss upon its
+ringlets. The father of Alice Elleray was a wild and reckless youth,
+and, going to the wars, died in a foreign land. Her mother soon faded
+away of a broken heart;--and who was to care for the orphan child of the
+forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely
+distinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to
+take her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her own
+subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the
+solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray
+never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it--never
+entered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small,
+lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old
+songs--as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? She
+is now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for
+a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may
+mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge
+will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on
+leaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-off
+city some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside and
+Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid
+waters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from the
+fair basket-maker, an ornament for your parlour, that will not disgrace
+its fanciful furniture, and, as you sit at your dreamy needlework, will
+recall the green forest glades of Brathy or Calgarth. Industrious
+creature! each day is to thee, in thy simplicity, an entire life. All
+thoughts, all feelings, arise and die in peace between sunrise and
+sunset. What carest thou for being an orphan! knowing, as thou well
+dost, that God is thy father and thy mother, and that a prayer to Him
+brings health, food, and sleep to the innocent.
+
+Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, Alice
+Elleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden,
+trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in its
+cheerfulness has now and then a melancholy fall, and, at the close of
+the song, hers are the only eyes that are not dimmed with the haze of
+tears. Then away she glides with a thankful smile, and dancing over the
+greensward, like an uncertain sunbeam, lays the treasure, won by her
+beauty, her skill, and her industry, on the lap of her old guardian, who
+blesses her with the uplifting of withered hands.
+
+Meanwhile, we request you to walk away with us up to Stockgill-force.
+There has been a new series of dry weather, to be sure; but to our
+liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the
+noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified till your
+head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn-door--we are
+speaking to you, sir--and roar into a friend's ear all in vain a remark
+on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as
+completely drenched in spray as if you had fallen out of a boat--and
+descend to dinner with a toothache that keeps you in starvation in the
+presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry
+weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of
+tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why, it slides
+and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks,
+and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose
+foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache
+have you--speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent
+observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dewdrops have
+been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of
+the cushat--and as for toothache interfering with dinner, you eat as if
+your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss
+nuts, upper-and-lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the
+county. And all this comes of looking at Stockgill-force, or any other
+waterfall, in dry weather, after a few refreshing and fertilising
+showers that make the tributary rills to murmur, and set at work a
+thousand additional feeders to every Lake.
+
+Ha! Matutine Roses!--budding, half-blown, consummate--you are, indeed,
+in irresistible blush! We shall not say which of you we love best--_she
+knows it_; but we see there is no hope to-day for the old man--for you
+are all paired--and he must trudge it _solus_, in capacity of
+Guide-General of the Forces. What! the nymphs are going to pony it? And
+you intend, you selfish fellows, that we shall hold all the reins
+whenever the spirit moveth you to deviate from bridle-path, to clamber
+cliff for a bird's-eye view, or dive into dells for some rare plant?
+Well, well--there is a tradition, that once we were young ourselves; and
+so redolent of youth are these hills, that we are more than half
+inclined to believe it--so blush and titter, and laugh and look down, ye
+innocent wicked ones, each with her squire by her palfrey's mane, while
+good old Christopher, like a true guide, keeps hobbling in the rear on
+his Crutch. Holla there!--to the right of our friend Mr Benson's
+smithy--and to Rothay-bridge. Turn in at a gate to the right hand,
+which, twenty to one, you will find open, that the cattle may take an
+occasional promenade along the turnpike, and cool their palates with a
+little ditch grass, and saunter along by Millar-bridge and Foxgill on to
+Pelter-bridge, and, if you please, to Rydal-mere. Thus, and thus only,
+is seen the vale of Ambleside; and what a vale of grove, and glade, and
+stream, and cliff, and cottage, and villa, and grassfield, and garden,
+and orchard, and--But not another word, for you would forthwith compare
+our description with the reality, and seeing it faint and feeble, would
+toss it into the Rothay, and laugh as the Vol. plumped over a waterfall!
+
+The sylvan--or say rather the forest scenery--(for there is to us an
+indescribable difference between these two words)--of Rydal-park, was,
+in memory of living men, magnificent, and it still contains a treasure
+of old trees. Lady Diana's white pea-fowl, sitting on the limbs of that
+huge old tree like creatures newly alighted from the Isles of Paradise!
+all undisturbed by the waterfalls, which, as you keep gazing on the
+long-depending plumage illumining the forest gloom, seem indeed to lose
+their sound, and to partake the peace of that resplendent show--each
+splendour a wondrous Bird! For they stretch themselves all up, with
+their graceful crests, o'ercanopied by the umbrage draperied as from a
+throne. And never surely were seen in this daylight world such
+unterrestrial creatures--though come from afar, all happy as at home in
+the Fairies' Oak.
+
+By all means ride away into these woods, and lose yourself for half an
+hour among the cooing of cushats, and the shrill shriek of startled
+blackbirds, and the rustle of the harmless slow-worm among the last
+year's red beech-leaves. No very great harm in a kiss under the shadow
+of an oak (oh fie!) while the magpie chatters angrily at safe distance,
+and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of the
+canopy, and, hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of the
+loftiest umbrage. You still continue to see and hear; but the sight is a
+glimmer, and the sound a hum, as if the forest-glade were swarming with
+bees, from the ground-flowers to the herons' nests. Refreshed by your
+dream of Dryads, follow a lonesome din that issues from a pile of wooded
+cliffs, and you are led to a Waterfall. Five minutes are enough for
+taking an impression, if your mind be of the right material, and you
+carry it away with you further down the Forest. Such a torrent will not
+reach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; and
+saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied
+bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of
+many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in
+which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were
+grey, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt of the noisy
+world?
+
+You are now all standing together in a group beside Ivy-cottage, the
+river gliding below its wooden bridge from Rydal-mere. It is a perfect
+model of such architecture--breathing the very spirit of Westmoreland.
+The public road, skirted by its front paling, does not in the least
+degree injure its character of privacy and retirement; so we think at
+this dewy hour of prime, when the gossamer meets our faces, extended
+from the honey-suckled slate-porch to the trees on the other side of the
+turnpike. And see how the multitude of low-hanging roofs and gable-ends,
+and dovecot-looking windows, steal away up a green and shrubberied
+acclivity, and terminating in wooded rocks that seem part of the
+building, in the uniting richness of ivy, lichens, moss-roses, broom,
+and sweet-brier, murmuring with birds and bees, busy near hive and nest!
+It would be extremely pleasant to breakfast in that deep-windowed room
+on the ground-floor, on cream and barley cakes, eggs, coffee, and
+dry-toast, with a little mutton-ham not too severely salted, and at the
+conclusion, a nut-shell of Glenlivet or Cognac. But, Lord preserve ye!
+it is not yet six o'clock in the morning; and what Christian kettle
+simmereth before seven? Yes, my sweet Harriet, that sketch does you
+credit, and it is far from being very unlike the original. Rather too
+many chimneys by about half-a-dozen; and where did you find that steeple
+immediately over the window marked "Dairy?" The pigs are somewhat too
+sumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen-roost might
+accommodate a phoenix. But the features of the chief porch are very
+happily hit off--you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof--and
+some of the windows may be justly said to be staring
+likenesses.--Ivy-cottage is slipped into our portfolio, and we shall
+compare it, on our return to Scotland, with Buchanan Lodge.
+
+Gallantry forbids, but Truth demands to say, that young ladies are but
+indifferent sketchers. The dear creatures have no notion of perspective.
+At flower-painting and embroidery, they are pretty fair hands, but they
+make sad work among waterfalls and ruins. Notwithstanding, it is
+pleasant to hang over them, seated on stone or stool, drawing from
+nature; and now and then to help them in with a horse or a hermit. It is
+a difficult, almost an impossible thing--that foreshortening. The most
+speculative genius is often at a loss to conjecture the species of a
+human being foreshortened by a young lady. The hanging Tower at Pisa is,
+we believe, some thirty feet or so off the perpendicular, and there is
+one at Caerphilly about seventeen; but these are nothing to the castles
+in the air we have seen built by the touch of a female magician; nor is
+it an unusual thing with artists of the fair sex to order their plumed
+chivalry to gallop down precipices considerably steeper than a house, on
+animals apparently produced between the tiger and the bonassus. When
+they have succeeded in getting something like the appearance of water
+between what may be conjectured banks, they are not very particular
+about its running occasionally up-hill; and it is interesting to see a
+stream stealing quietly below trees in gradual ascension, till,
+disappearing for a few minutes over one summit, it comes thundering down
+another, in the shape of a waterfall, on the head of an elderly
+gentleman, unsuspectingly reading Mr Wordsworth's "Excursion," perhaps,
+in the foreground. Nevertheless, we repeat, that it is delightful to
+hang over one of the dear creatures, seated on stone or stool, drawing
+from nature; for whatever may be the pencil's skill, the eye may behold
+the glimpse of a vision whose beauty shall be remembered when even
+Windermere herself has for a while faded into oblivion.
+
+On such excursions there are sure to occur a few enviable adventures.
+First, the girths get wrong, and, without allowing your beloved virgin
+to alight, you spend more time than is absolutely necessary in arranging
+them; nor can you help admiring the attitude into which the graceful
+creature is forced to draw up her delicate limbs, that her fairy feet
+may not be in the way to impede your services. By-and-by a calf--which
+you hope will be allowed to grow up into a cow--stretching up her curved
+red back from behind a wall, startles John Darby, albeit unused to the
+starting mood, and you leap four yards to the timely assistance of the
+fair shrieker, tenderly pressing her bridle-hand as you find the rein
+that has not been lost, and wonder what has become of the whip that
+never existed. A little further on, a bridgeless stream crosses the
+road--a dangerous-looking ford indeed--a foot deep at the very least,
+and scorning wet feet, as they ought to be scorned, you almost carry,
+serene in danger, your affianced bride (or she is in a fair way of
+becoming so) in your arms off the saddle, nor relinquish the delightful
+clasp till all risk is at an end, some hundred yards on, along the
+velvet herbage. Next stream you come to has indeed a bridge--but then
+what a bridge! A long, coggly, cracked slate-stone, whose unsteady
+clatter would make the soberest steed jump over the moon. You beseech
+the timid girl to sit fast, and she almost leans down to your breast as
+you press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady old
+stager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each side
+of the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after due
+disentanglement, from that awkward, old-fashioned crutch and pummel, and
+from a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like a
+mouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, and
+difficult to open for releasement. You feel that all you love in the
+world is indeed fully, freshly, and warmly in your arms, nor can you
+bear to set the treasure down on the rough stony road, but look round,
+and round, and round, for a soft spot, which you finally prophesy at
+some distance up the hill, whitherwards, in spite of pouting Yea and
+Nay, you persist in carrying her whose head is ere long to lie in your
+tranquil bosom.
+
+Ivy-cottage, you see, is the domicile of gentlemen and lady folk; but
+look through yonder dispersion, and in a minute or two your eyes will
+see distinctly, in spite of the trees, a _bonâ fide_ farmhouse,
+inhabited by a family whose head is at once an agriculturist, a
+shepherd, and a woodsman. A Westmoreland cottage has scarcely any
+resemblance to a Scottish one. A Scottish cottage (in the Lowlands) has
+rarely any picturesque beauty in itself--a narrow oblong, with steep
+thatched roof, and an ear-like chimney at each of the two gable-ends.
+Many of the Westmoreland cottages would seem, to an ignorant observer,
+to have been originally built on a model conceived by the finest
+poetical genius. In the first place, they are almost always built
+precisely where they ought to be, had the builder's prime object been to
+beautify the dale; at least, so we have often felt in moods, when
+perhaps our emotions were unconsciously soothed into complacency by the
+spirit of the scene. Where the sedgy brink of the lake or tarn circles
+into a lone bay, with a low hill of coppice-wood on one side, and a few
+tall pines on the other, no--it is a grove of sycamores--there, about a
+hundred yards from the water, and about ten above its ordinary level,
+peeps out from its cheerful seclusion that prettiest of all
+hamlets--Braithwaite-fold. The hill behind is scarcely sylvan--yet it
+has many hazels--a few bushes--here and there a holly--and why or
+wherefore, who can now tell, a grove of enormous yews. There is sweet
+pasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mild
+without much sunshine, there is a bleating of lambs, a twitter of small
+birds, and the deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always a
+feature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, for
+probably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire,
+since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire on
+the hearth. No. There is a volume of smoke, as if the chimney were in
+flame--a tumultuous cloud pours aloft, straggling and broken, through
+the broad slate stones that defend the mouth of the vomitory from every
+blast. The matron within is doubtless about to prepare breakfast, and
+last year's rotten pea-sticks have soon heated the capacious grid-iron.
+Let the smoke-wreath melt away at its leisure, and do you admire, along
+with us, the infinite variety of all those little shelving and sloping
+roofs. To feel the full force of the peculiar beauty of these antique
+tenements, you must understand their domestic economy. If ignorant of
+that, you can have no conception of the meaning of any one thing you
+see--roofs, eaves, chimneys, beams, props, doors, hovels, and sheds, and
+hanging staircase, being all huddled together, as you think, in
+unintelligible confusion; whereas they are all precisely what and where
+they ought to be, and have had their colours painted, forms shaped, and
+places allotted by wind and weather, and the perpetually but pleasantly
+felt necessities Of the natural condition of mountaineers.
+
+Dear, dear is the thatch to the eyes of a son of Caledonia, for he may
+remember the house in which he was born; but what thatch was ever so
+beautiful as that slate from the quarry of the White-moss? Each
+one--no--not each one--but almost each one--of these little overhanging
+roofs seems to have been slated, or repaired at least, in its own
+separate season, so various is the lustre of lichens that bathes the
+whole, as richly as ever rock was bathed fronting the sun on the
+mountain's brow. Here and there is seen some small window, before
+unobserved, curtained perhaps--for the statesman, and the statesman's
+wife, and the statesman's daughters, have a taste--a taste inspired by
+domestic happiness, which, seeking simply comfort, unconsciously creates
+beauty, and whatever its homely hand touches, that it adorns. There
+would seem to be many fireplaces in Braithwaite-fold, from such a number
+of chimney-pillars, each rising up to a different altitude from a
+different base, round as the bole of a tree--and elegant, as if shaped
+by Vitruvius. To us, we confess, there is nothing offensive in the most
+glaring white rough-cast that ever changed a cottage into a patch of
+sunny snow. Yet here that greyish-tempered unobtrusive hue does
+certainly blend to perfection with roof, rock, and sky. Every instrument
+is in tune. Not even in sylvan glade, nor among the mountain rocks, did
+wanderer's eyes ever behold a porch of meeting tree-stems, or reclining
+cliffs, more gracefully festooned than the porch from which now issues
+one of the fairest of Westmeria's daughters. With one arm crossed before
+her eyes in a sudden burst of sunshine, with the other Ellinor Inman
+waves to her little brother and sisters among the bark-peelers in the
+Rydal woods. The graceful signal is repeated till seen, and in a few
+minutes a boat steals twinkling from the opposite side of the lake, each
+tug of the youthful rowers distinctly heard through the hollow of the
+vale. A singing voice rises and ceases--as if the singer were watching
+the echo--and is not now the picture complete?
+
+After a time old buildings undergo no perceptible change, any more than
+old trees; and after they have begun to feel the touch of decay, it is
+long before they look melancholy; for while they continue to be used,
+they cannot help looking cheerful, and even dilapidation is painful only
+when felt to be lifeless. The house now in ruins, that we passed a few
+hundred yards ago without your seeing it--we saw it with a sigh--among
+some dark firs, just before we began to ascend the hill, was many years
+ago inhabited by Miles Mackareth, a man of some substance, and
+universally esteemed for his honest and pious character. His integrity,
+however, wanted the grace of courteousness, and his religion was
+somewhat gloomy and austere, while all the habits of his life were sad,
+secluded, and solitary. His fireside was always decent, but never
+cheerful--there the passing traveller partook of an ungrudging, but a
+grave hospitality; and although neighbours dropping in unasked were
+always treated as neighbours, yet seldom were they invited to pass an
+evening below his roof, except upon the stated festivals of the seasons,
+or some domestic event demanding sociality, according to the country
+custom. Year after year the gloom deepened on his strong-marked
+intellectual countenance; and his hair, once black as jet, became
+untimely grey. Indeed, although little more than fifty years old, when
+you saw his head uncovered, you would have taken him for a man
+approaching to threescore and ten. His wife and only daughter, both
+naturally of a cheerful disposition, grew every year more retired, till
+at last they shunned society altogether, and were seldom seen but at
+church. And now a vague rumour ran through the hamlets of the
+neighbouring valleys, that he was scarcely in his right mind--that he
+had been heard by shepherds on the hills talking to himself wild words,
+and pacing up and down in a state of distraction. The family ceased to
+attend divine worship, and as for some time the Sabbath had been the
+only day they were visible, few or none now knew how they fared, and by
+many they were nearly forgotten. Meanwhile, during the whole summer, the
+miserable man haunted the loneliest places; and, to the terror of his
+wife and daughter, who had lost all power over him, and durst not speak,
+frequently passed whole days they knew not where, and came home, silent,
+haggard, and ghastly, about midnight. His widow afterwards told that he
+seldom slept, and never without dreadful dreams--that often he would sit
+up all night in his bed, with his eyes fixed and staring on nothing, and
+uttering ejaculations for mercy for all his sins.
+
+What these sins were he never confessed--nor, as far as man may judge of
+man, had he ever committed any act that needed to lie heavy on his
+conscience. But his whole being, he said, was one black sin--and a
+spirit had been sent to tell him, that his doom was to be with the
+wicked through all the ages of eternity. That spirit, without form or
+shadow--only a voice--seldom left his side day or night, go where he
+would; but its most dreadful haunt was under a steep rock called
+Blakerigg-scaur; and thither, in whatever direction he turned his face
+on leaving his own door, he was led by an irresistible impulse, even as
+a child is led by the hand. Tenderly and truly had he once loved his
+wife and daughter, nor less because that love had been of few words, and
+with a shade of sorrow. But now he looked on them almost as if they had
+been strangers--except at times, when he started up, kissed them, and
+wept. His whole soul was possessed by horrid fantasies, of which it was
+itself object and victim; and it is probable that had he seen them both
+lying dead, he would have left their corpses in the house, and taken his
+way to the mountains. At last one night passed away and he came not. His
+wife and daughter, who had not gone to bed, went to the nearest house
+and told their tale. In an hour a hundred feet were traversing all the
+loneliest places--till a hat was seen floating on Loughrigg-tarn, and
+then all knew that the search was near an end. Drags were soon got from
+the fishermen on Windermere, and a boat crossed and recrossed the tarn
+on its miserable quest, till in an hour, during which wife and daughter
+sat without speaking on a stone by the water-edge, the body came
+floating to the surface, with its long silver hair. One single shriek
+only, it is said, was heard, and from that shriek till three years
+afterwards, his widow knew not that her husband was with the dead. On
+the brink of that small sandy bay the body was laid down and cleansed of
+the muddy weeds--his daughter's own hands assisting in the rueful
+work--and she walked among the mourners, the day before the Sabbath,
+when the funeral entered the little burial-ground of Langdale chapel,
+and the congregation sung a Christian psalm over the grave of the
+forgiven suicide.
+
+We cannot patronise the practice of walking in large parties of ten or a
+score, ram-stam and helter-skelter, on to the front-green or gravel-walk
+of any private nobleman's or gentleman's house, to enjoy, from a
+commanding station, an extensive or picturesque view of the circumjacent
+country. It is too much in the style of the Free and Easy. The family
+within, sitting perhaps at dinner with the windows open, or sewing and
+reading in a cool dishabille, cannot like to be stared in upon by so
+many curious and inquisitive pupils all a-hunt for prospects; nor were
+these rose-bushes planted there for public use, nor that cherry-tree in
+vain netted against the blackbirds. Not but that a party may now and
+then excusably enough pretend to lose their way in a strange country;
+and looking around them in well-assumed bewilderment, bow hesitatingly
+and respectfully to maid or matron at door or window, and, with a
+thousand apologies, lingeringly offer to retire by the avenue gate, on
+the other side of the spacious lawn, that terrace-like hangs over vale,
+lake, and river. But to avoid all possible imputation of impertinence,
+follow you our example, and make all such incursions by break of day. We
+hold that, for a couple of hours before and after sunrise, all the earth
+is common property. Nobody surely would think for a moment of looking
+black on any number of freebooting lakers coming full sail up the
+avenue, right against the front, at four o'clock in the morning? At that
+hour, even the poet would grant them the privilege of the arbour where
+he sits when inspired, and writing for immortality. He feels conscious
+that he ought to have been in bed; and hastens, on such occasions, to
+apologise for his intrusion on strangers availing themselves of the
+rights and privileges of the Dawn.
+
+Leaving Ivy-cottage, then, and its yet unbreathing chimneys, turn in at
+the first gate to your right (if it be not built up, in which case leap
+the wall), and find your way the best you can through among old
+pollarded and ivied ash-trees, intermingled with yews, and over knolly
+ground, brier-woven, and here and there whitened with the jagged thorn,
+till you reach, through a slate-stile, a wide gravel walk, shaded by
+pine-trees, and open on the one side to an orchard. Proceed--and little
+more than a hundred steps will land you on the front of Rydal-mount, the
+house of the great Poet of the Lakes. Mr Wordsworth is not at home, but
+away to cloudland in his little boat so like the crescent moon. But do
+not by too much eloquence awaken the family, or scare the silence, or
+frighten "the innocent brightness of the new-born day." We hate all
+sentimentalism; but we bid you, in his own words,
+
+                "With gentle hand
+    Touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves."
+
+From a quaint platform of evergreens you see a blue gleam of Windermere
+over the grove-tops--close at hand are Rydal-hall and its ancient
+woods--right opposite the Loughrigg-fells, ferny, rocky, and sylvan, but
+the chief breadth of breast pastoral--and to the right Rydal-mere,
+seen, and scarcely seen, through embowering trees, and mountain-masses
+bathed in the morning light, and the white-wreathed mists for a little
+while longer shrouding their summits. A lately erected private chapel
+lifts its little tower from below, surrounded by a green, on which there
+are yet no graves--nor do we know if it be intended for a place of
+burial. A few houses are sleeping beyond the chapel by the river-side;
+and the people beginning to set them in order, here and there a pillar
+of smoke ascends into the air, giving cheerfulness and animation to the
+scene.
+
+The Lake-Poets! ay, their day is come. The lakes are worthy of the
+poets, and the poets of the lakes. That poets should love and live among
+lakes, once seemed most absurd to critics whose domiciles were on the
+Nor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerable
+quagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock--so are the Salisbury Craigs
+noble craigs--and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he to
+leap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in the
+Cowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour of
+Glaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack of
+cards. Who, pray, are the Nor-Loch poets? Not the Minstrel--he holds by
+the tenure of the Tweed. Not Campbell--"he heard in dreams the music of
+the Clyde." Not Joanna Baillie--her inspiration was nursed on the
+Calder's sylvan banks and the moors of Strathaven. Stream-loving Coila
+nurtured Burns; and the Shepherd's grave is close to the cot in which he
+was born--within hearing of the Ettrick's mournful voice on its way to
+meet the Yarrow. Skiddaw overshadows, and Greta freshens the bower of
+him who framed,
+
+    "Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."
+
+Here the woods, mountains, and waters of Rydal imparadise the abode of
+the wisest of nature's bards, with whom poetry is religion. And where
+was he ever so happy as in that region, he who created "Christabelle,"
+"beautiful exceedingly;" and sent the "Auncient Mariner" on the wildest
+of all voyagings, and brought him back with the ghastliest of all crews,
+and the strangest of all curses that ever haunted crime?
+
+Of all Poets that ever lived Wordsworth has been at once the most
+truthful and the most idealising; external nature from him has received
+a soul, and becomes our teacher; while he has so filled our minds with
+images from her, that every mood finds some fine affinities there, and
+thus we all hang for sustenance and delight on the bosom of our mighty
+Mother. We believe that there are many who have an eye for Nature, and
+even a sense of the beautiful, without any very profound feeling; and to
+them Wordsworth's finest descriptive passages seem often languid or
+diffuse, and not to present to their eyes any distinct picture. Perhaps
+sometimes this objection may be just; but to paint to the eye is easier
+than to the imagination--and Wordsworth, taking it for granted that
+people can now see and hear, desires to make them feel and understand;
+of his pupil it must not be said,
+
+    "A primrose by the river's brim
+    A yellow primrose is to him,
+    And it is nothing more;"
+
+the poet gives the something more till we start at the disclosure as at
+a lovely apparition--yet an apparition of beauty not foreign to the
+flower, but exhaling from its petals, which till that moment seemed to
+us but an ordinary bunch of leaves. In these lines is a humbler example
+of how recondite may be the spirit of beauty in any most familiar thing
+belonging to the kingdom of nature; one higher far--but of the same
+kind--is couched in two immortal verses--
+
+    "To me the humblest flower that blows, can give
+    Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."
+
+In what would the poet differ from the worthy man of prose, if his
+imagination possessed not a beautifying and transmuting power over the
+objects of the inanimate world? Nay, even the naked truth itself is seen
+clearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become a
+poet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad. Yonder ass licking his
+lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow
+with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at
+Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing
+with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally
+Chambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has
+cultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns their
+phraseology, and declares the sunset to be exceedingly handsome. The
+Laker, who sometimes has a soul, feels it rise within him as the rim of
+the orb disappears in the glow of softened fire. The artist compliments
+Nature, by likening her evening glories to a picture of Claud
+Lorraine--while the poet feels the sense sublime
+
+    "Of something far more deeply interfused,
+    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
+    And the round ocean and the living air,
+    And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
+    A motion and a spirit that impels
+    All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+    And rolls through all things."
+
+Compare any one page, or any twenty pages, with the character given of
+Wordsworth's poetry in the obsolete criticism that sought to send it to
+oblivion. The poet now sits on his throne in the blue serene--and no
+voice from below dares deny his supremacy in his own calm dominions. And
+was it of him, whom devout imagination, dreaming of ages to come, now
+sees, placed in his immortality between Milton and Spenser, that the
+whole land once rang with ridicule, while her wise men wiped their eyes
+"of tears that sacred _pity_ had engendered," and then relieved their
+hearts by joining in the laughter "of the universal British nation?" All
+the ineffable absurdities of the bard are now embodied in Seven
+Volumes--the sense of the ridiculous still survives among us--our men of
+wit and power are not all dead--we have yet our satirists, great and
+small--editors in thousands, and contributors in tens of thousands--yet
+not a whisper is heard to breathe detraction from the genius of the
+high-priest of nature; while the voice of the awakened and enlightened
+land declares it to be divine--using towards him not the language merely
+of admiration but of reverence--of love and gratitude due to the
+benefactor of humanity, who has purified its passions by loftiest
+thoughts and noblest sentiments, stilling their turbulence by the same
+processes that magnify their power, and showing how the soul, in ebb and
+flow, and when its tide is at full, may be at once as strong and as
+serene as the sea.
+
+There are few pictures painted by him merely for the pleasure of the
+eye, or even the imagination, though all the pictures he ever painted
+are beautiful to both; they have all a moral meaning--many a meaning
+more than moral--and his poetry can be comprehended, in its full scope
+and spirit, but by those who feel the sublimity of these four lines in
+his "Ode to Duty,"--
+
+    "Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads;
+    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
+    And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."
+
+Is thy life disturbed by guilty or sinful passions? Have they gained a
+mastery of thee--and art thou indeed their slave? Then the poetry of
+Wordsworth must be to thee
+
+    "As is a picture to a blind man's eye;"
+
+or if thine eyes yet see the light in which it is enveloped, and thy
+heart yet feels the beauty it reveals, in spite of the clouds that
+overhang and the storms that trouble them, that beauty will be
+unbearable, till regret become remorse, and remorse penitence, and
+penitence restore thee to those intuitions of the truth that illumine
+his sacred pages, and thou knowest and feelest once more that
+
+    "The primal duties shine aloft--like stars,"
+
+that life's best pleasures grow like flowers all around and beneath thy
+feet.
+
+Nor are we not privileged to cherish a better feeling than pride in the
+belief, or rather knowledge, that WE have helped to diffuse Wordsworth's
+poetry not only over this Island, but the furthest dependencies of the
+British empire, and throughout the United States of America. Many
+thousands have owed to us their emancipation from the prejudices against
+it, under which they had wilfully remained ignorant of it during many
+years; and we have instructed as many more, whose hearts were free, how
+to look on it with those eyes of love which alone can discover the
+Beautiful. Communications have been made to us from across the Atlantic,
+and from the heart of India--from the Occident and the Orient--thanking
+us for having vindicated and extended the fame of the best of our
+living bards, till the name of Wordsworth has become a household word on
+the banks of the Mississippi and the Ganges. It would have been so had
+we never lived, _but not so soon_; and many a noble nature has
+worshipped his genius, as displayed in our pages, not in fragments but
+in perfect poems, accompanied with our comments, who had no means in
+those distant regions of possessing his volumes, whereas Maga flies on
+wings to the uttermost parts of the earth.
+
+As for our own dear Scotland--for whose sake, with all her faults, the
+light of day is sweet to our eyes--twenty years ago there were not
+twenty copies--we question if there were ten--of the "Lyrical Ballads"
+in all the land of the mountain and the flood. Now Wordsworth is studied
+all Scotland over--and Scotland is proud and happy to know, from his
+Memorials of the Tours he has made through her brown heaths and shaggy
+woods, that the Bard's heart overflows with kindness towards her
+children--that his songs have celebrated the simple and heroic character
+of her olden times, nor left unhonoured the virtues that yet survive in
+her national character. All her generous youth regard him now as a great
+Poet; and we have been more affected than we should choose to confess,
+by the grateful acknowledgment of many a gifted spirit, that to us it
+was owing that they had opened their eyes and their hearts to the
+ineffable beauty of that poetry in which they had, under our
+instructions, found not a vain visionary delight, but a strength and
+succour and consolation, breathed as from a shrine in the silence and
+solitude of nature, in which stood their father's hut, sanctifying their
+humble birthplace with pious thoughts that made the very weekdays to
+them like Sabbaths--nor on the evening of the Sabbath might they not
+blamelessly be blended with those breathed from the Bible, enlarging
+their souls to religion by those meditative moods which such pure poetry
+inspires, and by those habits of reflection which its study forms, when
+pursued under the influence of thoughtful peace.
+
+Why, if it were not for that everlasting--we beg pardon--immortal
+Wordsworth--the LAKES, and all that belong to them, would be our
+own--_jure divino_--for we are the heir-apparent to the
+
+    "Sole King of rocky Cumberland."
+
+But Wordsworth never will--never can die; and so we are in danger of
+being cheated out of our due dominion. We cannot think this fatherly
+treatment of such a son--and yet in our loftiest moods of filial
+reverence we have heard ourselves exclaiming, while
+
+            "The Cataract of Lodore
+    Peal'd to our orisons,"
+
+O King! live for ever!
+
+Therefore, with the fear of "The Excursion" before our eyes, we took to
+prose--to numerous prose--ay, though we say it that should not say it,
+to prose as numerous as any verse--and showed such scenes
+
+    "As savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew."
+
+Here an English Lake--there a Scottish loch--till Turner grew jealous,
+and Thomson flung his brush at one of his own unfinished mountains--when
+lo! a miracle! Creative of grandeur in his very despair, he stood
+astonished at the cliff that came prerupt from his canvass, and
+christened itself "the Eagle's Eyrie," as it _frowned serenely_ upon the
+sea, maddening in a foamy circle at its inaccessible feet.
+
+Only in such prose as ours can the heart pour forth its effusions like a
+strong spring discharging ever so many gallons in a minute, either into
+pipes that conduct it through some great Metropolitan city, or into a
+water-course that soon becomes a rivulet, then a stream, then a river,
+then a lake, and then a sea. Would Fancy luxuriate? Then let her expand
+wings of prose. In verse, however irregular, her flight is lime-twigged,
+and she soon takes to hopping on the ground. Would Imagination dive? Let
+the bell in which she sinks be constructed on the prose principle, and
+deeper than ever plummet sunk, it will startle monsters at the roots of
+the coral caves, yet be impervious to the strokes of the most tremendous
+of tails. Would she soar? In a prose balloon she seeks the stars. There
+is room and power of ascension for any quantity of ballast--fling it
+out, and up she goes! Let some gas escape, and she descends far more
+gingerly than Mrs Graham and his Serene Highness; the grapnel catches a
+stile, and she steps "like a dreadless angel unpursued" once more upon
+_terra firma_, and may then celebrate her aerial voyage, if she choose,
+in an Ode which will be sure near the end to rise--into prose.
+
+Prose, we believe, is destined to drive what is called Poetry out of the
+world. Here is a fair challenge. Let any Poet send us a poem of five
+hundred lines--blanks or not--on any subject; and we shall write on that
+subject a passage of the same number of words in prose; and the Editors
+of the Quarterly, Edinburgh, and Westminster, shall decide which
+deserves the prize. Milton was woefully wrong in speaking of "prose or
+numerous verse." Prose is a million times more numerous than verse. Then
+prose improves the more poetical it becomes; but verse, the moment it
+becomes prosaic, goes to the dogs. Then, the connecting links between
+two fine passages in verse, it is enjoined, shall be as little like
+verse as possible; nay, whole passages, critics say, should be of that
+sort; and why, pray, not prose at once? Why clip the King's English, or
+the Emperor's German, or the Sublime Porte's Turkish, into bits of dull
+jingle--pretending to be verses merely because of the proper number of
+syllables--some of them imprisoned perhaps in parentheses, where they
+sit helplessly protruding the bare soles of their feet, like folks that
+have got muzzy, in the stocks?
+
+Wordsworth says well, that the language of common people, when giving
+utterance to passionate emotions, is highly figurative; and hence he
+concludes not so well fit for a lyrical ballad. Their volubility is
+great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by
+the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never--the utmost they
+reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk!
+The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream
+of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion!
+The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever
+yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet,
+in his sublimest moods, speaks in prose--Lady Macbeth talks prose in her
+sleep--and so it should be printed. "Out damned spot!" are three words
+of prose; and who that beheld Siddons wringing her hands to wash them of
+murder, did not feel that they were the most dreadful ever extorted by
+remorse from guilt?
+
+A green old age is the most loving season of life, for almost all the
+other passions are then dead or dying--or the mind, no more at the mercy
+of a troubled heart, compares the little pleasure their gratification
+can ever yield now with what it could at any time long ago, and lets
+them rest. Envy is the worst disturber or embitterer of man's declining
+years; but it does not deserve the name of a passion--and is a disease,
+not of the poor in spirit--for they are blessed--but of the mean, and
+then they indeed are cursed. For our own parts, we know Envy but as we
+have studied it in others--and never felt it except towards the wise and
+good; and then 'twas a longing desire to be like them--painful only when
+we thought that might never be, and that all our loftiest aspirations
+might be in vain. Our envy of Genius is of a nature so noble, that it
+knows no happiness like that of guarding from mildew the laurels on the
+brows of the Muses' Sons. What a dear kind soul of a critic is old
+Christopher North! Watering the flowers of poetry, and removing the
+weeds that might choke them--letting in the sunshine upon them, and
+fencing them from the blast--proclaiming where the gardens grow, and
+leading boys and virgins into the pleasant alleys--teaching hearts to
+love and eyes to see their beauty, and classifying, by the attributes it
+has pleased nature to bestow on the various orders, the plants of
+Paradise--This is our occupation--and the happiness of witnessing them
+all growing in the light of admiration is our reward.
+
+Finding our way back as we choose to Ivy-cottage, we cross the wooden
+bridge, and away along the western shore of Rydal-mere. Hence you see
+the mountains in magnificent composition, and craggy coppices with
+intervening green fields shelving down to the lake margin. It is a small
+lake, not much more than a mile round, and of a very peculiar character.
+One memorable cottage only, as far as we remember, peeps on its shore
+from a grove of sycamores, a statesman's pleasant dwelling; and there
+are the ruins of another on a slope near the upper end, the circle of
+the garden still visible. Everything has a quiet but wildish pastoral
+and sylvan look, and the bleating of sheep fills the hollow of the
+hills. The lake has a reedy inlet and outlet, and the angler thinks of
+pike when he looks upon such harbours. There is a single boat-house,
+where the Lady of the Hall has a padlocked and painted barge for
+pleasure parties; and the heronry on the high pine-trees of the only
+island connects the scene with the ancient park of Rydal, whose oak
+woods, though thinned and decayed, still preserve the majestic and
+venerable character of antiquity and baronial state.
+
+Having taken a lingering farewell of Rydal-mere, and of the new
+Chapel-tower, that seems among the groves already to be an antique, we
+may either sink down to the stream that flows out of Grassmere and
+connects the two lakes, crossing a wooden bridge, and then joining the
+new road that sweeps along to the Village, or we may keep up on the face
+of the hill, and by a terrace-path reach the Loughrigg-road, a few
+hundred yards above Tail-end, a pretty cottage-ornée which you will
+observe crowning a wooded eminence, and looking cheerfully abroad over
+all the vale. There is one Mount in particular, whence we see to
+advantage the delightful panorama--encircling mountains--Grassmere Lake
+far down below your feet, with its one green pastoral isle, sylvan
+shores, and emerald meadows--huts and houses sprinkled up and down in
+all directions--the village partly embowered in groves, and partly open
+below the shadow of large single trees--and the Church-tower, almost
+always a fine feature in the scenery of the north of England, standing
+in stately simplicity among the clustering tenements, nor dwindled even
+by the great height of the hills.
+
+It is pleasant to lose sight entirely of a beautiful scene, and to plod
+along for a few hundred yards in almost objectless shadow. Our
+conceptions and feelings are bright and strong from the nearness of
+their objects, yet the dream is somewhat different from the reality. All
+at once, at a turning of the road, the splendour reappears like an
+unfurled banner, and the heart leaps in the joy of the senses. This sort
+of enjoyment comes upon you before you reach the Village of Grassmere
+from the point of vision above described, and a stranger sometimes is
+apt to doubt if it be really the same Lake--that one island, and those
+few promontories, shifting into such varied combinations with the
+varying mountain-ridges and ranges, that show top over top in
+bewildering succession, and give hints of other valleys beyond, and of
+Tarns rarely visited, among the moorland wastes. A single long dim
+shadow, falling across the water, alters the whole physiognomy of the
+scene--nor less a single bright streak of sunshine, brightening up some
+feature formerly hidden, and giving animation and expression to the
+whole face of the Lake.
+
+About a short mile from the Village Inn, you will pass by without seeing
+it--unless warned not to do so--one of the most singularly beautiful
+habitations in the world. It belongs to a gentleman of the name of
+Barber, and, we believe, has been almost entirely built by him--the
+original hut on which his taste has worked having been a mere shell. The
+spirit of the place seems to us to be that of Shadowy Silence. Its
+bounds are small; but it is an indivisible part of a hill-side so secret
+and sylvan, that it might be the haunt of the roe. You hear the tinkle
+of a rill, invisible among the hazels--a bird sings or flutters--a bee
+hums his way through the bewildering wood--but no louder sound. Some
+fine old forest-trees extend widely their cool and glimmering shade; and
+a few stumps or armless trunks, whose bulk is increased by a load of ivy
+that hides the hollow wherein the owls have their domicile, give an air
+of antiquity to the spot, that, but for other accompaniments, would
+almost be melancholy. As it is, the scene has a pensive character. As
+yet you have seen no house, and wonder whither the gravel-walks are to
+conduct you, winding fancifully and fantastically through the
+smooth-shaven lawn, bestrewed by a few large leaves of the
+horse-chestnut or sycamore. But there are clustered verandas where the
+nightingale might woo the rose, and lattice-windows reaching from eaves
+to ground-sill, so sheltered that they might stand open in storm and
+rain, and tall circular chimneys, shaped almost like the stems of the
+trees that overshadow the roof irregular, and over all a gleam of blue
+sky and a few motionless clouds. The noisy world ceases to be, and the
+tranquil heart, delighted with the sweet seclusion, breathes, "Oh! that
+this were my cell, and that I were a hermit!"
+
+But you soon see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere you
+discern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement that
+belong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yet
+nothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep their
+own places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunny
+slope, not a weed is to be seen, for weeds are beautiful only by the
+wayside, in the matting of hedge-roots, by the mossy stone, and the
+brink of the well in the brae--and are offensive only when they intrude
+into society above their own rank, and where they have the air and
+accent of aliens. By pretty pebbled steps of stairs you mount up from
+platform to platform of the sloping woodland banks--the prospect
+widening as you ascend, till from a bridge that spans a leaping rivulet,
+you behold in full blow all Grassmere Vale, Village, Church-tower, and
+Lake, the whole of the mountains, and a noble arch of sky, the
+circumference of that little world of peace.
+
+Circumscribed as are the boundaries of this place, yet the grounds are
+so artfully, while one thinks so artlessly, laid out, that, wandering
+through their labyrinthine recesses, you might believe yourself in an
+extensive wilderness. Here you come out upon a green open glade (you see
+by the sun-dial it is past seven o'clock)--there the arms of an immense
+tree overshadow what is in itself a scene--yonder you have an alley that
+serpentises into gloom and obscurity--and from that cliff you doubtless
+would see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all its
+natural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows the
+owner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almost
+caprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments--the
+barn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of a
+chapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of being
+sick of the world, is attached to all elegant socialities and amities;
+that he uses silver cups instead of maple bowls, shows his scallop-shell
+among other curiosities in his cabinet, and will treat the passing
+pilgrim with pure water from the spring, if he insists upon that
+beverage, but will first offer him a glass of the yellow cowslip-wine,
+the cooling claret, or the sparkling champagne.
+
+Perhaps we are all beginning to get a little hungry, but it is too soon
+to breakfast; so, leaving the village of Grassmere on the right, keep
+your eye on Helm-crag, while we are finding, without seeking, our way up
+Easdale. Easdale is an arm of Grassmere, and in the words of Mr Green
+the artist, "it is in places profusely wooded, and charmingly
+sequestered among the mountains." Here you may hunt the waterfalls, in
+rainy weather easily run down, but difficult of detection in a drought.
+Several pretty rustic bridges cross and recross the main stream and its
+tributaries; the cottages, in nook and on hill-side, are among the most
+picturesque and engaging in the whole country; the vale widens into
+spacious and noble meadow-grounds, on which might suitably stand the
+mansion of any nobleman in England--as you near its head, everything
+gets wild and broken, with a slight touch of dreariness, and by no very
+difficult ascent we might reach Easdale-tarn in less than an hour's
+walking from Grassmere--a lonely and impressive scene, and the haunt of
+the angler almost as frequently as of the shepherd.
+
+How far can we enjoy the beauty of external nature under a sharp
+appetite for breakfast or dinner? On our imagination the effect of
+hunger is somewhat singular. We no longer regard sheep, for instance, as
+the fleecy or the bleating flock. Their wool or their baaing is nothing
+to us--we think of necks, and jigots, and saddles of mutton; and even
+the lamb frisking on the sunny bank is eaten by us in the shape of
+steaks and fry. If it is in the morning, we see no part of the cow but
+her udder, distilling richest milkiness. Instead of ascending to heaven
+on the smoke of a cottage chimney, we put our arms round the column, and
+descend on the lid of the great pan preparing the family breakfast.
+Every interesting object in the landscape seems edible--our mouth waters
+all over the vale--as the village clock tolls eight, we involuntarily
+say grace, and Price on the Picturesque gives way to Meg Dods's Cookery.
+
+Mrs Bell of the Red Lion Inn, Grassmere, can give a breakfast with any
+woman in England. She bakes incomparable bread--firm, close, compact,
+and white, thin-crusted, and admirably raised. Her yeast always works
+well. What butter! Before it a primrose must hide its unyellowed head.
+Then jam of the finest quality, goose, rasp, and strawberry! and as the
+jam is, so are her jellies. Hens cackle that the eggs are fresh--and
+these shrimps were scraping the sand last night in the Whitehaven sea.
+What glorious bannocks of barley-meal! Crisp wheaten cakes, too, no
+thicker than a wafer. Do not, our good sir, appropriate that cut of
+pickled salmon; it is heavier than it looks, and will weigh about four
+pounds. One might live a thousand years, yet never weary of such
+mutton-ham. Virgin honey, indeed! Let us hope that the bees were not
+smothered, but by some gracious disciple of Bonar or Huber decoyed from
+a full hive into an empty one, with half the summer and all the autumn
+before them to build and saturate their new Comb-Palace. No bad thing
+is a cold pigeon-pie, especially of cushats. To hear them cooing in the
+centre of a wood is one thing, and to see them lying at the bottom of a
+pie is another--which is the better, depends entirely on time, place,
+and circumstance. Well, a beef-steak at breakfast is rather
+startling--but let us try a bit with these fine ingenuous youthful
+potatoes, from a light sandy soil on a warm slope. Next to the country
+clergy, smugglers are the most spiritual of characters; and we verily
+believe that to be "sma' still." Our dear sir--you are in orders, we
+believe--will you have the goodness to return thanks? Yes, now you may
+ring the bell for the bill. Moderate indeed! With a day's work before
+one, there is nothing like the deep broad basis of breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+STROLL TO GRASSMERE.
+
+SECOND SAUNTER.
+
+
+It is yet only ten o'clock--and what a multitude of thoughts and
+feelings, sights and sounds, lights and shadows, have been ours since
+sunrise! Had we been in bed, all would have remained unfelt and unknown.
+But, to be sure, one dream might have been worth them all. Dreams,
+however, when they are over, are gone, be they of bliss or bale, heaven
+or the shades. No one weeps over a dream. With such tears no one would
+sympathise. Give us reality, "the sober certainty of waking bliss," and
+to it memory shall cling. Let the object of our sorrow belong to the
+living world, and, transient though it be, its power may be immortal.
+Away then, as of little worth, all the unsubstantial and wavering world
+of dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, so
+much the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like this,
+where all is steadfast but the clouds, whose very being is change, and
+the flow of waters that have been in motion since the Flood.
+
+Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by her
+elated husband, a high-born beautiful and graceful bride. They are
+making a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled her
+horns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, here
+it is--youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love--all united in
+ties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other--the
+blissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came to
+admire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can see
+only one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother,
+and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself--every
+one--that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virgin
+youthhood. With her, as with Genevieve--
+
+    "All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
+      Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
+    All are but ministers of Love,
+      And feed his sacred flame!"
+
+And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No--it will fade, and
+fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like the
+shortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of the
+light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal
+twilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not
+how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth,
+and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die.
+
+Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all such
+occasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that of
+wedded life it may generally be said,
+
+    "O, happy state, where souls together draw,
+    Where love is liberty, and nature law!"
+
+What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and
+religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul!
+And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine
+dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within
+bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them
+the cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good must
+flourish under that holy necessity--everything foul and bad fade away;
+and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrims
+travelling together through time to eternity, whether their path lead
+through an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to be
+gracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that very
+reason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and if
+the present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in rapture
+as it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice to
+them whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the past
+and future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulge
+tempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so?
+How much tranquillity and contentment in human homes! Calm onflowings of
+life shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out into
+the open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautiful
+resignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away--yet
+without and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not an
+unhappy lot--The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as if
+they were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in the
+gloom--The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearly
+dried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven--Children,
+those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as the
+glades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in the
+mother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether without
+relief--for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now in
+the bowers of heaven.
+
+Reverse the picture--and tremble for the fate of those whom God hath
+made one, and whom no one man must put asunder. In common natures, what
+hot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference,
+disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to
+madness, lies in that mean but mighty word--Temper! The face, to whose
+meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows
+now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape of
+those features is still fine--the eye of the gazelle--the Grecian nose
+and forehead--the ivory teeth, so small and regular--and thin line of
+ruby lips breathing Circassian luxury--the snow-drifts of the bosom
+still heave there--a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping from
+the chariot of the sun--nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veil
+beneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend--a devil
+incarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made your
+house a hell.
+
+But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homely
+wife--or one comely at the best--nay, even that you have sought to
+secure your peace by admitted ugliness--or wedded a woman whom all
+tongues call--plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame like
+the sun in miniature on the front of your house--but what Joint-Stock
+Company can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetual
+singeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze up without
+warning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire?
+We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantly
+contradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure,
+at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine at
+home every day for a month, she wonders why nobody asks you out, and
+fears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine from
+home one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted to
+tavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention--there is
+hatred and sorrow in house-bills--rent and taxes are productive of
+endless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing--indeed
+quite a fortune in itself--especially to a poor Scotsman going to
+England, where all the people are barbarous--yet is it irritatingly
+expensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawky
+hoydens and hobbletehoys are getting themselves accomplished in the
+foreign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, and
+the dumb-bells.
+
+    "Let observation, with extensive view,
+    Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
+
+(two bad lines, by the way, though written by Dr Johnson)--and
+observation will find the literature of all countries filled with
+sarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and ballads
+especially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous misery
+and discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns--the dilemma of
+English wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, of
+every individual hour of every individual day, and so on, has its
+peculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yet
+the delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing,
+and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger--marrying and
+giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of
+prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about
+every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth--double
+houses become villages--villages towns--towns cities--and our Metropolis
+is itself a world!
+
+While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach against
+wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion that
+leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the
+mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of
+the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's
+bosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under a
+fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful
+embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselves
+spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and the
+weak fall--bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as
+the day--fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken
+heart--hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to
+despair--crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of
+appetite, grows by what it feeds on--wide, but unseen, over all the
+regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy,
+dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge--beseechings, seductions,
+suicides, and insanities--and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet
+all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time
+endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage,
+of which every other golden globe is poison and death.
+
+Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou
+young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears
+to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile
+can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also
+the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and
+religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and
+unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, mayst thou be, as the dove in the
+sunshine on the Tower-top--and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on
+her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood!
+
+Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquainted
+with your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects to
+gaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Of
+yourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the pretty
+white-washed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine with
+each other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower.
+Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be there
+pathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes.
+Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you will
+disappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woody
+wildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and a
+glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is best
+society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or
+voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained
+in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an
+incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of
+nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song--and of the
+hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweet
+the cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears by far the most
+beautiful place in all the Lake-country. You buy a field--build a
+cottage--and in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you to
+sit) beneath the shadow of your own trees!
+
+In an English village--highland or lowland--seldom is there any spot so
+beautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, with
+the pensive shadows of the old church-tower settling over its cheerful
+graves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as too
+strong--for the pigeons are cooing in the belfry, the stream is
+murmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on the
+mounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead.
+But hark! the bell tolls--one--one--one--a funeral knell, speaking not
+of time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial--and close to
+the wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave.
+
+Hush! The sound of singing voices in yonder wood, deadened by the weight
+of umbrage! Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now all is
+silence--but the pause speaks of death. Again the melancholy swell
+ascends the sky--and then comes slowly along the funeral procession, the
+coffin borne aloft, and the mourners all in white; for it is a virgin
+who is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncovered
+while the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites
+along the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. A
+smothered sobbing disturbeth not the service--'tis a human spirit
+breathing in accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for the
+immortal--Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven.
+
+Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger
+from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost
+all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole
+delight of her greyhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy
+extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been
+beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her
+heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All
+that we know is her name and age--you see them glittering on her
+coffin--"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years"!
+
+The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to
+Ambleside; and although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous
+than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not
+indulge too long in a mournful mood--yet let us all sit down under the
+shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of
+Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears.
+
+Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for
+ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius
+has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves
+heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have
+well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now
+almost like a fallen wall--at best, the remnants of a cattle-shed shaken
+down by the storm.
+
+Thirty years ago--how short a time in national history--how long in that
+of private sorrows!--all tongues were speaking of the death that there
+befell; and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the
+funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on
+the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not
+even their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It was
+inhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known
+familiarly in her own small world by the name of LUCY OF THE FOLD. In
+almost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiar
+pride--some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and
+whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of
+mind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of
+attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending
+year. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished her
+thirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness,
+often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her
+parents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why they
+should dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so many
+regarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, but as fond too of her
+nest; and when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life was
+almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadness, and from sadness to joy;
+from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like that
+of the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creature
+wavering in the sunshine over the wood-top--was to Lucy as welcome a
+change as the change of lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the
+mountain-country of her birth.
+
+One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house,
+and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they
+would let him have lodging with them for a few months--a single room for
+bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family.
+Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever
+creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of
+imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the
+confinement of college walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a
+rainbow. No eyes had he for realities--all nature was seen in the light
+of genius--not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was
+beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in
+the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends,
+colleges, cities--all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt as
+if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond
+the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect
+and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a
+spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that
+cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in
+all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the
+countryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the
+Fold.
+
+Every day--and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among
+the hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyes--and every
+hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr Howard
+was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none
+doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever
+conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland
+and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured
+the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of
+the Fold. It was indeed even so--for, before the long summer days were
+gone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slept
+on the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none--indeed,
+scarcely one near relation--although he was rich in this world's riches,
+but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature had
+lavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed of the splendid
+but wayward youth--and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him,
+were it even to some savage land. Thus the Fold became to him the one
+dearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple ongoings of that
+humble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all the
+rough or coarser edges of lowly life were softened away in the light of
+genius that transmuted everything on which it fell; while all the silent
+intimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hut
+as fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spirit
+pre-eminently lovely, and chained it to the hearth, around which was
+read the morning and the evening prayer.
+
+What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very
+impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in
+place of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till in
+a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away,
+perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creature
+will have the soul of a very angel--and then, before God and at His holy
+altar, mine shall she become for ever--here and hereafter--in this
+paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of
+heaven."
+
+Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the
+change, imperceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought on
+Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely
+could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was
+dutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiar
+objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now
+grown to woman's stature--tall, though she scarcely seemed so except
+when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling,
+and far more than fulfilling, the fair promise of her childhood. Never
+once had the young stranger--stranger no more--spoken to daughter,
+father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towards
+Lucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, which
+was almost pity--an affection that was often sad--wonder at her
+surpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of its
+power--admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meet
+instruction as if already formed--and that heart-throbbing that stirs
+the blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in the
+twilight through smiles or through tears,--these, and a thousand other
+feelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, now
+constituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook him
+when he was alone among the mountains.
+
+At last it was known through the country that Mr Howard--the stranger,
+the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much,
+but whom everybody loved, and whose father must at the least have been a
+lord, was going--in a year or less--to marry the daughter of Allan
+Fleming--Lucy of the Fold. O, grief and shame to the parents--if still
+living--of the noble Boy! O, sorrow for himself when his passion
+dies--when the dream is dissolved--and when, in place of the angel of
+light who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowly
+born, and long rudely bred--a being only fair as many others are fair,
+sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, and
+partaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown to
+herself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one to
+rescue them from such a fate--from a few months of imaginary bliss, and
+from many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming be
+so infatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who would soon desert
+her broken-hearted? Yet kind thoughts, wishes, hopes, and beliefs
+prevailed; nor were there wanting stories of the olden time, of
+low-born maidens married to youths of high estate, and raised from hut
+to hall, becoming mothers of a lordly line of sons, that were
+counsellors to Kings and Princes.
+
+In Spring, Mr Howard went away for a few months--it was said to the
+great city--and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride.
+They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were still
+together. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath he
+would be at the Fold. A few fields in Easdale, long mortgaged beyond
+their fee-simple by the hard-working statesman from whom they
+reluctantly were passing away, had meanwhile been purchased by Mr
+Howard, and in that cottage they were to abide, till they had built for
+themselves a house a little further up the side of the sylvan hill,
+below the shadow of Helm-crag. Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return and
+its golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was to
+descend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of living
+things.
+
+Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun;
+and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic pass of the
+Hawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose as
+lustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnight
+hour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached the
+cliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning in
+the low window, the very planet of love. It seemed to shed a bright
+serenity over all the vale, and the moon-glittering waters of Rydal-mere
+were as an image of life, pure, lonely, undisturbed, and at the pensive
+hour how profound! "Blessing and praise be to the gracious God! who
+framed my spirit so to delight in His beautiful and glorious
+creation--blessing and praise to the Holy One, for the boon of my Lucy's
+innocent and religious love!" Prayers crowded fast into his soul, and
+tears of joy fell from his eyes, as he stood at the threshold, almost
+afraid, in the trembling of life-deep affection, to meet her first
+embrace.
+
+In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then in
+another moment, he saw, through the open door of the room where Lucy
+used to sleep, several figures moving to and fro in the light, and one
+figure upon its knees--who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed he
+became one of the pale-faced company--and there he beheld her on her
+bed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorable
+beauty--eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead,
+dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he fell
+down in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor.
+
+Encircled with arms that lay round him softer and silkier far than
+flower-wreaths on the neck of a child who has laid him down from play,
+was he when he awoke from that fit--lying even on his own maiden's bed,
+and within her very bosom, that beat yet, although soon about to beat no
+more. At that blest awakening moment, he might have thought he saw the
+first glimpse of light of the morning after his marriage-day; for her
+face was turned towards his breast, and with her faint breathings he
+felt the touch of tears. Not tears alone now bedimmed those eyes, for
+tears he could have kissed away; but the blue lids were heavy with
+something that was not slumber--the orbs themselves were scarcely
+visible--and her voice--it was gone, to be heard never again, till in
+the choir of white-robed spirits that sing at the right hand of God.
+
+Yet no one doubted that she knew him--him who had dropt down, like a
+superior being, from another sphere, on the innocence of her simple
+childhood--had taught her to know so much of her own soul--to love her
+parents with a profounder and more holy love--to see, in characters more
+divine, Heaven's promises of forgiveness to every contrite heart--and a
+life of perfect blessedness beyond death and the grave. A smile that
+shone over her face the moment that she had been brought to know that he
+had come at last, and was nigh at hand--and that never left it while her
+bosom moved--no--not for all the three days and nights that he continued
+to sit beside the corpse, when father and mother were forgetting their
+cares in sleep--that smile told all who stood around, watching her
+departure, neighbour, friend, priest, parent, and him the suddenly
+distracted and desolate, that in the very moment of expiration she knew
+him well, and was recommending him and his afflictions to the pity of
+One who died to save sinners.
+
+Three days and three nights, we have said, did he sit beside her who so
+soon was to have been his bride; and come or go who would into the room,
+he saw them not--his sight was fixed on the winding-sheet, eyeing it,
+without a single tear, from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking up
+to heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably long
+without food, so did he--and so he would have done, on and on to the
+most far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, he
+never rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he never
+slept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunderstorm,
+the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed that
+he heard it not--and during the floods of next day, to him the roaring
+vale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people--for now
+they seemed to be old--wept to see him sitting still beside their dead
+child; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office,
+and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenly
+alighted on the face of the corpse--and then off--and on--and away--and
+returning--was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty in
+its corruption. "Ha--ha!" starting up, he cried in horror--"What birds
+of prey are these, whom Satan has sent to devour the corpse?" He became
+stricken with a sort of palsy--and, being led out to the open air, was
+laid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf,
+where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat,
+building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life.
+
+The company assembled--but not before his eyes--the bier was lifted up
+and moved away down the sylvan slope, and away round the head of the
+Lake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied, here and there, as it
+passed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound of
+psalms--but he saw--he heard not;--when the last sound of the spade
+rebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by--but all the
+while he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmen
+at his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage of
+the Fold was as if she had never been born--for she had vanished for
+ever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguished
+in the dust.
+
+Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in his
+eyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of a
+reasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or in
+what part of the earth, yet, when left by himself, he never sought to
+move beyond the boundaries of the Fold. During the first faint
+glimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and over
+many times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she was
+dead--then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleep
+had fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate--then
+with groans too affecting to be borne by those who heard them, he would
+ask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, her
+husband, in life; and finally, and last of all, he imagined himself in
+Grassmere Churchyard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which it
+was evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours and
+hours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes all
+at once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting-fits
+returned, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone-dead. As
+for his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms,
+little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposed
+that one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days be
+alive--yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun did that
+body die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks of
+Rydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passing
+like a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage in
+Palestine, even beneath the shadow of Mount Sion, and was laid, with a
+lock of hair--which, from the place it held, strangers knew to have
+belonged to one dearly beloved--close to his heart, on which it had lain
+so long, and was to moulder away in darkness together, by Christian
+hands and in a Christian sepulchre.
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOY.
+
+
+Periodical literature is a type of many of the most beautiful things and
+interesting events in nature; or say, rather, that _they_ are types of
+_it_--the Flowers and the Stars. As to Flowers, they are the prettiest
+periodicals ever published in folio--the leaves are wire-wove and
+hot-pressed by Nature's self; their circulation is wide over all the
+land; from castle to cottage they are regularly taken in; as old age
+bends over them, his youth is renewed; and you see childhood poring upon
+them pressed close to its very bosom. Some of them are ephemeral--their
+contents are exhaled between the rising and setting sun. Once a-week
+others break through their green, pink, or crimson cover; and how
+delightful, on the seventh day, smiles in the sunshine the Sabbath
+Flower--a Sunday publication perused without blame by the most
+religious--even before morning prayer! Each month, indeed, throughout
+the whole year, has its own Flower periodical. Some are annual, some
+biennial, some triennial, and there are perennials that seem to live for
+ever--and yet are still periodical--though our love will not allow us to
+know when they die, and phoenix-like reappear from their own ashes. So
+much for Flowers--typifying or typified;--leaves emblematical of
+pages--buds of binding--dew-veils of covers--and the wafting away of
+bloom and fragrance like the dissemination of fine feelings, bright
+fancies, and winged thoughts.
+
+The Flowers are the periodicals of the earth--the Stars are the
+periodicals of heaven. With what unfailing regularity do the numbers
+issue forth! Hesperus and Lucifer! ye are one concern. The Pole-star is
+studied by all nations. How popular the poetry of the Moon! On what
+subject does not the Sun throw light? No fear of hurting your eyes by
+reading that fine clear large type on that softened page. As you turn
+them over, one blue, another yellow, and another green, all are alike
+delightful to the pupil, dear as the very apple of his eye. Yes, the
+great Periodical Press of heaven is unceasingly at work--night and day;
+the only free power all over the world--'tis indeed like the air we
+breathe--if we have it not, we die.
+
+Look, then, at all paper periodicals with pleasure, for sake of the
+Flowers and the Stars. Suppose them all extinct, and life would be like
+a flowerless earth, a starless heaven. We should soon forget the
+Seasons. The periodicals of the External would soon all lose their
+meaning, were there no longer any periodicals of the Internal. These are
+the lights and shadows of life, merrily dancing or gravely stealing over
+the dial; remembrancers of the past--teachers of the present--prophets
+of the future hours. Were they all dead, Spring would in vain renew her
+promise--wearisome would be the interminable summer days--the fruits of
+autumn tasteless--the winter ingle blink mournfully round the hearth.
+What are the blessed Seasons themselves, in nature and in Thomson, but
+periodicals of a larger growth? We should doubt the goodness of that
+man's heart, who loved not the periodical literature of earth and
+sky--who would not weep to see one of its flowers wither--one of its
+stars fall--one beauty die on its humble bed--one glory drop from its
+lofty sphere. Let them bloom and burn on--flowers in which there is no
+poison, stars in which there is no disease--whose blossoms are all
+sweet, and whose rays are all sanative--both alike steeped in dew, and
+both, to the fine ear of nature's worshipper, bathed in music.
+
+Pomposo never reads Magazine poetry--nor, we presume, ever looks at a
+field or wayside flower. He studies only the standard authors. He walks
+only in gardens with high brick walls--and then admires only at a hint
+from the head-gardener. Pomposo does not know that many of the finest
+poems of our day first appeared in magazines--or, worse still, in
+newspapers; and that in our periodicals, daily and weekly, equally with
+the monthlies and quarterlies, is to be found the best criticism of
+poetry anywhere extant, superior far, in that unpretending form, to
+nine-tenths of the learned lucubrations of Germany--though some of it,
+too, is good--almost as one's heart could desire. What is the
+circulation even of a popular volume of verses--if any such there
+be--to that of a number of Maga? Hundreds of thousands at home peruse it
+before it is a week old--as many abroad ere the moon has thrice renewed
+her horns; and the Series ceases not--regular as the Seasons that make
+up the perfect year. Our periodical literature--say of it what you
+will--gives light to the heads and heat to the hearts of millions of our
+race. The greatest and best men of the age have not disdained to belong
+to the brotherhood; and thus the hovel holds what must not be missing in
+the hall--the furniture of the cot is the same as that of the
+palace--and duke and ditcher read their lessons from the same page.
+
+Good people have said, and it would be misanthropical to disbelieve or
+discredit their judgment, that our Prose is original--nay, has created a
+new era in the history of Periodical Literature. Only think of that,
+Christopher, and up with your Tail like a Peacock! Why, there is some
+comfort in that reflection, while we sit rubbing our withered hands up
+and down on these shrivelled shanks. Our feet are on the fender, and
+that fire is felt on our face; but we verily believe our ice-cold shanks
+would not shrink from the application of the red-hot poker. Peter has a
+notion that but for that red-hot poker the fire would go out; so to
+humour him we let it remain in the ribs, and occasionally brandish it
+round our head in moments of enthusiasm when the Crutch looks tame, and
+the Knout a silken leash for Italian Greyhound.
+
+Old Simonides--old Mimnermus--old Theognis--old Solon-old Anacreon--old
+Sophocles--old Pindar--old Hesiod--old Homer--and old Methuselah! What
+mean we by the word _old_? All these men are old in three lights--they
+lived to a raven age--long long ago--and we heard tell of them in our
+youth. Their glory dawned on us in a dream of life's golden prime--and
+far away seems now that dawn, as if in another world beyond a million
+seas! In that use of the word "old," far from us is all thought of
+dotage or decay. Old are those great personages as the stars are old; a
+heaven there is in which are seen shining, for ever young, all the most
+ancient spiritual "orbs of Song."
+
+In our delight, too, we love to speak of old Venus and of old Cupid--of
+old Eve and of old Cleopatra--of old Helen and of old Dalilah; yea, of
+old Psyche, though her aerial wings are as rainbow bright as the first
+hour she waved them in the eye of the youthful Sun.
+
+How full of endearment "old boy!"--"old girl!" "Old Christopher
+North!"--"old Maga!" To our simplest sayings age seems to give a
+consecration which youth reveres. And why may not our hand, withered
+somewhat though it be, but yet unpalsied, point out aloft to heedless
+eyes single light or constellation, or lily by herself or in groups
+unsuspected along the waysides of our mortal pilgrimage?
+
+Age like ours is even more lovable than venerable; and, thinking on
+ourselves, were we a young woman, we should assuredly marry an old man.
+Indeed, no man ought to marry before thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty;
+and, were it not that life is so short, soon enough at threescore and
+ten. At seventy you are sager than ever, though scarcely so strong. You
+and life love each other as well as ever; yet 'tis unpleasant, when
+sailing on Windermere or Lochlomond with your bride, to observe the Man
+in the Honeymoon looking at you with a congratulatory grin of
+condolence, to fear that the old villain will smile over your grave in
+the Season of Kirns and Harvest Homes, when the fiddle is heard in every
+farmhouse, and the bagpipes are lowing like cattle on a thousand hills.
+Fain would he insure his life on the Tipperary Tables. But the enamoured
+annuitant is haunted with visions of his own Funeral deploying in a long
+line of chariots--one at the head of all armed with scythes--through the
+city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in
+white, nor less so his widow in black--more so in grey, portentous of a
+great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his
+first-born as yet unborn--or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a
+precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing
+ten years at least from his own father--auld-farrant as a Fairy, and
+gash as the Last of the Lairds.
+
+Dearly do we love the young--yea, the young of all animals--the young
+swallows twittering from their straw-built shed--the young lambs
+bleating on the lea--the young bees, God bless them! on their first
+flight away off to the heather--the young butterflies, who, born in the
+morning, will die of old age ere night--the young salmon-fry glorying in
+the gravel at the first feeling of their fins--the young adders basking,
+ere they can bite, in the sun, as yet unconscious, like sucking
+satirists, of their stings--young pigs, pretty dears! all a-squeak with
+their curled tails after prolific grumphie--young lions and tigers,
+charming cubs! like very Christian children nuzzling in their nurse's
+breast--young devils, ere Satan has sent them to Sin, who keeps a
+fashionable boarding-school in Hades, and sends up into the world
+above-ground only her finished scholars.
+
+Oh! lad of the lightsome forehead! Thou art smiling at Us; and for the
+sake of our own Past we enjoy thy Present, and pardon the contumely with
+which thou silently insultest our thin grey hairs. Just such another
+"were we at Ravensburg." "_Carpe Diem_" was then our motto, as now it is
+yours; "no fear that dinner cool," for we fed then, as you feed now, on
+flowers and fruits of Eden. We lived then under the reign of the Seven
+Senses; Imagination was Prime Minister, and Reason, as Lord-Chancellor,
+had the keeping of the Royal Conscience; and they were kings, not
+tyrants--we subjects, not slaves. Supercilious as thou art, Puer, art
+thou as well read in Greek as we were at thy flowering age? Come close
+that we may whisper in thine ear--while we lean our left shoulder on
+thine--our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, O
+Son of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he not
+once a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie,
+Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood--ye who so often heard our shouts mixed
+with the red-deer's belling--tossed back in exultation by Echo,
+Omnipresent Auditress on youth's golden hills.
+
+Know, all ye Neophytes, that three lovely Sisters often visit the old
+man's solitude--Memory, Imagination, Hope. It would be hard to say which
+is the most beautiful. Memory has deep, dark, quiet eyes, and when she
+closes their light, the long eyelashes lie like shadows on her pensive
+cheeks, that smile faintly as if the dreamer were half asleep--a
+visionary slumber, which sometimes the dewdrop melting on the leaf will
+break, sometimes not the thunder-peal with all its echoes. Imagination
+is a brighter and bolder Beauty, with large lamping eyes of uncertain
+colour, as if fluctuating with rainbow light, and with features fine as
+those which Grecian genius gave to the Muses in the Parian Marble, yet
+in their daring delicacy defined like the face of Apollo. As for
+Hope--divinest of the divine--Collins, in one long line of light, has
+painted the picture of the angel,--
+
+    "And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair."
+
+All our great prose-writers owe the glory of their power to our great
+poets. Even Hobbes translated Homer as well--that is as ill--as
+Thucidydes; the Epic in his prime after eighty; the History in his youth
+at forty; and it is fearful to dream what the brainful and heartless
+metaphysician would have been, had he never heard of the Iliad and the
+Odyssey. What is the greatest of prose-writers in comparison with a
+great poet? Nay--we shall not be deterred by the fear of
+self-contradiction (see our "Stroll to Grassmere") from asking who is a
+great prose-writer? We cannot name one; they all sink in Shakespeare.
+Campbell finely asks and answers--
+
+    "Without the smile from partial beauty won,
+    Oh! what were man? a world without a sun."
+
+Suppose the world without poetry--how absurd would seem the Sun! Strip
+the word "phenomena" of its poetical meaning, and forthwith the whole
+human race, "moving about in worlds _realised_," would lose their powers
+of speech. But, thank Heaven! we are Makers all. Inhabiting, we verily
+believe, a real, and substantial, and palpable outer world, which
+nevertheless shall one day perish like a scroll, we build our bowers of
+joy in the Apparent, and lie down to rest in a drapery of Dreams.
+
+Thus we often love to dream our silent way even through the noisy world.
+And dreamers are with dreamers spiritually, though in the body apart;
+nor wandering at will think they whence they come, or whither they are
+going, assured by delight that they will reach their journey's end--like
+a bee, that in many a musical gyration goes humming round men's heads
+and tree-tops, aimlessly curious in his joy, yet knowing instinctively
+the straight line that intersects all those airy circles, leading to and
+fro between his hive in the garden and the honey-dew on the heather
+hills.
+
+What can it be that now recalls to our remembrance a few lines of Esop,
+the delightful old Fabulist, the Merry and Wise, who set our souls
+a-thinking and our hearts a-feeling in boyhood, by moral lessons read to
+them in almost every incident befalling in life's common walks--solemn
+as Simonides in this his sole surviving elegiac strain?
+
+    "What weary woe, what endless strife
+    Bring'st thou to mortal men, O Life!
+      Each hour they draw their breath.
+    Alas! the wretches all despair
+    To flee the ills they cannot bear,
+      But through the gates of Death.
+
+    And yet how beautiful art Thou
+    On Earth and Sea--and on the brow
+      Of starry Heaven! The Night
+    Sends forth the moon Thee to adorn;
+    And thee to glorify the Morn
+      Restores the Orb of Light.
+
+    Yet all is full of Pain and Dread;
+    Bedrench'd in tears for ever shed;
+      The darkness render'd worse
+    By gleams of joy--and if by Heaven
+    A Blessing seemeth to be given,
+      It changes to a curse."
+
+Even in our paraphrase are not these lines very impressive? In the
+original they are much more solemn. They are not querulous, yet full of
+lamentation. We see in them not a weak spirit quarrelling with fate, but
+a strong spirit subdued by a sense of the conditions on which life has
+been given; conditions against which it is vain to contend, to which it
+is hard to submit, but which may yet be borne by a will deriving
+strength from necessity, and in itself noble by nature. Nor, dark as the
+doctrine is, can we say it is false. Intellect and Imagination may from
+doleful experiences have too much generalised their inductions, so as to
+seem to themselves to have established the Law of Misery as the Law of
+Life. But perhaps it is only thus that the Truth can be made available
+to man, as it regards the necessity of Endurance. All is not
+wretchedness; but the soul seeks to support itself by the belief that it
+is really so. Holding that creed, it has no excuse for itself, if at any
+time it is stung to madness by misery, or grovels in the dust in a
+passion of grief; none, if at any time it delivers itself wholly up,
+abandoning itself to joy, and acts as if it trusted to the permanence
+of any blessing under the law of Mutability. The Poet, in the hour of
+profound emotion, declares that every blessing sent from heaven is a
+Nemesis. That oracular response inspires awe. A salutary fear is kept
+alive in the foolish by such sayings of the wise. Even to us--now--they
+sound like a knell. Religion has instructed Philosophy; and for Fate we
+substitute God. But all men feel that the foundations of Faith are laid
+in the dark depths of their being, and that all human happiness is
+mysteriously allied with pain and sorrow. The most perfect bliss is ever
+awful, as if we enjoyed it under the shadow of some great and gracious
+wing that would not long be detained from heaven.
+
+It is not for ordinary minds to attempt giving utterance to such
+simplicities. On their tongues truths become truisms. Sentiments, that
+seem always fresh, falling from the lips of moral wisdom, are stale in
+the mouths of men uninitiated in the greater mysteries. Genius colours
+common words with an impressive light, that makes them moral to all
+eyes--breathes into them an affecting music, that steals into all hearts
+like a revelation and a religion. They become memorable. They pass, as
+maxims, from generation to generation; and all because the divinity that
+is in every man's bosom responds to the truthful strain it had of yore
+itself inspired. Just so with the men we meet on our life-journey. One
+man is impressive in all his looks and words, on all serious or solemn
+occasions; and we carry away with us moral impressions from his eyes or
+lips. Another man says the same things, or nearly so, and perhaps with
+more fervour, and his locks are silver. But we forget his person in an
+hour; nor does his voice ever haunt our solitude.
+Simonides--Solon--Esop!--why do such lines of theirs as those assure us
+they were Sages? The same sentiments are the staple of many a sermon
+that has soothed sinners into snoring sleep.
+
+Men take refuge even in ocular deception from despair. Over buried
+beauty, that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves,
+they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget much
+they ought to remember--all profounder thoughts--while gazing on the
+epitaph of letters or flowers. 'Tis a vision to their senses, with which
+Imagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that the
+deception prospers; for what if Love could bid the burial-ground give
+up or disclose its dead? Or if Love's eyes saw through dust as through
+air? What if this planet--which men call Earth--were at all times seen
+and felt to be a cemetery circling round the sun that feeds it with
+death, and not a globe of green animated with life--even as the dewdrop
+on the rose's leaf is animated with millions of invisible creatures,
+wantoning in bliss born of the sunshine and the vernal prime.
+
+Are we sermonising overmuch in this our L'ENVOY to these our misnamed
+RECREATIONS? Even a sermon is not always useless; the few concluding
+sentences are sometimes luminous, like stars rising on a dull twilight;
+the little flower that attracted Park's eyes when he was fainting in the
+desert, was to him beauteous as the rose of Sharon; there is solemnity
+in the shadow of quiet trees on a noisy road; a churchyard may be felt
+even in a village fair; a face of sorrow passes by us in our gaiety,
+neither unfelt nor unremembered in its uncomplaining calm; and sweet
+from some still house in the city stir is
+
+    "The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise."
+
+We daresay you are a very modest person; but we are all given to
+self-glorification, private men and public, individuals and nations; and
+every one Era and Ego has been prouder than another of its respective
+achievements. To hear the Present Generation speak, such an elderly
+gentleman as the Past Generation begins to suspect that his personal
+origin lies hid in the darkness of antiquity; and worse--that he is of
+the Pechs. Now, we offer to back the Past Generation against the Present
+Generation, at any feat the Present Generation chooses, and give the
+long odds. Say Poetry. Well, we bring to the scratch a few
+champions--such as, Beattie, Cowper, Crabbe, Rogers, Bowles, Burns,
+Baillie, Campbell, Graham, Montgomery, Scott, Southey, Coleridge,
+Wordsworth, Hunt, Hogg, Shelley, Keates, Pollok, Cunningham, Bloomfield,
+Clare, and _risum teneatis amici_--Ourselves.
+
+    "All with waistcoats of red and breeches of blue,
+    And mighty long tails that come swingeing through."
+
+And at sight of the cavalcade--for each poet is on his Pegasus--the
+champions of the Present Generation, accoutred in corduroy kilts and
+top-boots, and on animals which, "well do we know, but dare not name,"
+wheel to the right-about with "one dismal universal bray," brandishing
+their wooden sabres, till, frenzied by their own trumpeters, they charge
+madly a palisade in their own rear, and as dismounted cavalry make good
+their retreat. This in their strategies is called a drawn battle.
+
+Heroes, alive or dead, of the Past Generation, we bid you hail!
+Exceeding happiness to have been born among such Births--to have lived
+among such Lives--to be buried among such Graves. O great glory to have
+seen such Stars rising one after another larger and more lustrous--at
+times, when dilated with delight, more like Moons than Stars--like
+Seraphs hovering over the earth they loved, though seeming so high up in
+heaven!
+
+To whom now may the young enthusiast turn as to Beings of the same kind
+with himself, but of a higher order, and therefore with a love that
+fears no sin in its idolatry? The young enthusiast may turn to some of
+the living, but he will think more of others who are gone. The dead know
+not of his love, and he can hold no communion with the grave. But Poets
+never die--immortal in their works, the Library is the world of spirits;
+there they dwell, the same as in the flesh, when by meditation most
+cleansed and purified--yet with some holy change it seems--a change not
+in them but in us, who are stilled by the stillness, and attribute
+something supernatural to the Living Dead.
+
+Since first this Golden Pen of ours--given us by One who meant it but
+for a memorial--began, many years ago, to let drop on paper a few
+careless words, what quires so distained--some pages, let us hope, with
+durable ink--have accumulated on our hands! Some haughty ones have
+chosen to say rather, how many leaves have been wafted away to wither?
+But not a few of the gifted--near and afar--have called on us with other
+voices--reminding us that long ago we were elected, on sight of our
+credentials--not indeed without a few black balls--into the Brotherhood.
+The shelf marked with our initials exhibits some half-dozen volumes
+only, and has room for scores. It may not be easily found in that vast
+Library; but, humble member as we are, we feel it now to be a point of
+honour to make an occasional contribution to the Club. So here is the
+FIRST SERIES of what we have chosen to call our RECREATIONS. There have
+been much recasting and remoulding--many alterations, believed by us to
+have been wrought with no unskilful spirit of change--cruel, we confess,
+to our feelings, rejections of numerous lucubrations to their father
+dear--and if we may use such words, not a few new creations, in the same
+_genial_ spirit in which we worked of old--not always unrewarded by
+sympathy, which is better than praise.
+
+For kindness shown when kindness was most needed--for sympathy and
+affection--yea, love itself--for grief and pity not misplaced, though
+bestowed in a mistaken belief of our condition, forlorn indeed, but not
+wholly forlorn--for solace and encouragement sent to us from afar, from
+cities and solitudes, and from beyond seas and oceans, from brethren who
+never saw our face, and never may see it, we owe a debt of everlasting
+gratitude; and life itself must leave our heart, that beats not now as
+it used to beat, but with dismal trepidation, before it forget, or cease
+to remember as clearly as now it hears them, every one of the many words
+that came sweetly and solemnly to us from the Great and Good. Joy and
+sorrow make up the lot of our mortal estate, and by sympathy with them,
+we acknowledge our brotherhood with all our kind. We do far more. The
+strength that is untasked, lends itself to divide the load under which
+another is bowed; and the calamity that lies on the heads of men is
+lightened, while those who at the time are not called to bear, are yet
+willing to involve themselves in the sorrow of a brother. So soothed by
+such sympathy may a poor mortal be, that the wretch almost upbraids
+himself for transient gleams of gladness, as if he were false to the
+sorrow which he sighs to think he ought to have cherished more sacredly
+within his miserable heart.
+
+One word embraces all these pages of ours--Memorials. Friends are lost
+to us by removal--for then even the dearest are often utterly forgotten.
+But let something that once was theirs suddenly meet our eyes, and in a
+moment, returning from the region of the rising or the setting sun, the
+friend of our youth seems at our side, unchanged his voice and his
+smile; or dearer to our eyes than ever, because of some affecting
+change wrought on face and figure by climate and by years. Let it be but
+his name written with his own hand on the title-page of a book; or a few
+syllables on the margin of a favourite passage which long ago we may
+have read together, "when life itself was new," and poetry overflowed
+the whole world; or a lock of _her_ hair in whose eyes we first knew the
+meaning of the word "depth." And if death hath stretched out the absence
+into the dim arms of eternity--and removed the distance away into that
+bourne from which no traveller returns--the absence and the distance of
+her on whose forehead once hung the relic we adore--what heart may abide
+the beauty of the ghost that doth sometimes at midnight appear at our
+sleepless bed, and with pale uplifted arms waft over us at once a
+blessing and a farewell!
+
+Why so sad a word--_Farewell_? We should not weep in wishing welfare,
+nor sully felicity with tears. But we do weep because evil lies lurking
+in wait over all the earth for the innocent and the good, the happy and
+the beautiful; and, when guarded no more by our eyes, it seems as if the
+demon would leap out upon his prey. Or is it because we are so selfish
+that we cannot bear the thought of losing the sight of the happiness of
+a beloved object, and are troubled with a strange jealousy of beings
+unknown to us, and for ever to be unknown, about to be taken into the
+very heart, perhaps, of the friend from whom we are parting, and to whom
+in that fear we give almost a sullen farewell? Or does the shadow of
+death pass over us while we stand for the last time together on the
+sea-shore, and see the ship with all her sails about to voyage away to
+the uttermost parts of the earth? Or do we shudder at the thought of
+mutability in all created things--and know that ere a few suns shall
+have brightened the path of the swift vessel on the sea, we shall be
+dimly remembered--at last forgotten--and all those days, months, and
+years that once seemed eternal, swallowed up in everlasting oblivion?
+
+With us all ambitious desires some years ago expired. Far rather would
+we read than write nowadays--far rather than read, sit with shut eyes
+and no book in the room--far rather than so sit, walk about alone
+anywhere
+
+    "Beneath the umbrage deep
+    That shades the silent world of memory."
+
+Shall we live? or "like beasts and common people die?" There is
+something harsh and grating in the collocation of these words of the
+"Melancholy Cowley;" yet he meant no harm, for he was a kind, good
+creature as ever was born, and a true genius. He there has expressed
+concisely, but too abruptly, the mere fact of their falling alike and
+together into oblivion. Far better Gray's exquisite words,
+
+    "On some fond breast the parting soul relies!"
+
+The reliance is firm and sure; the "fond breast" is faithful to its
+trust, and dying, transmits it to another; till after two or three
+transmissions--holy all, but fainter and dimmer--the pious tradition
+dies, and all memorial of the love and the delight, the pity and the
+sorrow, is swallowed up in vacant night.
+
+Posthumous Fame! Proud words--yet may they be uttered in a humble
+spirit. The common lot of man is, after death--oblivion. Yet genius,
+however small its sphere, if conversant with the conditions of the human
+heart, may vivify with indestructible life some happy delineations, that
+shall continue to be held dear by successive sorrowers in this vale of
+tears. If the _name_ of the delineator continue to have something sacred
+in its sound--obscure to the many as it may be, or non-existent--the
+hope of such posthumous fame is sufficient to one who overrates not his
+own endowments. And as the hope has its root in love and sympathy, he
+who by his writings has inspired towards himself when in life, some of
+these feelings in the hearts of not a few who never saw his face, seems
+to be justified in believing that even after final obliteration of _Hic
+jacet_ from his tombstone, his memory will be regarded with something of
+the same affection in his REMAINS.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS
+
+ON THE
+
+SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS
+
+ON THE
+
+SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
+
+
+     [Professor Wilson's "Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands" were
+     first published as a Preface to _Swan's Select Views of the Lakes
+     of Scotland_, 2d edition, 1836. They were not included originally
+     in the "Recreations of Christopher North;" but the harmony of their
+     tone and spirit seemed to recommend them as an appropriate sequel
+     to that work; and accordingly they are now reprinted as such. The
+     thanks of the Editor and Publishers of Professor Wilson's writings
+     are due to the Messrs Fullarton, the proprietors of "Swan's Views,"
+     for the liberal manner in which they have placed this valuable
+     article at their disposal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In no other country does nature exhibit herself in more various forms of
+beauty and sublimity, than in the North of England and the Highlands of
+Scotland. This is acknowledged by all who, having studied their
+character, and become familiar with the feelings it inspires, have
+compared the effects produced on their minds by our own mountainous
+regions, with what they have experienced among the scenery of the Alps.
+There, indeed, all objects are on so vast a scale, that we are for a
+while astonished as we gaze on the gigantic; and all other emotions are
+sunk in an overwhelming sense of awe that prostrates the imagination.
+But on recovering from its subjection to the prodigious, that faculty
+everywhere recognises in those mighty mountains of dark forests,
+glittering glaciers, and regions of eternal snow--infinite all--the
+power and dominion of the Sublime. True that all these are but
+materials for the mind to work on, and that to its creative energy
+nature owes much of that grandeur which seems to be inherent in her own
+forms; yet surely she in herself is great, and there is a regality
+belonging of divine right to such a monarch as Mont Blanc.
+
+Those are the very regions of sublimity, and if brought into immediate
+comparison with them in their immense magnitude, the most magnificent
+scenery of our own country would no doubt seem to lose its character of
+greatness. But such is not the process of the imagination in her
+intercourse with Nature. To her sufficient for the day is the good
+thereof; and on each new glorious sight being shown to her eyes, she
+employs her God-given power to magnify or irradiate what she beholds,
+without diminishing or obscuring what she remembers. Thus, to her all
+things in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their own
+due impressions, aggrandised and beautified by mutual reaction in those
+visionary worlds, which by a thought she can create, and which as they
+arise are all shadowy representations of realities--new compositions in
+which the image of the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greater
+than any realities, but not therefore less, but more true to the spirit
+of nature. It is thus that Poets and Painters at once obey and control
+their own inspirations. They visit all the regions of the earth, but to
+love, admire, and adore; and the greatest of them all, native to our
+soil, from their travel or sojourn in foreign lands, have always brought
+home a clearer insight into the character of the scenery of their own, a
+profounder affection for it all, and a higher power of imaging its
+attributes in colours or in words. In our poetry, more than in any
+other, nature sees herself reflected in a magic mirror; and though many
+a various show passes processionally along its lustre, displaying the
+scenery of "lands and seas, whatever clime the sun's bright circle
+warms," among them all there are none more delightful or elevating to
+behold, than those which genius, inspired by love, has framed of the
+imagery, which in all her pomp and prodigality heaven has been pleased
+to shower, through all seasons, on our own beautiful island. It is not
+for us to say whether our native Painters, or the "old masters," have
+shown the greatest genius in landscape; but if the palm must be yielded
+to them whose works have been consecrated by a reverence, as often,
+perhaps, superstitious as religious, we do not fear to say that their
+superiority is not to be attributed in any degree to the scenery on
+which they exercised the art its beauty had inspired. Whatever may be
+the associations connected with the subjects of their landscapes--and we
+know not why they should be higher or holier than those belonging to
+innumerable places in our own land--assuredly in themselves they are not
+more interesting or impressive; nay, though none who have shared with us
+the spirit of the few imperfect sentences we have now written, will, for
+a moment, suppose us capable of instituting an invidious comparison
+between our own scenery and that of any other country, why should we
+hesitate to assert that our own storm-loving Northern Isle is equally
+rich in all kinds of beauty as the sunny South, and richer far in all
+kinds of grandeur, whether we regard the forms or colouring of
+nature--earth, sea, or air,--
+
+    "Or all the dread magnificence of heaven."
+
+What other region in all the world like that of the Lakes in the North
+of England! And yet how the true lover of nature, while he carries along
+with him its delightful character in his heart, and can so revive any
+spot of especial beauty in his imagination, as that it shall seem in an
+instant to be again before his very eyes, can deliver himself up, after
+the lapse of a day, to the genius of some savage scene in the Highlands
+of Scotland, rent and riven by the fury of some wild sea-loch! Not that
+the regions do not resemble one another, but surely the prevailing
+spirit of the one--not so of the other--is a spirit of joy and of peace.
+Her mountains, invested, though they often be, in gloom--and we have
+been more than once benighted during day, as a thunder-cloud thickened
+the shadows that for ever sleep in the deepest dungeons of
+Helvellyn--are yet--so it seems to us--such mountains as in nature ought
+to belong to "merry England." They boldly meet the storms, and seen in
+storms, you might think they loved the trouble; but pitch your tent
+among them, and you will feel that theirs is a grandeur that is
+congenial with the sunshine, and that their spirit fully rejoices in the
+brightness of light. In clear weather, verdant from base to summit, how
+majestic their repose! And as mists slowly withdraw themselves in
+thickening folds up along their sides, the revelation made is still of
+more and more of the beautiful--arable fields below--then coppice woods
+studded with standard trees--enclosed pastures above and among the
+woods--broad breasts of close-nibbled herbage here and there adorned by
+rich dyed rocks, that do not break the expanse--till the whole veil has
+disappeared, and, lo! the long lofty range, with its wavy line, rising
+and sinking so softly in the blue serenity perhaps of an almost
+cloudless sky. Yet though we have thus characterised the mountains by
+what we have always felt to be the pervading spirit of the region,
+chasms and ravines, and cliffs and precipices, are there; in some places
+you see such assemblages as inspire the fear that quakes at the heart,
+when suddenly struck in the solitude with a sense of the sublime; and
+though we have called the mountains green--and during Spring and Summer,
+in spite of frost or drought, they are green as emerald--yet in Autumn
+they are many-coloured, and are girdled with a glow of variegated light,
+that at sunset sometimes seems like fire kindled in the woods.
+
+The larger Vales are all serene and cheerful, and among the sylvan
+knolls with which their wide levels highly cultivated are interspersed,
+cottages, single or in groups, are frequent, of an architecture always
+admirably suited to the scenery, because in a style suggested not by
+taste or fancy, which so often disfigure nature to produce the
+picturesque, but resorted to for sake of the uses and conveniences of
+in-door life, to weather-fend it in storms, and in calm to give it the
+enjoyment of sunshine. Many of these dwellings are not what are properly
+called cottages, but Statesmen's houses, of ample front, with their many
+roofs, overshadowed by a stately grove, and inhabited by the same race
+for many generations. All alike have their suitable gardens, and the
+porches of the poorest are often clustered with roses; for everywhere
+among these hills, even in minds the most rude and uncultivated, there
+is a natural love of flowers. The villages, though somewhat too much
+modernised in those days of improvement, and indeed not a few of them
+with hardly any remains now of their original architecture--nothing old
+about them but the church tower, perhaps the parsonage--are nevertheless
+generally of a pleasing character, and accordant, if not with the great
+features of nature, which are unchanged and unchangeable, with the
+increased cultivation of the country, and the many villas and
+ornamented cottages that have risen and are rising by every lake and
+river side. Rivers indeed, properly so called, there are none among
+these mountains; but every vale, great and small, has at all times its
+pure and undefiled stream or rivulet; every hill has its hundreds of
+evanescent rills, almost every one its own perennial torrent flowing
+from spring, marsh, or tarn; and the whole region is often alive with
+waterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness, the scenery
+is fit for fairy festivals--and of many, in its horrid gloom, for
+gatherings of gnomes revisiting the glimpses of the moon from their
+subterraneous prisons. One lake there is which has been called "wooded
+Winandermere, the river lake;" and there is another--Ulswater--which you
+might imagine to be a river too, and to have come flowing from afar: the
+one excelling in isles, and bays, and promontories, serene and gentle
+all, and perfectly beautiful; the other, matchless in its majesty of
+cliff and mountain, and in its old forests, among whose hoary gloom is
+for ever breaking out the green light of young generations, and
+perpetual renovation triumphing over perpetual decay. Of the other
+lakes--not river-like--the character may be imagined even from that we
+have faintly described of the mountains:--almost every vale has its
+lake, or a series of lakes--and though some of them have at times a
+stern aspect, and have scenes to show almost of desolation, descending
+sheer to the water's edge, or overhanging the depth that looks
+profounder in the gloom, yet even these, to eyes and hearts familiar
+with their spirit, wear a sweet smile which seldom passes away: witness
+Wastwater--with its huge single mountains, and hugest of all the
+mountains of England, Scawfell, with its terrific precipices--which, in
+the accidents of storm, gloom, or mist, has seemed, to the lonely
+passer-by, savage in the extreme--a howling or dreary wilderness--but in
+its enduring character, is surrounded with all quiet pastoral imagery,
+the deep glen in which it is imbedded being, in good truth, the abode of
+Sabbath peace. That hugest mountain is indeed the centre from which all
+the vales irregularly diverge; the whole circumjacent region may be
+traversed in a week; and though no other district of equal extent
+contains such variety of the sublime and beautiful, yet the beautiful is
+so prevalent, that we feel its presence, even in places where it is
+overpowered; and on leaving "The Lakes," our imagination is haunted and
+possessed with images, not of dread, but of delight.
+
+We have sometimes been asked, whether the North of England or the
+Highlands of Scotland should be visited first; but, simple as the
+question seems, it is really one which it is impossible to answer;
+though we suspect it would equally puzzle Scotchman or Englishman to
+give a sufficient reason for his wishing to see any part of any other
+country before he had seen what was best worth seeing in his own. His
+own country ought to be, and generally is, dearest to every man. There,
+if nothing forbid, he should not only begin his study of nature, but
+continue his education in her school, wherever it may happen to be
+situated, till he has taken his first degree. We believe that the love
+of nature is strong in the hearts of the inhabitants of our Island. And
+how wide and profound may that knowledge of nature be, which the loving
+heart has acquired, without having studied her anywhere but within the
+Four Seas! The impulses that make us desire to widen the circle of our
+observation, are all impulses of delight and love; and it would be
+strange indeed, did they not move us, first of all, towards whatever is
+most beautiful belonging to our own land. Were it otherwise, it would
+seem as if the heart were faithless to the home-affections, out of
+which, in their strength, spring all others that are good; and it is
+essential, we do not doubt, to the full growth of the Love of Country,
+that we should all have our earliest imaginative delights associated
+with our native soil. Such associations will for ever keep it loveliest
+to our eyes; nor is it possible that we can ever as perfectly understand
+the character of any other; but we can afterwards transfer and transfuse
+our feelings in imagination kindled by our own will; and the beauty,
+born before our eyes, among the banks and braes of our childhood, and
+then believed to be but there, and nothing like it anywhere else in all
+the world, becomes a golden light, "whose home is everywhere," which if
+we do not darken it, will shine unshadowed in the dreariest places, till
+"the desert blossom like the rose."
+
+For our own parts, before we beheld one of "the beautiful fields of
+England," we had walked all Scotland thorough, and had seen many a
+secret place, which now, in the confusion of our crowded memory, seem
+often to shift their uncertain ground; but still, wherever they
+glimmeringly reappear, invested with the same heavenly light in which,
+long ago, they took possession of our soul. And now, that we are almost
+as familiar with the fair sister-land, and love her almost as well as
+Scotland's self, not all the charms in which she is arrayed, and they
+are at once graceful and glorious, have ever for a day withdrawn our
+deeper dreams from the regions where,
+
+    "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young,"
+
+unaccompanied but by our own shadow in the wilderness, we first heard
+the belling of the red-deer and the eagle's cry.
+
+In those days there was some difficulty, if not a little danger, in
+getting in among some of the noblest regions of our Alps. They could not
+be traversed without strong personal exertion; and a solitary pedestrian
+excursion through the Grampians was seldom achieved without a few
+incidents that might almost have been called adventures. It is very
+different now; yet the _Genius Loci_, though tamed, is not subdued; and
+they who would become acquainted with the heart of the Highlands, will
+have need of some endurance still, and must care nothing about the
+condition of earth or sky. Formerly, it was not possible to survey more
+than a district or division in a single season, except to those
+unenviable persons who had no other pursuit but that of amusement, and
+waged a weary war with time. The industrious dwellers in cities, who
+sought those solitudes, for a while to relieve their hearts from worldly
+anxieties, and gratify that love of nature which is inextinguishable in
+every bosom that in youth has beat with its noble inspirations, were
+contented with a week or two of such intercommunion with the spirit of
+the mountains, and thus continued to extend their acquaintance with the
+glorious wildernesses, visit after visit, for years. Now the whole
+Highlands, western and northern, may be commanded in a month. Not that
+any one who knows what they are, will imagine that they can be exhausted
+in a lifetime. The man does not live who knows all worth knowing there;
+and were they who made the Trigonometrical Survey to be questioned on
+their experiences, they would be found ignorant of thousands of sights,
+any one of which would be worth a journey for its own sake. But now
+steam has bridged the Great Glen, and connected the two seas.
+Salt-water lochs the most remote and inaccessible, it has brought within
+reach of a summer-day's voyage. In a week a joyous company can gather
+all the mainland shores, leaving not one magnificent bay uncircled; and,
+having rounded St Kilda and
+
+                      "the Hebride Isles,
+    Placed far amid the melancholy main,"
+
+and heard the pealing anthem of waves in the cave-cathedral of Staffa,
+may bless the bells of St Mungo's tolling on the first Sabbath.
+Thousands and tens of thousands, who, but for those smoking sea-horses,
+had never been beyond view of the city spires, have seen sights which,
+though passing by almost like dreams, are not like dreams forgotten, but
+revive of themselves in memory and imagination; and, when the heart is
+weary with the work of the hand, quicken its pulses with a sudden
+pleasure that is felt like a renovation of youth.
+
+All through the interior, too, how many hundreds of miles of roads now
+intersect regions not long ago deemed impracticable!--firm on the fen,
+in safety flung across the chasm--and winding smoothly amidst
+shatterings of rocks, round the huge mountain bases, and down the glens
+once felt as if interminable, now travelled almost with the speed of the
+raven's wing!
+
+In the Highlands now, there is no _Terra Incognita_. But there are many
+places yet well worth seeing, which it is not easy for all men to find,
+and to which every man must be his own guide. It is somewhat of a
+selfish feeling, indeed, but the pride is not a mean one, with which the
+solitary pedestrian sits down to contemplate some strange, or wild, or
+savage scene, or some view of surpassing sweetness and serenity, so far
+removed from the track of men that he can well believe for a time that
+his eyes have been the first to behold it, and that for them alone it
+has now become a visible revelation. The memory of such places is
+sometimes kept as a secret which we would not communicate but to a
+congenial friend. They are hallowed by those mysterious "thoughts that,
+like phantoms, trackless come and go;" no words can tell another how to
+find his way thither; and were we ourselves to seek to return, we should
+have to trust to some consciousness mysterious as the instinct of a
+bird that carries it through the blind night to the place of its desire.
+
+It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route: but without
+being utterly departed from--nay, without ceasing to control us within
+certain bounds--it admits of almost any degrees of deviation. We have
+known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to
+turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting
+themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of
+purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn
+a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless
+dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it
+listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought to
+shackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, that
+for a while they may walk on air, and feel that they too have wings.
+
+    "A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,
+    And it must be obeyed."
+
+The voice was our own--and yet though but a whisper from the heart, it
+seemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice--sweet and wild
+as an echo.
+
+On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine, where
+at night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:
+
+    "Among the hills a hundred homes have I;
+      My table in the wilderness is spread;
+    In these lone spots one honest smile can buy
+      Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed."
+
+If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the powers
+of Nature--the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun moon, and stars. We
+must keep a look-out--
+
+    "To see the deep fermenting tempest brew'd,
+    In the grim evening sky;"
+
+that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords; and
+if they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the mountain,
+and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet with the
+heather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not visited but
+for that storm, with its dark blue river streaked with golden
+light,--for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range; and there,
+during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward rejoiced in
+the trembling dews.
+
+There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur, as the
+climate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old shepherd
+or herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in spite of many a
+night's unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he can presage its
+changes from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when the
+long-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise have
+often perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain symptoms,
+there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well to study, and he
+will often exult on the mountain to feel that "knowledge is power." Many
+a glorious hour has been won from the tempest by him before whose
+instructed eye--beyond the gloom that wide around blackened all the
+purple heather--"far off its coming shone." Leagues of continuous
+magnificence have gradually unveiled themselves on either side to him,
+as he has slowly paced, midway between, along the banks of the River of
+Waterfalls; having been assured by the light struggling through the
+mist, that it would not be long till there was a break-up of all that
+ghastly dreariment, and that the sun would call on him to come forth
+from his cave of shelter, and behold in all its pride the Glen
+affronting the sea.
+
+Some Tourists--as they call themselves--are provided with map and
+compass; and we hope they find them of avail in extremities, though we
+fear few such understand their use. No map can tell--except very
+vaguely--how the aspect of the localities, looked at on its lines, is
+likely to be affected by sun-rise, meridian, or sun-set. Yet, true it
+is, that every region has its own happy hours, which the fortunate often
+find unawares, and know them at once to be so the moment they lift up
+their eyes. At such times, while "our hearts rejoice in Nature's joy,"
+we feel the presence of a spirit that brings out the essential character
+of the place, be it of beauty or of grandeur. Harmonious as music is
+then the composition of colours and of forms. It becomes a perfect
+picture in memory, more and more idealised by imagination, every moment
+the veil is withdrawn before it; its aerial lineaments never fade; yet
+they too, though their being be but in the soul, are mellowed by the
+touch, of time--and every glimpse of such a vision, the longer we live,
+and the more we suffer, seems suffused with a mournful light, as if seen
+through tears.
+
+It would serve no good purpose, supposing we had the power, to analyse
+the composition of that scenery, which in the aggregate so moves even
+the most sluggish faculties, as to make "the dullest wight a poet." It
+rises before the mind in imagination, as it does before the eyes in
+nature; and we can no more speak of it than look at it, but--as a whole.
+We can indeed fix our mental or our visual gaze on scene after scene to
+the exclusion of all beside, and picture it even in words that shall be
+more than shadows. But how shall any succession of such pictures,
+however clear and complete, give an idea of that picture which
+comprehends them all, and infinite as are its manifestations,
+nevertheless is imbued with one spirit?
+
+Try to forget that in the Highlands there are any Lochs. Then the sole
+power is that of the Mountains. We speak of a sea of mountains; but that
+image has never more than momentary possession of us, because, but for a
+moment, in nature it has no truth. Tumultuary movements envelope them;
+but they themselves are for ever steadfast and for ever still. Their
+power is that of an enduring calm no storms can disturb--and is often
+felt to be more majestical, the more furious are the storms. As the
+tempest-driven clouds are franticly hurrying to and fro, how serene the
+summits in the sky! Or if they be hidden, how peaceful the glimpses of
+some great mountain's breast! They disregard the hurricane that goes
+crashing through their old woods; the cloud-thunder disturbs not them
+any more than that of their own cataracts, and the lightnings play for
+their pastime. All minds under any excitation, more or less personify
+mountains. When much moved, that natural process affects all our
+feelings, as the language of passion awakened by such objects vividly
+declares; and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as endued with
+life--however dim and vague the conception may be--and feel their
+character in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of all
+that is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone. But
+while we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, will those
+monarchs remain invested with the purple and seated on thrones.
+
+In such imaginative moods as these must every one be, far more
+frequently than he is conscious of, and in far higher degrees, who, with
+a cultivated mind and a heart open to the influences of nature, finds
+himself, it matters not whether for the first or the hundredth time, in
+the Highlands. We fancy the Neophyte wandering, all by himself, on the
+"Longest Day;" rejoicing to think that the light will not fail him, when
+at last the sun must go down, for that a starry gloaming will continue
+its gentle reign till morn. He thinks but of what he sees, and that
+is--the mountains. All memories of any other world but that which
+encloses him with its still sublimities, are not excluded merely, but
+obliterated: his whole being is there! And now he stands on table-land,
+and with his eyes sweeps the horizon, bewildered for a while, for it
+seems chaos all. But soon the mighty masses begin arranging themselves
+into order; the confusion insensibly subsides as he comprehends more and
+more of their magnificent combinations; he discovers centres round which
+are associated altitudes towering afar off; and finally, he feels, and
+blesses himself on his felicity, that his good genius has placed him on
+the very centre of those wondrous assemblages altogether, from which
+alone he could command an empire of realities, more glorious far than
+was ever empire of dreams.
+
+It is a cloudy, but not a stormy day; the clouds occupy but portions of
+the sky,--and are they all in slow motion together, or are they all at
+rest? Huge shadows stalking along the earth, tell that there are changes
+going on in heaven; but to the upward gaze, all seems hanging there in
+the same repose; and with the same soft illumination the sun to continue
+shining, a concentration rather than an orb of light. All above is
+beautiful, and the clouds themselves are like celestial mountains; but
+the eye forsakes them, though it sees them still, and more quietly now
+it moves along the pageantry below that endures for ever--till chained
+on a sudden by that range of cliffs. 'Tis along them that the giant
+shadows are stalking--but now they have passed by--and the long line of
+precipice seems to come forward in the light. To look down from the
+brink might be terrible--to look up from the base would be sublime--but
+fronting the eye thus, horrid though it be, the sight is most beautiful;
+for weather-stains, and mosses, and lichens, and flowering
+plants--conspicuous most the broom and the heather--and shrubs that,
+among their leaves of light, have no need of flowers--and hollies, and
+birks, and hazels, and many a slender tree beside with pensile tresses,
+besprinkle all the cliffs, that in no gloom could ever lose their
+lustre; but now the day though not bright is fair, and brings out the
+whole beauty of the precipice--call it the hanging garden of the
+wilderness.
+
+The Highlands have been said to be a gloomy region, and worse gloom than
+theirs might well be borne, if not unfrequently illumined with such
+sights as these; but that is not the character of the mountains, though
+the purple light in which, for usual, they are so richly steeped, is
+often for a season tamed, or for a short while extinguished, while a
+strange night-like day lets fall over them all a something like a
+shroud. Such days we have seen--but now in fancy we are with the
+pilgrim, and see preparation making for a sun-set. It is drawing towards
+evening, and the clouds that have all this time been moving, though we
+knew it not, have assuredly settled now, and taken up their rest. The
+sun has gone down, and all that unspeakable glory has left the sky.
+Evening has come and gone without our knowing that she had been here;
+but there is no gloom on any place in the whole of this vast wilderness,
+and the mountains, as they wax dimmer and dimmer, look as if they were
+surrendering themselves to a repose like sleep. Day had no voice here
+audible to human ear--but night is murmuring--and gentle though the
+murmur be, it filleth the great void, and we imagine that ever and anon
+it awakens echoes. And now it is darker than we thought, for lo! one
+soft-burning star! And we see that there are many stars; but not theirs
+the light that begins again to reveal object after object as gradually
+as they had disappeared; the moon is about to rise--is rising--has
+arisen--has taken her place high in heaven; and as the glorious world
+again expands around us, faintly tinged, clearly illumined, softly
+shadowed, and deeply begloomed, we say within our hearts,
+
+    "How beautiful is night!"
+
+There are many such table-lands as the one we have now been imagining,
+and it requires but a slight acquaintance with the country to conjecture
+rightly where they lie. Independently of the panoramas they display,
+they are in themselves always impressive; perhaps a bare level that
+shows but bleached bent, and scatterings of stones, with here and there
+an unaccountable rock; or hundreds of fairy greensward knolls, fringed
+with tiny forests of fern that have almost displaced the heather; or a
+wild withered moor or moss intersected with pits dug not by men's hands;
+and, strange to see! a huge log lying half exposed, and as if blackened
+by fire. High as such places are, on one of them a young gorcock was
+stricken down by a hawk close to our feet. Indeed, hawks seem to haunt
+such places, and we have rarely crossed one of them, without either
+seeing the creature's stealthy flight, or hearing, whether he be alarmed
+or preying, his ever-angry cry.
+
+From a few such stations, you get an insight into the configuration of
+the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover
+at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other
+regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and if
+the blue aerial haze that hangs over a pass winding eastward, tempt you
+from your line of march due north, forthwith descend in that direction,
+and haply an omen will confirm you--an eagle rising on the left, and
+sailing away before you into that very spot of sky.
+
+No man, however well read, should travel by book. In books you find
+descriptions, and often good ones, of the most celebrated scenes, but
+seldom a word about the vast tracts between; and it would seem as if
+many Tourists had used their eyes only in those places where they had
+been told by common fame there was something greatly to admire. Travel
+in the faith, that go where you will, the cravings of your heart will be
+satisfied, and you will find it so, if you be a true lover of nature.
+You hope to be inspired by her spirit, that you may may read aright her
+works. But such inspiration comes not from one object or another,
+however great or fair, but from the whole "mighty world of eye and ear,"
+and it must be supported continuously, or it perishes. You may see a
+thousand sights never before seen by human eye, at every step you take,
+wherever be your path; for no steps but yours have ever walked along
+that same level; and moreover, never on the same spot twice rested the
+same lights or shadows. Then there may be something in the air, and
+more in your own heart, that invests every ordinary object with
+extraordinary beauty; old images affect you with a new delight; a
+grandeur grows upon your eyes in the undulations of the simplest hills;
+and you feel there is sublimity in the common skies. It is thus that all
+the stores of imagery are insensibly gathered, with which the minds of
+men are filled, who from youth have communed with nature. And it is thus
+that all those feelings have flowed into their hearts by which that
+imagery is sanctified; and these are the Poets.
+
+It is in this way that we become familiar with the mountains. Far more
+than we were aware of have we trusted to the strong spirit of delight
+within us, to prompt and to guide. And in such a country as the
+Highlands, thus led, we cannot err. Therefore, if your desire be for the
+summits, set your face thitherwards, and wind a way of your own, still
+ascending and ascending, along some vast brow, that seems almost a whole
+day's journey, and where it is lost from your sight, not to end, but to
+go sweeping round, with undiminished grandeur into another region. You
+are not yet half-way up the mountain, but you care not for the summit
+now; for you find yourself among a number of green knolls--all of them
+sprinkled, and some of them crowned with trees--as large almost as our
+lowland hills--surrounded close to the brink with the purple
+heather--and without impairing the majesty of the immense expanse,
+imbuing it with pastoral and sylvan beauty;--and there, lying in a small
+forest glade of the lady-fern, ambitious no longer of a throne on
+Benlomond or Ben-nevis, you dream away the still hours till sunset, yet
+then have no reason to weep that you have lost a day.
+
+But the best way to view the mountains is to trace the Glens. To find
+out the glens you must often scale the shoulders of mountains, and in
+such journeys of discovery, you have for ever going on before your eyes
+glorious transfigurations. Sometimes for a whole day one mighty mass
+lowers before you unchanged; look at it after the interval of hours, and
+still the giant is one and the same. It rules the region, subjecting all
+other altitudes to its sway, though many of them range away to a great
+distance; and at sunset retains it supremacy, blazing almost like a
+volcano with fiery clouds. Your line of journey lies, perhaps, some two
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, and seldom dips down to one
+thousand; and these are the heights from which all above and all below
+you looks most magnificent, for both regions have their full power over
+you--the unscaleable cliffs, the unfathomable abysses--and you know not
+which is the more sublime. The sublimity indeed is one. It is then that
+you may do well to ascend to the very mountain-top. For it may happen to
+be one of those heavenly days indeed, when the whole Highlands seem to
+be reposing in the cloudless sky.
+
+But we were about to speak of the Glens. And some of them are best
+entered by such descents as these--perhaps at their very head--where all
+at once you are in another world, how still, how gloomy, how profound!
+An hour ago and the eye of the eagle had not wider command of earth,
+sea, and sky, than yours--almost blinded now by the superincumbent
+precipices that imprison you, and seem to shut you out from life.
+
+    "Such the grim desolation, where Ben-Hun
+    And Craig-na-Torr, by earthquake shatterings
+    Disjoined with horrid chasms prerupt, enclose
+    What superstition calls the Glen of Ghosts."
+
+Or you may enter some great glen from the foot, where it widens into
+vale or strath--and there are many such--and some into which you can
+sail up an arm of the sea. For a while it partakes of the cultivated
+beauty of the lowlands, and glen and vale seem almost one and the same;
+but gradually it undergoes a strange wild change of character, and in a
+few miles that similitude is lost. There is little or no arable ground
+here; but the pasture is rich on the unenclosed plain--and here and
+there are enclosures, near the few houses or huts standing, some of them
+in the middle of the glen, quite exposed, on eminences above reach of
+the floods--some more happily placed on the edge of the coppices, that
+sprinkle the steep sides of the hills, yet barely mountains. But
+mountains they soon become; and leaving behind you those few barren
+habitations, you see before you a wide black moor. Beautiful hitherto
+had been the river, for a river you had inclined to think it, long after
+it had narrowed into a stream, with many a waterfall, and in one chasm a
+cataract. But the torrent now has a wild mountain cry, and though there
+is still beauty on its banks, they are bare of all trees, now swelling
+into multitudes of low green knolls among the heather, now composed but
+of heather and rocks. Through the very middle of the black moor it
+flows, yet are its waters clear, for all is not moss, and it seems to
+wind its way where there is nothing to pollute its purity, or tame its
+lustre. 'Tis a solitary scene, but still sweet; the mountains are of
+great magnitude, but they are not precipitous; vast herds of cattle are
+browsing there, on heights from which fire has cleared the heather, and
+wide ranges of greensward upon the lofty gloom seem to lie in perpetual
+light.
+
+The moor is crossed, and you prepare to scale the mountain in front, for
+you imagine the torrent by your side flows from a tarn in yonder cove,
+and forms that series of waterfalls. You have been all along well
+pleased with the glen, and here at the head, though there is a want of
+cliffs of the highest class, you feel nevertheless that it has a
+character of grandeur. Looking westward, you are astounded to see them
+ranging away on either side of another reach of the glen, terrific in
+their height, but in their formation beautiful, for like the walls of
+some vast temple they stand, roofed with sky. Yet are they but as a
+portal or gateway of the glen. For entering in with awe, that deepens,
+as you advance, almost into dread, you behold, beyond, mountains that
+carry their cliffs up into the clouds, seamed with chasms, and hollowed
+out into coves, where night dwells visibly by the side of day; and still
+the glen seems winding on beneath a purple light, that almost looks like
+gloom; such vast forms and such prodigious colours, and such utter
+stillness, become oppressive to your very life, and you wish that some
+human being were by, to relieve, by his mere presence, the insupportable
+weight of such a solitude.
+
+But we should never have done were we to attempt to sketch, however
+slightly, the character of all the different kinds of glens. Some are
+sublime in their prodigious depth and vast extent, and would be felt to
+be so, even were the mountains that enclose them of no great majesty;
+but these are all of the highest order, and sometimes are seen from
+below to the very cairns on their summits. Now we walk along a reach,
+between astonishing ranges of cliffs, among large heaps of rocks--not a
+tree--scarcely a shrub--no herbage--the very heather blasted--all
+lifelessness and desolation. The glen gradually grows less and less
+horrid, and though its sides are seamed with clefts and chasms, in the
+gloom there are places for the sunshine, and there is felt to be even
+beauty in the repose. Descends suddenly on either side a steep slope of
+hanging wood, and we find ourselves among verdant mounds, and knolls,
+and waterfalls. We come then into what seems of old to have been a
+forest. Here and there a stately pine survives, but the rest are all
+skeletons; and now the glen widens, and widens, yet ceases not to be
+profound, for several high mountains enclose a plain on which armies
+might encamp, and castellated clouds hang round the heights of the
+glorious amphitheatre, while the sky-roof is clear, and as if in its
+centre, the refulgent sun. 'Tis the plain called "The Meeting of the
+Glens." From the east and the west, the north and the south, they come
+like rivers into the sea.
+
+Other glens there are, as long, but not so profound, nor so grandly
+composed; yet they too conduct us nobly in among the mountains, and up
+their sides, and on even to their very summits. Such are the glens of
+Atholl, in the neighbourhood of Ben-y-gloe. From them the heather is not
+wholly banished, and the fire has left a green light without quenching
+the purple colour native to the hills. We think that we almost remember
+the time when those glens were in many places sprinkled with huts, and
+all animated with human life. Now they are solitary; and you may walk
+from sunrise till sunset without seeing a single soul. For a hundred
+thousand acres have there been changed into a forest, for sake of the
+pastime, indeed, which was dear of old to chieftains and kings. Vast
+herds of red-deer are there, for they herd in thousands--yet may you
+wander for days over the boundless waste, nor once be startled by one
+stag bounding by. Yet may a herd, a thousand strong, be drawn up, as in
+battle array, on the cliffs above your head. For they will long stand
+motionless, at gaze, when danger is in the wind--and then their antlers
+to unpractised eyes seem but boughs grotesque, or are invisible; and
+when all at once, with one accord, at signal from the stag, whom they
+obey, they wheel off towards the Corries, you think it but thunder, and
+look up to the clouds. Fortunate if you see such a sight once in your
+life. Once only have we seen it; and it was, of a sudden, all by
+ourselves,
+
+    "Ere yet the hunter's startling horn was heard
+    Upon the golden hills."
+
+Almost within rifle-shot, the herd occupied a position, high up indeed,
+but below several ridges of rocks, running parallel for a long distance,
+with slopes between of sward and heather. Standing still, they seemed to
+extend about a quarter of a mile, and as with a loud clattering of hoofs
+and antlers, they took more open order, the line at least doubled its
+length, and the whole mountain-side seemed alive. They might not be
+going at full speed, but the pace was equal to that of any charge of
+cavalry; and once and again the flight passed before us, till it
+overcame the ridges, and then deploying round the shoulder of the
+mountain, disappeared, without dust or noise, into the blue light of
+another glen.
+
+We question, if there be in the Highlands any one glen comparable with
+Borrowdale in Cumberland. But there are several that approach it, in
+that combination of beauty and grandeur, which perhaps no other scene
+equals in all the world. The "Gorge" of that Dale exhibits the finest
+imaginable assemblage of rocks and rocky hills, all wildly wooded;
+beyond them, yet before we have entered into the Dale, the Pass widens,
+with noble cliffs on one side, and on the other a sylvan stream, not
+without its abysses; and we see before us some lovely hills, on which--
+
+    "The smiling power of cultivation lies,"
+
+yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the ploughshare,
+copses and groves; and thus we are brought into the Dale itself, and
+soon have a vision of the whole--green and golden fields--for though
+most are in pasture, almost all seem arable--sprinkled with fine single
+trees--and lying in flats and levels, or swelling into mounds and
+knolls, and all diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages,
+with their out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand, and
+coloured like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to be
+distinguished--strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them very
+old; villages, apart from one another a mile--and there are three--yet
+on their sites, distant and different in much though they be, all
+associated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all the
+Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and even
+mountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensive
+aliens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains are
+not so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and the
+Passes over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are
+magnificent, and show precipices in which the Golden Eagle himself might
+rejoice.
+
+No--there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale.
+Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their beauty
+though less, almost as much affects us, because though contending, as it
+were, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it is not overcome, but
+prevails; and their beauty will increase with years. For while the rocks
+continue to frown aloft for ever, and the cliffs to range along the
+corries, unbroken by trees, which there the tempest will not suffer to
+rise, the woods and groves below, preserved from the axe, for sake of
+their needful shelter, shall become statelier, till the birch equal the
+pine; reclaimed from the waste, shall many a fresh field recline among
+the heather, tempering the gloom; and houses arise where now there are
+but huts, and every house have its garden:--such changes are now going
+on, and we have been glad to observe their progress, even though
+sometimes they had removed, or were removing, objects dear from old
+associations, and which, had it been possible, but it was not, we should
+have loved to see preserved.
+
+And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one often
+drops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds a night's
+lodging in the only hut. Yet they lie, sometimes, embosomed in their own
+green hills, among the most rugged mountains, and even among the wildest
+moors. They have no features by which you can describe them; it is their
+serenity that charms you, and their cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrong
+to call them glens, and they are but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell as
+deep, however small it may be; but these are not deep, for the hills
+slope down gently upon them, and leave room perhaps between for a little
+shallow loch. Often they have not any visible water at all, only a few
+springs and rivulets, and you wonder to see them so very green; there is
+no herbage like theirs; and to such spots of old, and sometimes yet,
+the kine are led in summer, and there the lonely family live in their
+shieling till the harvest moon.
+
+We have all along used the same word, and called the places we have
+spoken of--glens. A fine observer--the Editor of Gilpin's Forest
+Scenery--has said: "The gradation from extreme width downwards should be
+thus arranged,--strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell, ravine, chasm.
+In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to find the large,
+majestic, gently flowing river, or even the deeper or smaller lake. In
+the glen, if the river be large, it flows more rapidly, and with greater
+variety. In the dell the stream is smaller. In the ravine, we find the
+mountain torrent and the waterfall. In the chasm, we find the roaring
+cataract, or the rill, bursting from its haunted fountain. The chasm
+discharges its small tribute into the ravine, while the ravine is
+tributary to the dell, and thence to the glen; and the glen to the
+dale."
+
+These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true to
+nature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them in
+describing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed confused
+by common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing about
+Straths--nor shall we try to describe one--but suggest to your own
+imagination--as specimens--Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn. The
+dominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain ranges
+that environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble straths they
+are, from source to sea.
+
+And now we are brought to speak of the Highland Rivers, Streams, and
+Torrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or thunder in your
+own ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what the waters must be in a
+land of such glens and such mountains. The chief rivers possess all the
+attributes essential to greatness--width--depth--clearness--rapidity--in
+one word power. And some of them have long courses--rising in the
+central heights, and winding round many a huge projection, against which
+in flood we have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts are
+not of long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by all
+the tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calm
+into a commotion--the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood they
+are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of torment.
+Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is something
+to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them be
+united--and add thunder from the clouds--and we have heard in the
+Highlands all three in one--and the auditor need not care that he has
+never stood by Niagara. But when "though not o'erflowing full," a
+Highland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hear
+him rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calm
+and majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without any
+disturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace.
+
+Of rivers--comparatively speaking--of the second and third order--the
+Highlands are full--and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond
+compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of
+them--some tiny indeed, but others tall--are for ever dinning in the
+woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is the
+sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat's voice; clear
+amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and all
+other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the bark of the
+eagle--rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the
+"glimmer or the gloom" of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or the
+Tummel--for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he has
+shifted his eyrie, a few minutes' waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower.
+
+In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams, and
+some of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets; while in
+the greatest, the waters often flow on without a single tree, shadowed
+but by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they are larger than
+they seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of those profound
+hollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light in the sunshine, and
+in the gloom you see them not at all. We do not remember any very
+impressive glen, without a stream, that would not suffer some diminution
+of its power by our fancying it to have one; we may not be aware, at the
+time, that the conformation of the glen prevents its having any
+water-flow, but if we feel its character aright, that want is among the
+causes of our feeling; just as there are some scenes of which the beauty
+would not be so touching were there a single tree.
+
+Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennial
+torrents, and "in number without number numberless" those that seldom
+live a week--perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you hear
+nothing, even when they are all allow; yet, there is music in the sight,
+and the thought of the "general dance and minstrelsy" enlivens the air,
+where no insect hums. As on your descent you come within hearing of the
+"liquid lapses," your heart leaps within you, so merrily do they sing;
+the first torrent-rill you meet with you take for your guide, and it
+leads you perhaps into some fairy dell, where it wantons awhile in
+waterfalls, and then gliding along a little dale of its own with "banks
+o' green bracken," finishes its short course in a stream--one of many
+that meet and mingle before the current takes the name of river, which
+in a mile or less becomes a small woodland lake. There are many such of
+rememberable beauty; living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings of
+expanded rivers, which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilies
+have ever a gentle motion there as if touched by a tide.
+
+It used, not very long ago, to be pretty generally believed by our
+southern brethren, that there were few trees in the Lowlands of
+Scotland, and none at all in the Highlands. They had an obscure notion
+that trees either could not or would not grow in such a soil and
+climate--cold and bleak enough at times and places, heaven knows--yet
+not altogether unproductive of diverse stately plants. They know better
+now; nor were we ever angry with their ignorance, which was nothing more
+than what was to be expected in persons living perpetually at home so
+far remote. They rejoice now to visit, and sojourn, and travel here
+among us, foreigners and a foreign land no more; and we rejoice to see
+and receive them not as strangers, but friends, and are proud to know
+they are well pleased to behold our habitation. They do us and our
+country justice now, and we have sometimes thought even more than
+justice; for they are lost in admiration of our cities--above all, of
+Edinburgh--and speak with such raptures of our scenery, that they would
+appear to prefer it even to their own. They are charmed with our bare
+green hills, with our shaggy brown mountains they are astonished, our
+lochs are their delight, our woods their wonder, and they hold up their
+hands and clap them at our cliffs. This is generous, for we are not
+blind to the fact of England being the most beautiful land on all the
+earth. What are our woods to hers! To hers, what are our single trees!
+We have no such glorious standards to show as her indomitable and
+everlasting oaks. She is all over sylvan--Scotland but here and there;
+look on England from any point in any place, and you see she is rich,
+from almost any point in any place in Scotland, and you feel that
+comparatively she is poor. Yet our Lowlands have long been beautifying
+themselves into a resemblance of hers; as for our Highlands, though many
+changes have been going on there too, and most we believe for good, they
+are in their great features, and in their spirit unalterable by art,
+stamped and inspired by enduring Nature.
+
+We have spoken, slightly, of the sylvan scenery of the Highlands. In
+Perthshire, especially, it is of rare and extraordinary beauty, and we
+are always glad to hear of Englishmen travelling up the Tay and the
+Earn. We desire that eyes familiar with all that is umbrageous should
+receive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at Duneira and
+Dunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they proceed towards
+Blair Atholl. In that famous Pass, they will feel the power possessed by
+the sweet wild monotony of the universal birch woods--broken but by grey
+crags in every shape--grotesque, fantastical, majestic, magnificent, and
+sublime--on the many-ridged mountains, that are loth to lose the green
+light of their beloved forests, retain it as long as they can, and on
+the masses of living lustre seem to look down with pride from their
+skies.
+
+An English forest, meaning thereby any one wide continuous scene of all
+kinds of old English trees, with glades of pasture, and it may be of
+heath between, with dells dipping down into the gloom, and hillocks
+undulating in the light--ravines and chasms too, rills, and rivulets,
+and a haunted stream, and not without some melancholy old ruins, and
+here and there a cheerful cottage that feels not the touch of time--such
+a forest there is not, and hardly can be imagined to be in Scotland. But
+in the Highlands, there once were, and are still other forests of quite
+a different character, and of equal grandeur. In his "Forest Scenery,"
+Gilpin shows that he understood it well; all the knowledge, which as a
+stranger, almost of necessity he wanted, Lauder has supplied in his
+annotations; and the book should now be in the hands of every one who
+cares about the woods. "The English Forest," says Gilpin, "is commonly
+composed of woodland views, interspersed with extensive heaths and
+lawns. Its trees are oak and beech, whose lively green corresponds
+better than the gloomy pine with the nature of the scene, which seldom
+assumes the dignity of a mountain one, but generally exhibits a cheerful
+landscape. It aspires, indeed, to grandeur; but its grandeur does not
+depend, like that of the Scottish forest, on the sublimity of the
+objects, but on the vastness of the whole--the extent of its woods and
+the wideness of its plains. In its inhabitants also the English forest
+differs from the Scottish; instead of the stag and the roebuck, it is
+frequented by cattle and fallow-deer, and exchanges the scream of the
+eagle and the falcon for the crowing of pheasants, and the melody of the
+nightingale. The Scottish forest, no doubt, is the sublimer scene, and
+speaks to the imagination in a loftier language than the English forest
+can reach. The latter, indeed, often rouses the imagination, but seldom
+in so great a degree, being generally content with captivating the eye.
+The scenery, too, of the Scottish forest is better calculated to last
+through ages than that of the English. The woods of both are almost
+destroyed. But while the English forest hath lost all its beauty with
+its oaks, and becomes only a desolate waste, the rocks and the
+mountains, the lakes and the torrents of the Scottish forest make it
+still an interesting scene."
+
+The Tree of the Highlands is the Pine. There are Scotch firs, indeed,
+well worth looking at, in the Lowlands, and in England, but to learn
+their true character you must see them in the glen, among rooks, by the
+river-side and on the mountain. "We for our parts," says Lauder very
+finely, "confess that when we have seen it towering in full majesty in
+the midst of some appropriate Highland scene, and sending its limbs
+abroad with all the unrestrained freedom of a hardy mountaineer, as if
+it claimed dominion over the savage region round it, we have looked upon
+it as a very sublime object. People who have not seen it in its native
+climate and soil, and who judge of it from the wretched abortions which
+are swaddled and suffocated in English plantations, among dark, heavy,
+and eternally wet clays, may well call it a wretched tree; but when its
+foot is among its own Highland heather, and when it stands freely in
+its native knoll of dry gravel, or thinly covered rock, over which its
+roots wander afar in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall,
+furrowed, and often gracefully sweeping red and grey trunk, of enormous
+circumference, rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy, then would the
+greatest sceptic on this point be compelled to prostrate his mind before
+it with a veneration which perhaps was never before excited in him by
+any other tree." The colour of the pine has been objected to as
+murky--and murky it often is, or seems to be; and so then is the colour
+of the heather, and of the river, and of the loch, and of the sky itself
+thunder-laden, and murkiest of all are the clouds. But a stream of
+sunshine is let loose, and the gloom is confounded with glory; over all
+that night-like reign the jocund day goes dancing, and the forest revels
+in green or in golden light. Thousands and tens of thousands of pines
+are there, and as you gaze upon the whole mighty array, you fear, lest
+it might break the spell, to fix your gaze on any one single tree. But
+there are trees there that will force you to look on themselves alone,
+and they grow before your eyes into the kings of the forest. Straight
+stand their stems in the sunshine, and you feel that as straight have
+they stood in the storm. As yet you look not up, for your heart is awed,
+and you see but the stately columns reddening away into the gloom. But
+all the while you feel the power of the umbrage aloft, and when
+thitherwards you lift your eyes, what a roof to such a cathedral! A cone
+drops at your feet--nor other sound nor other stir--but afar off you
+think you hear a cataract. Inaudible your footsteps on the soft yellow
+floor, composed of the autumnal sheddings of countless years. Then it is
+true that you can indeed hear the beating of your own heart; you fear,
+but know not what you fear; and being the only living creature there,
+you are impressed with a thought of death. But soon to that severe
+silence you are more than reconciled; the solitude, without ceasing to
+be sublime, is felt to be solemn and not awful, and ere long, utter as
+it is, serene. Seen from afar, the forest was one black mass; but as you
+advance, it opens up into spacious glades, beautiful as gardens, with
+appropriate trees of gentler tribes, and ground-flowering in the sun.
+But there is no murmur of bee--no song of bird. In the air a thin
+whisper of insects--intermittent--and wafted quite away by a breath. For
+we are now in the very centre of the forest, and even the cushat haunts
+not here. Hither the red-deer may come--but not now--for at this season
+they love the hill. To such places the stricken stag might steal to lie
+down and die.
+
+And thus for hours may you be lost in the forest, nor all the while have
+wasted one thought on the outer-world, till with no other warning but an
+uncertain glimmer and a strange noise, you all at once issue forth into
+the open day, and are standing on the brink of a precipice above a
+flood. It comes tumbling down with a succession of falls, in a mile-long
+course, right opposite your stance--rocks, cliffs, and trees, all the
+way up on either side, majestically retiring back to afford ample
+channel, and showing an unobstructed vista, closed up by the purple
+mountain, that seems to send forth the river from a cavern in its
+breast. 'Tis the Glen of Pines. Nor ash nor oak is suffered to intrude
+on their dominion. Since the earthquake first shattered it out, this
+great chasm, with all its chasms, has been held by one race of trees. No
+other seed could there spring to life; for from the rocks has all soil,
+ages ago, been washed and swept by the tempests. But there they stand
+with glossy boles, spreading arms, and glittering crest; and those two
+by themselves on the summit, known all over Badenoch as "the
+Giants"--their "statures reach the sky."
+
+We have been indulging in a dream of old. Before our day the immemorial
+gloom of Glenmore had perished, and it ceased to be a forest. But there
+bordered on it another region of night or twilight, and in its vast
+depths we first felt the sublimity of lonesome fear. Rothiemurchus! The
+very word blackens before our eyes with necromantic characters--again we
+plunge into its gulfs desirous of what we dread--again, "in pleasure
+high and turbulent," we climb the cliffs of Cairngorm.
+
+Would you wish to know what is now the look of Glenmore? One now dead
+and gone--a man of wayward temper, but of genius--shall tell you--and
+think not the picture exaggerated--for you would not, if you were
+_there_. "It is the wreck of the ancient forest which arrests all the
+attention, and which renders Glenmore a melancholy, more than a
+melancholy, a terrific spectacle. Trees of enormous height, which have
+escaped alike the axe and the tempest, are still standing, stripped by
+the winds, even of the bark, and, like gigantic skeletons, throwing far
+and wide their white and bleached bones to the storms and rains of
+heaven; while others, broken by the violence of the gales, lift up their
+split and fractured trunks in a thousand shapes of resistance and of
+destruction, or still display some knotted and tortuous branches,
+stretched out, in sturdy and fantastic forms of defiance, to the
+whirlwind and the winter. Noble trunks also, which had long resisted,
+but resisted in vain, strew the ground; some lying on the declivity
+where they have fallen, others still adhering to the precipice where
+they were rooted, many upturned, with their twisted and entangled roots
+high in air; while not a few astonish us by the space which they cover,
+and by dimensions which we could not otherwise have estimated. It is one
+wide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over the
+valley. The sight even of a felled tree is painful; still more is that
+of the fallen forest, with all its green branches on the ground,
+withering, silent, and at rest, where once they glittered in the dew and
+the sun, and trembled in the breeze. Yet this is but an image of
+vegetable death. It is familiar, and the impression passes away. It is
+the naked skeleton bleaching in the winds, the gigantic bones of the
+forest still erect, the speaking records of former life, and of strength
+still unsubdued, vigorous even in death, which renders Glenmore one
+enormous charnel-house."
+
+What happened of old to the aboriginal Forests of Scotland, that long
+before these later destructions they had almost all perished, leaving,
+to bear witness what they were, such survivors? They were chiefly
+destroyed by fire. What power could extinguish chance-kindled
+conflagrations, when sailing before the wind? And no doubt fire was set
+to clear the country at once of Scotch firs, wolves, wild-boars, and
+outlaws. Tradition yet tells of such burnings; and, if we mistake not,
+the pines found in the Scottish mosses, the logs and the stocks, all
+show that they were destroyed by Vulcan, though Neptune buried them in
+the quagmires. Storms no doubt often levelled them by thousands; but had
+millions so fallen they had never been missed, and one Element
+only--which has been often fearfully commissioned--could achieve the
+work. In our own day the axe has indeed done wonders--and sixteen square
+miles of the Forest of Rothiemurchus "went to the ground." John of
+Ghent, Gilpin tells us, to avenge an inroad, set twenty-four thousand
+axes at work in the Caledonian Forest.
+
+Yet Scotland has perhaps sufficient forests at this day. For more has
+been planted than cut down; Glenmore will soon be populous as ever with
+self-sown pines, and Rothiemurchus may revive; the shades are yet deep
+of Loch Arkaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, Strathglass, Glen-Strathfarrar,
+and Loch-Shiel; deeper still on the Findhorn--and deepest of all on the
+Dee, rejoicing in the magnificent pine-woods of Invercauld and Braemar.
+
+We feel that we have spoken feebly of our Highland forests. Some,
+perhaps, who have never been off the high-roads, may accuse us of
+exaggeration too; but they contain wondrous beauties of which we have
+said not a word; and no imagination can conceive what they may be in
+another hundred years. But, apparently far apart from the forests,
+though still belonging to them, for they hold in fancy by the tenure of
+the olden time, how many woods, and groves, and sprinklings of fair
+trees, rise up during a day's journey, in almost every region of the
+North! And among them all, it may be, scarcely a pine. For the oak, and
+the ash, and the elm, are also all native trees; nowhere else does the
+rowan flush with more dazzling lustre; in spring, the alder with its
+vivid green stands well beside the birk--the yew was not neglected of
+yore, though the bow of the Celt was weak to that of the Saxon; and the
+holly, in winter emulating the brightness of the pine, flourished, and
+still flourishes on many a mountain-side. There is sufficient sylvan
+scenery for beauty in a land of mountains. More may be needed for
+shelter--but let the young plants and seedlings have time to grow--and
+as for the old trees, may they live for ever! Too many millions of
+larches are perhaps growing now behind the Tay and the Tilt; yet why
+should the hills of Perthshire be thought to be disfigured by what
+ennobles the Alps and the Apennines?
+
+Hitherto we have hardly said a word about Lochs, and have been doing our
+best to forget them, while imagining scenes that were chiefly
+characterised by other great features of Highland Landscape. A country
+thus constituted, and with such an aspect, even if we could suppose it
+without lochs, would still be a glorious region; but its lochs are
+indeed its greatest glory: by them its glens, its mountains, and its
+woods, are all illumined, and its rivers made to sing aloud for joy. In
+the pure element, overflowing so many spacious vales and glens profound,
+the great and stern objects of nature look even more sublime or more
+beautiful in their reflected shadows, which appear in that stillness to
+belong rather to heaven than earth. Or the evanescence of all that
+imagery at a breath may touch 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 they are
+sometimes seen to assume on a still summer day, always inspire some such
+faint feeling as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all
+things, when the setting sun is seen to sink beneath the mountain, and
+all its golden pomp at the same instant to evanish from the lake.
+
+The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of the
+Highlands as the region of Lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch Lomond.
+A great poet has said that, "in Scotland, the proportion of diffused
+water is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for instance, and in
+most of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds magnificent, and flatters
+the imagination, to hear at a distance of masses of water, so many
+leagues in length and miles in width; and such ample room may be
+delightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding with a lively breeze amid
+the rapidly-shifting scenery. But who ever travelled along the banks of
+Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling
+that a speedier termination of the long vista of blank water would be
+acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows,
+trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side? In fact,
+a notion of grandeur, as connected with magnitude, has seduced persons
+of taste into a general mistake upon this subject. It is much more
+desirable, for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerous
+and small or middle-sized, than large, not only for communication by
+walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar
+appearances. To illustrate this by one instance: how pleasing is it to
+have a ready and frequent opportunity of watching, at the outlet of a
+lake, the stream, pushing its way among the rocks, in lively contrast
+with the stillness from which it has escaped! and how amusing to compare
+its noisy and turbulent motions with the gentle playfulness of the
+breezes that may be starting up, or wandering here and there, over the
+faintly-rippled surface of the broad water! I may add, as a general
+remark, that in lakes of great width the shores cannot be distinctly
+seen at the same time, and therefore contribute little to mutual
+illustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of sight
+of each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes, then
+unfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object--he has the
+blankness of a sea-prospect without the grandeur and accompanying sense
+of power."
+
+We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on light
+grounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt and
+expressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is not
+applicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise this passage
+sentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a captious, but a
+reverent spirit, as we have ever done with the works of this illustrious
+man. He has studied nature more widely and profoundly than we have; but
+it is out of our power to look on Loch Lomond without a feeling of
+perfection. The "diffusion of water" is indeed great; but in what a
+world it floats! At first sight of it, how our soul expands! The sudden
+revelation of such majestic beauty, wide as it is and extending afar,
+inspires us with a power of comprehending it all. Sea-like indeed it
+is--a Mediterranean Sea--enclosed with lofty hills and as lofty
+mountains--and these indeed are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwell
+on the feeling which all must have experienced on the first sight of
+such a vision--the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifest
+that the spacious "diffusion of water" more than conspires with the
+other components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to it
+belongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright, as
+its own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and so
+deeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scene
+before us depend less on the expanse of the "diffusion of water." The
+islands, that before had lain we knew not how--or we had only felt that
+they were all most lovely--begin to show themselves in the order of
+their relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on the
+largest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or two of
+the least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted rock; and
+many as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid plain, for
+it is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude, as masses and
+sprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of the
+cerulean vault. And then the long promontories--stretching out from
+opposite mainlands, and enclosing bays that in themselves are
+lakes--they too magnify the empire of water; for long as they are, they
+seem so only as our eye attends them with their cliffs and woods from
+the retiring shores, and far distant are their shadows from the central
+light. Then what shores! On one side, where the lake is widest,
+low-lying they seem, and therefore lovelier--undulating with fields and
+groves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered, into lines of hills
+that gradually soften away into another land. On the other side, sloping
+back, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in their bareness, for they are
+green as emerald; others, scarcely more beautiful, studded with fair
+trees--some altogether woods. They soon form into mountains--and the
+mountains become more and more majestical, yet beauty never deserts
+them, and her spirit continues to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Far
+off as they are, Benlomond and Benvorlich are seen to be giants;
+magnificent is their retinue, but they two are supreme, each in his own
+dominion; and clear as the day is here, they are diadem'd with clouds.
+
+It cannot be that the "proportion of diffused water is here too great;"
+and is it then true that no one "ever travelled along the banks of Loch
+Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling that
+a speedier termination to the long vista of blank water would be
+acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows,
+trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side?" We have
+travelled along them in all weathers and never felt such a wish. For
+there they all are--all but the "sparkling stream to run by our side,"
+and we see not how that well could be in nature. "Streams that sparkle
+as they run," cross our path on their own; and brighter never issued
+from the woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss--ay, and
+much farther--the variations of the foreground are incessant; "had it no
+other beauties," it has been truly said, "but those of its shores, it
+would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the
+bright-green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that sometimes
+skirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its gentle
+billows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky promontories
+rising from the dark water, rich in wildflowers and ferns, and tangled
+with wild roses and honeysuckles, or its retired bays where the waves
+dash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them, an
+inverted landscape." The islands are for ever arranging themselves into
+new forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem to
+be, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is a
+pleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances the
+delight of admiration. And alongside, or behind us, all the while, are
+the sylvan mountains, "laden with beauty;" and ever and anon open glens
+widen down upon us from chasms; or forest-glades lead our hearts away
+into the inner gloom--perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looks
+not as if it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear by
+nature, a woodsman's hut.
+
+Half-way between Luss and Tarbet the water narrows, but it is still
+wide; the new road, we believe, winds round the point of Firkin, the old
+road boldly scaled the height, as all old roads loved to do; ascend it,
+and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell.
+Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to
+belong to them--to be subjected to their will--and that is capricious;
+for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and
+sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their
+biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences"
+which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigious
+mountains; for we cannot look on them without feeling that they reign
+over the solitude they compose; the lights and shadows flung by the sun
+and the clouds imagination assuredly regards as put forth by the vast
+objects which they colour; and we are inclined to think some such belief
+is essential in the profound awe, often amounting to dread, with which
+we are inspired by the presences of mere material forms. But be this as
+it may, the upper portion of Loch Lomond is felt by all to be most
+sublime. Near the head, all the manifold impressions of the beautiful
+which for hours our mind had been receiving, begin to fade; if some
+gloomy change has taken place in the air, there is a total obliteration,
+and the mighty scene before us is felt to possess not the hour merely,
+but the day. Yet should sunshine come, and abide a while, beauty will
+glimpse upon us even here, for green pastures will smile vividly high up
+among the rocks; the sylvan spirit is serene the moment it is touched
+with light, and here there is not only many a fair tree by the
+water-side, but yon old oak-wood will look joyful on the mountain, and
+the gloom become glimmer in the profound abyss.
+
+Wordsworth says that "it must be more desirable, for the purposes of
+pleasure, that lakes should be numerous, and small or middle-sized, than
+large, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for variety,
+and for recurrence of similar appearances." The Highlands have them of
+all sizes--and that surely is best. But here is one which, it has been
+truly said, is not only "incomparable in its beauty as in its
+dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent and
+splendour, but unites in itself every style of scenery which is found in
+the other lakes of the Highlands." He who has studied, and understood,
+and felt all Loch Lomond, will be prepared at once to enjoy any other
+fine lake he looks on; nor will he admire nor love it the less, though
+its chief character should consist in what forms but one part of that of
+the Wonder in which all kinds of beauty and sublimity are combined.
+
+We feel that it would be idle, and worse than idle, to describe any
+number of the Highland lochs, for so many of the finest have been seen
+by so many eyes that few persons probably will ever read these pages to
+whom such descriptions would be, at the best, more than shadowings of
+scenery that their own imaginations can more vividly re-create. There
+are other reasons for not saying a single word about some of the most
+beautiful; for genius has pictured and peopled them and the surrounding
+regions in colours that will never fade. Besides, in the volumes to
+which these "Remarks" are a preface--contributed with pleasure, somewhat
+impaired indeed by the consciousness of their many defects and
+imperfections--views of them all are submitted to the eye; and it is not
+to be thought that we could by words add to the effect of the works of
+such artists. These objections do not apply to what we have written
+respecting the character of the Scenery of the Highlands, apart, as far
+as that may be, from their lochs; and it may have in some measure
+illustrated them also, if it has at all truly characterised the
+mountains, the glens, the rivers, the forests, and the woods.
+
+We may be allowed, however, to say, that there cannot be a greater
+mistake than to think, as many, we believe, do who have only heard of
+the Highland Lochs, that, with the exception of those famous for their
+beauty as well as their grandeur, beauty is not only not the quality by
+which they are distinguished, but that it is rarely found in them at
+all. There are few, possessing any very marked character, in which
+beauty is not either an ingredient or an accompaniment; and there are
+many "beautiful exceedingly," which, lying out of the way even of
+somewhat adventurous travellers, or very remote, are known, if even by
+that, only by name. It does not, indeed, require much, in some
+situations, to give a very touching beauty to water. A few trees, a few
+knolls, a few tufted rocks, will do it, where all around and above is
+stern or sterile; and how strong may be the gentle charm, if the torrent
+that feeds the little loch chance to flow into it from a lucid pool
+formed by a waterfall, and to flow out of it in a rivulet that enlivens
+the dark heather with a vale of verdure over which a stag might
+bound--and more especially if there be two or three huts in which it is
+perceived there is human life! We believe we slightly touched before on
+such scenes; but any little repetition will be excused for the sake of a
+very picturesque passage, which we have much pleasure in quoting from
+the very valuable "Guide to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland," by
+the brothers Anderson. We well remember walking into the scene here so
+well painted, many long years ago, and have indeed, somewhere or other,
+described it. The Fall of Foyers is the most magnificent cataract, out
+of all sight and hearing, in Britain. The din is quite loud enough in
+ordinary weather--and it is only in ordinary weather that you can
+approach the place from which you have a full view of all its grandeur.
+When the Fall is in flood--to say nothing of being drenched to the
+skin--you are so blinded by the sharp spray-smoke, and so deafened by
+the dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that your
+condition is far from enviable, as you cling, "lonely lover of nature,"
+to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid gulf. Nor in
+former times was there any likelihood of your being comforted by the
+accommodations of the General's Hut. In ordinary Highland
+weather--meaning thereby weather neither very wet nor very dry--it is
+worth walking a thousand miles for one hour to behold the Fall of
+Foyers. The spacious cavity is enclosed by "complicated cliffs and
+perpendicular precipices" of immense height, and though for a while it
+wears to the eye a savage aspect, yet beauty fears not to dwell even
+there, and the horror is softened by what appears to be masses of tall
+shrubs, or single shrubs almost like trees. And they are trees, which on
+the level plain would look even stately; but as they ascend ledge above
+ledge the walls of that awful chasm, it takes the eye time to see them
+as they really are, while on our first discernment of their character,
+serenely standing among the tumult, they are felt on such sites to be
+sublime.
+
+"Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik," says the Book we were
+about to quote, "a space of three or four miles, the river Foyers flows
+through a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch. They present
+various quiet glades and open spaces, where little patches of cultivated
+ground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose surface is pleasingly
+diversified by nodding trees, bare rocks, empurpled heath, and bracken
+bearing herbage." It was the excessive loveliness of some of the scenery
+there that suggested to us the thought of going to look what kind of a
+stream the Foyers was above the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of a
+summer evening, found it
+
+    "Was even the gentlest of all gentle things."
+
+But here is the promised description of it. "Before pursuing our way
+westward, we would wish to direct the traveller's attention to a
+sequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This is a
+secluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its natural
+attractions--and these are many--is distinguished as one of the few
+places where the old practice of resorting to the 'shieling' for summer
+grazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on all sides by
+steep mountains; but at the north end there is a small lake, about a
+mile and a half in length, and from one-third to half a mile in breadth.
+The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a perfectly level tract, of
+the same width with the lake, and about two miles and a half in length,
+covered with the richest herbage, and traversed by a small meandering
+river flowing through it into the lake. The surface of this flat is
+bedecked with the little huts or bothies which afford temporary
+accommodation to the herdsmen and others in charge of the cattle. This
+portion of the glen is bordered on the west by continuous hills rising
+abruptly in a uniformly steep acclivity, and passing above into a
+perpendicular range of precipices, the whole covered with a scanty
+verdure sprouted with heath. At a bend of the lake near its middle,
+where it inclines from a northernly course towards the west, a
+magnificent rounded precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may be
+about 1200 feet in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a few
+narrow and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting a
+perfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the rest
+of the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side, clothed
+with birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded over with the
+deeper-tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain, and the adjoining
+portion of the lake, are lined by mountains corresponding in height with
+those opposed to them; but their lower extremities are, to a
+considerable extent, strewed with broken fragments of rock, to which
+succeeds an uninterrupted zone of birch and alder, which is again
+overtopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An elevated terrace occupies the
+remainder of this side of the lake; above the wooded face of which is
+seen a sloping expanse of mingled heath and herbage. About half a mile
+from the south end, Mr Fraser of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected a
+shooting-lodge; viewed from which, or from either end, or from the top
+of the platform on the north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcely
+picture a more attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by this
+sequestered vale, to which Dr Johnson's description of the 'Happy
+Valley' not inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of several
+hundreds, are generally kept here from the beginning of June to the
+middle of August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The river
+sweeps to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-clad
+hills, which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn which
+immediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a rustic
+bridge, from which a single footpath conducts across the brow of the
+hill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles distant."
+
+There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost as
+little known (one view of it is given in the book), equal to anything in
+the Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in the Great
+Glen--Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since, having been
+induced to do so by a passage in John Stoddart's "Remarks on the Local
+Scenery and Manners of Scotland;" and it was then a very noble oak and
+pine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept steadily at it; and a
+great change was wrought; but it is still a grand scene, with a larger
+infusion of beauty than it possessed of old. The scenery of the valley
+separating it from Loch Lochy is very similar to that of the Trossachs;
+through it there are two approaches to the loch, and the _Mile-Dubh_, or
+the Dark Mile, according to our feeling, is more impressive than any
+part of the approach to Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are very
+solemn, and yet very sweet; for though many old pines and oaks and ashes
+are there, and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now on
+many places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocks
+below, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the young
+are intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their protection,
+without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch, more or less
+sylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some magnificent
+remains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep like some great
+river. There may be more, but we remember but one island--not large, but
+wooded as it should be--the burying-place of the family of Lochiel. What
+rest! It is a long journey from Loch Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig--and by the
+silent waters we walked or sat all a summer's day. There was nothing
+like a road that we observed, but the shores are easily travelled, and
+there it is you may be almost sure of seeing some red-deer. They are no
+better worth looking at from a window than Fallow--no offence to Fallow,
+who are fine creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all;
+but on the shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a human
+habitation within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seen
+to be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here and
+there some spot that seems cultivatable, but probably is found not to
+be so after some laborious years--there they are at home; and you, if
+young, looking on them, feel at home too, and go bounding, like one of
+themselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable steep. Roe, too,
+frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be started; grouse spring
+up before you oftener than you might expect in a deer forest; but, to be
+sure, it is a rough and shaggy one, though lovelier lines of verdure
+never lay in the sunshine than we think we see now lying for miles along
+the margin of that loch. The numerous mountains towards the head of the
+loch are very lofty, and glens diverge in grand style into opposite and
+distant regions. Glen Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on the
+loch, and leads to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart--Glen Pæan to
+Oben-a-Cave on Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and Loch
+Shiel; and Glen Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice!
+We chose Glen Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that took
+us down to Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and in
+grandeur not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day's
+journey, the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the great
+objects of nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, the
+spirit of the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest.
+It is surpassing fair--and having lain all night long on its gentle
+banks, sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it since
+but as the Land of Dreams.
+
+Which is the dreariest, most desolate, and dismal of the Highland Lochs?
+We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness, with
+which perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may travel
+for days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We speak of the
+regions comprehended between the Forest of Atholl and Ben-nevis, the
+Moor of Rannoch and Glen Spean. There are many lochs--and Loch Ericht is
+their griesly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds, hunters, fowlers, anglers,
+traverse its borders, but few have been far in the interior, and we
+never knew anybody who had crossed it from south to north, from east to
+west. We have ourselves seen more of it, perhaps, than any other
+Lowlander; and had traversed many of its vast glens and moors, before we
+found our way to the southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into the
+western gloom of Ben Auler from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hours
+dismal but not dangerous precipices that opened out into what might
+almost be called passes--but we had frequently to go back, for they were
+blind--contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains that
+rose from the water a few miles down the loch. All was vast, shapeless,
+savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of those days that
+keep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder; such as one conceives
+of on the eve of an earthquake. At first the sight was dreadful, but
+there was no reason for dread; imagination remains not longer than she
+chooses the slave of her own eyes, and we soon began to enjoy the gloom,
+and to feel how congenial it was in nature with the character of all
+those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in
+solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And
+they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great
+distance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, covering their
+feet.
+
+Loch Ericht is many miles long--nearly twenty; but there is a loch among
+the Grampians not more than two miles round, if so much, which is
+sublimer far--Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once, a short
+way down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some two thousand
+feet below you, itself being as many above the level of the sea. But to
+come upon it so as to feel best its transcendent grandeur, you should
+approach it up Glenaven--and from as far down as Inch-Rouran, which is
+about half-way between Loch Aven and Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran and
+Tomantoul the glen is wild, but it is inhabited; above that house there
+is but one other; and for about a dozen miles--we have heard it called
+far more--there is utter solitude. But never was there a solitude at
+once so wild, so solemn, so serene, so sweet! The glen is narrow; but on
+one side there are openings into several wider glens, that show you
+mighty coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are without
+a break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy, from
+dark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of pastoral or of
+forest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong to the bases of
+Ben-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants are not seen--but it
+sublimes the long glen to know that it belongs to their dominion, and
+that it is leading us on to an elevation that ere long will be on a
+level with the roots of their topmost cliffs. The Aven is so clear--on
+account of the nature of its channel--that you see the fishes hanging in
+every pool; and 'tis not possible to imagine how beautiful in such
+transparencies are the reflections of its green ferny banks. For miles
+they are composed of knolls, seldom interspersed with rocks, and there
+cease to be any trees. But ever and anon we walk for a while on a level
+floor, and the voice of the stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have been
+noticed on the hill, but not many, and red and black cattle grazing on
+the lower pastures; but they disappear, and we find ourselves all at
+once in a desert. So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its black
+heather on that greenest grass; but 'tis such a desert as the red-deer
+love. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to
+be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till we
+again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in the
+glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains,
+for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, forming
+themselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; and
+now we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we know
+not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel that
+sublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur we
+feel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker.
+
+This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from that
+enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholy
+moors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps them
+herbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any
+sign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as if
+they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere
+imagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a
+desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances of
+outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith,
+the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to make
+them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region as
+happy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as the
+soul has chosen to make sublime--the colouring of the mountains all
+such, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region,
+thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to be
+indeed one of the very noblest in nature.
+
+We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on the
+Character of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that the
+sketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally filled
+up with some details--must be very imperfect indeed without
+comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that
+stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do not
+think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we have
+sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds,
+and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet they
+contain such an endless variety of all the fairest and greatest objects
+of nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our powers to give
+anything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the grandeur that for
+ever kept unfolding themselves around our summer voyagings in calm or
+storm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth part of the wonders of
+"the marine" between the Mull of Cantire and Cape Wrath? He may have
+gathered many an extensive shore--threaded many a mazy multitude of
+isles--sailed up many a spacious bay--and cast anchor at the head of
+many a haven land-locked so as no more to seem to belong to the sea--yet
+other voyagers shall speak to him of innumerable sights which he has
+never witnessed; and they who are most conversant with those coasts,
+best know how much they have left and must leave for ever unexplored.
+
+Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyll! Without it and
+the Sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morvern! Eclipsed the
+splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the waves
+roll in light, you will see how the mountains are beautified by the sea.
+There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to no
+land-loch--only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image of
+ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all now
+it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich and
+adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the Amethyst bound away "at
+her own sweet will," accordant with yours, till she reach the distant
+and long-desired loch.
+
+    "Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar,
+    Comes in among these mountains from the main,
+    'Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan's rocky cape
+    And Ardmore's shingly beach of hissing spray;
+    And while his thunders bid the sound of Mull
+    Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays
+    Hill-shelter'd from the wrath that foams along
+    The mad mid-channel,--All as quiet they
+    As little separate worlds of summer dreams,--
+    And by storm-loving birds attended up
+    The mountain-hollow, white in their career
+    As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles
+    Of craggy Carnich, and green Oronsay
+    Drench'd in that sea-horn shower o'er tree-tops driven,
+    And ivied stones of what was once a tower,
+    Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might
+    In the long reach between Dungallan caves
+    And point of Arderinis ever fair
+    With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait
+    Into another ampler inland sea;
+    Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,--
+    And potent is she, though so meek the Eve,--
+    Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean
+    Insensibly into a solemn calm,--
+    And all along that ancient burial-ground
+    (Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend
+    Its own eternal quiet to the waves,
+    Restless no more, into a perfect peace
+    Lulling and lull'd at last, while drop the airs
+    Away as they were dead, the first-risen star
+    Beholds that lovely Archipelago,
+    All shadow'd there as in a spiritual world,
+    Where time's mutations shall come never more!"
+
+These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe their
+greatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which nature has
+lavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but Loch Leven is
+scarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is matchless
+magnificence above Loch Etive. All round about Ballahulish and Inverco
+the scenery of Loch Leven is the sweetest ever seen overshadowed by
+such mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter its lustre; in all
+weathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often while tip among the rocks
+the tall trees are tossing in the storm, the heart of the woods beneath
+is calm, and the vivid fields they shelter look as if they still enjoyed
+the sun. Nor closes the beauty there, but even animates the entrance
+into that dreadful glen--Glencoe. All the way up its river, Loch Leven
+would be fair, were it only for her hanging woods. But though the glen
+narrows, it still continues broad, and there are green plains between
+her waters and the mountains, on which stately trees stand single, and
+there is ample room for groves. The returning tide tells us, should we
+forget it, that this is no inland loch, for it hurries away back to the
+sea, not turbulent, but fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is one
+of the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series of
+waterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immense
+vista; and all the way up to the furthest there are noble assemblages of
+rocks--nowhere any want of wood--and in places, trees that seem to have
+belonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to
+lead into another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way,
+past some small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on all
+sides, and descended on Loch Treag,
+
+    "A loch whom there are none to praise,
+    And very few to love,"
+
+but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoral
+contentment and peace.
+
+Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen by
+almost all who have visited the Highlands--but very imperfectly; to know
+what it is, you must row or sail up it, for the banks on both sides are
+often richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are frequently well
+embayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently wide to allow you
+from its centre to command a view of many of the distant heights. But
+above Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For a couple of miles it is
+not wide, and it is so darkened by enormous shadows that it looks even
+less like a strait than a gulf--huge overhanging rocks on both sides
+ascending high, and yet felt to belong but to the bases of mountains
+that sloping far back have their summits among clouds of their own in
+another region of the sky. Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere else
+is there such lofty heather--it seems a wild sort of brushwood; tall
+trees flourish, single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and then
+an oak--and they are in their youth or their prime--and even the
+prodigious trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are not
+all dead, but shoot from their knotted rind symptoms of life
+inextinguishable by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge into
+the Upper Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains,
+all of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests.
+Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all--king at once of Loch
+Etive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off, is still a
+giant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with him the Black
+Mount and its dependents, so that they all seem to belong to this most
+magnificent of all Highland lochs. "I know not," says Macculloch, "that
+Loch Etive could bear an ornament without an infringement on that aspect
+of solitary vastness which it presents throughout. Nor is there one. The
+rocks and bays on the shore, which might elsewhere attract attention,
+are here swallowed up in the enormous dimensions of the surrounding
+mountains, and the wide and ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house,
+here fearfully solitary, situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visible
+when at the upper extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in a
+few places on the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were a
+humble mountain flower, by the universal magnitude around." This is
+finely felt and expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there is
+much of the beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, and
+bay, and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granite
+masses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; several
+houses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though that
+long hollow--half a day's journey--till you reach the wild road between
+Inveruran and King's House--lies in gloom, yet the hillsides are
+cheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and rock-broken,
+should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. But
+to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceases
+to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off a
+solitary dwelling indeed--perhaps the loneliest house in all the
+Highlands--and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by the
+voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or three
+stems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture--but we
+have seen them and the deer-hounds glide over it, followed by other
+fearless feet, when far and wide the Forest of Dalness was echoing to
+the hunter's horn.
+
+We have now brought our Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands to a
+close, and would fain have said a few words on the character and life of
+the people; but are precluded from even touching on that most
+interesting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellers
+through those wonderful regions, can be so occupied with the
+contemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought to
+their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without such
+thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses,
+in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; but
+they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensive
+tracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods that
+for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life,
+yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable to the instructed
+eye almost everywhere, and in them often lies the spell that charms us,
+even while we think that we are wholly delivered up to the influence of
+"dead insensate things." None will visit the Highlands without having
+some knowledge of their history; and the changes that have long been
+taking place in the condition of the people will be affectingly
+recognised wherever they go, in spite even of what might have appeared
+the insuperable barriers of nature.
+
+                                  "Time and Tide
+    Have washed away, like weeds upon the sands,
+    Crowds of the olden life's memorials;
+    And 'mid the mountains you as well might seek
+    For the lone site of fancy's filmy dreams.
+    Towers have decay'd and moulder'd from the cliffs,
+    Or their green age, or grey, has help'd to build
+    New dwellings sending up their household smoke
+    From treeless places once inhabited
+    But by the secret sylvans. On the moors
+    The pillar-stone, reared to perpetuate
+    The fame of some great battle, or the power
+    Of storied necromancer in the wild,
+    Among the wide change on the heather-bloom
+    By power more wondrous wrought than his, its name
+    Has lost, or fallen itself has disappear'd;
+    No broken fragment suffer'd to impede
+    The glancing ploughshare. All the ancient woods
+    Are thinn'd and let in floods of daylight now,
+    Then dark and dern as when the Druids lived.
+    Narrow'd is now the red-deer's forest reign;
+    The royal race of eagles is extinct.
+    But other changes than on moor and cliff
+    Have tamed the aspect of the wilderness;
+    The simple system of primeval life,
+    Simple but stately, hath been broken down;
+    The clans are scatter'd, and the chieftain's power
+    Is dead, or dying--but a name--though yet
+    It sometimes stirs the desert; to the winds
+    The tall plumes wave no more--the tartan green
+    With fiery streaks among the heather-bells
+    Now glows unfrequent; and the echoes mourn
+    The silence of the music that of old
+    Kept war-thoughts stern amid the calm of peace.
+    Yet to far battle plains still Morven sends
+    Her heroes, and still glittering in the sun,
+    Or blood-dimm'd, her dread line of bayonets
+    Marches with loud shouts straight to victory.
+    A soften'd radiance now floats o'er her glens;
+    No rare sight now upon her sea-arm lochs
+    The sail oft-veering up the solitude;
+    And from afar the noise of life is brought
+    Within the thunders of her cataracts.
+    These will flow on for ever; and the crests,
+    Gold-tipt by rising and by setting suns,
+    Of her old mountains inaccessible
+    Glance down their scorn for ever on the toils
+    That load with harvests now the humbler hills,
+    Now shorn of all their heather bloom, and green
+    Or yellow as the gleam of lowland fields.
+    And bold hearts in broad bosoms still are there,
+    Living and dying peacefully; the huts
+    Abodes are still of high-soul'd poverty;
+    And underneath their lintels beauty stoops
+    Her silken-snooded head, when singing goes
+    The maiden to her father at his work
+    Among the woods, or joins the scanty line
+    Of barley-reapers on their narrow ridge,
+    In some small field among the pastoral braes.
+    Still fragments dim of ancient poetry
+    In melancholy music down the glens
+    Go floating; and from shieling roof'd with boughs,
+    And turf-wall'd, high up in some lonely place
+    Where flocks of sheep are nibbling the sweet grass
+    Of mid-summer, and browsing on the plants
+    On the cliff mosses a few goats are seen
+    Among their kids, you hear sweet melodies
+    Attuned to some traditionary tale,
+    By young wife sitting all alone, aware
+    From shadow on the mountain horologe
+    Of the glad hour that brings her husband home
+    Before the gloaming, from the far-off moor
+    Where the black cattle feed; there all alone
+    She sits and sings, except that on her knees
+    Sleeps the sweet offspring of their faithful loves."
+
+We love the people too well to praise them--we have had too heartfelt
+experience of their virtues. In castle, hall, house, manse, hut, hovel,
+shieling--on mountain and moor, we have known, without having to study
+their character. It manifests itself in their manners, and in their
+whole frame of life. They are now, as they ever were, affectionate,
+faithful, and fearless; and far more delightful surely it is to see such
+qualities in all their pristine strength--for civilisation has not
+weakened, nor ever will weaken them--without that alloy of fierceness
+and ferocity which was inseparable from them in the turbulence of feudal
+times. They are now indeed a peaceful people; severe as are the
+hardships of their condition, they are, in the main, contented with it;
+and nothing short of necessity can dissever them from their dear
+mountains. We devoutly trust that there need be no more forced
+emigration--that henceforth it will be free--at the option of the
+adventurous--and that all who will, when the day cometh, may be gathered
+to their fathers in the land that gave them birth. Much remains to be
+done not only to relieve but enlighten; yet Christian benevolence has
+not been forgetful of their wants; schools and churches are arising in
+remote places; and that they are in good truth a religious as well as a
+moral people is proved by the passionate earnestness with which, in
+their worst destitution, they embrace every offer of instruction in the
+knowledge that leads to everlasting life. The blessing of Heaven will
+lie on all such missions as these; and the time will come when we shall
+be able to contemplate, without any pain, the condition of a race who,
+to use the noble language of one, though often scornful and sarcastic
+overmuch, yet at heart their friend, "almost in an hour subsided into
+peace and virtue, retaining their places, their possessions, their
+chiefs, their songs, their traditions, their superstitions and peculiar
+usages--even that language and those recollections which still separate
+them from the rest of the nation. They retained even their pride, and
+they retained their contempt of those who imposed that order on them,
+and still they settled into a state of obedience to that government, of
+which the world produces no other instance! It is a splendid moral
+phenomenon, and reflects a lustre on the Highland character, whether of
+the chiefs or the people, which extinguishes all past faults, and which
+atones for what little remains to be amended. A peculiar political
+situation was the cause of their faults; and that which swept away the
+cause, has rendered the effects a tale of other times."
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Recreations of Christopher North,
+Volume 2, by John Wilson
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+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER NORTH ***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 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 2
+
+Author: John Wilson
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER NORTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>RECREATIONS</h1>
+
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h1>CHRISTOPHER NORTH</h1>
+
+
+<h3><i>A NEW EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES</i></h3>
+
+<h2>VOL. II.</h2>
+
+
+<h4>WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS<br />
+EDINBURGH AND LONDON<br />
+MDCCCLXVIII</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. II.</h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='right'>PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>MAY-DAY</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>SACRED POETRY:&mdash;</td>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">CHAPTER I.,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_38'>38</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">CHAPTER II.,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_53'>53</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">CHAPTER III.,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_75'>75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">CHAPTER IV.,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_88'>88</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY:&mdash;</td>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FIRST CANTICLE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_98'>98</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">SECOND CANTICLE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">THIRD CANTICLE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_149'>149</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FOURTH CANTICLE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_165'>165</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>DR KITCHINER:&mdash;</td>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FIRST COURSE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_182'>182</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">SECOND COURSE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_194'>194</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">THIRD COURSE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_203'>203</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FOURTH COURSE,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_212'>212</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS:&mdash;</td>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FIRST RHAPSODY,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_224'>224</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">SECOND RHAPSODY,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_239'>239</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span>A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON,</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT,</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_274'>274</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>CHRISTMAS DREAMS,</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_285'>285</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>OUR WINTER QUARTERS,</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_304'>304</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>STROLL TO GRASSMERE:&mdash;</td>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">FIRST SAUNTER,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_327'>327</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">SECOND SAUNTER,</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_355'>355</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>L'ENVOY</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_369'>369</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><hr style='width: 45%;' /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>REMARKS ON THE SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS,</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_385'>385</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>RECREATIONS</h2>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h2>CHRISTOPHER NORTH.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MAY-DAY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Art thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moorland, sylvan, and pastoral
+Parish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious
+dawning of life&mdash;can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art
+indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in
+half an hour could fly the flapping dove&mdash;though the martens, wheeling
+to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, central in its
+own domain, seem in their more distant flight to glance their crescent
+wings over a vale rejoicing apart in another kirk-spire, yet how rich in
+streams, and rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar murmur&mdash;art
+Thou with thy bold bleak exposure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous
+undulations to the portals of the East! How endless the interchange of
+woods and meadows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without number, among
+thy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings&mdash;how rises the smoke,
+ever and anon, into the sky, all neighbouring on each other, so that the
+cock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead; while as you wander
+onwards, each roof still rises unexpectedly&mdash;and as solitary, as if it
+had been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thousand parishes&mdash;neither
+Highland, nor Lowland&mdash;but undulating&mdash;let us again use the descriptive
+word&mdash;like the sea in sunset after a day of storms&mdash;yes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> Heaven's
+blessing be upon thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old!</p>
+
+<p>The same heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers of
+earth&mdash;like the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The stillness of those
+lofty clouds makes them seem whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to
+thy grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded corn, for thy
+brooding mate can no longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there
+is little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full budding
+branches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hook
+levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briery
+knolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the
+rustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter
+benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that now
+are gone&mdash;tall, far-spreading single trees, in whose shade used to lie
+the ruminating cattle, with the small herd-girl asleep. Gone are they,
+and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not more
+forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held
+converse&mdash;whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead&mdash;hands so often
+grasped&mdash;arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes&mdash;have long
+ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so
+much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the
+holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of
+time.</p>
+
+<p>It is <span class="smcap">May-day</span>, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some
+sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at
+nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and
+then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush,
+took possession of field or forest. We are all alone&mdash;a solitary
+pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are
+changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly
+along to the merry music of streams&mdash;or linger by the silent shores of
+lochs&mdash;or upon the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a
+panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight&mdash;or plunge into the old
+wood's magnificent exclusion from sky&mdash;where, at midsummer, day is as
+night&mdash;though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;
+and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will
+be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the
+dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.</p>
+
+<p>What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the <span class="smcap">Manse</span>, wherein
+and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away,
+like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint
+or pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it is
+built, and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equally
+against all the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to direct
+our footsteps&mdash;for that venerable Man has long been dead&mdash;not one of his
+ancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it was
+gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has
+been entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of, but
+never more shall see&mdash;and the voices that are now heard within those
+walls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the
+silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is an
+appalling trial to approach a place where once we have been
+happier&mdash;happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and a
+worse evil doth it seem to our imagination to return to Paradise, with a
+changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the
+outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that
+spirit that had glorified our prime.</p>
+
+<p>But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the
+hill&mdash;the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for
+stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled
+roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which
+the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore,
+and almost as early as the alder or the birch&mdash;the <span class="smcap">$1</span>, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner.
+You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling&mdash;for eaves,
+roof, and chimneys all disappeared&mdash;and then, when you stood beneath,
+was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself,
+continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide
+of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mount Pleasant</span>! well indeed dost thou deserve the name,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> bestowed on
+thee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble proprietors, but by
+the general voice of praise, all eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty.
+For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields and
+meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of a river, the
+smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spire
+of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting with
+his solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the pulpit, with his
+expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged him
+to be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen him
+at labour on the working days, you might almost have thought him the
+serf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried
+the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength
+and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house,
+beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly
+esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverently
+beloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman of
+active habits and a strong mind, but tempering the natural sternness of
+her husband's character with that genial and jocund cheerfulness, that
+of all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of a
+household. One daughter only had they, and we could charm our heart even
+now, by evoking the vanished from oblivion, and imaging her over and
+over again in the light of words; but although all objects, animate and
+inanimate, seem always tinged with an air of sadness when they are
+past&mdash;and as at present we are resolved to be cheerful&mdash;obstinately to
+resist all access of melancholy&mdash;an enemy to the pathetic&mdash;and a scorner
+of shedders of tears&mdash;therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, and
+let us paint a pleasant picture of a May-Day afternoon, and enjoy it as
+it was enjoyed of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the
+grandisonant name of <span class="smcap">The Glory of Mount Pleasant</span>.</p>
+
+<p>There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, used
+on <span class="smcap">May-day</span> to be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayed
+in home-spun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on the
+distant mountain-head; and on various seats&mdash;stumps, stones, stools,
+creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and
+elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and
+allegorical&mdash;took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping
+and bowing, blushing and curtsying, old, young, and middle-aged, of high
+and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister
+shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well
+worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the <span class="smcap">May-day</span> meal spread
+beneath the shadow of the <span class="smcap">Glory of Mount Pleasant</span>. But the Minister
+uttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curds
+and cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on those
+horn-spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk&mdash;to the mouth how apt the
+bowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate of
+delft, rather more than full of curds, many million times more
+deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, and then filled to
+overflowing with a blessed outpouring of creamy richness that
+tenaciously descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar expression of
+whose physiognomy, particularly the nose, we will carry with us to the
+grave! The dairy at <span class="smcap">Mount Pleasant</span> consisted of twenty cows&mdash;almost all
+spring calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed&mdash;so you may guess what cream!
+The spoon could not stand in it,&mdash;it was not so thick as that&mdash;for that
+was too thick,&mdash;but the spoon, when placed upright in it, retained its
+perpendicularity for a while, and then, when uncertain on which side to
+fall, was grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with its
+fresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Never
+beneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal cakes, pease-scones,
+and barley-bannocks, as at <span class="smcap">Mount Pleasant</span>. You could have eaten away at
+them with pleasure, even although not hungry&mdash;and yet it was impossible
+of them to eat too much&mdash;Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter
+yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount
+Pleasant&mdash;such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture&mdash;was coloured like
+the crocus, before the young thrushes had left the nest in the
+honey-suckled corner of the gavel-end. Not a single hair in the churn.
+Then what honey and what jam! The first, not heather, for that is too
+luscious, especially after such cream, but the pure white virgin honey,
+like dew shaken from clover, but now <i>querny</i> after winter keep; and oh!
+over a layer of such butter on such barley bannocks was such honey, on
+such a day, in such company, and to such palates, too divine to be
+described by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> such a pen as that now wielded by such a writer! The Jam!
+It was of gooseberries&mdash;the small black hairy ones&mdash;gathered to a very
+minute from the bush, and boiled to a very moment in the pan! A bannock
+studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a
+corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The
+question, with the gaucy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was
+not&mdash;"My dear laddie, which will ye hae&mdash;hinny or jam?" but, "Which will
+ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs,
+or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half-a-dozen white cans of more moderate
+dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was
+withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity
+fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming
+Sycamore. There the bees were all at work for next May-day, happy as
+ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold,
+happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song;
+for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave
+forth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of
+Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that
+ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire
+in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies.</p>
+
+<p>Never had Mary Morrison heard the old ballad-airs sung, except during
+the mid-day hour of rest, in the corn or hay field&mdash;and rude singers are
+they all&mdash;whether male or female voices&mdash;although sometimes with a touch
+of natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. But as the
+nightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it never
+were to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among the
+shrub-roots, and the lark, though alone on earth, would sing the hymn
+well known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nature
+within her, and inspired by her own delightful genius alone, did Mary
+Morrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give them
+all an expression at once simple and profound. People who said they did
+not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous
+and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of
+the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly
+blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little
+hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> eyes fixed on the ground,
+or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would
+most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl&mdash;but her musical turn
+is really very singular indeed;"&mdash;but her happy father and mother knew,
+that in all common things&mdash;that is, in all the duties of an humble and
+innocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies and
+harmonies of song&mdash;and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was as
+angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearly
+inexperienced of sin.</p>
+
+<p>Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her&mdash;and to
+listen to her&mdash;as their Mary sat beside the young English boy&mdash;admired
+of all observers&mdash;and happier than she had ever been in this world
+before, in the charm of their blended music, and the unconscious
+affection&mdash;sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she had
+none&mdash;that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side-by-side in their music,
+insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both admired
+and beloved. It was thought that they loved one another too, too well;
+for Harry Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, and Mary Morrison
+a peasant's child; but they could not love too well&mdash;she in her
+tenderness&mdash;he in his passion&mdash;for, with them, life and love was a
+delightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as by
+some secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day&mdash;of the same
+fever&mdash;and died at the same hour;&mdash;and not from any dim intention of
+those who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-ground
+of the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in the
+same grave&mdash;for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them&mdash;a curtain
+between the beds on which brother and sister slept.</p>
+
+<p>In their delirium they both talked about each other&mdash;Mary Morrison and
+Harry Wilton&mdash;yet their words were not words of love, only of common
+kindness; for although on their death-beds they did not talk about
+death, but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasant
+meetings in neighbours' houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up
+in bed, and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute which
+to his lips was to breathe no more; and even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> at the very self-same
+moment&mdash;so it wonderfully was&mdash;did he tell all to be hushed, for that
+Mary Morrison was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest.</p>
+
+<p>Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they may
+sleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterly
+obliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour or
+other however distant, legible as at the very moment they were first
+engraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the long-ago
+vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delight
+or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesired
+indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating up
+into some inland vale, because, unknown to us who wonder at them, the
+tide is flowing and the breezes blow from the main. Bright as the living
+image stands now before us the ghost&mdash;for what else is it than the
+ghost&mdash;of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particular
+day&mdash;in one particular place, innumerable years ago! It was at the close
+of one of those midsummer days which melt away into twilight, rather
+than into night, although the stars are visible, and bird and beast
+asleep. All by herself, as she walked along between the braes, was she
+singing a hymn,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And must this body die?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This mortal frame decay?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And must these feeble limbs of mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lie mouldering in the clay?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not that the child had any thought of death, for she was as full of life
+as the star above her was of lustre&mdash;tamed though they both were by the
+holy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as we
+met, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away in
+the distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we that
+voice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguished
+no more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer.</p>
+
+<p>Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter was
+taken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No&mdash;such is not
+the natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure and
+pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once
+been&mdash;nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in
+resig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>nation that often wept when it did not repine&mdash;in faith that now
+held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of
+being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's&mdash;they had
+been as sisters&mdash;took her place, and filled it too, as far as the living
+can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while
+to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom their
+substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have
+discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others
+saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a
+delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired
+to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let
+him be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working man
+before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He broke
+down fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that
+partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those who
+have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other's
+arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there is
+one on which this inscription may be read&mdash;"<span class="smcap">$1</span>." The headstone is a granite slab&mdash;as they almost all are
+in that kirkyard&mdash;and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material.
+But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the very
+snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with the
+armorial bearings belonging to a family of the high-born.</p>
+
+<p>Sworn Brother of our soul! during the bright ardours of boyhood, when
+the present was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon
+forgotten, and the future unfeared, what might have been thy lot,
+beloved Harry Wilton, had thy span of life been prolonged to this very
+day? Better&mdash;oh! far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst so
+early die; for it seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; and
+that, with all their genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonour
+comes and goes, a familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house.
+Shame never veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> tamed the
+eloquence of those sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed down
+that young princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed each
+successive morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood.
+But the time was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergone
+a rueful transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of a
+sorceress, and forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice,
+worthlessness, profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a broken
+heart! And that lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelled
+hair&mdash;But all these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hour
+when we and the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and
+the burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem or
+organ-peal, among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all those
+floods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we who
+loved thee to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy image
+now survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away from
+eyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is not
+bedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet thou,
+Nature, on this glorious May-day, rejoicing in all the plenitude of thy
+bliss&mdash;we call upon thee to bear witness to the intensity of our
+never-dying grief! Ye fields, that long ago we so often trode together,
+with the wind-swept shadows hovering about our path&mdash;Ye streams, whose
+murmur awoke our imaginations, as we lay reading, or musing together in
+day-dreams, among the broomy braes&mdash;Ye woods, where we started at the
+startled cushat, or paused, without a word, to hear the creature's
+solitary moans and murmurs deepening the far-off hush, already so
+profound&mdash;Ye moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with your
+peat-trenches overshadowed by the heather-blossoms that scented the
+wilderness afar&mdash;where the little maiden, sent from the shieling on
+errands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met her
+in the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy from
+the desert bloom&mdash;Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and with
+nought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoral
+hills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven&mdash;no
+creature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in the
+breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, with some book of old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+ballads, or strain of some Immortal yet alive on earth&mdash;one and all bear
+witness to our undying affection, that silently now feeds on grief! And,
+oh! what overflowing thoughts did that shout of ours now awaken from the
+hanging tower of the Old Castle&mdash;"Wilton, Wilton!" The name of the
+long-ago buried faintly and afar-off repeated by an echo!</p>
+
+<p>A pensive shade has fallen across <span class="smcap">May-day</span>; and while the sun is behind
+those castellated clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into the
+saddest places of memory, and gather together stories and tales of
+tears. And many such there are, annually sprinkled all round the humble
+huts of our imaginative and religious land, even like the wildflowers
+that, in endless succession, disappearing and reappearing in their
+beauty, Spring drops down upon every brae. And as ofttimes some one
+particular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect and fragmentary part of
+an old melody, will nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to the
+finest and most finished strain; so now a faint and dim tradition comes
+upon us, giving birth to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an old
+Tradition. They were called the <span class="smcap">Blessed Family</span>! Far up at the head of
+yonder glen of old was their dwelling, and in their garden sparkled the
+translucent well that is the source of the stream that animates the
+parish with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, and daughter&mdash;it was
+hard to say which of the three was the most beloved! Yet they were not
+native here, but brought with them, from some distant place, the soft
+and silvery accents of the pure English tongue, and manners most
+gracious in their serene simplicity; while over a life composed of acts
+of charity was spread a stillness that nothing ever disturbed&mdash;the
+stillness of a thoughtful pity for human sins and sorrows, yet not
+unwilling to be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In those days the
+very heart of Scotland was distracted&mdash;persecution scattered her
+prayers&mdash;and during the summer months, families remained shut up in fear
+within their huts, as if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up and
+buried their doors. It was as if the shadow of a thunder-cloud hung over
+all the land, so that men's hearts quaked as they looked up to
+heaven&mdash;when, lo! all at once, Three gracious Visitants appeared!
+Imagination invested their foreheads with a halo; and as they walked on
+their missions of mercy, exclaimed&mdash;How beautiful are their feet! Few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+words was the Child ever heard to speak, except some words of prayer;
+but her image-like stillness breathed a blessing wherever it smiled, and
+all the little maidens loved her, when hushed almost into awe by her
+spiritual beauty, as she knelt with them in their morning and evening
+orisons. The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as a face of
+grief, while her eyes seemed always happy, and a tone of thanksgiving
+was in her voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his way to the
+grave&mdash;for his eye's excessive brightness glittered with death&mdash;and
+often, as he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek became like ashes,
+for his heart in a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burst
+in agony, sounded audibly in the silence. Journeying on did they all
+seem to heaven; yet as they were passing by, how loving and how full of
+mercy! To them belonged some blessed power to wave away the sword that
+would fain have smitten the Saints. The dewdrops on the greensward
+before the cottage door, they suffered not to be polluted with blood.
+Guardian Angels were they thought to be, and such indeed they were, for
+what else are the holy powers of innocence?&mdash;Guardian Angels sent to
+save some of God's servants on earth from the choking tide and the
+scorching fire. Often, in the clear and starry nights, did the dwellers
+among all these little dells, and up along all these low hill-sides,
+hear music flowing down from heaven, responsive to the hymns of the
+Blessed Family. Music without the syllabling of words&mdash;yet breathing
+worship, and with the spirit of piety filling all the Night-Heavens. One
+whole day and night passed by, and not a hut had been enlightened by
+their presence. Perhaps they had gone away without warning as they had
+come&mdash;having been sent on another mission. With soft steps one maiden,
+and then another, entered the door, and then was heard the voice of
+weeping and of loud lament. The three lay, side by side, with their pale
+faces up to heaven. Dora, for that is the name tradition has handed
+down&mdash;Dorothea, the gift of God, lay between her Father and her Mother,
+and all their hands were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No agonies
+had been there&mdash;unknown what hand, human or divine, had closed their
+eyelids and composed their limbs; but there they lay as if asleep, not
+to be awakened by the burst of sunshine that dazzled upon their smiling
+countenances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of united death.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The deep religion of that troubled time had sanctified the Strangers
+almost into an angelic character; and when the little kirk-bells were
+again heard tinkling through the air of peace (the number of the martyrs
+being complete), the beauty with which their living foreheads had been
+invested, reappeared to the eyes of imagination, as the Poets whom
+Nature kept to herself walked along the moonlight hills. "The Blessed
+Family," which had been as a household word, appertaining to them while
+they lived, now when centuries have gone by, is still full of a dim but
+divine meaning; the spirit of the tradition having remained, while its
+framework has almost fallen into decay.</p>
+
+<p>How beautifully emerges that sun-stricken Cottage from the rocks, that
+all around it are floating in a blue vapoury light! Were we so disposed,
+methinks we could easily write a little book entirely about the obscure
+people that have lived and died about that farm, by name <span class="smcap">Logan Braes</span>.
+Neither is it without its old traditions. One May-day long ago&mdash;some two
+centuries since&mdash;that rural festival was there interrupted by a
+thunderstorm, and the party of youths and maidens, driven from the
+budding arbours, were all assembled in the ample kitchen. The house
+seemed to be in the very heart of the thunder; and the master began to
+read, without declaring it to be a religious service, a chapter of the
+Bible; but the frequent flashes of lightning so blinded him, that he was
+forced to lay down the Book, and all then sat still without speaking a
+word; many with pale faces, and none without a mingled sense of awe and
+fear. The maiden forgot her bashfulness as the rattling peals shook the
+roof-tree, and hid her face in her lover's bosom; the children crept
+closer and closer, each to some protecting knee, and the dogs came all
+into the house, and lay down in dark places. Now and then there was a
+convulsive, irrepressible, but half-stifled shriek&mdash;some sobbed&mdash;and a
+loud hysterical laugh from one overcome with terror sounded ghastly
+between the deepest of all dread repose&mdash;that which separates one peal
+from another, when the flash and the roar are as one, and the thick air
+smells of sulphur. The body feels its mortal nature, and shrinks as if
+about to be withered into nothing. Now the muttering thunder seems to
+have changed its place to some distant cloud&mdash;now, as if returning to
+blast those whom it had spared, waxes louder and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> fiercer than
+before&mdash;till the Great Tree that shelters the house is shivered with a
+noise like the masts of a ship carried away by the board. "Look, father,
+look&mdash;see yonder is an Angel all in white, descending from heaven!" said
+little Alice, who had already been almost in the attitude of prayer, and
+now clasped her hands together, and steadfastly, and without fear of the
+lightning, eyed the sky. "One of God's Holy Angels&mdash;one of those who
+sing before the Lamb!" And with an inspired rapture the fair child
+sprung to her feet. "See ye her not&mdash;see ye her not&mdash;father&mdash;mother! Lo!
+she beckons to me with a palm in her hand, like one of the palms in that
+picture in our Bible, when our Saviour is entering into Jerusalem! There
+she comes, nearer and nearer the earth&mdash;Oh! pity, forgive, and have
+mercy on me, thou most beautiful of all the Angels&mdash;even for His name's
+sake." All eyes were turned towards the black heavens, and then to the
+raving child. Her mother clasped her to her bosom, afraid that terror
+had turned her brain&mdash;and her father going to the door, surveyed an
+ampler space of the sky. She flew to his side, and clinging to him
+again, exclaimed in a wild outcry, "On her forehead a star! on her
+forehead a star! And oh! on what lovely wings she is floating away, away
+into eternity! The Angel, father, is calling me by my Christian name,
+and I must no more abide on earth; but, touching the hem of her garment,
+be wafted away to heaven!" Sudden as a bird let loose from the hand,
+darted the maiden from her father's bosom, and with her face upward to
+the skies, pursued her flight. Young and old left the house, and at that
+moment the forked lightning came from the crashing cloud, and struck the
+whole tenement into ruins. Not a hair on any head was singed; and with
+one accord the people fell down upon their knees. From the eyes of the
+child, the Angel, or Vision of the Angel, had disappeared; but on her
+return to heaven, the Celestial heard the hymn that rose from those that
+were saved, and above all the voices, the small sweet silvery voice of
+her whose eyes alone were worthy of beholding a Saint Transfigured.</p>
+
+<p>For several hundred years has that farm belonged to the family of the
+Logans, nor has son or daughter ever stained the name&mdash;while some have
+imparted to it, in its humble annals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> what well may be called lustre.
+Many a time have we stood when a boy, all alone, beginning to be
+disturbed by the record of heroic or holy lives, in the kirkyard, beside
+the <span class="smcap">Grave of the Martyrs</span>&mdash;the grave in which Christian and Hannah Logan,
+mother and daughter, were interred. Many a time have we listened to the
+story of their deaths, from the lips of one who well knew how to stir
+the hearts of the young, till "from their eyes they wiped the tears that
+sacred pity had engendered." Nearly a hundred years old was she that
+eloquent narrator&mdash;the Minister's mother&mdash;yet she could hear a whisper,
+and read the Bible without spectacles&mdash;although we sometimes used to
+suspect her of pretending to be reading off the Book, when, in fact, she
+was reciting from memory. The old lady often took a walk in the
+kirkyard&mdash;and being of a pleasant and cheerful nature, though in
+religious principle inflexibly austere, many were the most amusing
+anecdotes that she related to us and our compeers, all huddled round
+her, "where heaved the turf in many a mouldering heap." But the evening
+converse was always sure to have a serious termination&mdash;and the
+venerable matron could not be more willing to tell, than we to hear
+again and again, were it for the twentieth repetition, some old tragic
+event that gathered a deeper interest from every recital, as if on each
+we became better acquainted with the characters of those to whom it had
+befallen, till the chasm that time had dug between them and us
+disappeared, and we felt for the while that their happiness or misery
+and ours were essentially interdependent. At first she used, we well
+remember, to fix her solemn spirit-like eyes on our faces, to mark the
+different effects her story produced on her hearers; but ere long she
+became possessed wholly by the pathos of her own narrative, and with
+fluctuating features and earnest action of head and hands poured forth
+her eloquence, as if soliloquising among the tombs.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, my dear boys, that is the grave o' the Martyrs. My father saw
+them die. The tide o' the far-ebbed sea was again beginning to flow, but
+the sands o' the bay o' death lay sae dry, that there were but few spots
+where a bairn could hae wat its feet. Thousands and tens o' thousands
+were standing a' roun' the edge of the bay&mdash;that was in shape just like
+that moon&mdash;and then twa stakes were driven deep into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> sand, that the
+waves o' the returning sea michtna loosen them&mdash;and my father, who was
+but a boy like ane o' yourselves noo, waes me, didna he see wi' his ain
+een Christian Logan, and her wee dochter Hannah, for she was but eleven
+years auld&mdash;hurried alang by the enemies o' the Lord, and tied to their
+accursed stakes within the power o' the sea. He who holds the waters in
+the hollow o' his hand, thocht my father, will not suffer them to choke
+the prayer within those holy lips&mdash;but what kent he o' the dreadfu'
+judgments o' the Almighty? Dreadfu' as those judgments seemed to be, o'
+a' that crowd o' mortal creatures there were but only twa that drew
+their breath without a shudder&mdash;and these twa were Christian Logan and
+her beautifu' wee dochter Hannah, wi' her rosy cheeks, for they blanched
+not in that last extremity, her blue een, and her gowden hair, that
+glittered like a star in the darkness o' that dismal day. 'Mother, be
+not afraid,' she was heard to say, when the foam o' the first wave broke
+about their feet&mdash;and just as these words were uttered, all the great
+black clouds melted away from the sky, and the sun shone forth in the
+firmament like the all-seeing eye of God. The martyrs turned their faces
+a little towards one another, for the cords could not wholly hinder
+them, and wi' voices as steady and as clear as ever they sang the psalm
+within the walls o' that kirk, did they, while the sea was mounting
+up&mdash;up from knee&mdash;waist&mdash;breast&mdash;neck&mdash;chin&mdash;lip&mdash;sing praises and
+thanksgivings unto God. As soon as Hannah's voice was drowned, it seemed
+as if her mother, before the water reached her own lips, bowed and gave
+up the ghost. While the people were all gazing the heads of both martyrs
+disappeared, and nothing then was to be seen on the face o' the waters,
+but here and there a bit white breaking wave or silly sea-bird floating
+on the flow o' the tide into the bay. Back and back had aye fallen the
+people, as the tide was roarin' on wi' a hollow soun'&mdash;and now that the
+water was high aboon the heads o' the martyrs, what chained that dismal
+congregation to the sea-shore? It was the countenance o' a man that had
+suddenly come down frae his hiding-place amang the moors&mdash;and who now
+knew that his wife and daughter were bound to stakes deep down in the
+waters o' the very bay that his eyes beheld rolling, and his ears heard
+roaring&mdash;all the while that there was a God in heaven! Naebody could
+speak to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> him&mdash;although they all beseeched their Maker to have
+compassion upon him, and not to let his heart break and his reason fail.
+'The stakes! the stakes! O Jesus! point out to me, with thy own scarred
+hand, the place where my wife and daughter are bound to the stakes&mdash;and
+I may yet bear them up out of the sand, and bring the bodies ashore&mdash;to
+be restored to life! O brethren, brethren!&mdash;said ye that my Christian
+and my Hannah have been for an hour below the sea? And was it from fear
+of fifty armed men, that so many thousand fathers and mothers, and sons
+and daughters, and brothers and sisters, rescued them not from such
+cruel, cruel death?' After uttering mony mair siclike raving words, he
+suddenly plunged into the sea, and, being a strong swimmer, was soon far
+out into the bay&mdash;and led by some desperate instinct to the very place
+where the stakes were fixed in the sand. Perfectly resigned had the
+martyrs been to their doom&mdash;but in the agonies o' that horrible death,
+there had been some struggles o' the mortal body, and the weight o' the
+waters had borne down the stakes, so that, just as if they had been
+lashed to a spar to enable them to escape from shipwreck, baith the
+bodies came floatin' to the surface, and his hand grasped, without
+knowing it, his ain Hannah's gowden hair&mdash;sairly defiled, ye may weel
+think, wi' the sand&mdash;baith their faces changed frae what they ance were
+by the wrench o' death. Father, mother, and daughter came a'thegither to
+the shore&mdash;and there was a cry went far and wide, up even to the
+hiding-places o' the faithfu' among the hags and cleuchs i' the moors,
+that the sea had given up the living, and that the martyrs were
+triumphant, even in this world, over the powers o' Sin and o' Death.
+Yea, they were indeed triumphant;&mdash;and well might the faithfu' sing
+aloud in the desert, 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
+victory?' for these three bodies were but as the weeds on which they lay
+stretched out to the pitying gaze of the multitude, but their spirits
+had gane to heaven to receive the eternal rewards o' sanctity and
+truth."</p>
+
+<p>Not a house in all the parish&mdash;scarcely excepting Mount Pleasant
+itself&mdash;all round and about which our heart could in some dreamy hour
+raise to life a greater multitude of dear old remembrances, all touching
+ourselves, than <span class="smcap">Logan Braes</span>. The old people, when we first knew them, we
+used to think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> somewhat apt to be surly&mdash;for they were Seceders&mdash;and
+owing to some unavoidable prejudices, which we were at no great pains to
+vanquish, we Manse-boys recognised something repulsive in that most
+respectable word. Yet for the sake of that sad story of the Martyrs,
+there was always something affecting to us in the name of Logan Braes;
+and though Beltane was of old a Pagan Festival, celebrated with grave
+idolatries round fires ablaze on a thousand hills, yet old Laurence
+Logan would sweeten his vinegar aspect on May-day, would wipe out a
+score of wrinkles, and calm, as far as that might be, the terrors of his
+shaggy eyebrows. A little gentleness of manner goes a long way with such
+young folk as we were all then, when it is seen naturally and easily
+worn for our sakes, and in sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one who
+in his ordinary deportment may have added the austerity of religion to
+the venerableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence Logan, the
+Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom&mdash;and made the hush of
+his house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the restraint
+laid on reverent youth by feeling akin to fear, the heart ever and anon
+bounded with freedom in the smile of the old man's eyes. Plain was his
+own apparel&mdash;a suit of the hodden-grey. His wife, when in full dress,
+did not remind us of a Quakeress, for a Quakeress then had we never
+seen&mdash;but we often think now, when in company with a still, sensible,
+cheerful, and comely-visaged matron of that sect, of her of Logan Braes.
+No waster was she of her tears, or her smiles, or her words, or her
+money, or her meal&mdash;either among those of her own blood, or the stranger
+or the beggar that was within her gates. You heard not her foot on the
+floor&mdash;yet never was she idle&mdash;moving about in doors and out, from
+morning till night, so placid and so composed, and always at small cost
+dressed so decently, so becomingly to one who was not yet old, and had
+not forgotten&mdash;why should she not remember it?&mdash;that she was esteemed in
+youth a beauty, and that it was not for want of a richer and younger
+lover that she agreed at last to become the wife of the Laird of Logan
+Braes.</p>
+
+<p>Their family consisted of two sons and a niece;&mdash;and be thou who thou
+mayest that hast so far read our May-day, we doubt not that thine eyes
+will glance&mdash;however rapidly&mdash;over another page, nor fling it
+contemptuously aside, because amidst<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> all the chance and change of
+administrations, ministries, and ministers in high places, there murmur
+along the channels of our memory "the simple annals of the poor," like
+unpolluted streams that sweep not by city walls.</p>
+
+<p>Never were two brothers more unlike in all things&mdash;in mind, body,
+habits, and disposition&mdash;than Lawrie and Willie Logan&mdash;and we see, as in
+a glass, at this very moment, both their images. "Wee Wise Willie"&mdash;for
+by that name he was known over several parishes&mdash;was one of those
+extraordinary creatures that one may liken to a rarest plant, which
+nature sows here and there&mdash;sometimes for ever unregarded&mdash;among the
+common families of Flowers. Early sickness had been his lot&mdash;continued
+with scarcely any interruption from his cradle to school-years&mdash;so that
+not only was his stature stunted, but his whole frame was delicate in
+the extreme; and his pale small-featured face, remarkable for large,
+soft, down-looking, hazel eyes, dark-lashed in their lustre, had a sweet
+feminine character, that corresponded well with his voice, his motions,
+and his in-door pursuits&mdash;all serene and composed, and interfering with
+the outgoings of no other living thing. All sorts of scholarship, such
+as the parish schoolmaster knew, he mastered as if by intuition. His
+slate was quickly covered with long calculations, by which the most
+puzzling questions were solved; and ere he was nine years old, he had
+made many pretty mechanical contrivances with wheels and pulleys, that
+showed in what direction lay the natural bent of his genius. Languages,
+too, the creature seemed to see into with quickest eyes, and with
+quickest ears to catch their sounds&mdash;so that, at the same tender age, he
+might have been called a linguist, sitting with his Greek and Latin
+books on a stool beside him by the fireside during the long winter
+nights. All the neighbours who had any books, cheerfully lent them to
+"Wee Wise Willie," and the Manse-boys gave him many a supply. At the
+head of every class he, of course, was found&mdash;but no ambition had he to
+be there; and like a bee that works among many thousand others on the
+clover-lea, heedless of their murmurs, and intent wholly on its own
+fragrant toil, did he go from task to task&mdash;although that was no fitting
+name for the studious creature's meditations on all he read or
+wrought&mdash;no more a task for him to grow in knowledge and in thought,
+than for a lily of the field to lift up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> its head towards the sun. That
+child's religion was like all the other parts of his character&mdash;as prone
+to tears as that of other children, when they read of the Divine Friend
+dying for them on the cross; but it was profounder far than theirs, when
+it shed no tears, and only made the paleness of his countenance more
+like that which we imagine to be the paleness of a phantom. No one ever
+saw him angry, complaining, or displeased; for angelical indeed was his
+temper, purified, like gold in fire, by suffering. He shunned not the
+company of other children, but loved all, as by them all he was more
+than beloved. In few of their plays could he take an active share; but
+sitting a little way off, still attached to the merry brotherhood,
+though in their society he had no part to enact, he read his book on the
+knoll, or, happy dreamer, sunk away among the visions of his own
+thoughts. There was poetry in that child's spirit, but it was too
+essentially blended with his whole happiness in life, often to be
+embodied in written words. A few compositions were found in his own
+small beautiful handwriting after his death&mdash;hymns and psalms. Prayers,
+too, had his heart indited&mdash;but they were not in measured
+language&mdash;framed, in his devout simplicity, on the model of our Lord's.
+How many hundred times have we formed a circle round him in the
+gloaming, all sitting or lying on the greensward, before the dews had
+begun to descend, listening to his tales and stories of holy or heroic
+men and women, who had been greatly good and glorious in the days of
+old! Not unendeared to his imagination were the patriots, who, living
+and dying, loved the liberties of the land&mdash;Tell&mdash;Bruce&mdash;or Wallace, he
+in whose immortal name a thousand rocks rejoice, while many a wood bears
+it on its summits as they are swinging to the storm. Weak as a reed that
+is shaken in the wind, or the stalk of a flower that tremblingly
+sustains its blossoms beneath the dews that feed their transitory
+lustre, was he whose lips were so eloquent to read the eulogies of
+mighty men of war riding mailed through bloody battles. What matters it
+that this frame of dust be frail, and of tiny size&mdash;still may it be the
+tenement of a lordly spirit. But high as such warfare was, it satisfied
+not that thoughtful child&mdash;for other warfare there was to read of, which
+was to him a far deeper and more divine delight&mdash;the warfare waged by
+good men against the legions of sin, and closed triumph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>antly in the eye
+of God&mdash;let this world deem as it will&mdash;on obscurest death-beds, or at
+the stake, or on the scaffold, where a profounder even than Sabbath
+silence glorifies the martyr far beyond any shout that from the immense
+multitude would have torn the concave of the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast to that creature was his elder brother! Lawrie was
+eighteen years old when first we visited Logan Braes, and was a perfect
+hero in strength and stature&mdash;Bob Howie alone his equal&mdash;but Bob was
+then in the West Indies. In the afternoons, after his work was over in
+the fields or in the barn, he had pleasure in getting us Manse-boys to
+accompany him to the Moor-Lochs for an hour's angling or two in the
+evening, when the large trouts came to the gravelly shallows, and, as we
+waded mid-leg deep, would sometimes take the fly among our very feet. Or
+he would go with us into the heart of the great wood, to show us where
+the foxes had their earths&mdash;the party being sometimes so fortunate as to
+see the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery aperture in the
+strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it
+safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and
+wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw
+him take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft of
+wall-flowers. What was there of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan
+was not, in our belief, able to perform? We were all several years
+younger&mdash;boys from nine to fifteen&mdash;and he had shot up into sudden
+manhood&mdash;not only into its shape but its strength&mdash;yet still the boyish
+spirit was fresh within him, and he never wearied of us in such
+excursions. The minister had a good opinion of his principles, knowing
+how he had been brought up, and did not discountenance his visits to the
+Manse, nor ours to Logan Braes. Then what danger could we be in, go
+where we might, with one who had more than once shown how eager he was
+to risk his own life when that of another was in jeopardy? Generous and
+fearless youth! To thee we owed our own life&mdash;although seldom is that
+rescue now remembered&mdash;(for what will not in this turmoiling world be
+forgotten?) when in pride of the newly-acquired art of swimming, we had
+ventured&mdash;with our clothes on too&mdash;some ten yards into the Brother-Loch,
+to disentangle our line from the water-lilies. It seemed that a hundred
+cords had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> got entangled round our legs, and our heart quaked too
+desperately to suffer us to shriek&mdash;but Lawrie Logan had his hand on us
+in a minute, and brought us to shore as easily as a Newfoundland dog
+lands a bit of floating wood.</p>
+
+<p>But that was a momentary danger, and Lawrie Logan ran but small risk,
+you will say, in saving us; so let us not extol that instance of his
+intrepidity. But fancy to yourself, gentle reader, the hideous mouth of
+an old coal-pit, that had not been worked for time immemorial, overgrown
+with thorns, and briers, and brackens, but still visible from a small
+mount above it, for some yards down its throat&mdash;the very throat of death
+and perdition. But can you fancy also the childish and superstitious
+terror with which we all regarded that coal-pit, for it was said to be a
+hundred fathom deep&mdash;with water at the bottom&mdash;so that you had to wait
+for many moments&mdash;almost a minute&mdash;before you heard a stone, first
+beating against its sides&mdash;from one to the other&mdash;plunge at last into
+the pool profound. In that very field, too, a murder had been
+perpetrated, and the woman's corpse flung by her sweetheart into that
+coal-pit. One day some unaccountable impulse had led a band of us into
+that interdicted field&mdash;which we remember was not arable&mdash;but said to be
+a place where a hare was always sure to be found sitting among the
+binweeds and thistles. A sort of thrilling horror urged us on closer and
+closer to the mouth of the pit&mdash;when Wee Wise Willie's foot slipping on
+the brae, he bounded with inexplicable force along&mdash;in among the thorns,
+briers, and brackens&mdash;through the whole hanging mat, and without a
+shriek, down&mdash;down&mdash;down into destruction. We all saw it happen&mdash;every
+one of us&mdash;and it is scarcely too much to say, that we were for a while
+all mad with horror. Yet we felt ourselves borne back instinctively from
+the horrible pit&mdash;and as aid we could give none, we listened if we could
+hear any cry&mdash;but there was none&mdash;and we all flew together out of the
+dreadful field, and again collecting ourselves together, feared to
+separate on the different roads to our homes. "Oh! can it be that our
+Wee Wise Willie has this moment died sic a death&mdash;and no a single ane
+amang us a' greetin for his sake?" said one of us aloud; and then indeed
+did we burst out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another who could
+carry such tidings to Logan Braes? All at once we heard a clear, rich,
+mellow whistle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> as of a blackbird&mdash;and there with his favourite collie,
+searching for a stray lamb among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, who
+hailed us with a laughing voice, and then asked us, "Where is Wee
+Willie?&mdash;hae ye flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" The
+consternation of our faces could not be misunderstood&mdash;whether we told
+him or not what had happened we do not know&mdash;but he staggered, as if he
+would have fallen down&mdash;and then ran off with amazing speed&mdash;not towards
+Logan Braes&mdash;but the village. We continued helplessly to wander about
+back and forwards along the near edge of a wood, when we beheld a
+multitude of people rapidly advancing, and in a few minutes they
+surrounded the mouth of the pit. It was about the very end of the
+hay-harvest&mdash;and many ropes that had been employed that very day in the
+leading of the hay of the Landlord of the Inn, who was also an extensive
+farmer, were tied together to the length of at least twenty fathom. Hope
+was quite dead&mdash;but her work is often done by Despair. For a while there
+was confusion all round the pit-mouth, but with a white fixed face and
+glaring eyes, Lawrie Logan advanced to the very brink, with the rope
+bound in many firm folds around him, and immediately behind him stood
+his grey-headed father, unbonneted, just as he had risen from a prayer.
+"Is't my ain father that's gaun to help me to gang doun to bring up
+Willie's body? O! merciful God, what a judgment is this!
+Father&mdash;father&mdash;Oh! lie doun at some distance awa frae the sicht o' this
+place. Robin Alison, and Gabriel Strang, and John Borland 'ill haud the
+ropes firm and safe. O, father&mdash;father&mdash;lie doun, a bit apart frae the
+crowd; and have mercy upon him&mdash;O thou, great God, have mercy upon him!"
+But the old man kept his place; and the only one son who now survived to
+him disappeared within the jaws of the same murderous pit, and was
+lowered slowly down, nearer and nearer to his little brother's corpse.
+They had spoken to him of foul air, of which to breathe is death, but he
+had taken his resolution, and not another word had been said to shake
+it. And now, for a short time, there was no weight at the line, except
+that of its own length. It was plain that he had reached the bottom of
+the pit. Silent was all that congregation, as if assembled in divine
+worship. Again, there was a weight at the rope, and in a minute or two,
+a voice was heard far down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> the pit that spread a sort of wild
+hope&mdash;else, why should it have spoken at all&mdash;and lo! the child&mdash;not
+like one of the dead&mdash;clasped in the arms of his brother, who was all
+covered with dust and blood. "Fall down on your knees&mdash;in the face o'
+heaven, and sing praises to God, for my brother is yet alive!"</p>
+
+<p>During that Psalm, father, mother, and both their sons&mdash;the rescuer and
+the rescued&mdash;and their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, were
+lying embraced in speechless&mdash;almost senseless trances; for the agony of
+such a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures be
+endured.</p>
+
+<p>The child himself was the first to tell how his life had been
+miraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out of
+the inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, and
+among them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. For
+days, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visited
+Logan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received a
+shock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried him
+subsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and its
+hospitable door open to all the neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth&mdash;but too
+apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life of
+poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or
+carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its
+ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and
+distress. He did not keep evil society&mdash;but neither did he shun it: and
+having a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to a
+stripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequented
+all meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, and
+in such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character for
+recklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticated
+evil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quiet
+retreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did all
+the Manse-boys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! It
+was he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey the
+Egyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a waggon of
+Staffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> as he called Lawrie,
+in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annual
+Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the
+dust&mdash;nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whose
+provincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-Ready
+School. Even now&mdash;as in an ugly dream&mdash;we see the combatants alternately
+prostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood.
+All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at such
+unchristian work; but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the shepherds
+and the ploughmen, to see fair play against all the attempts of the
+Showmen and the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their money thick on
+the King; till a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, which had
+nearly been the gypsy's everlasting quietus, gave the victory to Lawrie,
+amid acclamations that would have fitlier graced a triumph in a better
+cause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruiting
+sergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the colours of the
+42d Regiment, and in the intoxication of victory, whisky, and the
+bagpipe, the young champion was as fairly enlisted into his Majesty's
+service, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married at
+Gretna Green; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, gold
+could not have bought off such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board a
+transport.</p>
+
+<p>Logan Braes was not the same place&mdash;indeed, the whole parish seemed
+altered&mdash;after Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thenceforth anything
+but cheerful ones, going by turns to inquire for Willie, who seemed to
+be pining away&mdash;not in any deadly disease, but just as if he himself
+knew, that without ailing much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearly
+two years passed on, and all that time the principle of life had seemed
+like a flickering flame within him, that when you think it expiring or
+expired, streams up again with surprising brightness, and continues to
+glimmer even steadily with a protracted light. Every week&mdash;nay, almost
+every day, they feared to lose him&mdash;yet there he still was at morning
+and evening prayers. The third spring after the loss of his brother was
+remarkably mild, and breathing with west-winds that came softened over
+many woody miles from the sea. He seemed stronger, and more cheerful,
+and expressed a wish that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> the Manse-boys, and some others of his
+companions, would come to Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May-day.
+There we all sat at the long table, and both parents did their best to
+look cheerful during the feast. Indeed, all that had once been harsh and
+forbidding in the old man's looks and manners, was now softened down by
+the perpetual yearnings at his heart towards "the distant far and absent
+long," nor less towards him that peaceful and pious child, whom every
+hour he saw, or thought he saw, awaiting a call from the eternal voice.
+Although sometimes sadness fell across us like a shadow, yet the hours
+passed on as May-day hours should do; and what with our many-toned talk
+and laughter, the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the twittering
+of the swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs ringing like
+silver bells over all the heavens, it seemed a day that ought to bring
+good tidings&mdash;or, the Soldier himself returning from the wars to bless
+the eyes of his parents once more, so that they might die in peace.
+"Heaven hold us in its keeping, for there's his wraith!" ejaculated
+Annie Raeburn. "It passed before the window, and my Lawrie, I now know,
+is with the dead!"&mdash;Bending his stately head beneath the lintel of the
+door, in the dress, and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Logan
+stepped again across his father's threshold, and, ere he well uttered
+"God be with you all!" Willie was within his arms, and on his bosom. His
+father and his mother rose not from their chairs, but sat still, with
+faces like ashes. But we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted his
+name aloud&mdash;while Luath, from his sleep in the corner, leapt on his
+master breast-high, and whining his dumb delight, frisked round him as
+of yore, when impatient to snuff the dawn on the hill-side. "Let us go
+out and play," said a boy's voice, and issuing somewhat seriously into
+the sunshine, we left the family within to themselves, and then walked
+away, without speaking, down to the Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>After the lapse of an hour or more, and while we were all considering
+whether or no we should return to the house, the figure of Annie Raeburn
+was seen coming down the brae towards the party, in a way very unlike
+her usual staid and quiet demeanour, and stopping at some distance, to
+beckon with her hand more particularly, it was thought, on ourselves, as
+we stood a few yards apart from the rest. "Willie is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> worse," were the
+only words she said, as we hastened back together; and on entering the
+room, we found the old man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, but
+with a composed countenance. "He expressed a wish to see you&mdash;but he is
+gone!" We followed into Willie's small bedroom and study, and beheld him
+already <i>laid out</i>, and his mother sitting as calmly beside him as if
+she were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, Lawrie&mdash;God was gracious
+to let him live to this day, that he micht dee in his brither's arms."</p>
+
+<p>The sun has mounted high in heaven, while thus we have been dreaming
+away the hours&mdash;a dozen miles at least have we slowly wandered over,
+since morning, along pleasant by-paths, where never dust lay, or from
+gate to gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fearless of those
+threatening nonentities, spring-guns. There is the turnpike road&mdash;the
+great north and south road&mdash;for it is either the one or the other,
+according to the airt towards which you, choose to turn your face.
+Behold a little <span class="smcap">Wayside Inn</span>, neatly thatched, and with white-washed
+front, and sign-board hanging from a tree, on which are painted the
+figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches,
+shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals
+is a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of these
+strapping hens is good augury;&mdash;hark, a cackle from the barn&mdash;another
+egg is laid&mdash;and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, and
+clapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultana
+till the welkin rings. "Turn to the left, sir, if you please," quoth a
+comely matron; and we find ourselves snugly seated in an arm-chair, not
+wearied, but to rest willing, while the clock ticks pleasantly, and we
+take no note of time but by its gain; for here is our journal, in which
+we shall put down a few jottings for <span class="smcap">May-Day</span>. Three boiled eggs&mdash;one to
+each penny-roll&mdash;are sufficient, under any circumstances, along with the
+same number fried with mutton ham, for the breakfast of a Gentleman and
+a Tory. Nor do we remember&mdash;when tea-cups have been on a proper scale,
+ever to have wished to go beyond the Golden Rule of Three. In politics,
+we confess that we are rather ultra; but in all things else we love
+moderation. "Come in, my bonny little lassie&mdash;ye needna keep keekin in
+that gate fra ahint the door"&mdash;and in a few minutes the curly-pated
+prattler is mur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>muring on our knee. The sonsy wife, well-pleased with
+the sight, and knowing from our kindness to children, that we are on the
+same side of politics with her gudeman&mdash;Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch,
+and once Orderly to Garth himself&mdash;brings out her ain bottle from the
+spence&mdash;a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its
+honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously
+letting fall a not inelegant curtsy&mdash;for she had, we now learned, been a
+lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her
+lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies,
+and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she
+said, Corfu. One of the children has been sent to the field, where her
+husband is sowing barley, to tell him that there is fear lest dinner
+cool; and the mistress now draws herself up in pride of his noble
+appearance, as the stately Highlander salutes us with the respectful but
+bold air of one who has seen some service at home and abroad. Never knew
+we a man make other than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a charge
+of bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>Shenstone's lines about always meeting the warmest welcome in an inn,
+are very natural and tender&mdash;as most of his compositions are, when he
+was at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of ever
+meeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we are
+not obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed,
+or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers),
+we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn,
+the only kind of welcome that is indispensable, is a civil one. When
+that is not forthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, off our feet,
+and pursue our journey, well assured that a few milestones will bring us
+to a humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have occasionally given us
+opportunities of beholding rare celestial phenomena&mdash;meteors&mdash;falling
+and shooting stars&mdash;the Aurora Borealis, in her shifting
+splendours&mdash;haloes round the moon, variously bright as the
+rainbow&mdash;electrical arches forming themselves on the sky in a manner so
+wondrously beautiful, that we should be sorry to hear them accounted for
+by philosophers&mdash;one-half of the horizon blue, and without a cloud, and
+the other driving tempestuously like the sea-foam, with waves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+mountain-high&mdash;and divinest show of all for a solitary night-wandering
+man, who has anything of a soul at all, far and wide, and high up into
+the gracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burning as if their urns
+were newly fed with light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or a
+vapoury night, although then, too, are the softened or veiled luminaries
+beautiful&mdash;but large, full, and free over the whole firmament&mdash;a galaxy
+of shining and unanswerable arguments in proof of the Immortality of the
+Soul.</p>
+
+<p>The whole world is improving; nor can there be a pleasanter proof of
+that than this very wayside inn&mdash;ycleped the <span class="smcap">Salutation</span>. What a
+miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, that
+would neither open nor shut&mdash;neither let you out nor in&mdash;immovable and
+intractable to foot or hand&mdash;or all at once, when you least expected it
+to yield, slamming to with a bang; a constant puddle in front during
+rainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry&mdash;roof partly thatched, partly
+slated, partly tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its naked
+rafters. Broken windows repaired with an old petticoat, or a still older
+pair of breeches, and walls that had always been plastered and better
+plastered and worse plastered, in frosty weather&mdash;all labour in vain, as
+crumbling patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains of dismal
+ochre, meanest of all colours, and still symptomatic of want,
+mismanagement, bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenement that
+was never known to have paid any rent. Then what a pair of drunkards
+were old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once were they seen drunk on
+a Sabbath or a fast-day&mdash;regular kirk-goers, and attentive observers of
+ordinances. They had not very many children, yet, pass the door when you
+might, you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or the ban of the
+mother, or the smacking of the palm of the hand on the part of the enemy
+easiest of access; or you saw one of the ragged fiends pursued by a
+parent round the corner, and brought back by the hair of the head till
+its eyes were like those of a Chinese. Now, what decency&mdash;what
+neatness&mdash;what order&mdash;in this household&mdash;this private public! into which
+customers step like neighbours on a visit, and are served with a
+heartiness and goodwill that deserve the name of hospitality, for they
+are gratuitous, and can only be repaid in kind. A limited prospect does
+that latticed win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>dow command&mdash;and the small panes cut objects into too
+many parts&mdash;little more than the breadth of the turnpike road, and a
+hundred yards of the same, to the north and to the south, with a few
+budding hedgerows, half-a-dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could
+we sit and moralise, and intellectualise, for hours at this window, nor
+hear the striking clock.</p>
+
+<p>There trips by a blooming maiden of middle degree, all alone&mdash;the more's
+the pity&mdash;yet perfectly happy in her own society, and one we venture to
+say who never received a love-letter, valentines excepted, in all her
+innocent days.&mdash;A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! somewhat red in
+the face, as if he had dined early, and not so sure of the road as his
+horse, who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of water, and is
+anxious to get to town that he may be rubbed down, and see oats once
+more.&mdash;Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for your sake, may that
+cloud breathe forth rain and breeze, before you reach the burn, which
+you seem to fear may run dry before you can see the Pool where the
+two-pounders lie.&mdash;Methinks we know that old woman, and of the first
+novel we write she shall be the heroine.&mdash;Ha! a brilliant bevy of
+mounted maidens, in riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swaling
+feathers"&mdash;sisters, it is easy to see, and daughters of one whom we
+either loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat and
+vulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husband
+lead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time it
+was <i>tout une autre chose</i>; for a smaller foot, a slimmer ankle, a more
+delicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneath
+her bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn&mdash;such starlike
+eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul&mdash;But phoo! phoo! phoo!
+she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in
+self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.&mdash;There is a Head for a
+painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's
+countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms&mdash;those
+sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as,
+staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells
+his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his long
+silvery hair, journeying contentedly in darkness towards the eternal
+light.&mdash;A gang of gypsies! with their numerous assery laden with
+horn-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not be
+surprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leads
+the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the
+misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred
+cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing
+about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made
+for the wearer&mdash;long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in
+huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails&mdash;a shambling gait,
+notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night
+prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to
+awaken&mdash;so noiseless his stealthy advances&mdash;the unchained mastiff in his
+kennel.</p>
+
+<p>But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regiment
+of soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment of
+soldiers&mdash;and that is as much as we can be expected to know about their
+movements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has been
+gorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation,
+blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bole of her pipe, have all burst as
+they have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, and
+with feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what is
+called the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all these
+fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for some
+unlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to die
+in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the composition
+of a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shall
+suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuine
+clodhoppers, chaw-bacons <i>sans peur et sans reproche</i>, except that the
+overseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; add
+one shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of the
+spring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certain
+fleeces, for which no ingenuity could account; a laird's son, long known
+by the name of the Neerdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the
+bounty-money during a protracted strike&mdash;not dungs they, but flints all
+the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and
+who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at
+last; a bankrupt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the
+Seven Young Men&mdash;all that now survive&mdash;impatient of the drudgery of the
+compting-house, and the injustice of the age&mdash;but they, we believe, are
+in the band&mdash;the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the
+least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers from the bowels of
+the earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble&mdash;flunkies long out of
+place, and unable to live on their liveries&mdash;felons acquitted, or that
+have dreed their punishment&mdash;picked men from the shilling galleries of
+playhouses&mdash;and the &eacute;lite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look
+how all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it of
+such materials that our conquering army was made?&mdash;were such the heroes
+of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo?</p>
+
+<p>Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go,
+are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three years
+ripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined into
+courage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets become
+patriots&mdash;members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and step
+out from the ranks to head the storm. Lord bless you! have you not
+studied sympathy and <i>l'esprit de corps</i>? An army fifty thousand strong
+consists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; and
+saints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then,
+that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory to
+victory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at work
+with all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing <i>Te Deum?</i>
+You must not be permitted too curiously to analyse the composition of
+the British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them as
+Wholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God to
+bless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar.</p>
+
+<p>The baggage-waggons halt, and some refreshment is sent for to the women
+and children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there&mdash;a
+year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now
+mothers, with babies at their breasts&mdash;happy still perhaps; but that
+pretty face is woefully wan&mdash;that hair did not use to be so
+dishevelled&mdash;and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay
+so white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp of the seducer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her
+marriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and no
+more, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots not
+fall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell.</p>
+
+<p>The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and twelve outsides&mdash;driver and
+guard excluded&mdash;rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stoppages.
+Why, in the name of Heaven, are all people nowadays in such haste and
+hurry? Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of this dozen and a
+half Protestants and Catholics&mdash;alike anxious for emancipation&mdash;should
+be at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of the
+twenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are we
+that that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman&mdash;whose ample
+rotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, a
+spenser&mdash;needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to his
+comfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honest
+man's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge,
+or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades.
+But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats with
+as many necks as Hydra&mdash;the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud of
+dust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeled
+onwards a mile on its destination.</p>
+
+<p>But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us&mdash;a hearse
+and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that
+the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got
+higher than a single-horse Chay&mdash;yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneys
+must be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides a
+race, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, and
+another&mdash;all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, on
+cart-horses in the Brooze&mdash;the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort of
+notice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps its
+snorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water&mdash;for well
+may they be thirsty&mdash;the kirkyard being far among the hills, and the
+roads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend," addressing ourself to the
+hearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir&mdash;if you
+are going my way, you may have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> lift for a dram!" We had always
+thought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in the
+month of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in that
+month too&mdash;some in warm sheets&mdash;and some in cold&mdash;cold&mdash;cold&mdash;dripping
+damp as the grave.</p>
+
+<p>But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish&mdash;that
+is to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabited
+by persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know to
+the contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather too
+great an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, of
+sufficient antiquity to please a lover of the olden time; and of those
+four, the one which we used to love best to look at was&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Mains</span>. No
+need to describe it in many words. A Hall on a river-side, embosomed in
+woods&mdash;holms and meadows winding away in front, with their low thick
+hedgerows and stately single trees&mdash;on&mdash;on&mdash;on&mdash;as far as the eye can
+reach, a crowd of grove-tops&mdash;elms chiefly, or beeches&mdash;and a beautiful
+boundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell,
+Ma'am&mdash;farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-house
+at the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed grey
+walls of the <span class="smcap">Mains</span>, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by the
+weather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house," quod Sergeant
+Stewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune&mdash;so
+the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had
+been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could
+do&mdash;and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand,
+undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own
+decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own
+hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with
+shells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor&mdash;and that
+bright scintillating piece of spar, the centre of the circle, came all
+the way from Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, who died a
+Professor. It is strange the roof has not fallen in long ago; but what a
+slight ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins from tumbling
+into nothing! The old moss-house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive;
+and, if these swallows don't take care, they will be stunning themselves
+against our face, jerk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>ing out and in, through door and window, twenty
+times in a minute. Yet with all that twittering of swallows&mdash;and with
+all that frequent crowing of a cock&mdash;and all that cawing of rooks&mdash;and
+cooing of doves&mdash;and lowing of cattle along the holms&mdash;and bleating of
+lambs along the braes&mdash;it is nevertheless a pensive place; and here sit
+we like a hermit, world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkening in
+the solitude to the voices of other years.</p>
+
+<p>What more mournful thought than that of a Decayed Family&mdash;a high-born
+race gradually worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The remote ancestors
+of this House were famous men of war&mdash;then some no less famous
+statesmen&mdash;then poets and historians&mdash;then minds still of fine, but of
+less energetic mould&mdash;and last of all, the mystery of madness breaking
+suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formed
+for profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters,
+undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race&mdash;the oldest on his
+approach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious of
+being destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. The
+twin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no
+maiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet's
+dream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walked
+along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at all
+describe&mdash;and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended all
+that imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As the
+sisters were, so were the brothers&mdash;distinguished above all their mates
+conspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangers
+could single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according to
+veritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable gift
+from nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the last
+three generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridian
+of life&mdash;and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans.
+Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from this
+cell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united together
+with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!&mdash;One
+morning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in her
+mind, and perfectly astray&mdash;with no symptom of having been suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+alarmed or terrified&mdash;but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcely
+changed in their expression, although they knew not&mdash;but rarely&mdash;on whom
+they looked. It was but a few months till she died&mdash;and Adelaide was
+laughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day&mdash;and asked why mourning
+should be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away the
+bride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive?
+Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees&mdash;not walking in the free realms
+of earth and heaven with thy husband&mdash;the noble youth, who loved thee
+from thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can be
+beneath the sun&mdash;shut up in some narrow cell perhaps&mdash;no one knows
+where&mdash;whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land&mdash;with
+those hands manacled&mdash;a demon-light in eyes once most angelical&mdash;and
+ringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekings
+and yellings in thy poor distracted brain!&mdash;Down went the ship with all
+her crew in which Percy sailed;&mdash;the sabre must have been in the hand of
+a skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto
+down; and the gentle Richard, whose soul&mdash;while he possessed it
+clearly&mdash;was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he was
+as a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short time
+starlike reappear&mdash;and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal
+creatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to save
+sinners.</p>
+
+<p>Let us away&mdash;let us away from this overpowering place&mdash;and make our
+escape from such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebration of merry
+May-day? Is this the spirit in which we ought to look over the bosom of
+the earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just as man's heart should
+be teeming&mdash;and why not ours&mdash;with hopes and joys? Yet beautiful as this
+May-day is&mdash;and all the country round which it so tenderly illumines, we
+came not hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant home, to indulge
+ourself in a joyful happiness. No, hither came we purposely to mourn
+among the scenes which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And
+therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life
+is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the
+cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> hope to find, who after a
+life of wandering&mdash;and maybe not without sorrow&mdash;comes back to gaze on
+the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of
+Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still&mdash;for, praise be to Heaven!
+the sense of beauty is still strong within us&mdash;and methinks we could
+feel the beauty of this scene though our heart were broken.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SACRED POETRY.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, so
+pertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limited
+understandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius,
+and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do not
+know that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formally
+stated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect,
+nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine his
+statement, which, though, as we think, altogether unsatisfactory and
+sophistical, is yet a splendid specimen of false reasoning, and
+therefore worthy of being exposed and overthrown. Dr Johnson was not
+often utterly wrong in his mature and considerate judgments respecting
+any subject of paramount importance to the virtue and happiness of
+mankind. He was a good and wise being; but sometimes he did grievously
+err; and never more so than in his vain endeavour to exclude from the
+province of poetry its noblest, highest, and holiest domain. Shut the
+gates of Heaven against Poetry, and her flights along this earth will be
+feebler and lower,&mdash;her wings clogged and heavy by the attraction of
+matter,&mdash;and her voice&mdash;like that of the caged lark, so different from
+its hymning when lost to sight in the sky&mdash;will fail to call forth the
+deepest responses from the sanctuary of our spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Let no pious ear be offended," says Johnson, "if I advance, in
+opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often
+please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic
+poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose
+it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the
+grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn,
+the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> praise
+his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the
+disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the
+description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or
+the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man
+admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of
+his Reedemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.</p>
+
+<p>"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing
+something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are
+few, and being few are universally known: but few as they are, they can
+be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment,
+and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting
+an idea more grateful in the mind than things themselves afford. This
+effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract,
+and the concealment of those that repel, the imagination; but religion
+must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and
+such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly
+expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his
+comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be
+hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great,
+desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being.
+Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection
+cannot be improved.</p>
+
+<p>"The employments of pious meditation are <i>faith</i>, <i>thanksgiving</i>,
+<i>repentance</i>, and <i>supplication</i>. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be
+invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful
+of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is
+confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed.
+Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure
+for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself
+through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry
+for mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
+expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
+because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
+itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight
+the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies
+nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere."</p>
+
+<p>Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit&mdash;that they
+are fit&mdash;for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wide
+and comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and just
+admission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once as
+destructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. The
+doctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didactic
+poem&mdash;and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are also
+expounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as it
+were, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as can
+possibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit of
+religion&mdash;and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also be
+frequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, in
+particular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense,
+a Sacred poem?</p>
+
+<p>"But," says Dr Johnson, "the subject of the disputation is not piety,
+but the motives to piety." Why introduce the word "disputation," as if
+it characterised justly and entirely all didactic poetry? And who ever
+heard of an essential distinction between piety, and motives to piety?
+Mr James Montgomery, in a very excellent Essay prefixed to that most
+interesting collection, "The Christian Poet," well observes, that
+"motives to piety must be of the <i>nature</i> of piety, otherwise they could
+never incite to it&mdash;the precepts and sanctions of the Gospel might as
+well be denied to be any part of the Gospel." And, for our own parts, we
+scarcely know what piety is, separated from its motives&mdash;or how, so
+separated, it could be expressed in words at all.</p>
+
+<p>With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, the argument, if argument it
+may be called, is still more lame and impotent. "A poet," it is said,
+"may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the
+spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the
+revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader
+shall lay aside." Most true he may; but then we are told, "the subject
+of the description is not God, but the works of God!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> Alas! what
+trifling&mdash;what miserable trifling is this! In the works of God, God is
+felt to be by us His creatures, whom He has spiritually endowed. We
+cannot look on them, even in our least elevated moods, without some
+shadow of love or awe; in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them with
+religion. By the very constitution of our intelligence, the effects
+speak of the cause. We are led by nature up to nature's God. The Bible
+is not the only revelation&mdash;there is another&mdash;dimmer but not less
+divine&mdash;for surely the works are as the words of God. No great poet, in
+describing the glories and beauties of the external world, is forgetful
+of the existence and attributes of the Most High. That thought, and that
+feeling, animate all his strains; and though he dare not to describe Him
+the Ineffable, he cannot prevent his poetry from being beautifully
+coloured by devotion, tinged by piety&mdash;in its essence it is religious.</p>
+
+<p>It appears, then, that the qualifications or restrictions with which Dr
+Johnson is willing to allow that there may be didactic and descriptive
+sacred poetry, are wholly unmeaning, and made to depend on distinctions
+which have no existence.</p>
+
+<p>Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr Montgomery well remarks,
+Johnson makes no mention, except it be implicated with the statement,
+that "the ideas of Christian Theology are too sacred for fiction&mdash;a
+sentiment more just than the admirers of Milton and Klopstock are
+willing to admit, without almost plenary indulgence in favour of these
+great, but not infallible authorities." Here Mr Montgomery expresses
+himself very cautiously&mdash;perhaps rather too much so&mdash;for he leaves us in
+the dark about his own belief. But this we do not hesitate to say, that
+though there is great danger of wrong being done to the ideas of
+Christian theology by poetry&mdash;a wrong which must be most painful to the
+whole inner being of a Christian; yet that there seems no necessity of
+such a wrong, and that a great poet, guarded by awe, and fear, and love,
+may move his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, even among the
+most awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awful
+for "fiction"&mdash;but fiction is not the word here, any more than
+disputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; and
+then, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+Holy of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities,
+if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards were
+inspired&mdash;with them</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;"the name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of prophet and of poet was the same;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, not in that highest of
+senses inspired, is, we may say it, of the same kind&mdash;inferior but in
+degree; for religion itself is always an inspiration. It is felt to be
+so in the prose of holy men&mdash;Why not in their poetry?</p>
+
+<p>If these views be just, and we have expressed them "boldly, yet
+humbly"&mdash;all that remains to be set aside of Dr Johnson's argument is,
+"that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and man,
+cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator,
+and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than
+poetry can confer."</p>
+
+<p>There is something very fine and true in the sentiment here; but the
+sentiment is only true in some cases, not in all. There are different
+degrees in the pious moods of the most pious spirit that ever sought
+communion with its God and its Saviour. Some of these are awe-struck and
+speechless. That line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>denies the power of poetry to be adequate to adoration, while the line
+itself is most glorious poetry. The temper even of our fallen spirits
+may be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute before
+his Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feel
+ourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessness
+laid upon us&mdash;but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, and
+the heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song&mdash;in
+the inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms&mdash;poetry
+indeed&mdash;if there be poetry on this earth? Why may we not say that the
+spirits of just men made perfect&mdash;almost perfect, by such visitations
+from heaven&mdash;will break forth&mdash;"rapt, inspired," into poetry which may
+be called holy, sacred, divine?</p>
+
+<p>We feel as if treading on forbidden ground&mdash;and therefore speak
+reverently; but still we do not fear to say, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> between that highest
+state of contemplative piety which must be mute, down to that lowest
+state of the same feeling which evanishes and blends into mere human
+emotion as between creature and creature, there are infinite degrees of
+emotion which may be all embodied, without offence, in words&mdash;and if so
+embodied, with sincerity and humility, will be poetry, and poetry too of
+the most beautiful and affecting kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits
+of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer."
+Most true, indeed. But, though poetry did not confer that higher state,
+poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe
+audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry
+may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because
+poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself
+out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there
+may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and
+strong in the spirit of that word&mdash;unexistent but for the Old and the
+New Testament.</p>
+
+<p>We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argument
+amounts to this&mdash;that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between
+God and the human soul, <i>cannot be poetical</i>. But here we at once ask
+ourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry," he
+says, "is invention&mdash;such invention as, by producing something
+unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, again, there is confusion and
+sophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, such
+invention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is
+of that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprising
+in a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelings
+as these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, without
+much&mdash;without any aid from the imagination&mdash;except in as far as the
+imagination will work under the power of every great emotion that does
+not absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even below
+the very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment," and
+"very little from novelty of expression"&mdash;to use Dr Johnson's words&mdash;for
+it is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet is
+seeking&mdash;"the strain we hear is of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> higher mood;" and "few as the
+topics of devotion may be," (but are they few?) and "universally known,"
+they are all commensurate&mdash;nay, far more than commensurate, with the
+whole power of the soul&mdash;never can they become unaffecting while it is
+our lot to die;&mdash;even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow
+on such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, and
+sincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shall
+dare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt to
+be poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, and
+by their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels," than whom we were
+made but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be no
+more, be equalled in heaven?</p>
+
+<p>We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the <i>effect</i> of
+poetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea
+more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is only
+because the things themselves are imperfect&mdash;more so than suits the
+aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a higher
+sphere&mdash;a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all awe
+and reverence, made the subject of song&mdash;then it is the office&mdash;the
+sacred office of poetry&mdash;not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soul
+that contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human nature
+glory in the "Paradise Lost?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name
+of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted&mdash;Infinity cannot be
+amplified&mdash;Perfection cannot be improved." Should not this go to
+prohibit all speech&mdash;all discourse&mdash;all sermons concerning the divine
+attributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the
+attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot,
+indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot be
+improved"&mdash;nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while the
+Creator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, too
+willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, may
+be raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel,"
+from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into the
+ether.</p>
+
+<p>Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> Theology? On
+the same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in his
+doctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all
+animate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, or
+improve perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divine
+contemplations&mdash;by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of an
+insect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and
+exclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" And
+while science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and the
+mercies of our God?</p>
+
+<p>The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as it
+proceeds&mdash;the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it is
+founded becomes more and more glaring&mdash;the paradoxes, dealt out as
+confidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsive
+alike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of pious
+meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith,
+invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.
+Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet
+addressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is
+to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence
+of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication
+to men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but
+supplication to God can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt
+authoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is not
+invariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering&mdash;unquaking&mdash;to save it
+from lingering or from sudden death&mdash;is the most difficult service to
+which the frail spirit&mdash;frail even in its greatest strength&mdash;is called
+every day&mdash;every hour&mdash;of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and
+often most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will," says Jeremy Taylor,
+"is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of
+trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; it
+wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more.
+It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore,
+for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignity
+and excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrument
+and capacity of all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose faith is
+finally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> that faith, what
+hinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings,
+and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith has
+experienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many a
+melancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent of
+peace?</p>
+
+<p>Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holy
+effusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be
+"confined to a few modes." "Out of the fulness of the heart the tongue
+speaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech,
+yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude&mdash;yea, the
+very dumb do speak&mdash;nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that has
+been wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and high
+enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not be
+at leisure for cadences and epithets," is in one respect true; but
+nobody supposes that during such moments&mdash;or hours&mdash;poetry is composed;
+and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mind
+is left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of the
+past, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmly
+contemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogether
+endurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry&mdash;that
+is, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted to
+clothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after a
+swell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or still
+bearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the whole
+being self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itself
+in an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance
+will not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets," but cadences
+and epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth,
+if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences and
+epithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, and
+ingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly and
+more easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressive
+mood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the full
+possession of powers that had for a short severe season been
+overwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on the
+feelings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> that during their height were nearly unendurable, and then
+unfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at the
+bar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receiving
+his doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to
+the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or
+reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly
+recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that
+hour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?</p>
+
+<p>"Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of
+persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." And in that
+cry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his
+creatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which they
+have learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of being
+forgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may follow
+supplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various and
+most affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many other
+words besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle with
+prayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak in
+poetry&mdash;else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacred
+passions.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that
+the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre
+and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more
+excellent than itself." Here he had in his mind the most false notions
+of poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despising
+simplicity&mdash;whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, he
+truly says, is in religion most sublime&mdash;and why should not poetry be
+simple in its expression? Is it not always so&mdash;when the mood of mind it
+expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great
+emotion? But he uses&mdash;as we see&mdash;the terms "lustre" and "decoration"&mdash;as
+if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and
+ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct
+and simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reason
+sublime.</p>
+
+<p>With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that Dr
+Johnson, enlightened man as he was, should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> concluded his argument
+with this absurdity&mdash;"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as they are&mdash;on them have been
+bestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence&mdash;and
+here we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone&mdash;one of the highest that
+ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been
+desecrated by the fictions&mdash;so to call them&mdash;of John Milton; majestic as
+are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments
+that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung
+around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of
+Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in
+the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent as
+are the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to our
+eyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a still
+lake or the slumbering ocean.</p>
+
+<p>This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr Johnson's splendid
+sophistry&mdash;splendid at first sight&mdash;but on closer inspection a mere
+haze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artificial lustre. How far more
+truly, and how far more sublimely, does Milton, "that mighty orb of
+song," speak of his own divine gift&mdash;the gift of Poetry! "These
+abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of
+power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and
+public civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the
+affections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the
+throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be
+wrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies
+of Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations,
+doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore
+the general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's true
+worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and in
+virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in all
+the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
+subtleties and reflections of men's thoughts from within; all these
+things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and
+describe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>&mdash;Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, through
+all instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of soft
+and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself
+unless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths of
+honesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear to
+all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult
+indeed."</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown on
+the mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets,
+moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel more
+profoundly than they&mdash;to see, as it were, into a new world. The things
+of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck
+moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the
+revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by
+Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity,
+which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain.
+The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates
+and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over
+many lands into "the huts where poor men lie"&mdash;and thoughts are familiar
+there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from
+the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his
+pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being,
+in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and
+he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even
+when he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that Religion
+was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime
+expression&mdash;The Brotherhood of Man.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is just as true that there is as much misery and suffering in
+Christendom&mdash;nay, far more of them all&mdash;than troubled and tore men's
+hearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. But
+with what different feelings is it all thought of&mdash;spoken of&mdash;looked
+at&mdash;alleviated&mdash;repented&mdash;expiated&mdash;atoned for&mdash;now! In the olden time,
+such was the prostration of the "million," that it was only when seen in
+high places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling;&mdash;Remorse
+was the privilege of Kings and Princes&mdash;and the Furies shook their
+scourges but before the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had brought
+eclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line.</p>
+
+<p>But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow all
+disastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does
+"with the lofty equalise the low;" and the same deep-felt community of
+guilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in a
+lower degree something of the same character&mdash;has made it far more
+profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and
+thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charity
+more comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by those
+to whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed,
+darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life.</p>
+
+<p>We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified
+and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human
+nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken
+of that purity and that elevation&mdash;and that it may now be a far holier
+and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of
+Apollo and the Muses. We may not circumscribe its sphere. To what
+cerulean heights shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what
+dungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers and
+privileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion?</p>
+
+<p>If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then it
+would indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be worse than
+worthless. They must be, not imperfect merely, but false; and not false
+merely, but calumnious against human nature. The agonies of passion
+fling men down to the dust on their knees, or smite them motionless as
+stone statues, sitting alone in their darkened chambers of despair. But
+sooner or later, all eyes, all hearts, look for comfort to God. The
+coldest metaphysical analyst could not avoid <i>that</i>, in his sage
+enumeration of "each particular hair" that is twisted and untwisted by
+him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the impassioned and
+philosophical poet will not, dare not, for the spirit that is within
+him, exclude <i>that</i> from his elegies, his hymns, and his songs, which,
+whether mournful or exulting, are inspired by the life-long, life-deep
+conviction, that all the greatness of the present is but for the
+future&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyre
+only because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens.</p>
+
+<p>But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a
+picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its
+very essence&mdash;how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this
+spirit&mdash;how shall we limit it&mdash;measure it&mdash;and accustom it to the curb
+of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few
+who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in
+allusion&mdash;hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half
+ashamed&mdash;and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians,
+without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose
+scorn, even in this enlightened age, has&mdash;the more is the pity&mdash;even by
+men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal than
+death?</p>
+
+<p>No: Let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion.
+Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great
+Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen,
+who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's
+discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened
+by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still more
+unpublishable&mdash;but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured that
+the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to your
+eyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish,
+but will have everlasting life. Your books&mdash;humble and unpretending
+though they be&mdash;yet here and there a page not uninspired by the spirit
+of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, and Charity&mdash;that is, by Religion&mdash;will
+be held up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of the pious
+patriarch, sitting with his children's children round his knees&mdash;nor
+will any one sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers the sacred
+links that bind together the brotherhood of man, escape the solemn
+search of a soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught wisdom, and
+happy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknown&mdash;even
+perhaps by name&mdash;who although dead yet speaketh&mdash;and, without
+superstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household.</p>
+
+<p>He who knows that he writes in the fear of God and in the love of man,
+will not arrest the thoughts that flow from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> pen, because he knows
+that they may&mdash;will be&mdash;insulted and profaned by the name of cant, and
+he himself held up as a hypocrite. In some hands, ridicule is indeed a
+terrible weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius,
+branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule
+in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as
+a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her
+blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float
+in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the
+sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage
+during the Christmas holydays of a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metrical
+composition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and
+then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a pious
+pretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is, indeed, to see
+"fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express
+our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those
+awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings,
+but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns&mdash;would-be
+fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and
+rings on their fingers&mdash;afterwards extending their notes into Sacred
+Poems for the use of the public&mdash;penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments
+of Providence as they would the proceedings of a police court.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SACRED POETRY.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The distinctive character of poetry, it has been said, and credited
+almost universally, is <i>to please</i>. That they who have studied the laws
+of thought and passion should have suffered themselves to be deluded by
+an unmeaning word is mortifying enough; but it is more than
+mortifying&mdash;it perplexes and confounds&mdash;to think that poets themselves,
+and poets too of the highest order, have declared the same degrading
+belief of what is the scope and tendency, the end and aim of their own
+divine art&mdash;forsooth, <i>to please</i>! Pleasure is no more the end of
+poetry, than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion,
+or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction,
+expansion, elevation, honour, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or it
+is nothing. Is the end of "Paradise Lost" to please? Is the end of
+Dante's Divine Comedy to please? Is the end of the Psalms of David to
+please? Or of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that poetry has
+often been injured or vitiated by having been written in the spirit of
+this creed. It relieved poets from the burden of their duty&mdash;from the
+responsibility of their endowments&mdash;from the conscience that is in
+genius. We suspect that this doctrine has borne especially hard on all
+sacred poetry, disinclined poets to devoting their genius to it&mdash;and
+consigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much of what is great in that
+magnificent walk. For if the masters of the Holy Harp are to strike it
+but to please&mdash;if their high inspirations are to be deadened and dragged
+down by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim&mdash;they will
+either be contented to awaken a few touching tones of "those strains
+that once did sweet in Zion glide"&mdash;unwilling to prolong and deepen them
+into the diapason of praise&mdash;or they will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> deposit their lyre within the
+gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "the soul of music sleeping
+on its strings."</p>
+
+<p>All arguments, or rather objections to, sacred poetry, dissolve as you
+internally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like
+imagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes ocular
+deceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry is mostly meant
+Scriptural; but there are, and always have been, conceited and callous
+critics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, and
+indeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had such
+criticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried in
+their great bards. Poetry, it is clear, embraces all we can experience;
+and every high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, and moral state
+of being becomes religious before it passes away, provided it be left
+free to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted to the glebe by some
+severe slavery of condition, which destroys the desire of ascent by the
+same inexorable laws that palsy the power, and reconcile the toilers to
+the doom of the dust. If all the states of being that poetry illustrates
+do thus tend, of their own accord, towards religious elevation, all high
+poetry must be religious; and so it is, for its whole language is
+breathing of a life "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men
+call earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations,
+obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or embodies,
+enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directly
+or indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of the
+immortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward and
+retribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, and
+he may hang up his harp.</p>
+
+<p>Among the great living poets, Wordsworth is the one whose poetry is to
+us the most inexplicable&mdash;with all our reverence for his transcendent
+genius, we do not fear to say the most open to the most serious
+charges&mdash;on the score of its religion. From the first line of the
+"Lyrical Ballads" to the last of "The Excursion"&mdash;it is avowedly one
+system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life,
+and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human
+heart&mdash;the human mind&mdash;the human soul&mdash;to use his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> own fine words&mdash;is
+"the haunt and main region of his song." There are few, perhaps none of
+our affections&mdash;using that term in its largest sense&mdash;which have not
+been either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In
+his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears
+to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentable
+defect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of the
+representation? We think there is&mdash;and that it lies in his Religion.</p>
+
+<p>In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion," is there
+any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to
+Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The
+hopes that lie beyond the grave&mdash;and the many holy and awful feelings in
+which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever
+part of the character of any of the persons&mdash;male or female&mdash;old or
+young&mdash;brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most
+interesting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitely
+delineated&mdash;and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, had
+the thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's
+heart during the hours of inspiration&mdash;and he often has written like a
+man inspired&mdash;they must have found expression in his strains; and the
+personages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, would
+have been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and their
+trials, Christians. But most assuredly this is not the case; the
+religion of this great Poet&mdash;in all his poetry published previous to
+"The Excursion"&mdash;is but the "Religion of the Woods."</p>
+
+<p>In "The Excursion," his religion is brought forward&mdash;prominently and
+conspicuously&mdash;in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet,
+and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is it
+Christianity? No&mdash;it is not. There are glimpses given of some of the
+Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions,
+in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect without some allusion to
+the Christian creed. The interlocutors&mdash;eloquent as they all are&mdash;say
+but little on that theme; nor do they show&mdash;if we except the
+Priest&mdash;much interest in it&mdash;any solicitude; they may all, for anything
+that appears to the contrary, be deists.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from entering
+on such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance of
+this having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem.
+Nor could it have been the case with such a man&mdash;a man privileged, by
+the power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations of
+the earth, on all themes, however high and holy, which the children of
+men can feel and understand. Christianity, during almost all their
+disquisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as they kept
+journeying among the hills,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"On man, on nature, and on human life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Musing in Solitude!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, or, perceiving it,
+looked upon it with a cold and indifferent regard, and passed by into
+the poetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering from the cloudy
+skies. Their talk is of "Palmyra central, in the desert," rather than of
+Jerusalem. On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful poetry is
+bestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is no subject too high for Wordsworth's muse. In the preface
+to "The Excursion," he says daringly&mdash;we fear too daringly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Urania, I shall need<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep&mdash;and aloft ascending, breathe in worlds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All strength&mdash;all terror&mdash;single or in bands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ever was put forth in personal form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I passed them unalarm'd!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Has the poet, who believes himself entitled to speak thus of the power
+and province given to him to put forth and to possess, spoken in
+consonance with such a strain, by avoiding, in part of the very work to
+which he so triumphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? Nothing
+could have reconciled us to a burst of such&mdash;audacity&mdash;we use the word
+considerately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>&mdash;but the exhibition of a spirit divinely imbued with the
+Christian faith. For what else, we ask, but the truths beheld by the
+Christian Faith, can be beyond those "personal forms," "beyond Jehovah,"
+"the choirs of shouting angels," and the "empyreal thrones?"</p>
+
+<p>This omission is felt the more deeply&mdash;the more sadly&mdash;from such
+introduction as there is of Christianity; for one of the books of "The
+Excursion" begins with a very long, and a very noble eulogy on the
+Church Establishment in England. How happened it that he who pronounced
+such eloquent panegyric&mdash;that they who so devoutly inclined their ear to
+imbibe it&mdash;should have been all contented with</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That basis laid, these principles of faith<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Announced,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and yet throughout the whole course of their discussions, before and
+after, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity or a
+Christian Church in the world?</p>
+
+<p>We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtful and sincere student of
+this great poet's works, must regard such omission&mdash;such inconsistency
+or contradiction&mdash;with more than the pain of regret; for there is no
+relief afforded to our defrauded hearts from any quarter to which we can
+look. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of a
+Christian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof&mdash;for our
+delight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before the
+heavenly splendour; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after all
+this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation
+into the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on the
+Church of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we have
+much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most
+ingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion.</p>
+
+<p>Should the opinion boldly avowed be challenged, we shall enter into
+further exposition and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confine
+ourselves to some remarks on one of the most elaborate tales of domestic
+suffering in "The Excursion." In the story of Margaret, containing, we
+believe, more than four hundred lines&mdash;a tolerably long poem in
+itself&mdash;though the whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife and
+mother's heart, for year after year of "hope deferred, that maketh the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+heart sick," is described, or rather dissected, with an almost cruel
+anatomy&mdash;not one quivering fibre being left unexposed&mdash;all the
+fluctuating, and finally all the constant agitations laid bare and naked
+that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave&mdash;there is not&mdash;except
+one or two weak lines, that seem to have been afterwards purposely
+dropped in&mdash;one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret a
+Christian?&mdash;Let the answer be yes&mdash;as good a Christian as ever kneeled
+in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for
+the resurrection. If she was&mdash;then the picture painted of her and her
+agonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character of
+all other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as she
+was, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions&mdash;she surely
+must have turned sometimes&mdash;ay, often, and often, and often, else had
+she sooner left the clay&mdash;towards her Lord and Saviour. But of such
+"comfort let no man speak," seems to have been the principle of Mr
+Wordsworth; and the consequence is, that this, perhaps the most
+elaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one human
+heart, is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious
+mind&mdash;<i>that</i> being wanting without which the entire representation is
+vitiated, and necessarily false to nature&mdash;to virtue&mdash;to resignation&mdash;to
+life&mdash;and to death. These may seem strong words&mdash;but we are ready to
+defend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth.</p>
+
+<p>This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have been
+all-in-all&mdash;for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we
+regard the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance&mdash;shocks far deeper
+feelings within us than those of taste, and throws over the whole poem
+to which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion of
+hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion, which at the best
+is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Above
+all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over
+the orthodox Church-of-Englandism&mdash;for once to quote a not inexpressive
+barbarism of Bentham&mdash;which every now and then breaks out either in
+passing compliment&mdash;amounting to but a bow&mdash;or in eloquent laudation,
+during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaks
+nobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, rev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>erendly adorning
+all the land; but in none&mdash;no, not one of the houses of the humble, the
+hovels of the poor into which he takes us&mdash;is the religion preached in
+those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealing
+organ, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree,
+lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tutelary spirit of the
+lowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find the
+Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever
+was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of
+the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he
+breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be
+one of the order of the High Priests of nature?</p>
+
+<p>Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very
+interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does
+not pretend to present a model of virtue?&mdash;that there are miseries which
+shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too
+severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their
+suffering, to look to that source for comfort?&mdash;that this is human
+nature, and the description only follows it?&mdash;that when "in peace and
+comfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven," and that
+her habit in that respect was only broken up by the stroke of her
+calamity, causing such a derangement of her mental power as should
+deeply interest the sympathies?&mdash;in short, that the poet is an artist,
+and that the privation of all comfort from religion completes the
+picture of her desolation?</p>
+
+<p>Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet so
+pathetically speak?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Of one whose stock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She was a woman of a steady mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tender and deep in her excess of love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not speaking much&mdash;pleased rather with the joy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her own thoughts. By some especial care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her temper had been framed, as if to make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Being who, by adding love to fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might live on earth a life of happiness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The humble worth that satisfied her heart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Frugal, affectionate, sober, and withal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keenly industrious. She with pride would tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he was often seated at his loom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In summer, ere the mower was abroad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the dewy grass&mdash;in early spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the last star had vanish'd. They who pass'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At evening, from behind the garden fence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might hear his busy spade, which he would ply<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After his daily work, until the light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the dark hedges. So their days were spent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In peace and comfort; and a pretty boy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We are prepared by that character, so amply and beautifully drawn, to
+pity her to the utmost demand that may be made on our pity&mdash;to judge her
+leniently, even if in her desertion she finally give way to inordinate
+and incurable grief. But we are not prepared to see her sinking from
+depth to depth of despair, in wilful abandonment to her anguish, without
+oft-repeated and long-continued passionate prayers for support or
+deliverance from her trouble, to the throne of mercy. Alas! it is true
+that in our happiness our gratitude to God is too often more selfish
+than we think, and that in our misery it faints or dies. So is it even
+with the best of us&mdash;but surely not all life long&mdash;unless the heart has
+been utterly crushed&mdash;the brain itself distorted in its functions, by
+some calamity, under which nature's self gives way, and falls into ruins
+like a rent house when the last prop is withdrawn.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Nine tedious years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their first separation&mdash;nine long years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She linger'd in unquiet widowhood&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wife and widow. Needs must it have been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sore heart-wasting."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It must indeed, and it is depicted by a master's hand. But even were it
+granted that sufferings, such as hers, might, in the course of nature,
+have extinguished all heavenly comfort&mdash;all reliance on God and her
+Saviour&mdash;the process and progress of such fatal relinquishment should
+have been shown, with all its struggles and all its agonies; if the
+religion of one so good was so unavailing, its weakness should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+been exhibited and explained, that we might have known assuredly why, in
+the multitude of the thoughts within her, there was no solace for her
+sorrow, and how unpitying Heaven let her die of grief.</p>
+
+<p>This tale, too, is the very first told by the Pedlar to the Poet, under
+circumstances of much solemnity, and with affecting note of preparation.
+It arises naturally from the sight of the ruined cottage near which
+they, by appointment, have met; the narrator puts his whole heart into
+it, and the listener is overcome by its pathos. No remark is made on
+Margaret's grief, except that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I turn'd aside in weakness, nor had power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To thank him for the tale which he had told.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I stood, and leaning o'er the garden wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Review'd that woman's sufferings; and it seem'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To comfort me, while, with a brother's love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bless'd her in the impotence of grief.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then towards the cottage I return'd, and traced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fondly, though with an interest more mild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sacred spirit of humanity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, 'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of nature&mdash;'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And silent overgrowings, still survived."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Such musings receive the Pedlar's approbation, and he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My friend! enough to sorrow you have given.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The purposes of wisdom ask no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The forms of things with an unworthy eye.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As the Poet, then, was entirely satisfied with the tale, so ought to be
+all readers. No hint is dropped that there was anything to blame in the
+poor woman's nine years' passion&mdash;no regret breathed that she had sought
+not, by means offered to all, for that peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding&mdash;no question asked, how it was that she had not communed
+with her own afflicted heart, over the pages of that Book where it is
+written, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
+will give you rest!" The narrator had indeed said, that on revisiting
+her during her affliction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Her humble lot of books,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which in her cottage window, heretofore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had been piled up against the corner panes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In seemly order, now, with straggling leaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As they had chanced to fall."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But he does not mention the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>What follows has always seemed to us of a questionable character:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I well remember that those very plumes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So still an image of tranquillity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That what we feel of sorrow and despair</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>From ruin and from change, and all the griefs</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The passing shows of Being leave behind</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where meditation was. I turn'd away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And walk'd along my road in happiness."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in face of them, to deny the
+power of the beauty and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow of us
+mortal beings, who live for awhile on her breast. Assuredly there is
+sorrow that may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here spoken of&mdash;for poor
+Margaret, many years dead&mdash;was of that kind. But does not the heart of a
+man beat painfully, as if violence were offered to its most sacred
+memories, to hear from the lips of wisdom, that "sorrow and despair from
+ruin and from change, and all the griefs" that we can suffer here below,
+appear an idle dream among plumes, and weeds, and spear-grass, and
+mists, and rain-drops? "Where meditation is!" What meditation? Turn
+thou, O child of a day! to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest
+find comfort. It matters not whether a spring-bank be thy seat by Rydal
+Mere, "while heaven and earth do make one imagery," or thou sittest in
+the shadow of death, beside a tomb.</p>
+
+<p>We said, that for the present we should confine our remarks on this
+subject to the story of Margaret; but they are,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> more or less,
+applicable to almost all the stories in "The Excursion." In many of the
+eloquent disquisitions and harangues of the Three Friends, they carry
+along with them the sympathies of all mankind; and the wisest may be
+enlightened by their wisdom. But what we complain of is, that neither in
+joy nor grief, happiness nor misery, is religion the dominant principle
+of thought and feeling in the character of any one human being with whom
+we are made acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single one, man or
+woman, are we made to feel the beauty of holiness&mdash;the power and the
+glory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought before us whom we pity,
+respect, admire, love. The great poet is high-souled and
+tender-hearted&mdash;his song is pure as the morning, bright as day, solemn
+as night. But his inspiration is not drawn from the Book of God, but
+from the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails to sustain his genius when
+venturing into the depths of tribulation and anguish. Therefore
+imperfect are his most truthful delineations of sins and sorrows; and
+not in his philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found alleviation or
+cure of the maladies that kill the soul. Therefore never will "The
+Excursion" become a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and conditions of
+a Christian People, like "The Task" or the "Night Thoughts." Their
+religion is that of revelation&mdash;it acknowledges no other source but the
+word of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay,
+these poets appeal; and though they may sometimes, or often,
+misinterpret its judgment, that is an evil incident to finite
+intelligence; and the very consciousness that it is so, inspires a
+perpetual humility that is itself a virtue found to accompany only a
+Christian's Faith.</p>
+
+<p>We have elsewhere vindicated the choice of a person of low degree as
+Chief of "The Excursion," and exult to think that a great poet should
+have delivered his highest doctrines through the lips of a Scottish
+Pedlar.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Early had he learn'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To reverence the volume that displays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mystery of life that cannot die."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Throughout the poem he shows that he does reverence it, and that his
+whole being has been purified and elevated by its spirit. But fond as he
+is of preaching, and excellent in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the art or gift, a Christian Preacher
+he is not&mdash;at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by his parentage and
+nurture with all most hallowed round the poor man's hearth, and guarded
+by his noble nature from all offence to the sanctities there enshrined;
+yet the truth must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not the Word as
+the servant of the Lord, as the follower of Him Crucified. There is very
+much in his announcements to his equals wide of the mark set up in the
+New Testament. We seem to hear rather of a divine power and harmony in
+the universe than of the Living God. The spirit of Christianity as
+connected with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Human-God, the link
+between heaven and earth, between helplessness and omnipotence, ought to
+be everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a Christian
+Poet&mdash;wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love for
+his goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness.
+Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of that
+spirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, falling
+not from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming its
+conceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own power than humbled
+in the comparison of its personal inferiority; and in enunciating them
+in verse, more rejoices in the consciousness of the power of its own
+genius than in the contemplation of Him from whom cometh every good and
+perfect gift&mdash;it has not attained Piety, and its worship is not an
+acceptable service. For it is self-worship&mdash;worship of the creature's
+own conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness,
+in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command the
+praise and adoration of his fellow-mortals. Those lofty speculations,
+alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment of
+waterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude the
+hold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment and
+impatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escaping
+from the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a
+Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support to
+his steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him to
+everlasting life.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little of
+the light of revelation, and they all speak of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> the theological
+doctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressions
+as these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem often
+to have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are which
+human reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it is
+impossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely to
+itself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or in
+express, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; and
+we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting
+its powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In these
+circumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions which
+regard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfy
+itself in such great inquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer of
+truth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is able
+to deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it in
+their belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, it
+has means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing one
+from the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would be
+impossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which has
+been poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertain
+what self-left reason could find out. Yet this much we are able to do in
+the speculations of our philosophy: We can inquire, in this light, what
+are the grounds of evidence which nature and reason themselves offer for
+belief in the same truths. A like remark must be extended to the
+morality which we seem now to inculcate from the authority of human
+reason. We no longer possess any such independent morality. The spirit
+of a higher, purer, moral law than man could discover, has been breathed
+over the world, and we have grown up in the air and the light of a
+system so congenial to the highest feelings of our human nature, that
+the wisest spirits amongst us have sometimes been tempted to forget that
+its origin is divine.</p>
+
+<p>Had "The Excursion" been written in the poet's later life, it had not
+been so liable to such objections as these; for much of his poetry
+composed since that era is imbued with a religious spirit, answering the
+soul's desire of the devoutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are
+sacred Poetry in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>deed. How comprehensive the sympathy of a truly pious
+heart! How religion reconciles different forms, and modes, and signs,
+and symbols of worship, provided only they are all imbued with the
+spirit of faith! This is the toleration Christianity sanctions&mdash;for it
+is inspired by its own universal love. No sectarian feeling here, that
+would exclude or debar from the holiest chamber in the poet's bosom one
+sincere worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. Christian brethren!
+By that mysterious bond our natures are brought into more endearing
+communion&mdash;now more than ever brethren, because of the blood that was
+shed for us all from His blessed side! Even of that most awful mystery
+in some prayer-like strains the Poet tremblingly speaks, in many a
+strain, at once so affecting and so elevating&mdash;breathing so divinely of
+Christian charity to all whose trust is in the Cross! Who shall say what
+form of worship is most acceptable to the Almighty? All are holy in
+which the soul seeks to approach him&mdash;holy</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The chapel lurking among trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where a few villagers on bended knees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Find solace which a busy world disdains;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the image of some old
+abbey,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Once ye were holy, ye are holy still!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And what heart partakes not the awe of his</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Beneath that branching roof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Self-poised and scoop'd into ten thousand cells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where light and shade repose, where music dwells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lingering&mdash;and wandering on as loth to die"?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Read the first of these sonnets with the last&mdash;and then once more the
+strains that come between&mdash;and you will be made to feel how various and
+how vast beneath the sky are the regions set apart by the soul for
+prayer and worship; and that all places become consecrated&mdash;the high and
+the humble&mdash;the mean and the magnificent&mdash;in which Faith and Piety have
+sought to hold communion with Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>But they who duly worship God in temples made with hands, meet every
+hour of their lives "Devotional Excitements" as they walk among His
+works; and in the later<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> poetry of Wordsworth these abound&mdash;age having
+solemnised the whole frame of his being, that was always alive to
+religious emotions&mdash;but more than ever now, as around his paths in the
+evening of life longer fall the mysterious shadows. More fervid lines
+have seldom flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, than some
+awakened by the sounds and sights of a happy day in May&mdash;to him&mdash;though
+no church-bell was heard&mdash;a Sabbath. His occasional poems are often felt
+by us to be linked together by the finest affinities, which perhaps are
+but affinities between the feelings they inspire. Thus we turn from
+those lines to some on a subject seemingly very different, from a
+feeling of such fine affinities&mdash;which haply are but those subsisting
+between all things and thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in them
+how the Poet, as he gazes on a Family that holds not the Christian
+Faith, embraces them in the folds of Christian Love&mdash;and how religion as
+well as nature sanctifies the tenderness that is yearning at his heart
+towards them&mdash;"a Jewish Family"&mdash;who, though outcasts by Heaven's
+decree, are not by Heaven, still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth.</p>
+
+<p>How exquisite the stanzas composed in one of the Catholic Chapels in
+Switzerland,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Doom'd as we are our native dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wet with many a bitter shower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It ill befits us to disdain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Altar, to deride the Fane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where patient sufferers bend, in trust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To win a happier hour.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I love, where spreads the village lawn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hail to the firm unmoving Cross,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aloft, where pines their branches toss!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the Chapel far withdrawn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That lurks by lonely ways!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where'er we roam&mdash;along the brink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Rhine&mdash;or by the sweeping Po,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Whate'er we look on, at our side</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Be Charity&mdash;to bid us think</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And feel, if we would know.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, most
+touching in their simple pathos&mdash;such as a Hymn for the boatmen as they
+approach the Rapids&mdash;Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damsels
+floating homeward on the lake of Brientz&mdash;the Italian Itinerant and the
+Swiss Goat-herd&mdash;and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives of
+Italian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as if
+by magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace the
+peculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Such
+gentle visions disappear, and we sit by the side of the Poet as he gazes
+from his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the Church of San
+Salvador, which was almost destroyed by lightning a few years ago, while
+the altar and the image of the patron saint were untouched, and devoutly
+listen while he exclaims,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let all remind the soul of heaven;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our slack devotion needs them all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And faith, so oft of sense the thrall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While she, by aid of Nature, climbs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May hope to be forgiven."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse of the Sun, 1820," one of the
+finest lyrical effusions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, and
+imagery, within the whole compass of poetry. If the beautiful be indeed
+essentially different from the sublime, we here feel that they may be
+made to coalesce so as to be in their united agencies one divine power.
+We called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transitions. Though not an
+ode, it is ode-like in its invocations; and it might be set and sung to
+music if Handel were yet alive, and St Cecilia to come down for an hour
+from heaven. How solemn the opening strain! and from the momentary
+vision of Science on her speculative Tower, how gently glides
+Imagination down, to take her place by the Poet's side, in his bark
+afloat beneath Italian skies&mdash;suddenly bedimmed, lake, land, and all,
+with a something between day and night. In a moment we are conscious of
+Eclipse. Our slight surprise is lost in the sense of a strange
+beauty&mdash;solemn not sad&mdash;settling on the face of nature and the abodes of
+men. In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, we
+have a vision of the Lake,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> with all its noblest banks, and bays, and
+bowers, and mountains&mdash;when in an instant we are wafted away from a
+scene that might well have satisfied our imagination and our heart&mdash;if
+high emotions were not uncontrollable and omnipotent&mdash;wafted away by
+Fancy with the speed of Fire&mdash;lakes, groves, cliffs, mountains, all
+forgotten&mdash;and alight amid an aerial host of figures, human and divine,
+on a spire that seeks the sky. How still those imaged sanctities and
+purities, all white as snows of Apennine, stand in the heavenly region,
+circle above circle, and crowned as with a zone of stars! They are
+imbued with life. In their animation the figures of angels and saints,
+insensate stones no more, seem to feel the Eclipse that shadows them,
+and look awful in the portentous light. In his inspiration he transcends
+the grandeur even of that moment's vision&mdash;and beholds in the visages of
+that aerial host those of the sons of heaven darkening with celestial
+sorrow at the Fall of Man&mdash;when</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Throngs of celestial visages,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Darkening like water in the breeze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A holy sadness shared."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Never since the day on which the wondrous edifice, in its consummate
+glory, first saluted the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneeling
+saint a thought so sad and so sublime&mdash;a thought beyond the reaches of
+the soul of him whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adornments so
+far from earth, that the silent company seem sometimes, as light and
+shadow moves among them, to be in ascension to heaven. But the Sun
+begins again to look like the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyful
+light from that awful trance, delights to behold</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Town and Tower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Vineyard and the Olive Bower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their lustre re-assume;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and "breathes there a man with soul so dead," that it burns not within
+him as he hears the heart of the husband and the father breathe forth
+its love and its fear, remembering on a sudden the far distant whom it
+has never forgotten&mdash;a love and a fear that saddens, but disturbs not,
+for the vision he saw had inspired him with a trust in the tender
+mercies of God? Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who may some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> time
+or other be a traveller over the wide world, the sacred stanzas that
+bring the Poem to a close&mdash;and it will not fail to comfort thee when
+sitting all alone by the well in the wilderness, or walking along the
+strange streets of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnight
+afloat on far-off seas.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O ye, who guard and grace my Home<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While in far-distant lands we roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was such a vision given to you?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did sullen mist hide lake and skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mountains from your view?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I ask in vain&mdash;and know far less,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If sickness, sorrow, or distress<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have spared my Dwelling to this hour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sad blindness! but ordained to prove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our faith in Heaven's unfailing love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all-controlling power."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Let us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James Montgomery is truly a
+religious poet. His popularity, which is great, has, by some scribes
+sitting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been attributed chiefly
+to the power of sectarianism. He is, we believe, a sectary; and, if all
+sects were animated by the spirit that breathes throughout his poetry,
+we should have no fears for the safety and stability of the Established
+Church; for in that self-same spirit was she built, and by that
+self-same spirit were her foundations dug in a rock. Many are the
+lights&mdash;solemn and awful all&mdash;in which the eyes of us mortal creatures
+may see the Christian dispensation. Friends, looking down from the top
+of a high mountain on a city-sprinkled plain, have each his own vision
+of imagination&mdash;each his own sinking or swelling of heart. They urge no
+inquisition into the peculiar affections of each other's secret
+breasts&mdash;all assured, from what each knows of his brother, that every
+eye there may see God&mdash;that every tongue that has the gift of lofty
+utterance may sing His praises aloud&mdash;that the lips that remain silent
+may be mute in adoration&mdash;and that all the distinctions of habits,
+customs, professions, modes of life, even natural constitution and form
+of character, if not lost, may be blended together in mild amalgamation
+under the common atmosphere of emotion, even as the towers, domes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and
+temples, are all softly or brightly interfused with the huts, cots, and
+homesteads&mdash;the whole scene below harmonious because inhabited by beings
+created by the same God&mdash;in his own image&mdash;and destined for the same
+immortality.</p>
+
+<p>It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, in an invidious sense,
+any of Montgomery's fame to any such cause. No doubt many persons read
+his poetry on account of its religion, who, but for that, would not have
+read it; and no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it.
+But so, too, do many persons read Wordsworth's poetry on account of its
+religion&mdash;the religion of the woods&mdash;who, but for that, would not have
+read it; and so, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. So is
+it with the common-manners-painting poetry of Crabbe&mdash;the
+dark-passion-painting poetry of Byron&mdash;the high-romance-painting poetry
+of Scott&mdash;and so on with Moore, Coleridge, Southey, and the rest. But it
+is to the <i>mens divinior</i>, however displayed, that they owe all their
+fame. Had Montgomery not been a true poet, all the Religious Magazines
+in the world could not have saved his name from forgetfulness and
+oblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholy
+Poppy&mdash;melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness; but as it is, he is
+like the Rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, planted
+on the banks of "that river whose streams make glad the city of the
+Lord."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conceived in the spirit of a most
+exclusive sectarianism, may not be of a very high order, and powerfully
+impressive on minds whose religious tenets are most irreconcilable and
+hostile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being unduly concentrated,
+are not thereby necessarily enfeebled&mdash;on the contrary, often
+strengthened; and there is a grand austerity which the imagination more
+than admires&mdash;which the conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, the
+conviction from which that austerity grows, is in itself right; for it
+is a feeling&mdash;a conviction of the perfect righteousness of God&mdash;the
+utter worthlessness of self-left man&mdash;the awful sanctity of duty&mdash;and
+the dreadfulness of the judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe till
+the seals have been broken, and the Archangel has blown his trumpet. A
+religion planted in such convictions as these, may become dark and
+disordered in its future growth within the spirit; and the tree, though
+of good seed and in a strong soil, may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> come to be laden with bitter
+fruit, and the very droppings of its leaves may be pernicious to all who
+rest within its shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast than
+the trunk of a dead faith; and such food, unwholesome though it be, is
+not so miserable as famine to a hungry soul.</p>
+
+<p>Grant, then, that there may be in Mr Montgomery's poetry certain
+sentiments, which, in want of a better word, we call Sectarian. They are
+not necessarily false, although not perfectly reconcilable to our own
+creed, which, we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, we may be made
+much the better and the wiser men by meditating upon them; for while
+they may, perhaps (and we are merely making a supposition), be too
+strongly felt by him, they may be too feebly felt by us&mdash;they may,
+perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of his poetry than of his
+faith&mdash;and if, in some degree, offensive in the composition of a poem,
+far less so, or not at all, in that of a life.</p>
+
+<p>All his shorter poems are stamped with the character of the man. Most of
+them are breathings of his own devout spirit, either delighted or awed
+by a sense of the Divine goodness and mercy towards itself, or
+tremblingly alive&mdash;not in mere sensibility to human virtues and joys,
+crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs to the diseased and
+depraved&mdash;but in solemn, moral, and religious thought, to all of good or
+evil befalling his brethren of mankind. "A sparrow cannot fall to the
+ground"&mdash;a flower of the field cannot wither immediately before his
+eyes&mdash;without awakening in his heart such thoughts as we may believe God
+intended should be awakened even by such sights as these; for the fall
+of a sparrow is a Scriptural illustration of His providence, and His
+hand framed the lily, whose array is more royal than was that of Solomon
+in all his glory. Herein he resembles Wordsworth&mdash;less profound
+certainly&mdash;less lofty; for in its highest moods the genius of Wordsworth
+walks by itself&mdash;unapproachable&mdash;on the earth it beautifies. But
+Montgomery's poetical piety is far more prevalent over his whole
+character; it belongs more essentially and permanently to the man.
+Perhaps, although we shall not say so, it may be more simple, natural,
+and true. More accordant it certainly is, with the sympathies of
+ordinary minds. The piety of his poetry is far more Christian than that
+of Wordsworth. It is in all his feelings, all his thoughts, all his
+imagery; and at the close of most of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> beautiful compositions, which
+are so often avowals, confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, we feel, not
+the moral, but the religion of his song. He "improves" all the
+"occasions" of this life, because he has an "eye that broods on its own
+heart;" and that heart is impressed by all lights and shadows, like a
+river or lake whose waters are pure&mdash;pure in their sources and in their
+course. He is, manifestly, a man of the kindliest home-affections; and
+these, though it is to be hoped the commonest of all, preserved to him
+in unabated glow and freshness by innocence and piety, often give vent
+to themselves in little hymns and ode-like strains, of which the rich
+and even novel imagery shows how close is the connection between a pure
+heart and a fine fancy, and that the flowers of poetry may be brought
+from afar, nor yet be felt to be exotics&mdash;to intertwine with the very
+simplest domestic feelings and thoughts&mdash;so simple, so perfectly human,
+that there is a touch of surprise on seeing them capable of such
+adornment, and more than a touch of pleasure on feeling how much that
+adornment becomes them&mdash;brightening without changing, and adding
+admiration to delight&mdash;wonder to love.</p>
+
+<p>Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an egotist as Wordsworth; and
+thence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances of
+external nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length,
+that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either in
+the garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce
+a strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease and
+freedom&mdash;they shall be cold and stiff&mdash;and both passion and imagination
+shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain or
+the man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves or
+admires&mdash;themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows&mdash;who is
+himself still the centre of the enchanted circle&mdash;who, in the delusion
+of a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die,
+all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with him&mdash;who not
+only sees</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Poetic visions swarm on every bough,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but the history of all his own most secret emotions written on the very
+rocks&mdash;who gathers up the many beautiful things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> that in the prodigality
+of nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and the
+more dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are now
+appropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymy
+so further brighten them that the thousands of eyes that formerly passed
+them by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their rare and
+transcendent beauty&mdash;he is the "prevailing Poet!" Montgomery neither
+seeks nor shuns those dark thoughts that will come and go, night and
+day, unbidden, forbidden, across the minds of all men&mdash;fortified
+although the main entrances may be; but when they do invade his secret,
+solitary hours, he turns even such visitants to a happy account, and
+questions them, ghost-like as they are, concerning both the future and
+the past. Melancholy as often his views are, we should not suppose him a
+man of other than a cheerful mind; for whenever the theme allows or
+demands it, he is not averse to a sober glee, a composed gaiety that,
+although we cannot say it ever so far sparkles out as to deserve to be
+called absolutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his lighter-toned
+compositions, which it is peculiarly pleasant now and then to feel in
+the writings of a man whose genius is naturally, and from the course of
+life, not gloomy indeed, but pensive, and less disposed to indulge
+itself in smiles than in tears.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SACRED POETRY.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>People nowadays will write, because they see so many writing; the
+impulse comes upon them from without, not from within; loud voices from
+streets and squares of cities call on them to join the throng, but the
+still small voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute;
+and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, or
+linnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at the
+worst an oratorio of ganders and bubbleys?</p>
+
+<p>At this particular juncture or crisis, the disease would fain assume the
+symptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious&mdash;all
+smitten with sanctity&mdash;Christian all over&mdash;and crossing and jostling on
+the Course of Time&mdash;as they think, on the high road to Heaven and
+Immortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites.
+Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shops, and, crowned with
+foolscap, repeat to Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggrel to the
+Deity! They bandy about the Bible as if it were an Album. They forget
+that the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well as a set of
+verses to be damned; they look forward to the First of the Month with
+more fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and beseech a critic to be
+merciful upon them with far more earnestness than they ever beseeched
+their Maker. They pray through the press&mdash;vainly striving to give some
+publicity to what must be private for evermore; and are seen wiping
+away, at tea-parties, the tears of contrition and repentance for capital
+crimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily,
+that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it is
+felt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowls
+with their own unsaleable sheets. They are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> frequently so singed; yet
+singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed;
+and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still
+gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe with
+their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner,
+and are no more seen among bipeds.</p>
+
+<p>Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spirit
+of imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two&mdash;who for the
+present must be nameless&mdash;have shown feeling; and would they but obey
+their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own free
+feet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings,
+they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditable
+reputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands
+the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his
+Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household
+words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song.
+For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those
+pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with
+religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine.
+The study of <span class="smcap">The Book</span> must have been begun in the simplicity of
+childhood, when it was felt to be indeed divine&mdash;and carried on through
+all those silent intervals in which the soul of manhood is restored,
+during the din of life, to the purity and peace of its early being. The
+Bible must be to such a poet even as the sky&mdash;with its sun, moon, and
+stars&mdash;its boundless blue with all its cloud-mysteries&mdash;its peace deeper
+than the grave, because of realms beyond the grave&mdash;its tumult louder
+than that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He who
+begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himself
+to it&mdash;night and day&mdash;and with a humble and a contrite heart as well as
+an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what he
+understands, or to understand what he feels&mdash;thoughts and feelings
+breathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery,
+between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly venture
+on the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thought
+of doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> irreverent; it
+would convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, and
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>They alone, therefore, to whom God has given genius as well as faith,
+zeal, and benevolence&mdash;will, of their own accord, fix their Pindus
+either on Lebanon or Calvary&mdash;and of these but few. The genius must be
+high&mdash;the faith sure&mdash;and human love must coalesce with divine, that the
+strain may have power to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they are
+in matter, and with all their apprehensions and conceptions blended with
+material imagery, and the things of this moving earth and this restless
+life.</p>
+
+<p>So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen his
+subject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. His
+work, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependent
+on creeds, but out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestly
+moulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry will
+outlive every other; for the time will come when Christian Poetry will
+be deeper and higher far than any that has ever yet been known among
+men. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto have been either religious or
+superstitious; and as "the day-spring from on High that has visited us"
+spreads wider and wider over the earth, "the soul of the world, dreaming
+of things to come," shall assuredly see more glorified visions than have
+yet been submitted to her ken. That poetry has so seldom satisfied the
+utmost longings and aspirations of human nature, can only have been
+because Poetry has so seldom dealt in its power with the only mysteries
+worth knowing&mdash;the greater mysteries of religion, into which the
+Christian is initiated only through faith, an angel sent from heaven to
+spirits struggling by supplications and sacrifices to escape from sin
+and death.</p>
+
+<p>These, and many other thoughts and feelings concerning the "Vision and
+the Faculty divine," when employed on divine subjects, have arisen
+within us, on reading&mdash;which we have often done with delight&mdash;"The
+Christian Year," so full of Christian poetry of the purest character. Mr
+Keble is a poet whom Cowper himself would have loved&mdash;for in him piety
+inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialised by religion. We
+peruse his book in a tone and temper of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> spirit similar to that which is
+breathed upon us by some calm day in spring, when all imagery is serene
+and still&mdash;cheerful in the main&mdash;yet with a touch and a tinge of
+melancholy, which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once more
+endearing and more profound. We should no more think of criticising such
+poetry than of criticising the clear blue skies&mdash;the soft green
+earth&mdash;the "liquid lapse" of an unpolluted stream, that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Giving a gentle kiss to every flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It overtaketh on its pilgrimage."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, we partake of the
+universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it
+emanated. Indeed, we do not remember any poetry nearly so beautiful as
+this, which reminds one so seldom of the poet's art. We read it without
+ever thinking of the place which its author may hold among poets, just
+as we behold a "lily of the field" without comparing it with other
+flowers, but satisfied with its own pure and simple loveliness; or each
+separate poem may be likened, in its
+unostentatious&mdash;unambitious&mdash;unconscious beauty&mdash;to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A violet by a mossy stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half hidden to the eye."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair earth, the violet is indeed
+the most delightful in itself&mdash;form, fragrance, and colour&mdash;nor less in
+the humility of its birthplace, and its haunts in the "sunshiny shade."
+Therefore, 'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that may be said to
+blossom on Mount Sion.</p>
+
+<p>The most imaginative poetry inspired by Nature, and dedicated to her
+praise, is never perfectly and consummately beautiful till it ascends
+into the religious; but then religion breathes from, and around, and
+about it, only at last when the poet has been brought, by the leading of
+his own aroused spirit, to the utmost pitch of his inspiration. He
+begins, and continues long, unblamed in mere emotions of beauty; and he
+often pauses unblamed, and brings his strain to a close, without having
+forsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feelings which belong alone to
+this earth. But poetry like that of the "Christian Year" springs at
+once, visibly and audibly, from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> religion as its fount. If it, indeed,
+issue from one of the many springs religion opens in the human heart, no
+fear of its ever being dried up. Small indeed may seem the silver line,
+when first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! But how soon it
+begins to sing with a clear loud voice in the solitude! Bank and
+brae&mdash;tree, shrub, and flower&mdash;grow greener at each successive
+waterfall&mdash;the rains no more disturb that limpid element than the
+dews&mdash;and never does it lose some reflection of the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>In a few modest words, Mr Keble states the aim and object of his volume.
+He says truly, that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of
+England to possess in her authorised formularies an ample and secure
+provision, both for a sound rule of faith and a sober standard of
+feeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publication
+will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his
+own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended
+and exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has been
+attained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in a
+thousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deaf
+yet to lovely sights and sounds&mdash;and a true poet is as certain of
+recognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we have
+no prayer-book printed on paper&mdash;perhaps it would be better if we had;
+but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr Keble, is compiled and
+composed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotland
+than in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is
+felt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said,
+no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, and
+which in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inward
+observances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling <i>here</i>; and
+therefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart,
+will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration&mdash;for the
+Christian creed is "wide and general as the casing air," and felt as
+profoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms is
+heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities of
+England, where so often</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about&mdash;to
+show off upon&mdash;as if the writing and the reading of it were to be
+reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets
+have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most
+unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy&mdash;for it implies
+much voluntary self-degradation&mdash;is mere popularity. Against all such
+low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the
+muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on
+the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry is
+praise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from some
+unseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer or
+wanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holier
+solemnity in the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed <i>got by
+heart</i>; and memory is then tenacious to the death, for her hold on what
+she loves is strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, when even
+hope itself is dead&mdash;if, indeed, hope ever dies&mdash;the trust is committed
+to despair. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless thoughts; they
+become very thoughts themselves, and <i>are</i> what they represent. How are
+many of the simply, rudely, but fervently and beautifully rhymed Psalms
+of David, very part and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of the
+Scottish peasant's being!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He makes me down to lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In pastures green: he leadeth me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The quiet waters by."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful shepherd on the braes every
+stream that glides through the solitary places&mdash;they have often given
+colours to the greensward beyond the brightness of all herbage and of
+all flowers. Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes us mortal
+creatures feel the union that subsists between the Book of Nature and
+the Book of Life!</p>
+
+<p>Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathers
+and mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring.
+Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest and
+wisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories;
+the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smoky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+day; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallow
+up the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as a
+separate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy,
+and forlorn! But he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees far
+into the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying&mdash;"Suffer
+little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the
+kingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that Poetry throws back upon the New
+Testament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortal
+brother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of Man. On a dead
+insensible flower&mdash;a lily&mdash;a rose&mdash;a violet&mdash;a daisy, poetry may pour
+out all its divinest power&mdash;just as the sun itself sometimes seems to
+look with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once made
+transparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all its
+leaves&mdash;and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves be
+dead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall change
+death into sleep&mdash;till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shall
+seem a bed of bright and celestial repose. From poetry, in words or
+marble&mdash;both alike still and serene as water upon grass&mdash;we turn to the
+New Testament, and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They were redeemed
+from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We
+look down into the depths of that text&mdash;and we then turn again to
+Keble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon the
+uninspired page! Yet not uninspired&mdash;if that name may be given to
+strains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise,
+"whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets." Revelation has shown us
+that "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy of
+that Being for whom Godhead died!</p>
+
+<p>They who read the lines on the "Holy Innocents" in a mood of mind worthy
+of them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "The
+Epiphany." They are separated in the volume by some kindred and
+congenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy the
+still region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seem
+to occupy the entire sky.</p>
+
+<p>How far better than skilfully&mdash;how inspiredly does this Christian poet
+touch upon each successive holy theme&mdash;wing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>ing his way through the
+stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving
+one place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding and
+unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attempted
+the theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on such
+a subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of
+Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he
+will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching
+their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the
+sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger.
+Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few
+words&mdash;"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them,
+till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the
+star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."</p>
+
+<p>The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to a
+strain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism." How soon the
+infant spirit is touched with love&mdash;another name for religion&mdash;none may
+dare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling and
+thought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration&mdash;so strong it
+often is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of natural
+processes going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often been
+seen in the simplicity of childhood&mdash;creatures but five or six years
+old&mdash;soon perhaps about to disappear&mdash;astonishing, and saddening, and
+subliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by a
+holy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into a
+mysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink of
+death and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine
+unfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influences should not be
+rare&mdash;nor are they rare&mdash;in truly Christian households. Almost as soon
+as the heart is moved by filial affection, that affection grows reverent
+even to earthly parents&mdash;and, ere long, becomes piety towards the name
+of God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must not
+be too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No&mdash;let
+religion&mdash;a myriad-meaning word&mdash;be whispered and breathed round about
+them, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens their
+ears, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yet
+multitudinous world.</p>
+
+<p>Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read with
+tears by many a grateful heart&mdash;on the "Churching of Women." What would
+become of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen the
+piety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holy
+and divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify the
+affections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before a
+father's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the father
+yearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving after
+childbirth!</p>
+
+<p>"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither
+do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
+was not arrayed like one of these." What is all the poetry that genius
+ever breathed over all the flowers of this earth to that one divine
+sentence! It has inspired our Christian poet&mdash;and here is his heartfelt
+homily.</p>
+
+
+<h4>FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What more than magic in you lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To fill the heart's fond view?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In childhood's sports companions gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sorrow, on Life's downward way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How soothing! in our last decay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Memorials prompt and true.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As pure, as fragrant, and as fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of happy wanderers there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall'n all beside&mdash;the world of life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How is it stain'd with fear and strife!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Reason's world what storms are rife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What passions rage and glare!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But cheerful and unchanged the while<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your first and perfect form ye show,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same that won Eve's matron smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the world's opening glow<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The stars of Heaven a course are taught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too high above our human thought;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye may be found if ye are sought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And as we gaze we know.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye dwell beside our paths and homes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And guilty man, where'er he roams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your innocent mirth may borrow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The birds of air before us fleet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They cannot brook our shame to meet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But we may taste your solace sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And come again to-morrow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye fearless in your nests abide&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your silent lessons undescried<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By all but lowly eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ye could draw th' admiring gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your order wild, your fragrant maze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He taught us how to prize.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As when he paused and own'd you good;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His blessing on earth's primal bower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet felt it all renew'd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What care ye now, if winter's storm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ's blessing at your heart is warm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye fear no vexing mood.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That daily court you and caress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How few the happy secret find<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of your calm loveliness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Live for to-day! to-morrow's light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go, sleep like closing flowers at night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Heaven thy morn will bless.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Such poetry as this must have a fine influence on all the best human
+affections. Sacred are such songs to sorrow&mdash;and sorrow is either a
+frequent visitor, or a domesticated inmate, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> every household.
+Religion may thus be made to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours,
+into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not the mother unhappy who
+closes the eyes of her dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in the
+house, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed among other flowers, now
+all drooping for its sake&mdash;nor yet call the father unhappy who lays his
+sweet son below the earth, and returns to the home where his voice is to
+be heard never more. That affliction brings forth feelings unknown
+before in his heart; calming all turbulent thoughts by the settled peace
+of the grave. Then every page of the Bible is beautiful&mdash;and beautiful
+every verse of poetry that thence draws its inspiration. Thus in the
+pale and almost ghost-like countenance of decay, our hearts are not
+touched by the remembrance alone of beauty which is departed, and by the
+near extinction of loveliness which we behold fading before our
+eyes&mdash;but a beauty, fairer and deeper far, lies around the hollow eye
+and the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air of the untroubled
+spirit that has heard resigned the voice that calls it away from the dim
+shades of mortality. Well may that beauty be said to be religious; for
+in it speaks the soul, conscious, in the undreaded dissolution of its
+earthly frame, of a being destined to everlasting bliss. With every deep
+emotion arising from our contemplation of such beauty as this&mdash;religious
+beauty beaming in the human countenance, whether in joy or sadness,
+health or decay&mdash;there is profoundly interfused a sense of the soul's
+spirituality, which silently sheds over the emotion something celestial
+and divine, rendering it not only different in degree, but altogether
+distinct in kind, from all the feelings that things merely perishable
+can inspire&mdash;so that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feeling of
+beauty is but a vivid recognition of its own deathless being and
+ethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly
+known to the human heart in those ages of the world when all other
+feelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the
+most pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over the
+beauty intensely worshipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever over
+its now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the living
+lustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone a
+beauty in his latest smile, which spoke not alone of a brief scene
+closed, but of an endless scene unfolding; while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> its cessation, instead
+of leaving him in utter darkness, seemed to be accompanied with a burst
+of light.</p>
+
+<p>Much of our most fashionable Modern Poetry is at once ludicrously and
+lamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthful
+creatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins of
+shameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and by
+persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to that
+vulgar altitude&mdash;the gallows. The darker&mdash;the stronger passions,
+forsooth! And what hast thou to do&mdash;my dove-eyed Margaret, with the
+darker and stronger passions? Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still,
+serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and the
+weaker passions thine&mdash;brighter indeed&mdash;yet say not <i>weaker</i>, for they
+are strong as death;&mdash;Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, and
+Sorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears&mdash;be these all thy own&mdash;and
+sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imagination
+be spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescence&mdash;a Lunar
+Rainbow.</p>
+
+<p>There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christian Year"&mdash;such perfect
+sincerity, and consequently such simplicity&mdash;that though the production
+of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot doubt that it will some day or
+other find its way into many of the dwellings of humble life. Such
+descent, if descent it be, must be of all receptions the most delightful
+to the heart of a Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more widely
+over the land, why fear that it will deaden religion? Let us believe
+that it will rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time true poetry,
+such as this, of a character somewhat higher than probably can be yet
+felt, understood, and appreciated by the people, will come to be easy
+and familiar, and blended with all the other benign influences breathed
+over their common existence by books. Meanwhile the "Christian Year"
+will be finding its way into many houses where the inmates read from the
+love of reading&mdash;not for mere amusement only, but for instruction and a
+deeper delight; and we shall be happy if our recommendation causes its
+pages to be illumined by the gleams of a few more peaceful hearths, and
+to be rehearsed by a few more happy voices in the "parlour twilight."</p>
+
+<p>We cannot help expressing the pleasure it has given us to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> see so much,
+true poetry coming from Oxford. It is delightful to see that classical
+literature, which sometimes, we know not how, certainly has a chilling
+effect on poetical feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, and
+causing it to produce itself in song. Oxford has produced many true
+poets; Collins, Warton, Bowles, Heber, Milman, and now Keble&mdash;are all
+her own&mdash;her inspired sons. Their strains are not steeped in "port and
+prejudice;" but in the&mdash;Isis. Heaven bless Iffley and Godstow&mdash;and many
+another sweet old ruined place&mdash;secluded, but not far apart from her own
+inspiring Sanctities! And those who love her not, never may the Muses
+love!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SACRED POETRY.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In his Poem, entitled, "The Omnipresence of the Deity," Mr Robert
+Montgomery writes thus,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lo! there, in yonder fancy-haunted room,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When pale, and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dying sceptic felt his hour drew near!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the last throes of death convulsed his cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lock'd his white lips&mdash;and all was mute despair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go, child of darkness, see a Christian die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No horror pales his lip, or rolls his eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No dreadful doubts, or dreamy terrors, start<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hope Religion pillows on his heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When with a dying hand he waves adieu<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To all who love so well, and weep so true:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meek as an infant to the mother's breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns fondly longing for its wonted rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He pants for where congenial spirits stray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>First, as to the execution of this passage. "Fancy-haunted" may do, but
+it is not a sufficiently strong expression for the occasion. In every
+such picture as this, we demand appropriate vigour in every word
+intended to be vigorous, and which is important to the effect of the
+whole.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>How could they?&mdash;The line but one before is,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot doubt that Mr Montgomery
+will confess that it is so; but independently of that, he is describing
+the deathbed of a person who, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, could have no bright
+hopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. He might as well, in a
+description of a negress, have told us that she had no long, smooth,
+shining, yellow locks&mdash;no light-blue eyes&mdash;no ruddy and rosy cheeks&mdash;nor
+yet a bosom white as snow. The execution of the picture of the Christian
+is not much better&mdash;it is too much to use, in the sense here given to
+them, no fewer than three verbs&mdash;"pales"&mdash;"rolls"&mdash;"starts," in four
+lines.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The hope Religion pillows on his heart,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is not a good line, and it is a borrowed one.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When with a dying hand he waves adieu,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do not act so. Not thus are taken
+eternal farewells. The motion in the sea-song was more natural&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She waved adieu, and kiss'd her lily hand."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"<i>Weeps so true</i>," means nothing, nor is it English. The grammar is not
+good of,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He <i>pants for where</i> congenial spirits"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Neither is the word <i>pants</i> by any means the right one; and in such an
+awful crisis, admire who may the simile of the infant longing for its
+mother's breast, we never can in its present shape; while there is the
+line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Turns to his God, <i>and sighs his soul away</i>;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>a prettiness we very much dislike&mdash;alter one word, and it would be
+voluptuous&mdash;nor do we hesitate to call the passage a puling one
+altogether, and such as ought to be expunged from all paper.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not all we have to say against it&mdash;it is radically and
+essentially bad, because it either proves nothing of what it is meant to
+prove&mdash;or what no human being on earth ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> disputed. Be fair&mdash;be just
+in all that concerns religion. Take the best&mdash;the most moral, if the
+word can be used&mdash;the most enlightened Sceptic, and the true Christian,
+and compare their deathbeds. That of the Sceptic will be disturbed or
+disconsolate&mdash;that of the Christian confiding or blessed. But to
+contrast the deathbed of an absolute maniac, muttering curses, gnashing
+and scowling, and "raising a hideous shriek," and "rounding his eyes
+with a ghastly glare," and convulsed, too, with severe bodily
+throes&mdash;with that of a convinced, confiding, and conscientious
+Christian, a calm, meek, undoubting believer, happy in the "hope
+religion pillows on his heart," and enduring no fleshly agonies, can
+serve no purpose under the sun. Men who have the misery of being
+unbelievers, are at all times to be pitied&mdash;most of all in their last
+hours; but though theirs be then dim melancholy, or dark despair, they
+express neither the one state nor the other by mutterings, curses, and
+hideous shrieks. Such a wretch there may sometimes be&mdash;like him "who
+died and made no sign;" but there is no more sense in seeking to
+brighten the character of the Christian by its contrast with that of
+such an Atheist, than by contrast with a fiend to brighten the beauty of
+an angel.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, are the deathbeds of all good Christians so calm as this&mdash;and
+do they all thus meekly</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Pant for where congenial spirits stray,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>a line, besides its other vice, most unscriptural? Congenial spirit is
+not the language of the New Testament. Alas! for poor weak human nature
+at the dying hour! Not even can the Christian always then retain
+unquaking trust in his Saviour! "This is the blood that was shed for
+thee," are words whose mystery quells not always nature's terror. The
+Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is renewed in vain&mdash;and he remembers, in
+doubt and dismay, words that, if misunderstood, would appal all the
+Christian world&mdash;"My God&mdash;my God&mdash;why hast thou forsaken me?" Perhaps,
+before the Faith, that has waxed dim and died in his brain distracted by
+pain, and disease, and long sleeplessness, and a weight of woe&mdash;for he
+is a father who strove in vain to burst those silken ties, that winding
+all round and about his very soul and his very body, bound him to those
+dear little ones, who are of the same spirit and the same flesh,&mdash;we
+say, before that Faith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> could, by the prayers of holy men, be restored
+and revivified, and the Christian once more comforted by thinking on
+Him, who for all human beings did take upon him the rueful burden and
+agonies of the Cross&mdash;Death may have come for his prey, and left the
+chamber, of late so hushed and silent, at full liberty to weep! Enough
+to know, that though Christianity be divine, we are human,&mdash;that the
+vessel is weak in which that glorious light may be enshrined&mdash;weak as
+the potter's clay&mdash;and that though Christ died to save sinners, sinners
+who believe in Him, and therefore shall not perish, may yet lose hold of
+the belief when their understandings are darkened by the shadow of
+death, and, like Peter losing faith and sinking in the sea, feel
+themselves descending into some fearful void, and cease here to be, ere
+they find voice to call on the name of the Lord&mdash;"Help, or I perish!"</p>
+
+<p>What may be the nature of the thoughts and feelings of an Atheist,
+either when in great joy or great sorrow, full of life and the spirit of
+life, or in mortal malady and environed with the toils of death, it
+passes the power of our imagination even dimly to conceive; nor are we
+convinced that there ever was an utter Atheist. The thought of a God
+will enter in, barred though the doors be both of the understanding and
+the heart, and all the windows supposed to be blocked up against the
+light. The soul, blind and deaf as it may often be, cannot always resist
+the intimations all life long, day and night, forced upon it from the
+outer world; its very necessities, nobler far than those of the body,
+even when most degraded, importunate when denied their manna, are to it
+oftentimes a silent or a loud revelation. Then, not to feel and think as
+other beings do with "discourse of reason," is most hard and difficult
+indeed, even for a short time, and on occasions of very inferior moment.
+Being men, we are carried away, willing or unwilling, and often
+unconsciously, by the great common instinct; we keep sailing with the
+tide of humanity, whether in flow or ebb&mdash;fierce as demons and the sons
+of perdition, if that be the temper of the congregating hour&mdash;mild and
+meek as Pity, or the new-born babe, when the afflatus of some divine
+sympathy has breathed through the multitude, nor one creature escaped
+its influence, like a spring day that steals through a murmuring forest,
+till not a single tree, even in the darkest nook, is without some touch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+of the season's sunshine. Think, then, of one who would fain be an
+Atheist, conversing with the "sound, healthy children of the God of
+heaven!" To his reason, which is his solitary pride, arguments might in
+vain be addressed, for he exults in being "an Intellectual All in All,"
+and is a bold-browed sophist to daunt even the eyes of Truth&mdash;eyes which
+can indeed "outstare the eagle" when their ken is directed to heaven,
+but which are turned away in aversion from the human countenance that
+would dare to deny God. Appeal not to the intellect of such a man, but
+to his heart; and let not even that appeal be conveyed in any fixed form
+of words&mdash;but let it be an appeal of the smiles and tears of
+affectionate and loving lips and eyes&mdash;of common joys and common griefs,
+whose contagion is often felt, beyond prevention or cure, where two or
+three are gathered together&mdash;among families thinly sprinkled over the
+wilderness, where, on God's own day, they repair to God's own house, a
+lowly building on the brae, which the Creator of suns and systems
+despiseth not, nor yet the beatings of the few contrite hearts therein
+assembled to worship Him&mdash;in the cathedral's "long-drawn aisles and
+fretted vaults"&mdash;in mighty multitudes all crowded in silence, as beneath
+the shadow of a thunder-cloud, to see some one single human being
+die&mdash;or swaying and swinging backwards and forwards, and to and fro, to
+hail a victorious armament returning from the war of Liberty, with him
+who hath "taken the start of this majestic world" conspicuous from afar
+in front, encircled with music, and with the standard of his unconquered
+country afloat above his head. Thus, and by many thousand other potent
+influences for ever at work, and from which the human heart can never
+make its safe escape, let it flee to the uttermost parts of the earth,
+to the loneliest of the multitude of the isles of the sea, are men, who
+vainly dream that they are Atheists, forced to feel God. Nor happens
+this but rarely&mdash;nor are such "angel-visits few and far between." As the
+most cruel have often, very often, thoughts tender as dew, so have the
+most dark often, very often, thoughts bright as day. The sun's golden
+finger writes the name of God on the clouds, rising or setting, and the
+Atheist, falsely so called, starts in wonder and in delight, which his
+soul, because it is immortal, cannot resist, to behold that Bible
+suddenly opened before his eyes on the sky. Or some old,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> decrepit,
+greyhaired crone, holds out her shrivelled hand, with dim eyes patiently
+fixed on his, silently asking charity&mdash;silently, but in the holy name of
+God; and the Atheist, taken unawares, at the very core of his heart bids
+"God bless her," as he relieves her uncomplaining miseries.</p>
+
+<p>If then Atheists do exist, and if their deathbeds may be described for
+the awful or melancholy instruction of their fellow-men, let them be
+such Atheists as those whom, let us not hesitate to say, we may
+blamelessly love with a troubled affection; for our Faith may not have
+preserved us from sins from which they are free&mdash;and we may give even to
+many of the qualities of their most imperfect and unhappy characters
+almost the name of virtues. No curses on their deathbeds will they be
+heard to utter. No black scowlings&mdash;no horrid gnashing of teeth&mdash;no
+hideous shriekings will there appal the loving ones who watch and weep
+by the side of him who is dying disconsolate. He will hope, and he will
+fear, now that there is a God indeed everywhere present&mdash;visible now in
+the tears that fall, audible now in the sighs that breathe for his
+sake&mdash;in the still small voice. That Being forgets not those by whom he
+has been forgotten; least of all, the poor "Fool who has said in his
+heart there is no God," and who knows at last that a God there is, not
+always in terror and trembling, but as often perhaps in the assurance of
+forgiveness, which, undeserved by the best of the good, may not be
+withheld even from the worst of the bad, if the thought of a God and a
+Saviour pass but for a moment through the darkness of the departing
+spirit&mdash;like a dove shooting swiftly, with its fair plumage, through the
+deep but calm darkness that follows the subsided storm.</p>
+
+<p>So, too, with respect to Deists. Of unbelievers in Christianity there
+are many kinds&mdash;the reckless, the ignorant, the callous, the confirmed,
+the melancholy, the doubting, the despairing&mdash;the <i>good</i>. At their
+deathbeds, too, may the Christian poet, in imagination, take his
+stand&mdash;and there may he even hear</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The still sad music of humanity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To soften and subdue!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Oftener all the sounds and sights there will be full of most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> rueful
+anguish; and that anguish will groan in the poet's lays when his human
+heart, relieved from its load of painful sympathies, shall long
+afterwards be inspired with the pity of poetry, and sing in elegies,
+sublime in their pathos, the sore sufferings and the dim distress that
+clouded and tore the dying spirit, longing, but all unable&mdash;profound
+though its longings be&mdash;as life's daylight is about to close upon that
+awful gloaming, and the night of death to descend in oblivion&mdash;to
+believe in the Redeemer.</p>
+
+<p>Why then turn but to such deathbed, if indeed religion, and not
+superstition, described that scene&mdash;as that of Voltaire? Or even of
+Rousseau, whose dying eyes sought, in the last passion, the sight of the
+green earth, and the blue skies, and the sun shining so brightly, when
+all within the brain of his worshipper was fast growing dimmer and more
+dim&mdash;when all the unsatisfied spirit, that scarcely hoped a future life,
+knew not how it could ever take farewell of the present with tenderness
+enough, and enough of yearning and craving after its disappearing
+beauty, and when as if the whole earth were at that moment beloved even
+as his small peculiar birthplace&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Christian poet, in his humane wisdom, will, for instruction's sake
+of his fellow-men, and for the discovery and the revealment of
+ever-sacred truth, keep aloof from such death-beds as these, or take his
+awful stand beside them to drop the perplexed and pensive tear. For we
+know not what it is that we either hear or see; and holy Conscience,
+hearing through a confused sound, and seeing through an obscure light,
+fears to condemn, when perhaps she ought only to pity&mdash;to judge another,
+when perhaps it is her duty but to use that inward eye for her own
+delinquencies. He, then, who designs to benefit his kind by strains of
+high instruction, will turn from the deathbed of the famous Wit, whose
+brilliant fancy hath waxed dim as that of the clown&mdash;whose malignant
+heart is quaking beneath the Power it had so long derided, with terrors
+over which his hated Christian triumphs&mdash;and whose intellect, once so
+perspicacious that it could see but too well the motes that are in the
+sun, the specks and stains that are in the flowing robe of nature
+herself&mdash;prone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> in miserable contradiction to its better being, to turn
+them as proofs against the power and goodness of the Holy One who
+inhabiteth eternity&mdash;is now palsy-stricken as that of an idiot, and
+knows not even the sound of the name of its once vain and proud
+possessor&mdash;when crowded theatres had risen up with one rustle to honour,
+and then, with deafening acclamations,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Raised a mortal to the skies!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There he is&mdash;it matters not now whether on down or straw&mdash;stretched,
+already a skeleton, and gnashing&mdash;may it be in senselessness, for
+otherwise what pangs are these!&mdash;gnashing his teeth, within lips once so
+eloquent, now white with foam and slaver; and the whole mouth, of yore
+so musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painted
+death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of
+God of all His beams?&mdash;with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of
+the Cross?&mdash;with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood
+and water came from the wound in His blessed side?&mdash;with wit, to drive
+away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the
+stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?&mdash;with wit, to
+deride the ineffable glory of transfigured Godhead on the Mount, and the
+sweet and solemn semblance of the Man Jesus in the garden?&mdash;with wit, to
+darken all the decrees of Providence?&mdash;and with wit,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To shut the gates of Mercy on mankind?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor yet will the Christian poet long dwell in his religious strains,
+though awhile he may linger there, "and from his eyelids wipe the tears
+that sacred pity hath engendered," beside the dying couch of Jean Jaques
+Rousseau&mdash;a couch of turf beneath trees&mdash;for he was ever a lover of
+Nature, though he loved all things living or dead as madmen love. His
+soul, while most spiritual, was sensual still, and with tendrils of
+flesh and blood embraced&mdash;even as it did embrace the balm-breathing form
+of voluptuous woman&mdash;the very phantoms of his most etherealised
+imagination. Vice stained all his virtues&mdash;as roses are seen, in some
+certain soils, and beneath some certain skies, always to be blighted,
+and their fairest petals to bear on them something like blots of blood.
+Over the surface of the mirror of his mind, which reflected so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> much of
+the imagery of man and nature, there was still, here and there, on the
+centre or round the edges, rust-spots, that gave back no image, and
+marred the proportions of the beauty and the grandeur that yet shone
+over the rest of the circle set in the rich carved gold. His disturbed,
+and distracted, and defeated friendships, that all vanished in insane
+suspicions, and seemed to leave his soul as well satisfied in its fierce
+or gloomy void, as when it was filled with airy and glittering visions,
+are all gone for ever now. Those many thoughts and feelings&mdash;so
+melancholy, yet still fair, and lovely, and beautiful&mdash;which, like
+bright birds encaged, with ruffled and drooping wings, once so apt to
+soar, and their music mute, that used to make the wide woods to wring,
+were confined within the wires of his jealous heart&mdash;have now all flown
+away, and are at rest! Who sits beside the wild and wondrous genius,
+whose ravings entrance the world? Who wipes the death-sweat from that
+capacious forehead, once filled with such a multitude of disordered but
+aspiring fancies? Who, that his beloved air of heaven may kiss and cool
+it for the last time, lays open the covering that hides the marble
+sallowness of Rousseau's sin-and-sorrow-haunted breast? One of Nature's
+least-gifted children&mdash;to whose eyes nor earth nor heaven ever beamed
+with beauty&mdash;to whose heart were known but the meanest charities of
+nature; yet mean as they were, how much better in such an hour than all
+his imaginings most magnificent! For had he not suffered his own
+offspring to pass away from his eyes, even like the wood-shadows, only
+less beloved and less regretted? And in the very midst of the
+prodigality of love and passion, which he had poured out over the
+creations of his ever-distempered fancy, let his living children, his
+own flesh and blood, disappear as paupers in a chance-governed world? A
+world in which neither parental nor filial love were more than the names
+of nonentities&mdash;Father, Son, Daughter, Child, but empty syllables, which
+philosophy heeded not&mdash;or rather loved them in their emptiness, but
+despised, hated, or feared them, when for a moment they seemed pregnant
+with a meaning from heaven, and each in its holy utterance signifying
+God!</p>
+
+<p>No great moral or religious lesson can well be drawn, or say rather so
+well, from such anomalous deathbeds, as from those of common
+unbelievers. To show, in all its divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> power, the blessedness of the
+Christian's faith, it must be compared, rather than contrasted, with the
+faith of the best and wisest of Deists. The ascendancy of the heavenly
+over the earthly will then be apparent&mdash;as apparent as the superior
+lustre of a star to that of a lighted-up window in the night. For above
+all other things in which the Christian is happier than the Deist&mdash;with
+the latter, the life beyond the grave is but a dark hope&mdash;to the former,
+"immortality has been brought to light by the Gospel." That difference
+embraces the whole spirit. It may be less felt&mdash;less seen when life is
+quick and strong; for this earth alone has much and many things to
+embrace and enchain our being&mdash;but in death the difference is as between
+night and day.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>&mdash;In the later editions of "The Omnipresence of the Deity," the
+passage animadverted on in the preceding chapter has been altered as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lo! there, in yonder spectre-haunted room,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What sightless demons horrified the gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When pale and shivering, and bedew'd with fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dying Sceptic felt his hour draw near!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the last throes with anguish lined his cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He yell'd for mercy with a hollow shriek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mutter'd some accents of unmeaning prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lock'd his white lips&mdash;let God the rest declare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go, child of Darkness! see a Christian die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No horror pales his lip, or dims his eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hope Religion pillows on his heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When with a falt'ring hand he waves adieu<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hearts as tender as their tears are true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meek as an infant to the mother's breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So to our God the yielding soul retires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in one sigh of sainted peace expires."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.</h2>
+
+<h3>FIRST CANTICLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The present Age, which, after all, is a very pretty and pleasant one, is
+feelingly alive and widely awake to the manifold delights and advantages
+with which the study of Natural History swarms, and especially that
+branch of it which unfolds the character and habits, physical, moral,
+and intellectual, of those most interesting and admirable
+creatures&mdash;Birds. It is familiar not only with the shape and colour of
+beak, bill, claw, talon, and plume, but with the purposes for which they
+are designed, and with the instincts which guide their use in the
+beautiful economy of all-gracious Nature. We remember the time when the
+very word Ornithology would have required interpretation in mixed
+company; when a naturalist was looked on as a sort of out-of-the-way but
+amiable monster. Now, one seldom meets with man, woman, or child, who
+does not know a hawk from a handsaw, or even, to adopt the more learned
+reading, from a heron-shew; a black swan is no longer erroneously
+considered a <i>rara avis</i> any more than a black sheep; while the Glasgow
+Gander himself, no longer apocryphal, has taken his place in the
+national creed, belief in his existence being merely blended with wonder
+at his magnitude, and some surprise perhaps among the scientific that he
+should be as yet the sole specimen of that enormous Anser.</p>
+
+<p>The chief cause of this advancement of knowledge in one of its most
+delightful departments, has been the gradual extension of its study from
+stale books written by men, to that book ever fresh from the hand of
+God. And the second&mdash;another yet the same&mdash;has been the gradual change
+wrought by a philosophical spirit in the observation, delineation, and
+arrangement of the facts and laws with which the science is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> conversant,
+and which it exhibits in the most perfect harmony and order. Neophytes
+now range for themselves, according to their capacities and
+opportunities, the fields, woods, rivers, lakes, and seas; and
+proficients, no longer confining themselves to mere nomenclature, enrich
+their works with anecdotes and traits of character, which, without
+departure from truth, have imbued bird-biography with the double charm
+of reality and romance.</p>
+
+<p>Compare the intensity and truth of any natural knowledge insensibly
+acquired by observation in very early youth, with that corresponding to
+it picked up in later life from books! In fact, the habit of
+distinguishing between things as different, or of similar forms,
+colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and childhood, and boyhood,
+in a free intercourse and communion with Nature, while we are merely
+seeking and finding the divine joy of novelty and beauty, perpetually
+occurring before our eyes in all her haunts, may be made the foundation
+of an accuracy of judgment of inappreciable value as an intellectual
+endowment. So entirely is this true, that we know many observant
+persons&mdash;that is, observant in all things intimately related with their
+own pursuits, and with the experience of their own early education&mdash;who,
+with all the pains they could take in after life, have never been able
+to distinguish by name, when they saw them, above half-a-dozen, if so
+many, of our British singing-birds; while as to knowing them by their
+song, that is wholly beyond the reach of their uninstructed ear, and a
+shilfa chants to them like a yellow yoldrin. On seeing a small bird
+peeping out of a hole in the eaves, and especially on hearing him
+chatter, they shrewdly suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does not
+by any means follow that their suspicions are always verified; and
+though, when sitting with her white breast so lovely out of the "auld
+clay bigging" in the window-corner, he cannot mistake Mistress Swallow,
+yet when flitting in fly-search over the stream, and ever and anon
+dipping her wing-tips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance that
+he misnames her Miss Marten.</p>
+
+<p>What constant caution is necessary during the naturalist's perusal even
+of the very best books! From the very best we can only obtain knowledge
+at second-hand, and this, like a story circulated among village gossips,
+is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it passes from one to
+another;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> but in field-study we go at once to the fountain-head, and
+obtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the theories and opinions of
+previous observers. Hence it is that the utility of books becomes
+obvious. You witness with your own eyes some puzzling, perplexing,
+strange, and unaccountable&mdash;fact; twenty different statements of it have
+been given by twenty different ornithologists; you consult them all, and
+getting a hint from one, and a hint from another, here a glimmer of
+light to be followed, and there a gloom of darkness to be avoided&mdash;why,
+who knows but that in the end you do yourself solve the mystery, and
+absolutely become not only happy but illustrious? People sitting in
+their own parlour with their feet on the fender, or in the sanctum of
+some museum, staring at stuffed specimens, imagine themselves
+naturalists; and in their presumptuous and insolent ignorance, which is
+often total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have
+for many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiar
+with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, and
+set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and
+perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a
+system in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion with
+nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied&mdash;nor is he anything else than a
+slave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons in the
+fields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation everywhere
+displays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder,
+and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. The
+rich boy is to be envied, nor is he anything else than a king. The one
+sits bewildered among words, the other walks enlightened among things;
+the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substance&mdash;the
+very essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve years old he may be a
+better naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to
+outlive old Tommy Balmer.</p>
+
+<p>In education&mdash;late or early&mdash;for heaven's sake let us never separate
+things and words! They are married in nature; and what God hath put
+together let no man put asunder&mdash;'tis a fatal divorce. Without things,
+words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than drag
+out an useless existence in the dark; without words, their stay and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+support, things unaccountably disappear out of the store-house, and may
+be for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, stronger
+than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for
+ever happy in its bright prison-house. On this principle, it is indeed
+surprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the most
+interesting parts of natural history&mdash;ay, even a babe in arms. Remember
+Coleridge's beautiful lines to the Nightingale:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"That strain again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, capable of no articulate sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mars all things with his imitative lisp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How he would place his hand beside his ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His little hand, the small forefinger up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bid us listen! <i>and I deem it wise</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To make him Nature's child</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How we come to love the Birds of Bewick, and White, and the two Wilsons,
+and Montague, and Mudie, and Knapp, and Selby, and Swainson, and
+Audubon, and many others familiar with their haunts and habits, their
+affections and their passions, till we feel that they are indeed our
+fellow-creatures, and part of one wise and wonderful system! If there be
+sermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin and
+vesper, of the lark, who at heaven's gate sings&mdash;of the wren, who pipes
+her thanksgivings as the slant sunbeam shoots athwart the mossy portal
+of the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above the
+waterfall! In cave-roof? Yea&mdash;we have seen it so&mdash;just beneath the
+cornice. But most frequently we have detected her procreant cradle on
+old mossy stump, mouldering walls or living rock&mdash;sometimes in cleft of
+yew-tree or hawthorn&mdash;for hang the globe with its imperceptible orifice
+in the sunshine or the storm, and St. Catharine sits within heedless of
+the outer world, counting her beads with her sensitive breast that
+broods in bliss over the priceless pearls.</p>
+
+<p>Ay, the men we have named, and many other blameless idolaters of Nature,
+have worshipped her in a truly religious spirit, and have taught us
+their religion. All our great poets have loved the <i>Minnesingers</i> of the
+woods&mdash;Thomson, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, as dearly as Spenser, and
+Shake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>speare, and Milton. From the inarticulate language of the groves,
+they have inhaled the enthusiasm that inspired some of the finest of
+their own immortal strains. "Lonely wanderer of Nature" must every poet
+be&mdash;and though often self-wrapt his wanderings through a spiritual world
+of his own, yet as some fair flower silently asks his eye to look on it,
+some glad bird his ear solicits with a song, how intense is then his
+perception&mdash;his emotion how profound&mdash;while his spirit is thus appealed
+to, through all its human sensibilities, by the beauty and the joy
+perpetual even in the most solitary places!</p>
+
+<p>Our moral being owes deep obligation to all who assist us to study
+nature aright; for believe us, it is high and rare knowledge to know and
+to have the true and full use of our eyes. Millions go to the grave in
+old age without ever having learned it; they were just beginning,
+perhaps, to acquire it when they sighed to think that "they who look out
+of the windows were darkened;" and that, while they had been instructed
+how to look, sad shadows had fallen on the whole face of Nature, and
+that the time for those intuitions was gone for ever. But the science of
+seeing has now found favour in our eyes; and blessings be with them who
+can discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest of
+Nature's works&mdash;who can see as distinctly the finger of God in the
+lustre of the humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that of
+the star of Jove shining sole in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Take up now almost any book you may on any branch of Natural History,
+and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and
+classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain
+ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelation
+of the sublime varieties of the inferior&mdash;as we choose to call
+it&mdash;creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit rather
+to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and
+design. With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
+day gone by showed us a science that was but a skeleton&mdash;little but dry
+bones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
+day that is now, have been desirous to show us a living, breathing, and
+moving body&mdash;to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and its
+spirit. Ere another century elapse, how familiar may men be with all the
+families<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, with
+all the interdependencies of their characters and their kindreds,
+perhaps even with the mystery of that instinct which now is seen working
+wonders, not only beyond the power of reason to comprehend, but of
+imagination to conceive!</p>
+
+<p>How deeply enshrouded are felt to be the mysteries of Nature, when,
+thousands of years after Aristotle, we hear Audubon confess his utter
+ignorance of what migrations and non-migrations mean&mdash;that 'tis hard to
+understand why such general laws as these should be&mdash;though their benign
+operation is beautifully seen in the happiness provided alike for
+all&mdash;whether they reside in their own comparatively small localities,
+nor ever wish to leave them&mdash;or at stated seasons instinctively fly away
+over thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for a while on some
+spot adapted to their necessities, of which they had prescience afar
+off, though seemingly wafted thither like leaves upon the wind! Verily,
+as great a mystery is that Natural Religion by the theist studied in
+woods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as that Revelation which
+philosophers will not believe because they do not understand&mdash;"the
+blinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest and holiest
+happiness&mdash;Faith!</p>
+
+<p>We must not now go a bird-nesting, but first time we do we shall put
+Bishop Mant's "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop&mdash;who must have
+been an indefatigable bird-nester in his boyhood&mdash;though we answer for
+him that he never stole but one egg out of four, and left undisturbed
+the callow young&mdash;treats of those beauteous and wondrous structures in a
+style that might make Professor Rennie jealous, who has written like a
+Vitruvius on the architecture of birds. He expatiates with uncontrolled
+delight on the unwearied activity of the architects, who, without any
+apprenticeship to the trade, are journeymen, nay, master-builders, the
+first spring of their full-fledged lives; with no other tools but a
+bill, unless we count their claws, which however seem, and that only in
+some kinds, to be used but in carrying materials. With their breasts and
+whole bodies, indeed, most of them round off the soft insides of their
+procreant cradles, till they fit each brooding bunch of feathers to a
+hairbreadth, as it sits close and low on eggs or eyeless young, a
+<i>leetle</i> higher raised up above their gaping babies, as they wax from
+downy infancy into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> plumier childhood, which they do how swiftly! and
+how soon have they flown! You look some sunny morning into the bush, and
+the abode in which they seemed so <i>cosy</i> the day before is utterly
+forsaken by the joyous ingrates&mdash;now feebly fluttering in the narrow
+grove, to them a wide world teeming with delight and wonder&mdash;to be
+thought of never more. With all the various materials used by them in
+building their different domiciles, the Bishop is as familiar as with
+the sole material of his own wig&mdash;though, by the by, last time we had
+the pleasure of seeing and sitting by him, he wore his own hair&mdash;"but
+that not much;" for, like our own, his sconce was bald, and, like it,
+showed the organ of constructiveness as fully developed as Christopher
+or a Chaffinch. He is perfectly well acquainted, too, with all the
+diversities of their modes of building&mdash;their orders of
+architecture&mdash;and eke with all those of situation chosen by the
+kinds&mdash;whether seemingly simple, in cunning that deceives by a show of
+carelessness and heedlessness of notice, or with craft of concealment
+that baffles the most searching eye&mdash;hanging their beloved secret in
+gloom not impervious to sun and air&mdash;or, trustful in man's love of his
+own home, affixing the nest beneath the eaves, or in the flowers of the
+lattice, kept shut for their sakes, or half-opened by fair hands of
+virgins whose eyes gladden with heart-born brightness as each morning
+they mark the growing beauty of the brood, till they smile to see one
+almost as large as its parent sitting on the rim of the nest, when all
+at once it hops over, and, as it flutters away like a leaf, seems
+surprised that it can fly!</p>
+
+<p>Yet there are still a few wretched quacks among us whom we may some day
+perhaps drive down into the dirt. There are idiots who will not even
+suffer sheep, cows, horses, and dogs, to escape the disgusting
+perversions of their anile anecdotage&mdash;who, by all manner of drivelling
+lies, libel even the common domestic fowl, and impair the reputation of
+the bantam. Newspapers are sometimes so infested by the trivial trash,
+that in the nostrils of a naturalist they smell on the breakfast-table
+like rotten eggs; and there are absolutely volumes of the slaver bound
+in linen, and lettered with the names of the expectorators on the
+outside, resembling annuals&mdash;we almost fear with prints. In such hands,
+the ass loses his natural attributes, and takes the character of his
+owner; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> as the anecdote-monger is seen astride on his cuddy, you
+wonder what may be the meaning of the apparition, for we defy you to
+distinguish the one donk from the other, the rider from the ridden,
+except by the more inexpressive countenance of the one, and the ears of
+the other in uncomputed longitude dangling or erect.</p>
+
+<p>We can bear this libellous gossip least patiently of all with birds. If
+a ninny have some stories about a wonderful goose, let him out with
+them, and then waddle away with his fat friend into the stackyard&mdash;where
+they may take sweet counsel together in the "fause-house." Let him, with
+open mouth and grozet eyes, say what he chooses of "Pretty Poll," as she
+clings in her cage, by beak or claws, to stick or wire, and in her
+naughty vocabulary let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Aspasia
+inspiring a Pericles. But, unless his crown itch for the Crutch, let him
+spare the linnet on the briery bush among the broom&mdash;the laverock on the
+dewy braird or in the rosy cloud&mdash;the swan on her shadow&mdash;the eagle in
+his eyrie, in the sun, or at sea.</p>
+
+<p>The great ornithologists and the true are the authorities that are
+constantly correcting those errors of popular opinion about the fowls of
+the air, which in every country, contrary to the evidence of the senses,
+and in spite of observations that may be familiar to all, gain credence
+with the weak and ignorant, and in process of time compose even a sort
+of system of the vilest superstition. It would be a very curious inquiry
+to trace the operation of the causes that, in different lands, have
+produced with respect to birds national prejudices of admiration or
+contempt, love or even hatred; and in doing so, we should have to open
+up some strange views of the influence of imagination on the head and
+heart. It may be remarked that an excuse will be generally found for
+such fallacies in the very sources from which they spring; but no excuse
+can be found&mdash;on the contrary, in every sentence the fool scribbles, a
+glaring argument is shown in favour of his being put to a lingering and
+cruel death&mdash;the fool who keeps gossiping every week in the year,
+penny-a-line-wise, with a gawky face and a mawkish mind, about God's
+creatures to whom reason has been denied, but instinct given, in order
+that they may be happy on moor and mountain, in the hedge-roots and on
+the tops of heaven-kissing trees&mdash;by the side of rills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> whose sweet low
+voice gives no echo in the wild, and on the hollow thunder of seas on
+which they sit in safety around the sinking ship, or from all her
+shrieks flee away to some island and are at rest.</p>
+
+<p>Turn to the true Ornithologist, and how beautiful, each in the
+adaptation of its own structure to its own life, every bird that walks
+the land, wades the water, or skims the air! In his pages, pictured by
+pen or pencil, all is wondrous&mdash;as nature ever is to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The quiet eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>even while gazing on the inferior creatures of that creation to which we
+belong, and are linked in being's mysterious chain&mdash;till our breath,
+like theirs, expire. All is wondrous&mdash;but nothing monstrous in his
+delineations&mdash;for the more we know of nature in her infinite varieties,
+her laws reveal themselves to us in more majestic simplicity, and we are
+inspired with awe, solemn but sweet, by the incomprehensible, yet in
+part comprehended, magnificence of Truth. The writings of such men are
+the gospel of nature&mdash;and if the apocrypha be bound up along with
+it&mdash;'tis well; for in it, too, there is felt to be inspiration&mdash;and
+when, in good time, purified from error, the leaves all make but one
+Bible.</p>
+
+<p>Hark to the loud, clear, mellow, bold song of the <span class="smcap">Blackbird</span>. There he
+flits along upon a strong wing, with his yellow bill visible in
+distance, and disappears in the silent wood. Not long silent. It is a
+spring-day in our imagination&mdash;his clay-wall nest holds his mate at the
+foot of the Silver-fir, and he is now perched on its pinnacle. That
+thrilling hymn will go vibrating down the stem till it reaches her
+brooding breast. The whole vernal air is filled with the murmur and the
+glitter of insects; but the blackbird's song is over all other symptoms
+of love and life, and seems to call upon the leaves to unfold into
+happiness. It is on that one Tree-top, conspicuous among many thousands
+on the fine breast of wood&mdash;here and there, a pine mingling not unmeetly
+with the prevailing oak&mdash;that the forest-minstrel sits in his
+inspirations. The rock above is one which we have often climbed. There
+lies the glorious Loch and all its islands&mdash;one dearer than the rest to
+eye and imagination, with its old Religious House&mdash;year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> after year
+crumbling away unheeded into more entire ruin. Far away, a sea of
+mountains, with all their billowing summits distinct in the sky, and now
+uncertain and changeful as the clouds. Yonder Castle stands well on the
+peninsula among the trees which the herons inhabit. Those coppice-woods
+on the other shore, stealing up to the heathery rocks and sprinkled
+birches, are the haunts of the roe. That great glen, that stretches
+sullenly away into the distant darkness, has been for ages the birth and
+the death-place of the red-deer. The cry of an Eagle! There he hangs
+poised in the sunlight, and now he flies off towards the sea. But again
+the song of our <span class="smcap">Blackbird</span> rises like "a steam of rich distilled
+perfumes," and our heart comes back to him upon the pinnacle of his own
+Home-tree. The source of song is yet in the happy creature's heart&mdash;but
+the song itself has subsided, like a rivulet that has been rejoicing in
+a sudden shower among the hills; the bird drops down among the balmy
+branches, and the other faint songs which that bold anthem had drowned,
+are heard at a distance, and seem to encroach every moment on the
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>You say you greatly prefer the song of the <span class="smcap">Thrush</span>. Pray, why set such
+delightful singers by the ears? We dislike the habit that very many
+people have of trying everything by a scale. Nothing seems to them to be
+good positively&mdash;only relatively. Now, it is true wisdom to be charmed
+with what is charming, to live in it for the time being, and compare the
+emotion with no former emotion whatever&mdash;unless it be unconsciously in
+the working of an imagination set agoing by delight. Although,
+therefore, we cannot say that we prefer the Thrush to the Blackbird, yet
+we agree with you in thinking him a most delightful bird. Where a Thrush
+is, we defy you to anticipate his song in the morning. He is indeed an
+early riser. By the way, Chanticleer is far from being so. You hear him
+crowing away from shortly after midnight, and, in your simplicity, may
+suppose him to be up and strutting about the premises. Far from it;&mdash;he
+is at that very moment perched in his polygamy, between two of his
+fattest wives. The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for several hours
+to come; while all the time the Thrush, having long ago rubbed his eyes,
+is on his topmost twig, broad awake, and charming the ear of dawn with
+his beautiful vociferation. During mid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>-day he disappears, and is mute;
+but again, at dewy even, as at dewy morn, he pours his pipe like a
+prodigal, nor ceases sometimes when night has brought the moon and
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>Best beloved, and most beautiful of all Thrushes that ever broke from
+the blue-spotted shell!&mdash;thou who, for five springs, hast "hung thy
+procreant cradle" among the roses, and honeysuckles, and ivy, and
+clematis that embower in bloom the lattice of our Cottage-study&mdash;how
+farest thou now in the snow? Consider the whole place as your own, my
+dear bird; and remember, that when the gardener's children sprinkle food
+for you and yours all along your favourite haunts, that it is done by
+our orders. And when all the earth is green again, and all the sky blue,
+you will welcome us to our rural domicile, with light feet running
+before us among the winter leaves, and then skim away to your new nest
+in the old spot, then about to be somewhat more cheerful in the
+undisturbing din of the human life within the flowery walls.</p>
+
+<p>Nay&mdash;how can we forget what is for ever before our eyes! Blessed be
+Thou&mdash;on thy shadowy bed, belonging equally to earth and heaven&mdash;O Isle!
+who art called the Beautiful! and who of thyself canst make all the Lake
+one floating Paradise&mdash;even were her shore-hills sylvan no
+more&mdash;groveless the bases of all her remoter mountains&mdash;effaced that
+loveliest splendour, sun-painted on their sky-piercing cliffs. And can
+it be that we have forsaken Thee! Fairy-land and Love-land of our youth!
+Hath imagination left our brain, and passion our heart, so that we can
+bear banishment from Thee and yet endure life! Such loss not yet is
+ours&mdash;witness these gushing tears. But Duty, "stern daughter of the
+voice of God," dooms us to breathe our morning and evening orisons far
+from hearing and sight of Thee, whose music and whose light continue
+gladdening other ears and other eyes&mdash;as if ours had there never
+listened&mdash;and never gazed. As if thy worshipper&mdash;and sun! moon! and
+stars! he asks ye if he loved not you and your images&mdash;as if thy
+worshipper&mdash;O Windermere! were&mdash;dead! And does duty dispense no reward
+to them who sacrifice at her bidding what was once the very soul of
+life? Yes! an exceeding great reward&mdash;ample as the heart's desire&mdash;for
+contentment is borne of obedience&mdash;where no repinings are, the wings of
+thought are imped beyond the power of the eagle's plumes; and happy are
+we now&mdash;with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> the human smiles and voices we love even more than thine,
+thou fairest region of nature! happier than when we rippled in our
+pinnace through the billowy moonlight&mdash;than when we sat alone on the
+mountain within the thunder-cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Why do the songs of the Blackbird and Thrush make us think of the
+songless <span class="smcap">Starling</span>? It matters not. We do think of him, and see him
+too&mdash;a lovable bird, and his abode is majestic. What an object of wonder
+and awe is an old Castle to a boyish imagination! Its height how
+dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear carries him, and hangs
+him over the battlements! What beauty in those unapproachable wall
+flowers, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice,
+and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below, is the sound of a
+stream the eye cannot reach&mdash;of a waterfall echoing for ever among the
+black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of
+the old Castle&mdash;but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and
+imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals
+him&mdash;he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There and
+then it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard something wild and
+wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of the
+battlements, or flew out of the chinks and crannies. There were Martens
+too, so different in their looks from the pretty
+House-Swallows&mdash;Jack-daws clamouring afresh at every time we waved our
+caps, or vainly slung a pebble towards their nests&mdash;and one grove of
+elms, to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, ever and anon,
+some noiseless Heron from the Muirs.</p>
+
+<p>Ruins! Among all the external objects of imagination, surely they are
+most affecting! Some sumptuous edifice of a former age, still standing
+in its undecayed strength, has undoubtedly a great command over us, from
+the ages that have flowed over it; but the mouldering edifice which
+Nature has begun to win to herself, and to dissolve into her own bosom,
+is far more touching to the heart, and more awakening to the spirit. It
+is beautiful in its decay&mdash;not merely because green leaves, and wild
+flowers, and creeping mosses soften its rugged frowns, but because they
+have sown themselves on the decay of greatness; they are monitors to our
+fancy, like the flowers on a grave, of the untroubled rest of the dead.
+Bat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>tlements riven by the hand of time, and cloistered arches reft and
+rent, speak to us of the warfare and of the piety of our ancestors, of
+the pride of their might, and the consolations of their sorrow: they
+revive dim shadows of departed life, evoked from the land of
+forgetfulness; but they touch us more deeply when the brightness which
+the sun flings on the broken arches, and the warbling of birds that are
+nestled in the chambers of princes, and the moaning of winds through the
+crevices of towers, round which the surges of war were shattered and
+driven back, lay those phantoms again to rest in their silent bed, and
+show us, in the monuments of human life and power, the visible footsteps
+of Time and Oblivion coming on in their everlasting and irresistible
+career, to sweep down our perishable race, and to reduce all the forms
+of our momentary being into the undistinguishable elements of their
+original nothing.</p>
+
+<p>What is there below the skies like the place of mighty and departed
+cities? the vanishing or vanished capitals of renowned empires? There is
+no other such desolation. The solitudes of nature may be wild and drear,
+but they are not like the solitude from which human glory is swept away.
+The overthrow or decay of mighty human power is, of all thoughts that
+can enter the mind, the most overwhelming. The whole imagination is at
+once stirred by the prostration of that, round which so many high
+associations have been collected for so many ages. Beauty seems born but
+to perish, and its fragility is seen and felt to be inherent in it by a
+law of its being. But power gives stability, as it were, to human
+thought, and we forget our own perishable nature in the spectacle of
+some abiding and enduring greatness. Our own little span of years&mdash;our
+own confined region of space&mdash;are lost in the endurance and far-spread
+dominion of some mighty state, and we feel as if we partook of its
+deep-set and triumphant strength. When, therefore, a great and ancient
+empire falls into pieces, or when fragments of its power are heard rent
+asunder, like column after column disparting from some noble edifice, in
+sad conviction, we feel as if all the cities of men were built on
+foundations beneath which the earthquake sleeps. The same doom seems to
+be imminent over all the other kingdoms that still stand; and in the
+midst of such changes, and decays, and overthrows&mdash;or as we read<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> of
+them of old&mdash;we look, under such emotions, on all power as
+foundationless, and in our wide imagination embrace empires covered only
+with the ruins of their desolation. Yet such is the pride of the human
+spirit, that it often unconsciously, under the influence of such
+imagination, strives to hide from itself the utter nothingness of its
+mightiest works. And when all its glories are visibly crumbling into
+dust, it creates some imaginary power to overthrow the fabrics of human
+greatness&mdash;and thus attempts to derive a kind of mournful triumph even
+in its very fall. Thus, when nations have faded away in their sins and
+vices, rotten at the heart and palsied in all their limbs, we strive not
+to think of that sad internal decay, but imagine some mighty power
+smiting empires and cutting short the records of mortal magnificence.
+Thus Fate and Destiny are said in our imagination to lay our glories
+low. Thus, even, the calm and silent air of Oblivion has been thought of
+as an unsparing Power. Time, too, though in moral sadness wisely called
+a shadow, has been clothed with terrific attributes, and the sweep of
+his scythe has shorn the towery diadem of cities. Thus the mere sigh in
+which we expire, has been changed into active power&mdash;and all the nations
+have with one voice called out "Death!" And while mankind have sunk, and
+fallen, and disappeared in the helplessness of their own mortal being,
+we have still spoken of powers arrayed against them&mdash;powers that are in
+good truth only another name for their own weaknesses. Thus imagination
+is for ever fighting against truth&mdash;and even when humbled, her visions
+are sublime&mdash;conscious even amongst saddest ruin of her own immortality.</p>
+
+<p>Higher and higher than ever rose the tower of Belus, uplifted by
+ecstasy, soars the <span class="smcap">Lark</span>, the lyrical poet of the sky. Listen, listen!
+and the more remote the bird the louder seems his hymn in heaven. He
+seems, in such altitude, to have left the earth for ever, and to have
+forgotten his lowly nest. The primroses and the daisies, and all the
+sweet hill-flowers, must be unremembered in that lofty region of light.
+But just as the Lark is lost&mdash;he and his song together&mdash;as if his
+orisons had been accepted&mdash;both are seen and heard fondly wavering
+earthwards, and in a little while he is walking with his graceful crest
+contented along the furrows of the brairded corn, or on the clover lea
+that in man's memory has not felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> the ploughshare; or after a pause, in
+which he seems dallying with a home-sick passion, drooping down like one
+dead, beside his mate in her shallow nest.</p>
+
+<p>Of all birds to whom is given dominion over the air, the Lark alone lets
+loose the power that is in his wings only for the expression of love and
+gratitude. The eagle sweeps in passion of hunger&mdash;poised in the sky his
+ken is searching for prey on sea or sward&mdash;his flight is ever animated
+by destruction. The dove seems still to be escaping from something that
+pursues&mdash;afraid of enemies even in the dangerless solitudes where the
+old forests repose in primeval peace. The heron, high over houseless
+moors, seems at dusk fearful in her laborious flight, and weariedly
+gathers her long wings on the tree-top, as if thankful that day is done,
+and night again ready with its rest. "The blackening trains o' craws to
+their repose" is an image that affects the heart of "mortal man who
+liveth here by toil," through sympathy with creatures partaking with him
+a common lot. The swallow, for ever on the wing, and wheeling fitfully
+before fancy's eyes in element adapted for perpetual pastime, is flying
+but to feed&mdash;for lack of insects prepares to forsake the land of its
+nativity, and yearns for the blast to bear it across the sea. Thou
+alone, O Lark! hast wings given thee that thou mayest be perfectly
+happy&mdash;none other bird but thou can at once soar and sing&mdash;and
+heavenward thou seemest to be borne, not more by those twinkling pinions
+than by the ever-varying, ever-deepening melody effusing from thy heart.</p>
+
+<p>How imagination unifies! then most intensive when working with and in
+the heart. Who thinks, when profoundly listening with his eyes shut to
+the warbling air, that there is another lark in creation? <i>The</i>
+lark&mdash;sole as the season&mdash;or the rainbow. We can fancy he sings to charm
+our own particular ear&mdash;to please us descends into silence&mdash;for our
+sakes erects his crest as he walks confidingly near our feet. Not till
+the dream-circle, of which ourselves are the centre, dissolves or
+subsides, do the fairest sights and sweetest sounds in nature lose their
+relationship to us the beholder and hearer, and relapse into the common
+property of all our kind. To self appertains the whole sensuous as well
+as the whole spiritual world. Egoism is the creator of all beauty and
+all bliss, of all hope and of all faith. Even thus doth imagination
+unify<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> Sabbath worship. All our beloved Scotland is to the devout breast
+on that day one House of God. Each congregation&mdash;however far
+apart&mdash;hears but one hymn&mdash;sympathy with all is an all-comprehensive
+self&mdash;and Christian love of our brethren is evolved from the conviction
+that we have ourselves a soul to be saved or lost.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, methinks, imagination loveth just as well to pursue an opposite
+process, and to furnish food to the heart in separate picture after
+separate picture, one and all imbued not with the same but congenial
+sentiment, and therefore succeeding one another at her will, be her will
+intimated by mild bidding or imperial command. In such mood imagination,
+in still series, visions a thousand parish-kirks, each with its own
+characteristic localities, Sabbath-sanctified; distributes the beauty of
+that hallowed day in allotments all over the happy land&mdash;so that in one
+Sabbath there are a thousand Sabbaths.</p>
+
+<p>Keep carolling, then, all together, ye countless Larks, till heaven is
+one hymn! Imagination thinks she sees each particular field that sends
+up its own singer to the sky&mdash;the spot of each particular nest. And of
+the many hearts all over loveliest Scotland in the sweet vernal season
+a-listening your lays, she is with the quiet beatings of the happy, with
+the tumult in them that would wish to break! The little maiden by the
+well in the brae-side above the cottage, with the Bible on her knees,
+left in tendance of an infant&mdash;the palsied crone placed safely in the
+sunshine till after service&mdash;the sickly student meditating in the shade,
+and somewhat sadly thinking that these spring flowers are the last his
+eyes may see&mdash;lovers walking together on the Sabbath before their
+marriage to the house of God&mdash;life-wearied wanderers without a
+home&mdash;remorseful men touched by the innocent happiness they cannot help
+hearing in heaven&mdash;the sceptic&mdash;the unbeliever&mdash;the atheist to whom
+"hope comes not that comes to all." What different meanings to such
+different auditors hath the same music at the same moment filling the
+same sky!</p>
+
+<p>Does the Lark ever sing in winter? Ay, sometimes January is visited with
+a May-day hour; and in the genial glimpse, though the earth be yet barer
+than the sky, the Lark, mute for months, feels called on by the sun to
+sing, not so near to heaven's gate, and a shorter than vernal lyric, or
+during that sweetest season when neither he nor you can say whether it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+is summer or but spring. Unmated yet, nor of mate solicitous, in pure
+joy of heart he cannot refrain from ascent and song; but the snow-clouds
+look cold, and ere he has mounted as high again as the church-spire, the
+aimless impulse dies, and he comes wavering down silently to the yet
+unprimrosed brae.</p>
+
+<p>In our boyish days, we never felt that the Spring had really come till
+the clear-singing Lark went careering before our gladdened eyes away up
+to heaven. Then all the earth wore a vernal look, and the ringing sky
+said, "Winter is over and gone." As we roamed, on a holiday, over the
+wide pastoral moors, to angle in the lochs and pools, unless the day
+were very cloudy the song of some lark or other was still warbling
+aloft, and made a part of our happiness. The creature could not have
+been more joyful in the skies than we were on the greensward. We, too,
+had our wings, and flew through our holiday. Thou soul of glee! who
+still leddest our flight in all our pastimes&mdash;representative child of
+Erin!&mdash;wildest of the wild&mdash;brightest of the bright&mdash;boldest of the
+bold!&mdash;the lark-loved vales in their stillness were no home for thee.
+The green glens of ocean, created by swelling and subsiding storms, or
+by calms around thy ship transformed into immeasurable plains, they
+filled thy fancy with images dominant over the memories of the steadfast
+earth. The petterel and the halcyon were the birds the sailor loved, and
+he forgot the songs of the inland woods in the moanings that haunt the
+very heart of the tumultuous sea. Of that ship nothing was ever known
+but that she perished. He, too, the grave and thoughtful English boy,
+whose exquisite scholarship we all so enthusiastically admired, without
+one single particle of hopeless envy&mdash;and who accompanied us on all our
+wildest expeditions, rather from affection to his playmates than any
+love of their sports&mdash;he who, timid and unadventurous as he seemed to
+be, yet rescued little Marian of the Brae from a drowning death when so
+many grown-up men stood aloof in selfish fear&mdash;gone, too, for ever art
+thou, our beloved Edward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant years in
+the Oriental clime,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&mdash;&mdash;"on Hoogley's banks afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looks down on thy lone tomb the Evening Star."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet how pale thou ever wast;
+thou who sat'st then by the Sailor's side, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> listened to his sallies
+with a mournful smile&mdash;friend! dearest to our soul! loving us far better
+than we deserved; for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all our
+frailties&mdash;and in those days of hope from thy lips how elevating was
+praise! Yet how seldom do we think of thee! For months&mdash;years&mdash;not at
+all&mdash;not once&mdash;sometimes not even when by some chance we hear your name!
+It meets our eyes written on books that once belonged to you and that
+you gave us&mdash;and yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we sank down
+to the floor on hearing thou wast dead&mdash;ungrateful to thy memory for
+many years we were not&mdash;but it faded away till we forgot thee utterly,
+except when sleep showed thy grave!</p>
+
+<p>Methinks we hear the song of the <span class="smcap">Grey Lintie</span>, the darling bird of
+Scotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. When
+the simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied to
+the maiden the words, "my bonnie burdie," they must have been thinking
+of the Grey Lintie&mdash;its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure&mdash;its shape
+elegant yet unobtrusive&mdash;and its song various without any effort&mdash;now
+rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor riotous&mdash;now tender, almost
+mournful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, are all its habits,
+endearing and delightful. It is social, yet not averse to solitude,
+singing often in groups, and as often by itself in the furze brake, or
+on the briery knoll. You often find the lintie's nest in the most
+solitary places&mdash;in some small self-sown clump of trees by the brink of
+a wild hill-stream, or on the tangled edge of a forest; and just as
+often you find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden, or in a bower
+within, or even in an old gooseberry bush that has grown into a sort of
+tree.</p>
+
+<p>One wild and beautiful place we well remember&mdash;ay, the very bush, in
+which we first found a grey lintie's nest&mdash;for in our parish, from some
+cause or other, it was rather a rarish bird. That far-away day is as
+distinct as the present <span class="smcap lowercase">NOW</span>. Imagine, friend, first, a little well
+surrounded with wild cresses on the moor; something like a rivulet flows
+from it, or rather you see a deep tinge of verdure, the line of which,
+you believe, must be produced by the oozing moisture&mdash;you follow it, and
+by-and-by there is a descent palpable to your feet&mdash;then you find
+yourself between low broomy knolls, that, heightening every step, become
+ere long banks, and braes, and hills. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> are surprised now to see a
+stream, and look round for its source&mdash;and there seem now to be a
+hundred small sources in fissures and springs on every side&mdash;you hear
+the murmurs of its course over beds of sand and gravel&mdash;and hark, a
+waterfall! A tree or two begins to shake its tresses on the horizon&mdash;a
+birch or a rowan. You get ready your angle&mdash;and by the time you have
+panniered three dozen, you are at a wooden bridge&mdash;you fish the pool
+above it with the delicate dexterity of a Boaz, capture the monarch of
+the flood, and on lifting your eyes from his starry side as he gasps his
+last on the silvery shore, you behold a Cottage, at one gable-end an
+ash, at the other a sycamore, and standing perhaps at the lonely door, a
+maiden like a fairy or an angel.</p>
+
+<p>This is the Age of Confessions; and why, therefore, may we not make a
+confession of first-love? We had finished our sixteenth year&mdash;and we
+were almost as tall as we are now; for our figure was then straight as
+an arrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. We had given over
+bird-nesting&mdash;but we had not ceased to visit the dell where first we
+found the Grey Lintie's brood. Tale-writers are told by critics to
+remember that the young shepherdesses of Scotland are not beautiful as
+the fictions of a poet's dream. But <span class="smcap lowercase">SHE</span> was beautiful beyond poetry. She
+was so then, when passion and imagination were young&mdash;and her image, her
+undying, unfading image, is so now, when passion and imagination are
+old, and when from eye and soul have disappeared much of the beauty and
+glory both of nature and life. We loved her from the first moment that
+our eyes met&mdash;and we see their light at this moment&mdash;the same soft,
+burning light, that set body and soul on fire. She was but a poor
+shepherd's daughter; but what was that to us, when we heard her voice
+singing one of her old plaintive ballads among the braes?&mdash;When we sat
+down beside her&mdash;when the same plaid was drawn over our shoulders in the
+rain-storm&mdash;when we asked her for a kiss, and was not refused&mdash;for what
+had she to fear in her beauty, and her innocence, and her filial
+piety?&mdash;and were we not a mere boy, in the bliss of passion, ignorant of
+deceit or dishonour, and with a heart open to the eyes of all as to the
+gates of heaven? What music was in that stream! Could "Sabean odours
+from the spicy shores of Araby the Blest" so penetrate our soul, as that
+breath, balmier than the broom on which we sat, forgetful of all other
+human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> life! Father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts, and
+cousins, and all the tribe of friends that would throw us off&mdash;if we
+should be so base and mad as to marry a low-born, low-bred, ignorant,
+uneducated, crafty, ay, crafty and designing beggar&mdash;were all forgotten
+in our delirium&mdash;if indeed it were delirium&mdash;and not an
+everlastingly-sacred devotion to nature and to truth. For in what were
+we deluded? A voice&mdash;a faint and dewy voice&mdash;deadened by the earth that
+fills up her grave, and by the turf that, at this very hour, is
+expanding its primroses to the dew of heaven&mdash;answers, "In nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha! ha!" exclaims some reader in derision. "Here's an attempt at
+the pathetic!&mdash;a miserable attempt indeed; for who cares about the death
+of a mean hut girl?&mdash;we are sick of low life." Why, as to that matter,
+who cares for the death of any one mortal being? Who weeps for the death
+of the late Emperor of all the Russias? Who wept over Napoleon the
+Great? When Chatham or Burke, Pitt or Fox died&mdash;don't pretend to tell
+lies about a nation's tears. And if yourself, who, perhaps, are not in
+low life, were to die in half an hour (don't be alarmed), all who knew
+you&mdash;except two or three of your bosom friends, who, partly from being
+somewhat dull, and partly from wishing to be decent, might whine&mdash;would
+walk along George Street, at the fashionable hour of three, the very day
+after your funeral. Nor would it ever enter their heads to abstain from
+a dinner at the Club, ordered perhaps by yourself a fortnight ago, at
+which time you were in rude health, merely because you had foolishly
+allowed a cold to fasten upon your lungs, and carry you off in the prime
+and promise of your professional life. In spite of all your critical
+slang, therefore, Mr Editor, or Master Contributor to some Literary
+Journal, <span class="smcap lowercase">SHE</span>, though a poor <i>Scottish Herd</i>, was most beautiful; and
+when, but a week after taking farewell of her, we went, according to our
+tryst, to fold her in our arms, and was told by her father that she was
+dead,&mdash;ay, dead&mdash;that she had no existence&mdash;that she was in a
+coffin,&mdash;when we awoke from the dead-fit in which we had lain on the
+floor of that cottage, and saw her in her grave-clothes within an hour
+to be buried&mdash;when we stood at her burial&mdash;and knew that never more were
+we or the day to behold her presence&mdash;we learned then how immeasurably
+misery can surpass happiness&mdash;that the soul is ignorant of its own
+being, till all at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> once a thunder-stone plunges down its depths, and
+groans gurgle upwards upbraiding heaven.</p>
+
+<p>How easily can the heart change its mood from the awful to the
+solemn&mdash;from the solemn to the sweet&mdash;and from the sweet to the
+gay&mdash;while the mirth of this careless moment is unconsciously tempered
+by the influence of that holy hour that has subsided but not died, and
+continues to colour the most ordinary emotion, as the common things of
+earth look all lovelier in imbibed light, even after the serene moon
+that had yielded it is no more visible in her place! Most gentle are
+such transitions in the calm of nature and of the heart; all true poetry
+is full of them; and in music how pleasant are they, or how affecting!
+Those alternations of tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and of
+quiet thoughts! The organ and the &AElig;olian harp! As the one has ceased
+pealing praise, we can list the other whispering it&mdash;nor feels the soul
+any loss of emotion in the change&mdash;still true to itself and its wondrous
+nature&mdash;just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it turns its eyes
+to admire the beauty of a dewdrop or an insect's wing.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity of
+confining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. Gentle
+readers, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if you
+are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs
+to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold&mdash;three
+brace of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock pheasant, poor
+fellow,&mdash;a man and his wife of the aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock,
+vainly presenting his long Christmas bill,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Some sleeping kill'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All murder'd."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Why, you are indeed a most logical reasoner, and a most considerate
+Christian, when you launch out into an invective against the cruelty
+exhibited in our Cages. Let us leave this den of murder, and have a
+glass of our home-made frontignac in our own Sanctum. Come, come,
+sir,&mdash;look on this newly-married couple of <span class="smcap">Canaries</span>.&mdash;The architecture
+of their nest is certainly not of the florid order, but my Lady
+Yellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. Come back in a day or two,
+and you will see her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> the ear-piercing
+fife of the bridegroom!&mdash;Where will you find a set of happier people,
+unless perhaps it be in our parlour, or our library, or our nursery?
+For, to tell you the truth, there is a cage or two in almost every room
+of the house. Where is the cruelty&mdash;here, or in your blood-stained
+larder? But you must eat, you reply. We answer&mdash;not necessarily birds.
+The question is about birds&mdash;cruelty to birds; and were that sagacious
+old wild-goose, whom one single moment of heedlessness brought last
+Wednesday to your hospitable board, at this moment alive, to bear a part
+in our conversation, can you dream that, with all your ingenuity and
+eloquence, you could persuade him&mdash;the now defunct and disjected&mdash;that
+you had been under the painful necessity of eating him with stuffing and
+apple-sauce?</p>
+
+<p>It is not in nature that an ornithologist should be cruel&mdash;he is most
+humane. Mere skin-stuffers are not ornithologists&mdash;and we have known
+more than one of that tribe who would have had no scruple in strangling
+their own mothers, or reputed fathers. Yet if your true ornithologist
+cannot catch a poor dear bird alive, he must kill it&mdash;and leave you to
+weep for its death. There must be a few victims out of myriads of
+millions&mdash;and thousands and tens of thousands are few; but the
+ornithologist knows the seasons when death is least afflictive&mdash;he is
+merciful in his wisdom&mdash;for the spirit of knowledge is gentle&mdash;and
+"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," reconcile him to the
+fluttering and ruffled plumage blood-stained by death. 'Tis hard, for
+example, to be obliged to shoot a Zenaida dove! Yet a Zenaida dove must
+die for Audubon's Illustrations. How many has he loved in life, and
+tenderly preserved! And how many more pigeons of all sorts, cooked in
+all styles, have you devoured&mdash;ay, twenty for his one&mdash;you being a
+glutton and epicure in the same inhuman form, and he being contented at
+all times with the plainest fare&mdash;a salad perhaps of water-cresses
+plucked from a spring in the forest glade, or a bit of pemmican, or a
+wafer of portable soup melted in the pot of some squatter&mdash;and shared
+with the admiring children before a drop has been permitted to touch his
+own abstemious lips.</p>
+
+<p>The intelligent author of the "Treatise on British Birds" does not
+condescend to justify the right we claim to encage them; but he shows
+his genuine humanity in instructing us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> how to render happy and
+healthful their imprisonment. He says very prettily, "What are town
+gardens and shrubberies in squares, but an attempt to ruralise the city?
+So strong is the desire in man to participate in country pleasures, that
+he tries to bring some of them even to his room. Plants and birds are
+sought after with avidity, and cherished with delight. With flowers he
+endeavours to make his apartments resemble a garden; and thinks of
+groves and fields, as he listens to the wild sweet melody of his little
+captives. Those who keep and take an interest in song-birds, are often
+at a loss how to treat their little warblers during illness, or to
+prepare the proper food best suited to their various constitutions; but
+that knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve these little
+creatures in health: for want of it, young amateurs and bird-fanciers
+have often seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds perish."</p>
+
+<p>Now, here we confess is a good physician. In Edinburgh we understand
+there are about five hundred medical practitioners on the human
+race&mdash;and we have dog-doctors, and horse-doctors, who come out in
+numbers&mdash;but we have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the
+whole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of children
+teething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on his
+perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his
+lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food
+skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our
+treadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians,
+we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to die
+unattended. Why do not the ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into a
+Society for this purpose?</p>
+
+<p>Not one of all the philosophers in the world has been able to tell us
+what is happiness. Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have been
+miserable. Probably he was one of the most contented birds in the
+universe. Does confinement&mdash;the closest, most uncompanioned
+confinement&mdash;make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker, sitting
+with his head on his knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to night,
+in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day
+sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out
+washing, an object of compassion? or the widow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> of fourscore, hurkling
+over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it
+so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions
+circumscribed within the narrowest imaginable limits? Nonsense all!</p>
+
+<p>Then, gentle reader, were you ever in a Highland shieling? Often since
+you read our Recreations. It is built of turf, and is literally alive;
+for the beautiful heather is blooming, wildflowers and walls and roof
+are one sound of bees. The industrious little creatures must have come
+several long miles for their balmy spoil. There is but one human
+creature in that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He no more
+wearies of that lonesome place than do the sunbeams or the shadows. To
+himself alone he chants his old Gaelic songs, or frames wild ditties of
+his own to the raven or red-deer. Months thus pass on; and he descends
+again to the lower country. Perhaps he goes to the
+wars&mdash;fights&mdash;bleeds&mdash;and returns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and once
+more, blending in his imagination the battles of his own regiment, in
+Egypt, Spain, or Flanders, with the deeds done of yore by Ossian sung,
+sits contented by the door of the same shieling, restored and
+beautified, in which he had dreamt away the summers of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>What has become&mdash;we wonder&mdash;of Dartmoor Prison? During that long war its
+huge and hideous bulk was filled with Frenchmen&mdash;ay,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Men of all climes&mdash;attach'd to none&mdash;were there;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;a desperate race&mdash;robbers and reavers, and ruffians and rapers, and
+pirates and murderers&mdash;mingled with the heroes who, fired by freedom,
+had fought for the land of lilies, with its vine-vales and "hills of
+sweet myrtle"&mdash;doomed to die in captivity, immured in that doleful
+mansion on the sullen moor. There thousands pined and wore away and
+wasted&mdash;and when not another groan remained within the bones of their
+breasts, they gave up the ghost. Young heroes prematurely old in baffled
+passions&mdash;life's best and strongest passions, that scorned to go to
+sleep but in the sleep of death. These died in their golden prime. With
+them went down into unpitied and unhonoured graves&mdash;for pity and honour
+dwell not in houses so haunted&mdash;veterans in their iron age&mdash;some
+self-smitten with ghastly wounds that let life finally bubble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> out of
+sinewy neck or shaggy bosom&mdash;or the poison-bowl convulsed their giant
+limbs unto unquivering rest. Yet there you saw a wild strange tumult of
+troubled happiness&mdash;which, as you looked into its heart, was
+transfigured into misery. There volatile spirits fluttered in their
+cage, like birds that seem not to hate nor to be unhappy in confinement,
+but, hanging by beak or claws, to be often playing with the glittering
+wires&mdash;to be amusing themselves, so it seems, with drawing up, by small
+enginery, their food and drink, which soon sickens, however, on their
+stomachs, till, with ruffled plumage, they are often found in the
+morning lying on their backs, with clenched feet, and neck bent as if
+twisted, on the scribbled sand, stone-dead. There you saw pale
+youths&mdash;boys almost like girls, so delicate looked they in that hot
+infected air which, ventilate it as you will, is never felt to breathe
+on the face like the fresh air of liberty&mdash;once bold and bright
+midshipmen in frigate or first-rater, and saved by being picked up by
+the boats of the ship that had sunk her by one double-shotted broadside,
+or sent her in one explosion splintering into the sky, and splashing
+into the sea, in less than a minute the thunder silent, and the fiery
+shower over and gone&mdash;there you saw such lads as these, who used almost
+to weep if they got not duly the dear-desired letter from sister or
+sweetheart, and when they did duly get it, opened it with trembling
+fingers, and even then let drop some natural tears&mdash;there we saw them
+leaping and dancing, with gross gesticulations and horrid oaths obscene,
+with grim outcasts from nature, whose mustached mouths were rank with
+sin and pollution&mdash;monsters for whom hell was yawning&mdash;their mortal mire
+already possessed with a demon. There, wretched, woe-begone, and wearied
+out with recklessness and desperation, many wooed Chance and Fortune,
+who they hoped might yet listen to their prayers&mdash;and kept rattling the
+dice&mdash;cursing them that gave the indulgence&mdash;even in their cells of
+punishment for disobedience or mutiny. There you saw some, who in the
+crowded courts "sat apart retired,"&mdash;bringing the practised skill that
+once supported, or the native genius that once adorned life, to bear on
+beautiful contrivances and fancies elaborately executed with meanest
+instruments, till they rivalled or outdid the work of art assisted by
+all the ministries of science. And thus won they a poor pittance
+wherewithal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> to purchase some little comfort or luxury, or ornament to
+their persons; for vanity had not forsaken some in their rusty squalor,
+and they sought to please her, their mistress or their bride. There you
+saw accomplished men conjuring before their eyes, on the paper or the
+canvass, to feed the longings of their souls, the lights and the shadows
+of the dear days that far away were beautifying some sacred spot of "<i>la
+belle France</i>"&mdash;perhaps some festal scene, for love in sorrow is still
+true to remembered joy, where once with youths and maidens</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There you heard&mdash;and hushed then was all the hubbub&mdash;some clear silver
+voice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths,
+singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the best
+and noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!"
+And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, men
+with minds that had sounded the profounds of science, and, seemingly
+undisturbed by all that clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines and
+numbers&mdash;conversing with the harmonies and lofty stars of heaven, deaf
+to all the discord and despair of earth. Or religious still even more
+than they&mdash;for those were mental, these spiritual&mdash;you beheld there men,
+whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on their
+own souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if not
+yet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come!</p>
+
+<p>To return to Birds in Cages;&mdash;they are, when well, uniformly as happy as
+the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no,
+to burst out into song&mdash;to hop about so pleased and pert&mdash;to play such
+fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs&mdash;to sleep so soundly, and to
+awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of
+light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other
+sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing
+to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been
+flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand
+inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not
+the slightest idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to the
+meaning of his words, would have been shocked at his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> ungrateful folly.
+Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest," how
+they amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then,
+finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up to
+their cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more at
+home. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duet
+or a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly tranquil and cheerful life
+than that of a Goldfinch in a cage in spring, with his wife and his
+children. All his social affections are cultivated to the utmost. He
+possesses many accomplishments unknown to his brethren among the
+trees;&mdash;he has never known what it is to want a meal in times of the
+greatest scarcity; and he admires the beautiful frostwork on the
+windows, when thousands of his feathered friends are buried in the snow,
+or, what is almost as bad, baked up into pies, and devoured by a large
+supper-party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and flirtation by
+such viands, and, remorseless, swallow dozens upon dozens of the
+warblers of the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Ay, ay, Mr Goldy! you are wondering what we are now doing, and
+speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if
+you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better
+wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine
+goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his
+inquisitive nose within the wires&mdash;or when a strange cat glides round
+and round the room, fascinating thee with the glare of his fierce fixed
+eyes;&mdash;but what is all that to the woes of an Editor?&mdash;Yes, sweet
+simpleton! do you not know that we are the editor of <i>Blackwood's
+Magazine</i>&mdash;Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that very man&mdash;that
+self-same much-calumniated man-monster and Ogre. There, there!&mdash;perch on
+our shoulder, and let us laugh together at the whole world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.</h2>
+
+<h3>SECOND CANTICLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The golden eagle leads the van of our Birds of Prey&mdash;and there she sits
+in her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirst
+have been appeased&mdash;her wings are folded up in a dignified
+tranquillity&mdash;her talons, grasping a leafless branch, are almost hidden
+by the feathers of her breast&mdash;her sleepless eye has lost something of
+its ferocity&mdash;and the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary state
+in the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors and
+mosses&mdash;the blackbird whistles in the birken shaw&mdash;and the cony erects
+his ears at the mouth of his burrow, and whisks away frolicsome among
+the whins or heather.</p>
+
+<p>There is no index to the hour&mdash;neither light nor shadow&mdash;no cloud. But
+from the composed aspect of the Bird, we may suppose it to be the hush
+of evening after a day of successful foray. The imps in the eyrie have
+been fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. The
+mother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may
+glide up to her brood&mdash;the sire is somewhere sitting within her view
+among the rocks&mdash;a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in
+exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as
+if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to
+wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler of sheep-walk and
+forest-chase.</p>
+
+<p>Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow lustre of her keen, wild,
+fierce eye is veiled, even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhaps
+sickness has been at the heart of the dejected bird, or fever wasted her
+wing. The sun may have smitten her, or the storm driven her against a
+rock. Then hunger and thirst&mdash;which in pride of plumage she scorned, and
+which only made her fiercer on the edge of her unfed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> eyrie, as she
+whetted her beak on the flint-stone, and clutched the strong
+heather-stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating prey&mdash;quell
+her courage, and in famine she eyes afar off the fowls she is unable to
+pursue, and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight is heavier and
+heavier each succeeding day&mdash;she ventures not to cross the great glens
+with or without lochs&mdash;but flaps her way from rock to rock, lower and
+lower down along the same mountain-side&mdash;and finally, drawn by her
+weakness into dangerous descent, she is discovered at grey dawn far
+below the region of snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest carrion;
+till a bullet whizzing through her heart, down she topples, and soon is
+despatched by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd stretching out his
+foe's carcass on the sward, eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, with
+leg thick as his own wrist, and foot broad as his own hand.</p>
+
+<p>But behold the Golden Eagle, as she has pounced, and is exulting over
+her prey! With her head drawn back between the crescent of her uplifted
+wings, which she will not fold till that prey be devoured, eye glaring
+cruel joy, neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, and talons
+driven through the victim's entrails and heart&mdash;there she is new lighted
+on the ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell and its echo. Beak
+and talons, all her life long, have had a stain of blood, for the
+murderess observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips them in loch or sea,
+except when dashing down suddenly among the terrified water-fowl from
+her watch-tower in the sky. The week-old fawn had left the doe's side
+but for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice; a rustle and a
+shadow&mdash;and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis. In an
+instant the small animal is dead&mdash;after a short exultation torn into
+pieces, and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its unswallowed or
+undigested bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumbering
+the eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which the
+young demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Oh for the life of an eagle written by himself! It would outsell the
+Confessions even of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would he, or she,
+write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened his
+eyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light.
+The Great Glen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> of Scotland&mdash;hath it not been the inheritance of his
+ancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignoble
+blood, from intermarriages of necessity or convenience with kite,
+buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the Golden Eagles of Glen-Falloch,
+surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed alliances with the Golden Eagles
+of Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair&mdash;the
+Lightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm-wheelers, the
+Cloud-cleavers, ever since the deluge. The education of the
+autobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes,
+beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in that
+capacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from the
+desert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion of
+his instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man.
+What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College of
+the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of all
+inferior creatures, he speedily made himself master&mdash;ours included. Nor
+was his knowledge confined to theory, but reduced to daily practice. He
+kept himself in constant training&mdash;taking a flight of a couple of
+hundred miles before breakfast&mdash;paying a forenoon visit to the farthest
+of the Hebride Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In one day he
+has flown to Norway on a visit to his uncle by the mother's side, and
+returned the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying sick at the Head
+of the Cambrian Dee. He soon learned to despise himself for having once
+yelled for food, when food was none; and to sit or sail, on rock or
+through ether, athirst and an hungered, but mute. The virtues of
+patience, endurance, and fortitude, have become with him, in strict
+accordance with the Aristotelian Moral Philosophy&mdash;habits. A Peripatetic
+Philosopher he could hardly be called&mdash;properly speaking, he belongs to
+the Solar School&mdash;an airy sect, who take very high ground, indulge in
+lofty flights, and are often lost in the clouds. Now and then a light
+chapter might be introduced, setting forth how he and other youngsters
+of the Blood Royal were wont to take an occasional game at High-Jinks,
+or tourney in air lists, the champions on opposite sides flying from the
+Perthshire and from the Argyllshire mountains, and encountering with a
+clash in the azure common, six thousand feet high. But the fever of love
+burned in his blood, and flying to the mountains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> of another continent,
+in obedience to the yell of an old oral tradition, he wooed and won his
+virgin bride&mdash;a monstrous beauty, wider-winged than himself, to kill or
+caress, and bearing the proof of her noble nativity in the radiant Iris
+that belongs in perfection of fierceness but to the Sun-starers, and in
+them is found, unimpaired by cloudiest clime, over the uttermost parts
+of the earth. The bridegroom and his bride, during the honey-moon, slept
+on the naked rock&mdash;till they had built their eyrie beneath its
+cliff-canopy on the mountain-brow. When the bride was "as Eagles wish to
+be who love their lords"&mdash;devoted unto her was the bridegroom, even as
+the cushat murmuring to his brooding mate in the central pine-grove of a
+forest. Tenderly did he drop from his talons, close beside her beak, the
+delicate spring lamb, or the too early leveret, owing to the hurried and
+imprudent marriage of its parents before March, buried in a living tomb
+on April's closing day. Through all thy glens, Albyn! hadst thou reason
+to mourn, at the bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had been
+cherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven wheeled the Royal Pair,
+from rising to setting sun. Among the bright-blooming heather they
+espied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creeping like a lizard, and from
+behind the vain shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the flight he
+would fain see shorn of its beams. The flocks were thinned&mdash;and the
+bleating of desolate dams among the woolly people heard from many a
+brae. Poison was strewn over the glens for their destruction, but the
+Eagle, like the lion, preys not on carcasses; and the shepherd dogs
+howled in agony over the carrion in which they devoured death. Ha! was
+not that a day of triumph to the Sun-starers of Cruachan, when
+sky-hunting in couples, far down on the greensward before the ruined
+gateway of Kilchurn Castle, they saw, left all to himself in the
+sunshine, the infant heir of the Campbell of Breadalbane, the child of
+the Lord of Glenorchy and all its streams! Four talons in an instant
+were in his heart. Too late were the outcries from all the turrets; for
+ere the castle-gates were flung open, the golden head of the royal babe
+was lying in gore, in the Eyrie on the iron ramparts of Ben-Slarive&mdash;his
+blue eyes dug out&mdash;his rosy cheeks torn&mdash;and his brains dropping from
+beaks that revelled yelling within the skull!&mdash;Such are a few hints for
+"Some Passages in the Life of the Golden Eagle, written by
+Him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>self,"&mdash;in one volume crown octavo&mdash;Blackwoods, Edinburgh and
+London.</p>
+
+<p>O heavens and earth!&mdash;forests and barn-yards! what a difference with a
+distinction between a <span class="smcap">Golden Eagle</span> and a <span class="smcap">Green Goose</span>! There, all neck
+and bottom, splay-footed, and hissing in miserable imitation of a
+serpent, lolling from side to side, up and down like an ill-trimmed
+punt, the downy gosling waddles through the green mire, and, imagining
+that King George the Fourth is meditating mischief against him, cackles
+angrily as he plunges into the pond. No swan that "on still St Mary's
+lake floats double, swan and shadow," so proud as he! He prides himself
+on being a gander, and never forgets the lesson instilled into him by
+his parents, soon as he chipt the shell in the nest among the nettles,
+that his ancestors saved the Roman Capitol. In process of time, in
+company with swine, he grazes on the common, and insults the Egyptians
+in their roving camp. Then comes the season of plucking&mdash;and this very
+pen bears testimony to his tortures. Out into the houseless winter is he
+driven&mdash;and, if he escapes being frozen into a lump of fat ice, he is
+crammed till his liver swells into a four-pounder&mdash;his cerebellum is cut
+by the cruel knife of a phrenological cook, and his remains buried with
+a cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of apoplectic aldermen, eating
+against each other at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for "Some
+Passages in the Life of a Green Goose," written by himself&mdash;in foolscap
+octavo&mdash;published by Quack and Co., Ludgate Lane, and sold by all
+booksellers in town and country.</p>
+
+<p>Poor poets must not meddle with eagles. In the "Fall of Nineveh," Mr
+Atherstone describes a grand review of his army by Sardanapalus. Two
+million men are put into motion by the moving of the Assyrian flag-staff
+in the hand of the king, who takes his station on a mount conspicuous to
+all the army. This flag-staff, though "tall as a mast"&mdash;Mr Atherstone
+does not venture to go on to say with Milton, "hewn on Norwegian hills,"
+or "of some tall ammiral," though the readers' minds supply the
+deficiency&mdash;this mast was, we are told, for "<i>two strong men</i> a task;"
+but it must have been so for twenty. To have had the least chance of
+being all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have been
+less than fifty feet high&mdash;and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+of Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke to
+him. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Such
+shouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firm
+ground made tremble." But this was not all.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"At his height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down through the quivering air: another shout,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His talons droop&mdash;his sunny eye grows dark&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His strengthless pennons fail&mdash;plump down he falls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sleeping lion in his den sprang up;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Listen'd awhile&mdash;then laid his monstrous mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Close to the floor, and breathed hot roarings out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fierce reply."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What think ye of that, John Audubon, Charles Buonaparte, J. Prideaux
+Selby, James Wilson, Sir William Jardine, and ye other European and
+American ornithologists? Pray, Mr Atherstone, did you ever see an
+eagle&mdash;a speck in the sky? Never again suffer yourself, oh, dear sir! to
+believe old women's tales of men on earth shooting eagles with their
+mouths; because the thing is impossible, even had their mouthpieces had
+percussion-locks&mdash;had they been crammed with ammunition to the muzzle.
+Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly have
+got a fright, and probably a fall&mdash;nor would there have been any hope
+for a tom-tit. But an eagle&mdash;an eagle ever so many thousand feet
+aloft&mdash;poo, poo!&mdash;he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude,
+and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string of
+wild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they would
+merely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered
+the earth-born shout with an air-born gabble&mdash;clangour to clangour.
+Where were Mr Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, and all his
+acoustics? Two shouts slew an eagle. What became of all the other
+denizens of air&mdash;especially crows, ravens, and vultures, who, seeing two
+millions of men, must have come flocking against a day of battle? Every
+mother's son of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> must have gone to pot. Then what scrambling among
+the allied troops! And what was one eagle doing by himself "up-by
+yonder?" Was he the only eagle in Assyria&mdash;the secular bird of ages? Who
+was looking at him, first a speck&mdash;then faltering&mdash;then fluttering and
+wildly screaming&mdash;then plump down like a stone? Mr Atherstone talks as
+if he saw it. In the circumstances he had no business with his "sunny
+eye growing dark." That is entering too much into the medical, or rather
+anatomical symptoms of his apoplexy, and would be better for a medical
+journal than an epic poem. But to be done with it&mdash;two shouts that slew
+an eagle a mile up the sky, must have cracked all the tympana of the two
+million shouters. The entire army must have become as deaf as a post.
+Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the mount, must have been blown into the
+air as by the explosion of a range of gunpowder-mills; the campaign
+taken a new turn; and a revolution been brought about, of which, at this
+distance of place and time, it is not easy for us to conjecture what
+might have been the fundamental features on which it would have
+hinged&mdash;and thus an entirely new aspect given to all the histories of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>What is said about the lion, is to our minds equally picturesque and
+absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles?
+If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the
+huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion
+to hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be
+altered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannot
+believe that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot of
+Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"&mdash;and
+Semiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unduly upon
+a mere matter of police, is it the nature of lions, lying in their dens
+among far-off hills, to start up from their sleep, and "breathe hot
+roarings out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr
+Atherstone shows off his knowledge of natural history, in telling us
+that the said lion, in roaring, "laid his monstrous mouth close to the
+floor." We believe he does so; but did Mr Atherstone learn the fact from
+Cuvier or from Wombwell? It is always dangerous to a poet to be too
+picturesque; and in this case, you are made, whether you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> or no, to
+see an old, red, lean, mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy den
+in a menagerie, bathing his beard in the sawdust, and from his toothless
+jaws "breathing hot roarings out," to the terror of servant-girls and
+children, in fierce reply to a man in a hairy cap and full suit of
+velveteen, stirring him up with a long pole, and denominating him by the
+sacred name of the great asserter of Scottish independence.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Humphry Davy&mdash;in his own science the first man of his age&mdash;does not
+shine in his "Salmonia"&mdash;pleasant volume though it be&mdash;as an
+ornithologist. Let us see.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Poiet.</span>&mdash;The scenery improves as we advance nearer the lower parts of
+the lake. The mountains become higher, and that small island or
+peninsula presents a bold craggy outline; and the birch-wood below it,
+and the pines above, make a scene somewhat Alpine in character. But what
+is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the end of
+the lake? Surely it is an eagle!</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Hal.</span>&mdash;You are right; it is an eagle, and of a rare and peculiar
+species&mdash;the grey or silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of the
+animal, it must be the female; and her eyrie is in that high rock. I
+dare say the male is not far off."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Humphry speaks in his introductory pages of Mr Wordsworth as a lover
+of fishing and fishermen; and we cannot help thinking and feeling that
+he intends Poietes as an image of that great Poet. What! William
+Wordsworth, the very high-priest of nature, represented to have seen an
+eagle for the first time of his life only then, and to have boldly
+ventured on a conjecture that such was the name and nature of the bird!
+"But what is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the
+end of the lake? Surely it is an eagle!" "Yes, you are right&mdash;it is an
+eagle." Ha&mdash;ha&mdash;ha&mdash;ha&mdash;ha&mdash;ha! Sir Humphry&mdash;Sir Humphry&mdash;that guffaw
+was not ours&mdash;it came from the Bard of Rydal&mdash;albeit unused to the
+laughing mood&mdash;in the haunted twilight of that beautiful&mdash;that solemn
+Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>Poietes having been confirmed, by the authority of Halieus, in his
+belief that the bird is an eagle, exclaims, agreeably to the part he
+plays, "Look at the bird! She dashes into the water, <i>falling like a
+rock</i> and raising a column of spray&mdash;she has <i>fallen from a great
+height</i>. And now she rises again into the air&mdash;<i>what an extraordinary
+sight</i>!" Nothing is so annoy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>ing as to be ordered to look at a sight
+which, unless you shut your eyes, it is impossible for you not to see. A
+person behaving in a boat like Poietes, deserved being flung overboard.
+"Look at the bird!" Why, every eye was already upon her; and if Poietes
+had had a single spark of poetry in his composition, he would have been
+struck mute by such a sight, instead of bawling out, open-mouthed and
+goggle-eyed, like a Cockney to a rocket at Vauxhall. Besides, an eagle
+does not, when descending on her prey, fall like a rock. There is
+nothing like the "<i>vis inerti&aelig;</i>" in her precipitation. You still see the
+self-willed energy of the ravenous bird, as the mass of plumes flashes
+in the spray&mdash;of which, by the by, there never was, nor will be, a
+column so raised. She is as much the queen of birds as she sinks as when
+she soars&mdash;her trust and her power are still seen and felt to be in her
+pinions, whether she shoots to or from the zenith&mdash;to a falling star she
+might be likened&mdash;just as any other devil&mdash;either by Milton or
+Wordsworth&mdash;for such a star seems to our eye and our imagination ever
+instinct with spirit, not to be impelled by exterior force, but to be
+self-shot from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Upon our word, we begin to believe that we ourselves deserve the name of
+Poietes much better than the gentleman who at threescore had never seen
+an eagle. "She has fallen from a great height," quoth the
+gentleman&mdash;"What an extraordinary sight!" he continueth&mdash;while we are
+mute as the oar suspended by the up-gazing Celt, whose quiet eye
+brightens as it pursues the Bird to her eyrie in the cliff over the cove
+where the red-deer feed.</p>
+
+<p>Poietes having given vent to his emotions in such sublime
+exclamations&mdash;"Look at the bird!" "What an extraordinary sight!" might
+have thenceforth held his tongue, and said no more about eagles. But
+Halieus cries, "There! you see her rise with a fish in her talons"&mdash;and
+Poietes, very simply, or rather like a simpleton, returns for answer,
+"She <i>gives an interest which I hardly expected to have found in this
+scene</i>. Pray, are there <i>many of these animals</i> in this country?" A poet
+hardly expecting to find interest in such a scene as a great Highland
+loch&mdash;Loch Maree! "Pray, are there many <i>of these hanimals in this
+country</i>?" Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an animal;
+like Mr Cobbett or Mr O'Connell&mdash;"a very fine animal;" but we
+particularly, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> earnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry Davy
+not to call her so again&mdash;but to use the term bird, or any other term he
+chooses, except animal. Animal, a living creature, is too general, too
+vague by far; and somehow or other it offends our ear shockingly when
+applied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in a trifling matter of this
+kind Sir Humphry surely will not refuse our supplication. Let him call a
+horse an animal, if he chooses&mdash;or an ass&mdash;or a cow&mdash;but not an
+eagle&mdash;as he loves us, not an eagle; let him call it a bird&mdash;the Bird of
+Jove&mdash;the Queen or King of the Sky&mdash;or anything else he chooses&mdash;but not
+an animal&mdash;no&mdash;no&mdash;no&mdash;not an animal, as he hopes to prosper, to be
+praised in Maga, embalmed and immortalised.</p>
+
+<p>Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there were "<i>many</i> of these
+animals" in this country. He ought to have known that there are not
+<i>many</i> of these animals in any country. Eagles are proud&mdash;apt to hold
+their heads very high&mdash;and to make themselves scarce. A great many
+eagles all flying about together would look most absurd. They are aware
+of that, and fly in "ones and twos"&mdash;a couple perhaps to a county.
+Poietes might as well have asked Mungo Park if there were a great many
+lions in Africa. Mungo, we think, saw but one; and that was one too
+much. There were probably a few more between Sego and Timbuctoo&mdash;but
+there are not a "great many of those animals in that country"&mdash;though
+quite sufficient for the purpose. How the Romans contrived to get at
+hundreds for a single show, perplexes our power of conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Halieus says&mdash;with a smile on his lip surely&mdash;in answer to the query of
+Poietes&mdash;"Of this species I have seen but these two; and, I believe, the
+young ones migrate as soon as they can provide for themselves; for this
+solitary bird requires a large space to move and feed in, and does not
+allow its offspring to partake its reign, or to live near it." This is
+all pretty true, and known to every child rising or risen six, except
+poor Poietes. He had imagined that there were "many of these animals in
+this country," that they all went a-fishing together as amicably as five
+hundred sail of Manksmen among a shoal of herrings.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout these Dialogues we have observed that Ornither rarely opens
+his mouth. Why so taciturn? On the subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> of birds he ought, from his
+name, to be well informed; and how could he let slip an opportunity,
+such as will probably never be afforded him again in this life, of being
+eloquent on the Silver Eagle? Ornithology is surely the department of
+Ornither. Yet there is evidently something odd and peculiar in his
+idiosyncrasy; for we observe that he never once alludes to "these
+animals," birds, during the whole excursion. He has not taken his gun
+with him into the Highlands, a sad oversight indeed in a gentleman who
+"is to be regarded as generally fond of the sports of the field."
+Flappers are plentiful over all the moors about the middle of July; and
+hoodies, owls, hawks, ravens, make all first-rate shooting to sportsmen
+not over anxious about the pot. It is to be presumed, too, that he can
+stuff birds. What noble specimens might he not have shot for Mr Selby!
+On one occasion, "the <span class="smcap">Silver Eagle</span>" is preying in a pool within slug
+range, and there is some talk of shooting him&mdash;we suppose with an oar,
+or the butt of a fishing-rod, for the party have no firearms&mdash;but
+Poietes insists on sparing his life, because "these animals" are a
+picturesque accompaniment to the scenery, and "give it an interest which
+he had not expected to find" in mere rivers, lochs, moors, and
+mountains. Genus Falco must all the while have been laughing in his
+sleeve at the whole party&mdash;particularly at Ornither&mdash;who, to judge from
+his general demeanour, may be a fair shot with number five at an old
+newspaper expanded on a barn-door twenty yards off, but never could have
+had the audacity to think in his most ambitious mood of letting off his
+gun at an Eagle.</p>
+
+<p>But further, Halieus, before he took upon him to speak so
+authoritatively about eagles, should have made himself master of their
+names and natures. He is manifestly no scientific ornithologist. We are.
+The general question concerning Eagles in Scotland may now be squeezed
+into very small compass. Exclusive of the true Osprey (Falco Hali&aelig;tus),
+which is rather a larger fishing-hawk than an eagle, there are two
+kinds, viz.&mdash;the <span class="smcap">Golden Eagle</span> (F. Chrysa&euml;tos), and the <span class="smcap">White-Tailed</span> or
+<span class="smcap">Cinerous Eagle</span> (F. Albicilla). The other two <i>nominal</i> species are
+disposed of in the following manner:&mdash;First, the <span class="smcap">Ring-Tailed Eagle</span> (F.
+Fulvus) is the young of the Golden Eagle, being distinguished in early
+life by having the basal and central portion of the tail white, which
+colour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> disappears as the bird attains the adult state. Second, the <span class="smcap">$1</span> (F. Ossifragus), commonly so called, is the young of the
+White-tailed Eagle above named, from which it differs in having a brown
+tail; for in this species the white of the tail becomes every year more
+apparent as the bird increases in age, whereas, in the Golden Eagle, the
+white altogether disappears in the adult.</p>
+
+<p>It is to the <span class="smcap">Ring-Tailed Eagle</span>, and, by consequence, to the <span class="smcap">$1</span>, that the name of <span class="smcap">Black Eagle</span> is applied in the Highlands.</p>
+
+<p>The White-tailed or Sea Eagle, as it becomes old, attains, in addition
+to the pure tail, a pale or bleached appearance, from which it may merit
+and obtain the name of Grey or <span class="smcap">Silver Eagle</span>, as Sir Humphry Davy chooses
+to call it; but it is not known among naturalists by that name. There is
+no other species, however, to which the name can apply; and, therefore,
+Sir Humphry has committed the very gross mistake of calling the Grey or
+Silver Eagle (to use his own nomenclature) a very rare Eagle, since it
+is the most common of all the Scots, and also&mdash;<i>a fortiori</i>&mdash;of all the
+English Eagles&mdash;being in fact the <span class="smcap">Sea Eagle</span> of the Highlands.</p>
+
+<p>It preys often on fish dead or alive; but not exclusively, as it also
+attacks young lambs, and drives off the ravens from carrion prey, being
+less fastidious in its diet than the <span class="smcap">Golden Eagle</span>, which probably kills
+its own meat&mdash;and has been known to carry off children; for a striking
+account of one of which hay-field robberies you have but a few minutes
+to wait.</p>
+
+<p>As to its driving off its young, its habits are probably similar in this
+respect to other birds of prey, none of which appear to keep together in
+families after the young can shift for themselves; but we have never met
+with any one who has seen them in the act of driving. It is stated
+vaguely, in all books, of all eagles.</p>
+
+<p>As to its requiring a large range to feed in&mdash;we have only to remark
+that, from the powerful flight of these birds, and the wild and barren
+nature of the countries which they inhabit, there can be no doubt that
+they fly far, and "prey in distant isles"&mdash;as Thomson has it; but
+Halieus needed not have stated this circumstance as a character of this
+peculiar eagle&mdash;for an eagle with a small range does not exist; and
+therefore it is to be presumed that they require a large one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Further, all this being the case, there seems to be no necessity for the
+old eagles giving themselves the trouble to drive off the young ones,
+who by natural instinct will fly off of their own accord, as soon as
+their wings can bear them over the sea. If an eagle were so partial to
+his native vale, as never on any account, hungry or thirsty, drunk or
+sober, to venture into the next parish, why then the old people would be
+forced, on the old principle of self-preservation, to pack off their
+progeny to bed and board beyond Benevis. But an Eagle is a Citizen of
+the World. He is friendly to the views of Mr Huskisson on the Wool
+Trade, the Fisheries, and the Colonies&mdash;and acts upon the old adage,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Every bird for himself, and God for us all!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To conclude, for the present, this branch of our subject, we beg leave
+humbly to express our belief, that Sir Humphry Davy never saw the Eagle,
+by him called the Grey or Silver, hunting for fish in the style
+described in "Salmonia." It does not dislike fish&mdash;but it is not its
+nature to keep hunting for them so, not in the Highlands at least,
+whatever it may do on American continent or isles. Sir Humphry talks of
+the bird dashing down repeatedly upon a pool within shot of the anglers.
+We have angled fifty times in the Highlands for Sir Humphry's once, but
+never saw nor heard of such a sight. He has read of such things, and
+introduced them into this dialogue for the sake of effect&mdash;all quite
+right to do&mdash;had his reading lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. The
+common Eagle&mdash;which he ignorantly, as we have seen, calls so rare&mdash;is a
+shy bird, as all shepherds know&mdash;and is seldom within range of the
+rifle. Gorged with blood, they are sometimes run in upon and felled with
+a staff or club. So perished, in the flower of his age, that Eagle whose
+feet now form handles to the bell-ropes of our Sanctum at Buchanan
+Lodge&mdash;and are the subject of a clever copy of verses by Mullion,
+entitled "All the Talons."</p>
+
+<p>We said in "The Moors," that we envied not the eagle or any other bird
+his wings, and showed cause why we preferred our own feet. Had Puck
+wings? If he had, we retract, and would sport Puck.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Oberon.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fetch me this herb&mdash;and be thou here again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the Leviathan can swim a league."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>Puck.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I'll put a girdle round about the earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In forty minutes."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How infinitely more poetical are wings like these than seven-league
+boots! We declare, on our conscience, that we would not accept the
+present of a pair of seven-league boots to-morrow&mdash;or, if we did, it
+would be out of mere politeness to the genie who might press them on us,
+and the wisest thing we could do would be to lock them up in a drawer
+out of the reach of the servants. Suppose that we wished to walk from
+Clovenford to Innerleithen&mdash;why, with seven-league boots on, one single
+step would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Peebles! That would
+never do. By mincing one's steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop at
+Innerleithen; but suppose a gad-fly were to sting one's hip at the
+Pirn&mdash;one unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier,
+and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan water! Therefore,
+there is nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter&mdash;and glide&mdash;and
+float and soar&mdash;now like a humming-bird among the flowers&mdash;now like a
+swan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying adown a river&mdash;now like
+an eagle afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards,
+invisible in excess of light&mdash;and bidding farewell to earth and its
+humble shadows. "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee
+away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some heavy hour or other, from
+the depth of his very soul, devoutly&mdash;passionately&mdash;hopelessly&mdash;breathed
+that wish to escape beyond the limits of woe and sin&mdash;not into the world
+of dreamless death; for weary though the immortal pilgrim may have been,
+never desired he the doom of annihilation, untroubled although it be,
+shorn of all the attributes of being&mdash;but he has prayed for the wings of
+the dove, because that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away from
+the sight of human dwellings, has seemed to disappear to his imagination
+among old glimmering forests, wherein she foldeth her wing and falleth
+gladly asleep&mdash;and therefore, in those agitated times when the spirits
+of men acknowledge kindred with the inferior creatures, and would fain
+interchange with them powers and qualities, they are willing even to lay
+down their intelligence, their reason, their conscience itself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> so that
+they could but be blessed with the faculty of escaping from all the
+agonies that intelligence, and reason, and conscience alone can know,
+and beyond the reach of this world's horizon to flee away and be at
+rest!</p>
+
+<p>Puck says he will put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.
+At what rate is that per second, taking the circumference of the earth
+at 27,000 miles, more or less? There is a question for the mechanics,
+somewhat about as difficult of solution as Lord Brougham's celebrated
+one of the Smuggler and the Revenue Cutter&mdash;for the solution of which he
+recommended the aid of algebra. It is not so quick as you would imagine.
+We forget the usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he is
+in training&mdash;and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we are
+sorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would take a good,
+stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to accomplish a journey to
+our planet from one of the fixed stars. The great difficulty, we
+confess, would be to get him safely conveyed thither. If that could be
+done, we should have no fear of his finding his way back, if not in our
+time, in that of our posterity. However red-hot he might have been on
+starting, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on his arrival at the goal;
+yet we should have no objection to back him against Time for a
+trifle&mdash;Time, we observe, in almost all matches being beat, often indeed
+by the most miserable hacks, that can with difficulty raise a gallop.
+Time, however, possibly runs booty; for when he does make play, it must
+be confessed that he is a spanker, and that nothing has been seen with
+such a stride since Eclipse.</p>
+
+<p>O beautiful and beloved Highland Parish! in whose dashing glens our
+beating heart first felt the awe of solitude, and learned to commune
+(alas! to what purpose?) with the tumult of its own thoughts! The
+circuit of thy skies was indeed a glorious arena spread over the
+mountain-tops for the combats of the great birds of prey! One wild cry
+or another was in the lift&mdash;of the hawk, or the glead, or the raven, or
+the eagle&mdash;or when those fiends slept, of the peaceful heron, and
+sea-bird by wandering boys pursued in its easy flight, till the
+snow-white child of ocean wavered away far inland, as if in search of a
+steadfast happiness unknown on the restless waves. Seldom did the eagle
+stoop to the challenge of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> inferior fowl; but when he did, it was
+like a mailed knight treading down unknown men in battle. The hawks, and
+the gleads, and the ravens, and the carrion-crows, and the hooded-crows,
+and the rooks, and the magpies, and all the rest of the rural militia,
+forgetting their own feuds, sometimes came sallying from all quarters,
+with even a few facetious jackdaws from the old castle, to show fight
+with the monarch of the air. Amidst all that multitude of wings
+winnowing the wind, was heard the sough and whizz of those mighty vans,
+as the Royal Bird, himself an army, performed his majestic evolutions
+with all the calm confidence of a master in the art of aerial war, now
+shooting up half-a-thousand feet perpendicular, and now suddenly
+plump-down into the rear of the croaking, cawing, and chattering
+battalions, cutting off their retreat to the earth. Then the rout became
+general, the missing, however, far outnumbering the dead. Keeping
+possession of the field of battle, hung the eagle for a short while
+motionless&mdash;till with one fierce yell of triumph he seemed to seek the
+sun, and disappear like a speck in the light, surveying half of Scotland
+at a glance, and a thousand of her isles.</p>
+
+<p>Some people have a trick of describing incidents as having happened
+within their own observation, when in fact they were at the time lying
+asleep in bed, and disturbing the whole house with the snore of their
+dormitory. Such is too often the character of the eyewitnesses of the
+present age. Now, we would not claim personal acquaintance with an
+incident we had not seen&mdash;no, not for a hundred guineas per sheet; and,
+therefore, we warn the reader not to believe the following little story
+about an eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby crest, and a
+favourite sign of inns in the north of England) on our authority. "I
+tell the tale as 'twas told to me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws,
+in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he
+have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how
+to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many
+extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is
+believing," so likewise "believing is seeing," as every one must allow
+who reads these our Recreations.</p>
+
+<p>Almost all the people in the parish were leading in their meadow-hay
+(there were not in all its ten miles square twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> acres of ryegrass)
+on the same day of midsummer, so drying was the sunshine and the
+wind,&mdash;and huge heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view the horses
+that drew them along the sward, beginning to get green with second
+growth, were moving in all directions towards the snug farmyards. Never
+had the parish seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy air with
+laughter, whistle, and song. But the Tree-gnomons threw the shadow of
+"one o'clock" on the green dial-face of the earth&mdash;the horses were
+unyoked, and took instantly to grazing&mdash;groups of men, women, lads,
+lasses, and children collected under grove, and bush, and
+hedgerow&mdash;graces were pronounced, some of them rather too tedious in
+presence of the mantling milk-cans, bullion-bars of butter, and
+crackling cakes; and the great Being who gave them that day their daily
+bread, looked down from his Eternal Throne, well pleased with the piety
+of his thankful creatures.</p>
+
+<p>The great Golden Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped
+down, and away with something in his talons. One single sudden female
+shriek&mdash;and then shouts and outcries as if a church spire had tumbled
+down on a congregation at a sacrament. "Hannah Lamond's bairn! Hannah
+Lamond's bairn!" was the loud fast-spreading cry. "The Eagle's taen aff
+Hannah Lamond's bairn!" and many hundred feet were in another instant
+hurrying towards the mountain. Two miles of hill and dale, and copse and
+shingle, and many intersecting brooks, lay between; but in an incredibly
+short time the foot of the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was
+well known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. But who
+shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart the sailor, who had
+been at the storming of many a fort, once attempted in vain? All kept
+gazing, or weeping, or wringing of hands, rooted to the ground, or
+running back and forwards, like so many ants, essaying their new wings,
+in discomfiture. "What's the use&mdash;what's the use o' ony puir human
+means? We have nae power but in prayer!" And many knelt down&mdash;fathers
+and mothers thinking of their own babies&mdash;as if they would force the
+deaf heavens to hear.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Lamond had been all this while sitting on a stone, with a face
+perfectly white, and eyes like those of a mad person, fixed on the
+eyrie. Nobody noticed her; for strong as all sympathies with her had
+been at the swoop of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> the Eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agony
+of eyesight. "Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee wean baptised in the
+name o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" and on uttering
+these words, she flew off through the brakes and over the huge stones,
+up&mdash;up&mdash;up&mdash;faster than ever huntsman ran in to the death&mdash;fearless as a
+goat playing among the precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt,
+that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk in
+their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb the
+walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the
+edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep as
+draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing
+eyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of the
+soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's
+passion&mdash;who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast,
+hurried off by a demon to a hideous death&mdash;bear her limbs aloft wherever
+there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercer
+and more furious than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in
+blood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wing would fain flap
+her down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance?</p>
+
+<p>No stop&mdash;no stay&mdash;she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her
+feet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands
+strengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear, then,
+but once crossed her heart, as up&mdash;up&mdash;up&mdash;to the little image made of
+her own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing&mdash;will
+not the same God save me when my child is at my breast?" Down came the
+fierce rushing of the Eagle's wings&mdash;each savage bird dashing close to
+her head, so that she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once
+they quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an
+ash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the
+Christian mother, falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and
+blood, clasped her child&mdash;dead&mdash;dead&mdash;no doubt&mdash;but unmangled and
+untorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleep
+among the fresh hay in a nook of the harvest-field. Oh! what pang of
+perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+cry&mdash;"It lives! it lives! it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud
+laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious
+innocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love. "O, thou
+great and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me&mdash;one of the
+most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save me lest I perish, even for thy
+own name's sake! O Thou, who died to save sinners, have mercy upon me!"
+Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old
+trees&mdash;far&mdash;far down&mdash;and dwindled into specks a thousand creatures of
+her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of
+the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native
+strath?&mdash;and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands
+the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here
+must she die&mdash;and when her breast is exhausted&mdash;her baby too. And those
+horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her child
+will be devoured at last, even within the dead arms that can protect it
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half-way up the
+cliffs. But his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart
+sick&mdash;and he who had so often reefed the topgallant-sail, when at
+midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with
+his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And who
+will take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, who,
+through exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in her
+grasp the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God."
+She looked round expecting to see a spirit; but nothing moved except a
+rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling
+rock. Her eye&mdash;by some secret sympathy with the inanimate
+object&mdash;watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far off, on a small
+platform. Her child was bound upon her shoulders&mdash;she knew not how or
+when&mdash;but it was safe&mdash;and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid
+down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm
+root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers
+suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by
+brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stone
+leapt over a ledge and no sound was heard, so profound was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> its fall.
+There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to
+follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them; but
+she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall
+of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy
+centuries old&mdash;long ago dead, and without a single green leaf&mdash;but with
+thousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as
+with a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck&mdash;and with hands and feet
+clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down,
+she saw the whole population of the parish&mdash;so great was the
+multitude&mdash;on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms&mdash;a hymn
+breathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn was the
+strain&mdash;but nothing dirge-like&mdash;sounding not of death, but deliverance.
+Often had she sung that tune&mdash;perhaps the very words&mdash;but them she heard
+not&mdash;in her own hut, she and her mother&mdash;or in the kirk, along with all
+the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the
+ribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to
+be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into
+a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth&mdash;the psalm
+was hushed&mdash;but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and a
+she-goat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights," thought she,
+"do these creatures climb&mdash;but the dam will lead down her kids by the
+easiest paths; for in the brute creatures holy is the power of a
+mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping
+baby, and for the first time she wept.</p>
+
+<p>Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before by
+human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the Golden
+Eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their
+eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part of
+the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet
+accessible&mdash;and more than one person in the parish had reached the
+bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it&mdash;and ere the
+cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, through
+among dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were
+traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+then the head of another, and she knew that God had delivered her and
+her child into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a word was
+spoken&mdash;she hushed her friends with her hands&mdash;and with uplifted eyes
+pointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where
+those creatures nibble the wildflowers, became now more
+frequent&mdash;trodden lines, almost as plain as sheep-paths, showed that the
+dam had not led her young into danger; and now the brushwood dwindled
+away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence
+above the stream, and forming part of the strath.</p>
+
+<p>There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing and many tears, among
+the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs&mdash;sublime was the
+shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie&mdash;then had
+succeeded a silence deep as death&mdash;in a little while arose that hymning
+prayer, succeeded by mute supplication&mdash;the wildness of thankful and
+congratulatory joy had next its sway&mdash;and now that her salvation was
+sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake
+was all this alternation of agony? A poor humble creature, unknown to
+many even by name&mdash;one who had had but few friends, nor wished for
+more&mdash;contented to work all day, here&mdash;there&mdash;anywhere&mdash;that she might
+be able to support her aged mother and her child&mdash;and who on Sabbath
+took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, in the kirk.</p>
+
+<p>"Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the
+parish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death.
+"Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother and
+then another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses,
+many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no a
+single scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun hae
+stuck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun
+they be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"</p>
+
+<p>Hannah started up from her swoon&mdash;and, looking wildly round, cried, "Oh!
+the Bird&mdash;the Bird!&mdash;the Eagle&mdash;the Eagle!&mdash;the Eagle has carried off my
+bonny wee Walter&mdash;is there nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her baby
+into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the
+sorely bewildered creature said in a low voice, "Am I wauken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>&mdash;oh! tell
+me if I'm wauken&mdash;or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever."</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was a
+mother&mdash;and you may guess what a mother&mdash;yet&mdash;frown not, fair and gentle
+reader&mdash;frown not, pure and stainless as thou art&mdash;to her belonged not
+the sacred name of wife&mdash;and that baby was the child of sin and of
+shame&mdash;yes&mdash;"the child of misery, baptised in tears!" She had
+loved&mdash;trusted&mdash;been betrayed&mdash;and deserted. In sorrow and
+solitude&mdash;uncomforted and despised&mdash;she bore her burden. Dismal had been
+the hour of travail&mdash;and she feared her mother's heart would have
+broken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing is
+forgiveness&mdash;alike to the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! And
+then Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not
+such as her fellow-creatures deemed it&mdash;for there were dreadful secrets
+which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she
+bowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes of
+repentance&mdash;walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the
+kirk&mdash;yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her
+sadness inspired a general pity&mdash;she was excluded from no house she had
+heart to visit&mdash;no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice
+people took of her baby&mdash;no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty;
+for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung
+the lullaby, forbade all such approach&mdash;and an universal sentiment of
+indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled
+seducer&mdash;if all had been known, too weak word for his crime&mdash;who left
+thus to pine in sorrow, and in shame far worse than sorrow, one who till
+her unhappy fall had been held up by every mother as an example to her
+daughters.</p>
+
+<p>Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer&mdash;but she had
+striven&mdash;and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do so&mdash;to think
+not of him now that he had deserted her for ever. Sometimes his image,
+as well in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart&mdash;but she
+closed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the
+love towards him that slept&mdash;but was not dead&mdash;arose in yearnings of
+still more exceeding love towards his child. Round its head was gathered
+all hope of comfort&mdash;of peace&mdash;of reward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> of her repentance. One of its
+smiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In her
+breast&mdash;on her knee&mdash;in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual
+prayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness of
+affection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the hand
+of God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after the
+hour of rescue and deliverance, stretched her on the greensward like a
+corpse.</p>
+
+<p>The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strange
+story without names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the
+Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious to know what truth there was
+in it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd,
+went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined,
+and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierce
+eyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side.</p>
+
+<p>His heart died within him, not in fear, but in remorse. What a worm he
+felt himself to be! And fain would he have become a worm, that, to
+escape all that united human scorn, he might have wriggled away in slime
+into some hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hannah met his in
+forgiveness&mdash;an un-upbraiding tear&mdash;a faint smile of love. All his
+better nature rose within him, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes,
+good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is your
+scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in the
+woods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her&mdash;but here I
+am&mdash;not to offer retribution&mdash;for that may not&mdash;will not&mdash;must not
+be&mdash;guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim that
+innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to
+deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder&mdash;I call on you to
+seize your prisoner."</p>
+
+<p>The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge and
+enlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Their
+anger subsided into a stern satisfaction&mdash;and that soon softened, in
+sight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness,
+into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been,
+had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in his
+uncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> The old
+clergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers,
+whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer was
+over, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferior
+to a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation was
+freed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. And
+although the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much better
+than we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-ranger
+never became altogether a saint&mdash;nor acquired the edifying habit of
+pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his
+eyes&mdash;yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very
+serious laid to his prejudice&mdash;that he became in due time an elder of
+the Kirk&mdash;gave his children a religious education&mdash;erring only in making
+rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to
+manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.</h2>
+
+<h3>THIRD CANTICLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roaming
+pedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has not
+yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional big
+rain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimes
+utters a sullen groan&mdash;the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise is
+repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak&mdash;croak&mdash;croak! manifestly from
+a thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser the
+croak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the black
+sultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird on
+the wing. By-and-by something black lifts itself slowly and heavily up
+from a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared the
+rock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be a
+Raven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and in
+his strong straight-forward flight aims at the head of another glen; but
+he wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alighting among the heather,
+folds his huge massy wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with the
+same savage croak&mdash;croak&mdash;croak! No other bird so like a demon&mdash;and
+should you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawl
+to a hut, your life is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was
+there a single hound in Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordship
+became a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered
+fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs or bristles, that grimly
+adorn a bill of formidable dimensions, and apt for digging out
+eye-socket and splitting skull-structure of dying man or beast. That
+bill cannot tear in pieces like the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so
+powerful to smite as to compress&mdash;but a better bill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> for
+cut-and-thrust&mdash;- push, carte, and tierce&mdash;the dig dismal and the plunge
+profound&mdash;belongs to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor needs
+the wound to be repeated on the same spot. Feeder foul and obscene! to
+thy nostril upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of thy quarry from
+afar," sweeter is the scent of carrion, than to the panting lover's
+sense and soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath and bosom, when,
+lying in her innocence in his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden
+with something more ethereally pure than "Sabean odours from the spicy
+shores of Araby the Blest."</p>
+
+<p>The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. It
+cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of
+life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the
+dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or
+sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof&mdash;hopping in a
+circle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keep
+dilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the
+prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing
+carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by
+claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled
+and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and
+turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a
+self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then
+folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to
+gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of
+consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about,
+round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost
+snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At
+last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is
+stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid
+instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and
+preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course
+of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and
+with difficulty able either to croak or to fly.</p>
+
+<p>The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundred
+years, perhaps a couple of centuries. Children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> grow into girls, girls
+into maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into old
+decrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at the
+head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages,
+deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is&mdash;at least so men say&mdash;that he is
+aware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings
+against door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity,
+or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As
+the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft
+in the air&mdash;or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse
+like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the
+house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse
+hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little
+grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is
+sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that
+he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of
+human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact,
+much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the
+punishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood bore
+the human shape, and who, soon as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, flew
+off to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude of
+the drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in
+burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs,
+as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse
+that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says
+the Celtic superstition&mdash;muttered to us in a dream&mdash;adding that there
+are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the
+forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak
+at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty years
+ago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom of
+Helvyllyn," was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because no
+adherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountains
+when the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathed
+and pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quaker
+as the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> with what glee
+the few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club
+must have flocked to the Ordinary! Without asking each other to which
+part this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim
+which regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come,
+first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became
+animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the
+most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab.
+The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after
+going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled,
+and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black
+feather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue,
+pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox,
+and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of choking
+soft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was so
+provokingly insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak&mdash;then a drab
+wraprascal&mdash;then a drab broadcloth coat, made in the oldest
+fashion&mdash;then a drab waistcoat of the same&mdash;then a drab under-waistcoat
+of thinner mould&mdash;then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish&mdash;then a
+flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the
+members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days
+at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about
+eight <span class="smcap lowercase">A.M.</span> on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve
+o'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat down
+to supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that the
+President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary,
+treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary and
+extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so
+tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead
+bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably
+fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh
+bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even
+although a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable
+difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of
+"Order!&mdash;order!&mdash;Chair!&mdash;chair!"&mdash;must have been frequent; and had the
+office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown
+it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> and obstructions
+having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well
+believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to
+their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously
+down to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the first
+half-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of
+his prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command
+of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system,
+exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen&mdash;there be's Mister Wudsworth&mdash;Ho, ho,
+ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale
+to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their
+orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath
+the moon and stars.</p>
+
+<p>But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood of
+rueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale
+of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet
+wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude,
+he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen
+mountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, and
+diamonds, beneath the resplendent night-heavens. The din of populous
+cities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in the
+presence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuing
+their multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The very
+sheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all
+their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had become
+hateful to his spirit&mdash;for what were they but the floating enginery of
+Mammon? Truth, integrity, honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gain
+by the friends he loved and had respected most&mdash;sacrificed without shame
+and without remorse&mdash;repentance being with them a repentance only over
+ill-laid schemes of villany&mdash;plans for the ruination of widows and
+orphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The brother of his bosom
+made him a bankrupt&mdash;and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother was
+unpaid. But she died before the second Christmas&mdash;and he was left alone
+in the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to him
+from a distant relation&mdash;almost the only one of his name&mdash;who died
+abroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on&mdash;and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> enthusiastic
+spirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in some
+profound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her Great
+Laws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight,
+beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousand
+flat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which a
+great thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the first
+time, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himself
+alone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatry
+almost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and
+"stars that are the poetry of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the lore that links the human heart
+to the gracious form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In early youth he
+had been intended for the Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful and
+ungenial toils had not extinguished the fine scholarship that native
+aptitude for learning had acquired in the humble school of the village
+in which he was born. He had been ripe for College when the sudden death
+of his father, who had long been at the head of a great mercantile
+concern, imposed it upon him, as a sacred duty owed to his mother and
+his sisters, to embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope ever to
+retrieve their fortunes&mdash;and for ten years for their sake he was a
+slave, till ruin set him free. Now he was master of his own destiny&mdash;and
+sought some humble hut in that magnificent scenery, where he might pass
+a blameless life, and among earth's purest joys prepare his soul for
+heaven. Many such humble huts had he seen during that one bold, bright,
+beautiful spring winter-day. Each wreath of smoke from the breathing
+chimneys, while the huts themselves seemed hardly awakened from sleep in
+the morning-calm, led his imagination up into the profound peace of the
+sky. In any one of those dwellings, peeping from sheltered dells, or
+perched on wind-swept eminences, could he have taken up his abode, and
+sat down contented at the board of their simple inmates. But in the very
+delirium of a new bliss, the day faded before him&mdash;twilight looked
+lovelier than dream-land in the reflected glimmer of the snow&mdash;and thus
+had midnight found him, in a place so utterly lonesome in its remoteness
+from all habitations, that even in summer no stranger sought it without
+the guidance of some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> shepherd familiar with the many bewildering passes
+that stretched away in all directions through among the mountains to
+distant vales. No more fear or thought had he of being lost in the
+wilderness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest to forest in the
+winter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to the
+instinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether.</p>
+
+<p>As he continued gazing on the heavens, the moon all at once lost
+something of her brightness&mdash;the stars seemed fewer in number&mdash;and the
+lustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The blue ethereal frame grew
+discoloured with streaks of red and yellow&mdash;and a sort of dim darkness
+deepened and deepened on the air, while the mountains appeared higher,
+and at the same time further off, as if he had been transported in a
+dream to another region of the earth. A sound was heard, made up of
+far-mustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging of trees, and the
+murmur as of a great lake or sea beginning to break on the shore. A few
+flakes of snow touched his face, and the air grew cold. A clear tarn had
+a few minutes before glittered with moonbeams, but now it had
+disappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, and ere long it was a storm
+of snow. "O God! my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he hear his own
+voice in the roaring tempest.</p>
+
+<p>Men have died in dungeons&mdash;and their skeletons been found long years
+afterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through what
+hideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eye
+saw, no ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders,
+but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day in
+spring&mdash;long after the snows were melted&mdash;except here and there a patch
+like a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure&mdash;a huge Raven rose
+heavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who,
+going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld a
+rotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, and
+began to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of its
+master&mdash;a name unknown in that part of the country&mdash;and weeks elapsed
+before any person could be heard of that could tell the history of the
+sufferer. A stranger came and went&mdash;taking the faithful creature with
+him that had so long watched by the dead&mdash;but long before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> his arrival
+the remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little way
+on from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yards
+from the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of&mdash;&mdash;, not far from the foot
+of Ullswater.</p>
+
+<p>Gentle reader! we have given you two versions of the same story&mdash;and
+pray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the
+second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not
+decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that
+we are strongest in humour&mdash;others, that our power is in pathos. The
+judicious declare that our forte lies in both&mdash;in the two united, or
+alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims
+some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious
+an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated
+with such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, of
+the Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!"
+Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that&mdash;this&mdash;article
+confesses that he has more than once committed that capital crime. But
+no intelligent jury, taking into consideration the law as well as the
+fact&mdash;and it is often their duty to do so, let high authorities say what
+they will&mdash;would for a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded to,
+to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homicide." The gentleman or lady
+who has honoured us so far with perusal, knows enough of human life, and
+of their own hearts, to know also that there is no other subject which
+men of genius&mdash;and who ever denied that we are men of genius?&mdash;have been
+accustomed to view in so many ludicrous lights as this same subject of
+death; and the reason is at once obvious&mdash;yet <i>recherch&eacute;</i>&mdash;videlicet,
+Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild,
+dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times men
+talking about it cannot choose but laugh!</p>
+
+<p>Too-hoo&mdash;too-hoo&mdash;too-whit-too-hoo!&mdash;we have got among the <span class="smcap">Owls</span>.
+Venerable personages, in truth, they are&mdash;perfect Solomons! The
+spectator, as in most cases of very solemn characters, feels himself at
+first strongly disposed to commit the gross indecorum of bursting out
+a-laughing in their face. One does not see the absolute necessity either
+of man or bird<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> looking at all times so unaccountably wise. Why will an
+Owl persist in his stare? Why will a Bishop never lay aside his wig?</p>
+
+<p>People ignorant of Ornithology will stare like the Bird of Wisdom
+himself on being told that an <span class="smcap">Owl</span> is an Eagle. Yet, bating a little
+inaccuracy, it is so. Eagles, kites, hawks, and owls, all belong to the
+genus Falco. We hear a great deal too much in poetry of the moping Owl,
+the melancholy Owl, the boding Owl, whereas he neither mopes nor bodes,
+and is no more melancholy than becomes a gentleman. We also hear of the
+Owl being addicted to spirituous liquors; and hence the expression, as
+drunk as an Owl. All this is mere Whig personality, the Owl being a Tory
+of the old school, and a friend of the ancient establishments of church
+and state. Nay, the same political party, although certainly the most
+shortsighted of God's creatures, taunt the Owl with being blind. As
+blind as an Owl, is a libel in frequent use out of ornithological
+society. Shut up Lord Jeffrey himself in a hay-barn with a well-built
+mow, and ask him in the darkness to catch you a few mice, and he will
+tell you whether or not the Owl be blind. This would be just as fair as
+to expect the Owl to see, like Lord Jeffrey, through a case in the
+Parliament House during daylight. Nay, we once heard a writer in Taylor
+and Hessey call the Owl stupid, he himself having longer ears than any
+species of Owl extant. What is the positive character of the Owl may
+perhaps appear by-and-by; but we have seen that, describing his
+character by negations, we may say that he resembles Napoleon Buonaparte
+much more than Joseph Hume or Alderman Wood. He is not moping&mdash;not
+boding&mdash;not melancholy&mdash;not a drunkard&mdash;not blind&mdash;not stupid; as much
+as it would be prudent to say of any man, whether editor or contributor,
+in her Majesty's dominions.</p>
+
+<p>We really have no patience with people who persist in all manner of
+misconceptions regarding the character of birds. Birds often appear to
+such persons, judging from, of, and by themselves, to be in mind and
+manners the reverse of their real character. They judge the inner bird
+by outward circumstances inaccurately observed. There is the owl. How
+little do the people of England know of him&mdash;even of him the barn-door
+and domestic owl&mdash;yea, even at this day&mdash;we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> had almost said the Poets!
+Shakespeare, of course, and his freres, knew him to be a merry
+fellow&mdash;quite a madcap&mdash;and so do now all the Lakers. But Cowper had his
+doubts about it; and Gray, as every schoolboy knows, speaks of him like
+an old wife. The force of folly can go no further, than to imagine an
+owl complaining to the moon of being disturbed by people walking in a
+country churchyard. And among all our present bardlings, the owl is
+supposed to be constantly on the eve of suicide. If it were really so,
+he ought in a Christian country to be pitied, not pelted, as he is sure
+to be when accidentally seen in sunlight&mdash;for melancholy is a
+misfortune, especially when hereditary and constitutional, as it is
+popularly believed to be in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was in
+Dr Johnson. In young masters and misses we can pardon any childishness;
+but we cannot pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained by the manly
+minds of grown-up English clodhoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. They
+keep terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they shoot the owls,
+any one of whom we would cheerfully back against the famous Billy. "The
+very commonest observation teaches us," says the author of the "Gardens
+of the Menagerie," "that they are in reality the best and most efficient
+protectors of our cornfields and granaries from the devastating pillage
+of the swarms of mice and other small <i>rodents</i>." Nay, by their constant
+destruction of these petty but dangerous enemies, the owls, he says,
+"earn an unquestionable title to be regarded as among the <i>most active
+of the friends of man</i>; a title which only one or two among them
+occasionally forfeit by their aggressions on the defenceless poultry."
+Roger or Dolly beholds him in the act of murdering a duckling, and, like
+other light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they forget all the
+service he has done the farm, the parish, and the state; he is shot <i>in
+the act</i>, and nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on the
+barn-door. Others again call him dull and shortsighted&mdash;nay, go the
+length of asserting that he is stupid&mdash;as stupid as an owl. Why, our
+excellent fellow, when you have the tithe of the talent of the common
+owl, and know half as well how to use it, you may claim the medal.</p>
+
+<p>The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. The Owl is the Nimrod of the
+Night. Then, like one who shall be nameless, he sails about seeking
+those whom he may devour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> To do him justice, he has a truly ghost-like
+head and shoulders of his own. What horror to the "small birds rejoicing
+in spring's leafy bowers," fast-locked we were going to say in each
+other's arms, but sitting side by side in the same cosy nuptial nest, to
+be startled out of their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, beaked face
+of a horrible monster with horns, picked out of feathered bed, and
+wafted off in one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of hissing, and
+snappish, and shapeless powder-puffs, in the loophole of a barn? In a
+house where a cat is kept, mice are much to be pitied. They are so
+infatuated with the smell of a respectable larder, that to leave the
+premises, they confess, is impossible. Yet every hour&mdash;nay, every minute
+of their lives&mdash;must they be in the fear of being leaped out upon by
+four velvet paws&mdash;and devoured with kisses from a whiskered mouth, and a
+throat full of that incomprehensible music&mdash;a purr. Life, on such terms,
+seems to us anything but desirable. But the truth is, that mice in the
+fields are not a whit better off. Owls are cats with wings. Skimming
+along the grass tops, they stop in a momentary hover, let drop a talon,
+and away with Mus, his wife, and small family of blind children. It is
+the white, or yellow, or barn, or church, or Screech-Owl, or
+Gilley-Owlet, that behaves in this way; and he makes no bones of a
+mouse, uniformly swallowing him alive. Our friend, we suspect, though no
+drunkard, is somewhat of a glutton. In one thing we agree with him, that
+there is no sort of harm in a heavy supper. There, however, we are
+guilty of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, who rise in the
+morning, seems a supper, is to him who gets up at evening twilight, a
+breakfast. We therefore agree with him in thinking that there is no sort
+of harm in a heavy breakfast. After having passed a pleasant night in
+eating and flirting, he goes to bed betimes about four o'clock in the
+morning; and, as Bewick observes, makes a blowing hissing noise,
+resembling the snoring of a man. Indeed nothing can be more diverting to
+a person annoyed by blue devils, than to look at a white Owl and his
+wife asleep. With their heads gently inclined towards each other, there
+they keep snoring away like any Christian couple. Should the one make a
+pause, the other that instant awakes, and, fearing something may be
+wrong with his spouse, opens a pair of glimmering winking eyes, and
+inspects the adjacent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> physiognomy with the scrutinising stare of a
+village apothecary. If all be right, the concert is resumed, the snore
+sometimes degenerating into a sort of snivel, and the snivel into a
+blowing hiss. First time we heard this noise was in a churchyard when we
+were mere boys, having ventured in after dark to catch the minister's
+colt for a gallop over to the parish capital, where there was a
+dancing-school ball. There had been a nest of Owls in some hole in the
+spire; but we never doubted for a moment that the noise of snoring,
+blowing, hissing, and snapping proceeded from a testy old gentleman that
+had been buried that forenoon, and had come alive again a day after the
+fair. Had we reasoned the matter a little, we must soon have convinced
+ourselves that there was no ground for alarm to us at least; for the
+noise was like that of some one half stifled, and little likely to heave
+up from above him a six-feet-deep load of earth&mdash;to say nothing of the
+improbability of his being able to unscrew the coffin from the inside.
+Be that as it may, we cleared about a dozen of decent tombstones at
+three jumps&mdash;the fourth took us over a wall five feet high within and
+about fifteen without, and landed us, with a squash, in a
+cabbage-garden, enclosed on the other three sides by a house and a
+holly-hedge. The house was the sexton's, who, apprehending the stramash
+to proceed from a resurrectionary surgeon mistaken in his latitude,
+thrust out a long duck-gun from a window in the thatch, and swore to
+blow out our brains if we did not instantly surrender ourselves, and
+deliver up the corpse. It was in vain to cry out our name, which he knew
+as well as his own. He was deaf to reason, and would not withdraw his
+patterero till we had laid down the corpse. He swore that he saw the
+sack in the moonlight. This was a horse-cloth with which we had intended
+to saddle the "cowt," and that had remained, during the supernatural
+agency under which we laboured, clutched unconsciously and convulsively
+in our grasp. Long was it ere Davie Donald would see us in our true
+light&mdash;but at length he drew on his Kilmarnock nightcap, and coming out
+with a bouet, let us through the trance and out of the front door,
+thoroughly convinced, till we read Bewick, that old Southfield was not
+dead, although in a very bad way indeed. Let this be a lesson to
+schoolboys not to neglect the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> science of natural history, and to study
+the character of the White Owl.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Owls</span>&mdash;both White and common Brown, are not only useful in a mountainous
+country, but highly ornamental. How serenely beautiful their noiseless
+flight; a flake of snow is not winnowed through the air more
+softly-silent! Gliding along the dark shadows of a wood, how spiritual
+the motion&mdash;how like the thought of a dream! And then, during the hushed
+midnight hours, how jocund the whoop and hollo from the heart of a
+sycamore&mdash;grey rock, or ivied Tower! How the Owls of Windermere must
+laugh at the silly Lakers, that under the garish eye of day, enveloped
+in clouds of dust, whirl along in rattling post-shays in pursuit of the
+picturesque! Why, the least imaginative Owl that ever hunted mice by
+moonlight on the banks of Windermere, must know the character of its
+scenery better than any poetaster that ever dined on char at Bowness or
+Lowood. The long quivering lines of light illumining some sylvan
+isle&mdash;the evening-star shining from the water to its counterpart in the
+sky&mdash;the glorious phenomenon of the double moon&mdash;the night-colours of
+the woods&mdash;and, once in the three years perhaps, that loveliest and most
+lustrous of celestial forms, the lunar rainbow&mdash;all these and many more
+beauteous and magnificent sights are familiar to the Owls of Windermere.
+And who know half so well as they do the echoes of Furness, and
+Applethwaite, and Loughrigg, and Landale, all the way on to Dungeon-Gill
+and Pavey-Ark, Scawfell and the Great Gable, and that sea of mountains,
+of which every wave has a name? Midnight&mdash;when asleep so still and
+silent&mdash;seems inspired with the joyous spirit of the Owls in their
+revelry&mdash;and answers to their mirth and merriment through all her
+clouds. The Moping Owl, indeed!&mdash;the Boding Owl, forsooth!&mdash;the
+Melancholy Owl, you blockhead!&mdash;why, they are the most
+cheerful&mdash;joy-portending&mdash;and exulting of God's creatures! Their flow of
+animal spirits is incessant&mdash;crowing-cocks are a joke to them&mdash;blue
+devils are to them unknown&mdash;not one hypochondriac in a thousand
+barns&mdash;and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one of
+them utter a complaint.</p>
+
+<p>But what say ye to an Owl, not only like an eagle in plum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>age, but equal
+to the largest eagle in size&mdash;and therefore named, from the King of
+Birds, the <span class="smcap">Eagle Owl</span>. Mr Selby! you have done justice to the monarch of
+the Bubos. We hold ourselves to be persons of tolerable courage, as the
+world goes&mdash;but we could not answer for ourselves showing fight with
+such a customer, were he to waylay us by night in a wood. In comparison,
+Jack Thurtell looked harmless. No&mdash;that bold, bright-eyed murderer, with
+Horns on his head like those on Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, would
+never have had the cruel cowardice to cut the weasand, and smash out the
+brains of such a miserable wretch as Weare! True, he is fond of
+blood&mdash;and where's the harm in that? It is his nature. But if there be
+any truth in the science of Physiognomy&mdash;and be that of Phrenology what
+it will, most assuredly there is truth in it&mdash;the original of that Owl,
+for whose portrait the world is indebted to Mr Selby, and Sir Thomas
+Lawrence never painted a finer one of Prince or Potentate of any Holy or
+Unholy Alliance, must have despised Probert from the very bottom of his
+heart. No prudent Eagle but would be exceedingly desirous of keeping on
+good terms with him&mdash;devilish shy, i' faith, of giving him any offence
+by the least hauteur of manner, or the slightest violation of etiquette.
+An Owl of this character and calibre is not afraid to show his horns at
+mid-day on the mountain. The Fox is not over and above fond of him&mdash;and
+his claws can kill a cub at a blow. The Doe sees the monster sitting on
+the back of her fawn, and, maternal instinct overcome by horror, bounds
+into the brake, and leaves the pretty creature to its fate. Thank
+Heaven, he is, in Great Britain, a rare bird! Tempest-driven across the
+Northern Ocean from his native forests in Russia, an occasional visitant
+he "frightens this isle from its propriety," and causes a hideous
+screaming through every wood he haunts. Some years ago, one was killed
+in the upland moors in the county of Durham&mdash;and, of course, paid a
+visit to Mr Bullock's Museum. Eagle-like in all its habits, it builds
+its nest on high rocks&mdash;sometimes on the loftiest trees&mdash;and seldom lays
+more than two eggs. One is one more than enough&mdash;and we who fly by night
+trust never to fall in with a live specimen of the Strix-Bubo of
+Linn&aelig;us.</p>
+
+<p>But largest and loveliest of all the silent night-gliders&mdash;the <span class="smcap">$1</span>! Gentle reader&mdash;if you long to see his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> picture, we have told you
+where it may be found;&mdash;and in the College Museum, within a glass vase
+on the central table in the Palace of Stuffed Birds, you may admire his
+outward very self&mdash;the semblance of the Owl he was when he used to eye
+the moon shining over the Northern Sea:&mdash;but if you would see the noble
+and beautiful Creature himself, in all his living glory, you must seek
+him through the long summer twilight among the Orkney or the Shetland
+Isles. The Snowy Owl dearly loves the snow&mdash;and there is, we believe, a
+tradition among them, that their first ancestor and ancestress rose up
+together from a melting snow-wreath on the very last day of a Greenland
+winter, when all at once the bright fields reappear. The race still
+inhabits that frozen coast&mdash;being common, indeed, through all the
+regions of the Arctic Circle. It is numerous on the shores of Hudson's
+Bay, in Norway, Sweden, and Lapland&mdash;but in the temperate parts of
+Europe and America "rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno."</p>
+
+<p>We defy all the tailors on the face of the habitable globe; and what
+countless cross-legged fractional parts of men&mdash;who, like the beings of
+whom they are constituents, are thought to double their numbers every
+thirty years&mdash;must not the four quarters of the earth, in their present
+advanced state of civilisation, contain!&mdash;we defy, we say, all the
+tailors on the face of the habitable globe to construct such a surtout
+as that of the Snowy Owl, covering him, with equal luxury and comfort,
+in summer's heat and winter's cold. The elements, in all their freezing
+fury, cannot reach the body of the bird through that beautiful
+down-mail. Well guarded are the opening of those great eyes. Neither the
+driving dust, nor the searching sleet, nor the sharp frozen snow-stour,
+give him the ophthalmia. Gutta Serena is to him unknown&mdash;no Snowy Owl
+was ever couched for cataract&mdash;no need has he for an oculist, should he
+live an hundred years; and were they to attempt any operation on his
+lens or iris, how he would hoot at Alexander and Wardrope!</p>
+
+<p>Night, doubtless, is the usual season of his prey; but he does not shun
+the day, and is sometimes seen hovering unhurt in the sunshine. The red
+or black grouse flies as if pursued by a ghost; but the Snowy Owl,
+little slower than the eagle, in dreadful silence overtakes his flight,
+and then death is sudden and sure. Hawking is, or was, a noble
+pas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>time&mdash;and we have now prevented our eyes from glancing at
+Jer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk; but Owling, we do not doubt, would be
+noways inferior sport; and were it to become prevalent in modern times,
+as Hawking was in times of old, why, each lady, as Venus already fair,
+with an Owl on her wrist, would look as wise as Minerva.</p>
+
+<p>But our soul sickens at all those dreams of blood! and fain would turn
+away from fierce eye, cruel beak, and tearing talon&mdash;war-weapons of them
+that delight in wounds and death&mdash;to the contemplation of creatures
+whose characteristics are the love of solitude&mdash;shy gentleness of
+manner&mdash;the tender devotion of mutual attachment&mdash;and, in field or
+forest, a lifelong passion for peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.</h2>
+
+<h3>FOURTH CANTICLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Welcome then the <span class="smcap">Ring-Dove</span>&mdash;the <span class="smcap">Quest</span>&mdash;or <span class="smcap">Cushat</span>, for that is the very
+bird we have had in our imagination. There is his full-length portrait,
+stealthily sketched as the Solitary was sitting on a tree. You must
+catch him napping, indeed, before he will allow you an opportunity of
+colouring him on the spot from nature. It is not that he is more jealous
+or suspicious of man's approach than other bird; for never shall we
+suffer ourselves to believe that any tribe of the descendants of the
+Dove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings of reappearing earth, can
+in their hearts hate or fear the race of the children of man. But Nature
+has made the Cushat a lover of the still forest-gloom; and therefore,
+when his lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, he flies to some
+yet profounder, some more central solitude, and folds his wing in the
+hermitage of a Yew, sown in the time of the ancient Britons.</p>
+
+<p>It is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the Ring-Dove, from whom are
+descended all the varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer praise
+can we give them all, than that the Dove is the emblem of Innocence, and
+that the name of innocence&mdash;not of frailty&mdash;is Woman? When Hamlet said
+the reverse, he was thinking, you know, of the Queen&mdash;not of Ophelia. Is
+not woman by nature chaste as the Dove&mdash;as the Dove faithful? Sitting
+all alone with her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove devoted to
+her own nest? Murmureth she not a pleasant welcome to her wearied
+home-returned husband, even like the Dove among the woodlands when her
+mate re-alights on the pine? Should her spouse be taken from her and
+disappear, doth not her heart sometimes break, as they say it happens to
+the Dove? But oftener far, findeth not the widow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> that her orphans are
+still fed by her own hand, that is filled with good things by
+Providence; till grown up, and able to shift for themselves, away they
+go&mdash;just as the poor Dove lamenteth for her mate in the snare of the
+fowler, yet feedeth her young continually through the whole day, till
+away too go they&mdash;alas, in neither case, perhaps, ever more to return!</p>
+
+<p>We dislike all favouritism, all foolish and capricious partiality for
+particular bird or beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will
+<i>tell</i> upon all one thinks or feels towards any place or person in this
+world of ours, near or remote. God forbid we should criticise the
+Cushat! We desire to speak of him as tenderly as of a friend buried in
+our early youth. Too true it is, that often and oft, when schoolboys,
+have we striven to steal upon him in his solitude, and to shoot him to
+death. In morals, and in religion, it would be heterodox to deny that
+the will is as the deed. Yet in cases of high and low-way robbery and
+murder, there does seem, treating the subject not in philosophical but
+popular style, to be some little difference between the two; at least we
+hope so, for otherwise we can with difficulty imagine one person not
+deserving to be ordered for execution, on Wednesday next, between the
+hours of eight and nine ante-meridian. Happily, however, for our future
+peace of mind, and not improbably for the whole confirmation of our
+character, our Guardian Genius&mdash;(every boy has one constantly at his
+side, both during school and play hours, though it must be confessed
+sometimes a little remiss in his duty, for the nature even of angelical
+beings is imperfect)&mdash;always so contrived it, that with all our cunning
+we never could kill a Cushat. Many a long hour&mdash;indeed whole
+Saturdays&mdash;have we lain perdue among broom and whins, the beautiful
+green and yellow skirting of sweet Scotia's woods, watching his egress
+or ingress, our gun ready cocked, and finger on trigger, that on the
+flapping of his wings not a moment might be lost in bringing him to the
+ground. But couch where we might, no Cushat ever came near our insidious
+lair. Now and then a Magpie&mdash;birds who, by the by, when they suspect you
+of any intention of shooting them, are as distant in their manners as
+Cushats themselves, otherwise as impudent as Cockneys&mdash;would come,
+hopping in continual tail-jerks, with his really beautiful plumage, if
+one could bring oneself to think it so, and then sport the pensive
+within twenty yards of the muzzle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> of Brown-Bess, impatient to let fly.
+But our soul burned, our heart panted for a Cushat; and in that strong
+fever-fit of passion, could we seek to slake our thirst for that wild
+blood with the murder of a thievish eavesdropper of a Pye? The
+Blackbird, too, often dropt out of the thicket into an open glade in the
+hazel-shaws, and the distinctness of his yellow bill showed he was far
+within shot-range. Yet, let us do ourselves justice, we never in all our
+born days dreamt of shooting a Blackbird&mdash;him that scares away sadness
+from the woodland twilight gloom, at morn or eve; whose anthem, even in
+those dim days when Nature herself it might be well thought were
+melancholy, forceth the firmament to ring with joy. Once "the snow-white
+cony sought its evening meal," unconscious of our dangerous vicinity,
+issuing with erected ears from the wood edge. That last was, we confess,
+such a temptation to touch the trigger, that had we resisted it we must
+have been either more or less than boy. We fired; and kicking up his
+heels, doubtless in fright, but as it then seemed to us, during our
+disappointment, much rather in frolic&mdash;nay, absolute derision&mdash;away
+bounced Master Rabbit to his burrow, without one particle of soft
+silvery wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our unerring aim. As
+if the branch on which he had been sitting were broken, away then went
+the crashing Cushat through the intermingling sprays. The free flapping
+of his wings was soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and ere we
+could recover from our almost bitter amazement, the creature was
+murmuring to his mate on her shallow nest&mdash;a far-off murmur, solitary
+and profound&mdash;to reach unto which, through the tangled mazes of the
+forest, would have required a separate sense, instinct, or faculty,
+which we did not possess. So, skulking out of our hiding-place, we made
+no comment on the remark of homeward-plodding labourer, who had heard
+the report, and now smelt the powder&mdash;"Cushats are geyan kittle birds to
+kill"&mdash;but returned, with our shooting-bag as empty as our stomach, to
+the Manse.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do the birds sing on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us&mdash;and we
+answered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although the
+birds certainly do sing on Sunday&mdash;behaviour that with our small gentle
+Calvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being so
+innocent as during the week-days they appeared to be&mdash;we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> cannot set
+down their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in the holy
+superstition of the world-wearied heart that man believes the inferior
+creatures to be conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that they know
+it to be the day of our rest? Or is it that we transfer the feeling of
+our inward calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus imbue them with
+a character of reposing sanctity, existing only in our own spirits? Both
+solutions are true. The instincts of those creatures we know only in
+their symptoms and their effects, in the wonderful range of action over
+which they reign. Of the instincts themselves&mdash;as feelings or ideas&mdash;we
+know not anything, nor ever can know; for an impassable gulf separates
+the nature of those that may be to perish, from ours that are to live
+for ever. But their power of memory, we must believe, is not only
+capable of minutest retention, but also stretches back to afar&mdash;and some
+power or other they do possess, that gathers up the past experience into
+rules of conduct that guide them in their solitary or gregarious life.
+Why, therefore, should not the birds of Scotland know the Sabbath-day?
+On that day the Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler among the
+murmurs of his own waterfall; and, as he flits down the banks and braes
+of the burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound about the cottage that
+is the boundary of his furthest flight&mdash;for "the dizzying mill-wheel
+rests." The merry-nodding rooks, that in spring-time keep following the
+very heels of the ploughman&mdash;may they not know it to be Sabbath, when
+all the horses are standing idle in the field, or taking a gallop by
+themselves round the head-rig? Quick of hearing are birds&mdash;one and
+all&mdash;and in every action of their lives are obedient to sounds. May they
+not, then&mdash;do they not connect a feeling of perfect safety with the
+tinkle of the small kirk-bell? The very jay himself is not shy of people
+on their way to worship. The magpie, that never sits more than a minute
+at a time in the same place on a Saturday, will on the Sabbath remain on
+the kirkyard wall with all the composure of a dove. The whole feathered
+creation know our hours of sleep. They awake before us; and ere the
+earliest labourer has said his prayers, have not the woods and valleys
+been ringing with their hymns? Why, therefore, may not they, who know,
+each week-day, the hour of our lying down and our rising up, know also
+the day of our general rest? The animals whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> lot is labour, shall
+they not know it? Yes; the horse on that day sleeps in shade or sunshine
+without fear of being disturbed&mdash;his neck forgets the galling collar,
+"and there are forty feeding like one," all well knowing that their
+fresh meal on the tender herbage will not be broken in upon before the
+dews of next morning, ushering in a new day to them of toil or travel.</p>
+
+<p>So much for our belief in the knowledge, instinctive or from a sort of
+reason, possessed by the creatures of the inferior creation of the
+heaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. But it is also true that we
+transfer our inward feelings to their outward condition, and with our
+religious spirit imbue all the ongoings of animated and even inanimated
+life. There is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of pensiveness, a
+touch of pathos, in all profound rest. Perhaps because it is so much in
+contrast with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Perhaps because the
+soul, when undisturbed, will, from the impulse of its own divine nature,
+have high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such state, it transmutes all
+things into a show of sympathy with itself. The church-spire, rising
+high above the smoke and stir of a town, when struck by the sun-fire,
+seems, on a market-day, a tall building in the air, that may serve as a
+guide to people from a distance flocking into the bazaars. The same
+church-spire, were its loud-tongued bell to call from aloft on the
+gathering multitude below, to celebrate the anniversary of some great
+victory, Waterloo or Trafalgar, would appear to stretch up its stature
+triumphantly into the sky&mdash;so much the more triumphantly, if the
+standard of England were floating from its upper battlements. But to the
+devout eye of faith, doth it not seem to express its own character, when
+on the Sabbath it performs no other office than to point to heaven?</p>
+
+<p>So much for the second solution. But independently of both, no wonder
+that all nature seems to rest on the Sabbath; for it doth rest&mdash;all of
+it, at least, that appertains to man and his condition. If the Fourth
+Commandment be kept&mdash;at rest is all the household&mdash;and all the fields
+round it are at rest. Calm flows the current of human life, on that
+gracious day, throughout all the glens and valleys of Scotland, as a
+stream that wimples in the morning sunshine, freshened but not flooded
+with the soft-falling rain of a summer night. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> spiral smoke-wreath
+above the cottage is not calmer than the motion within. True, that the
+wood warblers do not cease their songs; but the louder they sing, the
+deeper is the stillness. And what perfect blessedness, when it is only
+joy that is astir in rest!</p>
+
+<p>Loud-flapping Cushat! it was thou that inspiredst these solemn fancies;
+and we have only to wish thee, for thy part contributed to our
+Recreations, now that the acorns of autumn must be well-nigh consumed,
+many a plentiful repast, amid the multitude of thy now congregated
+comrades, in the cleared stubble lands&mdash;as severe weather advances, and
+the ground becomes covered with snow, regales undisturbed by fowler, on
+the tops of turnip, rape, and other cruciform plants, which all of thy
+race affect so passionately&mdash;and soft blow the sea-breezes on thy
+unruffled plumage, when thou takest thy winter's walk with kindred
+myriads on the shelly shore, and for a season minglest with gull and
+seamew&mdash;apart every tribe, one from the other, in the province of its
+own peculiar instinct&mdash;yet all mysteriously taught to feed or sleep
+together within the roar or margin of the main.</p>
+
+<p>Sole-sitting Cushat! We see thee through the yew-tree's shade, on some
+day of the olden time, but when or where we remember not&mdash;for what has
+place or time to do with the vision of a dream? That we see thee is all
+we know, and that serenely beautiful thou art! Most pleasant is it to
+dream, and to know we dream! By sweet volition we keep ourselves half
+asleep and half awake; and all our visions of thought, as they go
+swimming along, partake at once of reality and imagination. Fiction and
+truth&mdash;clouds, shadows, phantoms and phantasms&mdash;ether, sunshine,
+substantial forms and sounds that have a being, blending together in a
+scene created by us, and partly impressed upon us, and which one motion
+of the head on the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more oppressive
+delight! In some such dreaming state of mind are we now; and, gentle
+reader, if thou art broad awake, lay aside the visionary volume, or read
+a little longer, and likely enough is it that thou too mayest fall half
+asleep. If so, let thy drowsy eyes still pursue the glimmering
+paragraphs&mdash;and wafted away wilt thou feel thyself to be into the heart
+of a Highland forest, that knows no bounds but those of the uncertain
+sky.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Away from our remembrance fades the noisy world of men into a silent
+glimmer&mdash;and now it is all no more than a mere faint thought.
+On&mdash;on&mdash;on! through briery brake&mdash;matted thicket&mdash;grassy
+glade&mdash;On&mdash;on&mdash;on! further into the Forest! What a confusion of huge
+stones, rocks, knolls, all tumbled together into a chaos&mdash;not without
+its stern and sterile beauty! Still are there, above, blue glimpses of
+the sky&mdash;deep though the umbrage be, and wide-flung the arms of the
+oaks, and of pines in their native wilderness gigantic as oaks, and
+extending as broad a shadow. Now the firmament has vanished&mdash;and all is
+twilight. Immense stems, "in number without number
+numberless,"&mdash;bewildering eye and soul&mdash;all
+still&mdash;silent&mdash;steadfast&mdash;and so would they be in a storm. For what
+storm&mdash;let it rage aloft as it might, till the surface of the forest
+toss and roar like the sea&mdash;could force its path through these many
+million trunks? The thunder-stone might split that giant there&mdash;how
+vast! how magnificent!&mdash;but the brother by his side would not tremble;
+and the sound&mdash;in the awful width of the silence&mdash;what more would it be
+than that of the woodpecker alarming the insects of one particular tree!</p>
+
+<p>Poor wretch that we are!&mdash;to us the uncompanioned silence of the
+solitude hath become terrible. More dreadful is it than the silence of
+the tomb; for there, often arise responses to the unuttered soliloquies
+of the pensive heart. But this is as the silence, not of Time, but of
+Eternity. No burial heaps&mdash;no mounds&mdash;no cairns! It is not as if man had
+perished here, and been forgotten; but as if this were a world in which
+there had been neither living nor dying. Too utter is the solitariness
+even for the ghosts of dead! For they are thought to haunt the
+burial-places of what once was their bodies&mdash;the chamber where the
+spirit breathed its final farewell&mdash;the spot of its transitory love and
+delight, or of its sin and sorrow&mdash;to gaze with troubled tenderness on
+the eyes that once they worshipped&mdash;with cold ear to drink the music of
+the voices long ago adored; and in all their permitted visitations, to
+express, if but by the beckoning of the shadow of a hand, some
+unextinguishable longing after the converse of the upper world, even
+within the gates of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>A change comes over us. Deep and still as is the solitude, we are
+relieved of our awe, and out of the forest-gloom arise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> images of beauty
+that come and go, gliding as on wings, or, statue-like, stand in the
+glades, like the sylvan deities to whom of old belonged, by birthright,
+all the regions of the woods. On&mdash;on&mdash;on!&mdash;further into the Forest!&mdash;and
+let the awe of imagination be still further tempered by the delight
+breathed even from any one of the lovely names sweet-sounding through
+the famous fables of antiquity. Dryad, Hamadryad! Faunus!
+Sylvanus!&mdash;Now, alas! ye are but names, and no more! Great Pan himself
+is dead, or here he would set up his reign. But what right has such a
+dreamer to dream of the dethroned deities of Greece? The language they
+spoke is not his language; yet the words of the great poets who sang of
+gods and demigods, are beautiful in their silent meanings as they meet
+his adoring eyes; and, mighty Lyrists! has he not often floated down the
+temple-crowned and altar-shaded rivers of your great Choral Odes?</p>
+
+<p>On&mdash;on&mdash;on!&mdash;further into the Forest!&mdash;unless, indeed, thou dreadest
+that the limbs that bear on thy fleshy tabernacle may fail, and the
+body, left to itself, sink down and die. Ha! such fears thou laughest to
+scorn; for from youth upwards thou hast dallied with the wild and
+perilous: and what but the chill delight in which thou hast so often
+shivered in threatening solitude brought thee here! These dens are not
+dungeons, nor are we a thrall. Yet if dungeons they must be called&mdash;and
+they are deep, and dark, and grim&mdash;ten thousand gates hath this great
+prison-house, and wide open are they all. So on&mdash;on&mdash;on!&mdash;further into
+the Forest! But who shall ascend to its summit? Eagles and dreams. Round
+its base we go, rejoicing in the new-found day, and once more cheered
+and charmed with the music of birds. Say whence came, ye scientific
+world-makers, these vast blocks of granite? Was it fire or water, think
+ye, that hung in air the semblance of yon Gothic cathedral, without
+nave, or chancel, or aisle&mdash;a mass of solid rock? Yet it looks like the
+abode of Echoes; and haply when there is thunder, rolls out its
+lengthening shadow of sound to the ear of the solitary shepherd afar off
+on Cairngorm.</p>
+
+<p>On&mdash;on&mdash;on!&mdash;further into the Forest! Now on all sides leagues of
+ancient trees surround us, and we are safe as in the grave from the
+persecuting love or hatred of friends or foes. The sun shall not find us
+by day, nor the moon by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> night. Were our life forfeited to what are
+called the laws, how could the laws discover the criminal? How could
+they drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? And
+if here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death&mdash;and famine is a
+natural death&mdash;what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but so
+it often is with us in severest solitude&mdash;our dreams will be hideous
+with sin and death.</p>
+
+<p>Hideous, said we, with sin and death? Thoughts that came flying against
+us like vultures, like vultures have disappeared, disappointed of their
+prey, and afraid to fix their talons in a thing alive. Hither&mdash;by some
+secret and sacred impulse within the soul, that often knoweth not the
+sovereign virtue of its own great desires&mdash;have we been led as into a
+penitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, we may lay down the
+burden of guilt or remorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven-pardoned
+man. What guilt?&mdash;O my soul! canst thou think of Him who inhabiteth
+eternity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?&mdash;For the dereliction of duty
+every day since thou received'st from Heaven the understanding of good
+and of evil. All our past existence gathers up into one dread
+conviction, that every man that is born of woman is a sinner, and worthy
+of everlasting death. Yet with the same dread conviction is interfused a
+knowledge, clear as the consciousness of present being, that the soul
+will live for ever. What was the meaning, O my soul! of all those
+transitory joys and griefs&mdash;of all those fears, hopes, loves, that so
+shook, each in its own fleeting season, the very foundations on which
+thy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, hatred, pride, and
+ambition&mdash;what are they all but so many shapes of sin coeval with thy
+birth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light into the Forest, was like
+the opening of the eye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed of its
+nakedness, because of the foulness and pollution of sin. But the awful
+thoughts that have travelled through its chambers have ventilated,
+swept, and cleansed them&mdash;and let us break away from beneath the weight
+of confession.</p>
+
+<p>Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears&mdash;of abject
+superstitions&mdash;and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages
+been laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them&mdash;and, without
+violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear
+testimony to the truth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> But think of the calm, purified, enlightened,
+and elevated conscience of the highest natures&mdash;from which objectless
+fear has been excluded&mdash;and which hears, in its stillness, the eternal
+voice of God. What calm celestial joy fills all the being of a good man,
+when conscience tells him he is obeying God's law! What dismal fear and
+sudden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves but one single step out
+of the right path that is shining before his feet! It is not a mere
+selfish terror&mdash;it is not the dread of punishment only that appals
+him&mdash;for, on the contrary, he can calmly look on the punishment which he
+knows his guilt has incurred, and almost desires that it should be
+inflicted, that the incensed power may be appeased. It is the
+consciousness of offence that is unendurable&mdash;not the fear of consequent
+suffering; it is the degradation of sin that his soul deplores&mdash;it is
+the guilt which he would expiate, if possible, in torments; it is the
+united sense of wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and remorse, that
+renders a moment's pang of the conscience more terrible to the good than
+years of any other punishment&mdash;and it thus is the power of the human
+soul to render its whole life miserable by its very love of that virtue
+which it has fatally violated. This is a passion which the soul could
+not suffer&mdash;unless it were immortal. Reason, so powerful in the highest
+minds, would escape from the vain delusion; but it is in the highest
+minds where reason is most subjected to this awful power&mdash;they would
+seek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happiness
+that earth ever yielded&mdash;and would rejoice to pour out their heart's
+blood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deep
+transgression! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states of
+mind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation of
+the dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men's
+sons&mdash;and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, or
+found strength to support it, the conviction of their reasonableness and
+of their awful reality remains; nor can it be removed from the minds of
+the wise and virtuous, without the obliteration from the tablets of
+memory of all the moral judgments which conscience has there recorded.</p>
+
+<p>It is melancholy to think that even in our own day, a philosopher, and
+one of high name too, should have spoken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> slightingly of the universal
+desire of immortality, as no argument at all in proof of it, because
+arising inevitably from the regret with which all men must regard the
+relinquishment of this life. By thus speaking of the desire as a
+delusion necessarily accompanying the constitution of mind which it has
+pleased the Deity to bestow on us, such reasoners but darken the mystery
+both of man and of Providence. But this desire of immortality is not of
+the kind they say it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of the
+character of a blind and weak feeling of regret at merely leaving this
+present life. "I would not live alway," is a feeling which all men
+understand&mdash;but who can endure the momentary thought of annihilation?
+Thousands, and tens of thousands&mdash;awful a thing as it is to die&mdash;are
+willing to do so&mdash;"passing through nature to eternity"&mdash;nay, when the
+last hour comes, death almost always finds his victim ready, if not
+resigned. To leave earth, and all the light both of the sun and of the
+soul, is a sad thought to us all&mdash;transient as are human smiles, we
+cannot bear to see them no more&mdash;and there is a beauty that binds us to
+life in the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees gushing for his
+sake. But between that regret for departing loves and affections, and
+all the gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth&mdash;between that love and
+the dread of annihilation, there is no connection. The soul can bear to
+part with all it loves&mdash;the soft voice&mdash;the kindling smile&mdash;the starting
+tear&mdash;and the profoundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved; but it
+cannot bear to part with its existence. It cannot even believe the
+possibility of that which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves&mdash;its
+passions&mdash;its joys&mdash;its agonies are <i>not itself</i>. They may perish, but
+it is imperishable. Strip it of all it has seen, touched, enjoyed, or
+suffered&mdash;still it seems to survive; bury all it knew, or could know in
+the grave&mdash;but itself cannot be trodden down into the corruption. It
+sees nothing like itself in what perishes, except in dim analogies that
+vanish before its last profound self-meditation&mdash;and though it parts
+with its mortal weeds at last, as with a garment, its life is felt at
+last to be something not even in contrast with the death of the body,
+but to flow on like a flood, that we believe continues still to flow
+after it has entered into the unseen solitude of some boundless desert.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Behind the cloud of death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the grave's alter'd! fathomless as hell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A real hell to those who dream'd of heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Annihilation</span>! How it yawns before me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The privilege of angels and of worms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An outcast from existence! and this spirit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This particle of energy divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which travels nature, flies from star to star,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And visits gods, and emulates their powers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>For ever is extinguish'd.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to perish, why may not we ask
+God, in that deep despair which, in that case, must inevitably flow from
+the consciousness of those powers with which He has at once blessed and
+cursed us&mdash;why that intellect, whose final doom is death, and that final
+doom within a moment, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that of
+Life, and no idea in which its flight can be lost but that of Eternity?
+If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why should
+that cradle have been hung amid the stars, and that tomb illumined by
+their eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not this
+earth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capacious
+enough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be
+extinguished in the darkness of its bosom? What had we to do with
+planets, and suns, and spheres, "and all the dread magnificence of
+heaven?" Were we framed merely that we might for a few years rejoice in
+the beauty of the stars, as in that of the flowers beneath our feet? And
+ought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, as
+for the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idle
+show, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the work
+of the Eternal God, and He has given us power therein to read and to
+understand His glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by the
+face of heaven&mdash;our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face is
+overspread by its celestial smiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits is
+already in the heavens. Well are we entitled to give names unto the
+stars; for we know the moment of their rising and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> their setting, and
+can be with them at every part of their shining journey through the
+boundless ether. While generations of men have lived, died, and are
+buried, the astronomer thinks of the golden orb that shone centuries ago
+within the vision of man, and lifts up his eye undoubting, at the very
+moment when it again comes glorious on its predicted return. Were the
+Eternal Being to slacken the course of a planet, or increase even the
+distance of the fixed stars, the decree would be soon known on earth.
+Our ignorance is great, because so is our knowledge; for it is from the
+mightiness and vastness of what we do know that we imagine the
+illimitable unknown creation. And to whom has God made these
+revelations? To a worm that next moment is to be in darkness? To a piece
+of earth momentarily raised into breathing existence? To a soul
+perishable as the telescope through which it looks into the gates of
+heaven?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander'd there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To waft us home&mdash;the message of despair?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No; there is no despair in the gracious light of heaven. As we travel
+through those orbs, we feel indeed that we have no power, but we feel
+that we have mighty knowledge. We can create nothing, but we can dimly
+understand all. It belongs to God only to <i>create</i>, but it is given to
+man to <i>know</i>&mdash;and that knowledge is itself an assurance of immortality.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Renounce St Evremont, and read St Paul.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His mounting mind made long abode in heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is freethinking, unconfined to parts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To send the soul, on curious travel bent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all the provinces of human thought:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of this vast universe to make the tour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In each recess of space and time, at home;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Familiar with their wonders: diving deep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like a prince of boundless interests there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still most ambitious of the most remote;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To look on truth unbroken, and entire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An archlike, strong foundation, to support<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More firm; who most examine, most believe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conveys the sense, and <span class="smcap">God</span> is understood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who not in fragments writes to human race.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Renounce St Evremont! Ay, and many a Deistical writer of high repute now
+in the world. But how came they by the truths they did know? Not by the
+work of their own unassisted faculties&mdash;for they lived in a Christian
+country; they had already been imbued with many high and holy beliefs,
+of which&mdash;had they willed it&mdash;they could never have got rid; and to the
+very last the light which they, in their pride, believed to have
+emanated from the inner shrine&mdash;the penetralia of Philosophy&mdash;came from
+the temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long&mdash;-
+though they knew it not, or strived to forget it&mdash;in the light of
+revelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds from
+earth, was still shining strong in heaven. Had the New Testament never
+been&mdash;think ye that men in their pride, though</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Poor sons of a day,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a <i>religion
+of humility</i>? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell&mdash;so by pride
+man, after his miserable fall, strove to lift up his helpless being from
+the dust; and though trailing himself, soul and body, along the soiling
+earth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here his
+very sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors,
+murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they had
+forgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foul
+imaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their own
+idolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame," while they
+were the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should
+we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in
+moral speculation we hear but little&mdash;too little&mdash;of the confession of
+what it owes to the Christian religion&mdash;in all the Philosophy,
+nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we <i>see</i> that "the
+dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there
+is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>tation of itself&mdash;which the
+spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to say
+that a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so&mdash;for seldom
+indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly of
+humility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our great
+divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but when
+we listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It is as if an angel shook his wings."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is now
+the air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of that
+religion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that of
+the humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it&mdash;and
+the lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling on the mountain-side, or
+in the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing to
+the Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount&mdash;and saying, "I see my duties to
+man and God <i>here</i>!" The religious establishments of Christianity,
+therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but to
+show all its springs and sources, than all the works of all the
+Philosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice.</p>
+
+<p>Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou wide-antlered king of the
+red-deer of Braemar, from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Ere
+now we have beheld thee, or one stately as thee, gazing abroad, from a
+rock over the heather, to all the points of heaven, and soon as our
+figure was seen far below, leading the van of the flight thou went'st
+haughtily away into the wilderness. But now thou glidest softly and
+slowly through the gloom&mdash;no watchfulness, no anxiety in thy large
+beaming eyes; and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest thyself down
+in unknown fellowship with one of those human creatures, a glance of
+whose eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send thee belling through the
+forest, terrified by the flash or sound that bespoke a hostile nature
+wont to pursue thy race unto death.&mdash;The hunter is upon
+thee&mdash;away&mdash;away! Sudden as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, and
+in the gloom as suddenly is lost.</p>
+
+<p>On&mdash;on&mdash;on! further into the Forest!&mdash;and now a noise as of "thunder
+heard remote." Waterfalls&mdash;hundreds of water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>falls sounding for
+ever&mdash;here&mdash;there&mdash;everywhere&mdash;among the remoter woods. Northwards one
+fierce torrent dashes through the centre&mdash;but no villages&mdash;only a few
+woodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of
+precipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out of
+the reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is in
+flood.</p>
+
+<p>Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again
+for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by
+our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters&mdash;wilt
+thou&mdash;short as hitherto has been thy journeying&mdash;wilt thou be our guide
+out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more
+of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the
+labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of
+silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind
+without entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases of
+the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, the
+small rivulet now gives utterance to a song; and sliding down shelving
+rocks, so low in their mossy verdure as hardly to deserve that name,
+glides along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a little
+hermit flower. No danger now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirsty
+earth; for it has a channel and banks of its own&mdash;and there is a
+waterfall! Thenceforwards the rivulet never loses its merry voice&mdash;and
+in an hour it is a torrent. What beautiful symptoms now of its approach
+to the edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and whispering airs are here
+visitants&mdash;and there the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from the
+ground! The glades are more frequent&mdash;more frequent open spaces cleared
+by the woodman's axe&mdash;and the antique Oak-Tree all alone by itself,
+itself a grove. The torrent may be called noble now; and that deep blue
+atmosphere&mdash;or say rather, that glimmer of purple air&mdash;lies over the
+Strath in which a great River rolls along to the Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in all nature more beautiful than the boundary of a great
+Highland Forest. Masses of rocks thrown together in magnificent
+confusion, many of them lichened and weather-stained with colours
+gorgeous as the eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the rainbow,
+or the barred and clouded glories of setting suns&mdash;some towering aloft
+with trees sown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> in the crevices by bird or breeze, and checkering the
+blue sky&mdash;others bare, black, abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shattered
+as if by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, places of perfect
+peace&mdash;circles among the tall heather, or taller lady-fern, smoothed
+into velvet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet&mdash;rocks where
+the undisturbed linnet hangs her nest among the blooming briers, all
+floating with dew-draperies of honeysuckle alive with bees&mdash;glades green
+as emerald, where lie the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a lovely
+doe reposes with her fawn; and further down, where the fields half
+belong to the mountain and half to the strath, the smoke of hidden
+huts&mdash;a log-bridge flung across the torrent&mdash;a hanging-garden, and a
+little broomy knoll, with a few laughing children at play, almost as
+wild-looking as the wanderers of the woods!</p>
+
+<p>Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely wilderness, and behold down
+along a mile-broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, floweth the
+noblest of Scotia's rivers, the strong-sweeping Spey! Let Imagination
+launch her canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman&mdash;for need is none of
+oar or sail; keep the middle course while all the groves go by, and ere
+the sun has sunk behind yon golden mountains&mdash;nay, mountains they are
+not, but a transitory pomp of clouds&mdash;thou mayest list the roaring, and
+behold the foaming of the Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Was there ever such a descriptive dream of a coloured engraving of the
+Cushat, Quest, or Ring-Dove, dreamt before? Poor worn-out and glimmering
+candle!&mdash;whose wick of light and life in a few more flickerings will be
+no more&mdash;what a contrast dost thou present with thyself of eight hours
+ago! Then, truly, wert thou a shining light, and high aloft in the
+room-gloaming burned thy clear crest like a star&mdash;during its midnight
+silence, a <i>memento mori</i> of which our spirit was not afraid. Now thou
+art dying&mdash;dying&mdash;dead! Our cell is in darkness. But methinks we see
+another&mdash;a purer&mdash;a clearer light&mdash;one more directly from Heaven. We
+touch but a spring in a wooden shutter&mdash;and lo! the full blaze of day.
+Oh! why should we mortal beings dread that night-prison&mdash;the Grave?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+<h2>DR KITCHINER.</h2>
+
+<h3>FIRST COURSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died before
+our numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining with
+him, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claims
+to immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, a
+dread of Us&mdash;not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner to
+Us, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knew
+and felt must have hung his reputation with posterity&mdash;his posthumous
+fame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinner
+among the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet,
+perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have died
+without attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It might
+have been a failure. How liable to imperfection the <i>mat&eacute;riel</i> on which
+he would have had to work! How defective the instruments!
+Yes&mdash;yes!&mdash;happier far was it for the good old man that he should have
+fallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in his
+imagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent in
+matter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died of
+a broken heart!</p>
+
+<p>"Travelling," it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his
+"Traveller's Oracle," "is a recreation to be recommended, especially to
+those whose employments are sedentary&mdash;who are engaged in abstract
+studies&mdash;whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy by
+hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domestic
+felicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; and
+therefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life to
+undertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> exposed to long
+and violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed to
+drink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine."</p>
+
+<p>Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by
+"long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown in
+England, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, some
+occasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes and
+cross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy the
+most sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in an
+easy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriage
+spinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows all
+galloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. The
+truth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentary
+life, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch of
+M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on the
+roof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only look
+at that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in
+between a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races.
+Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?</p>
+
+<p>We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no man
+who has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, be
+afraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear or
+trembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne&mdash;the Navy&mdash;and the Army.
+These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objection
+whatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of the
+Whigs&mdash;the Angler's delight&mdash;the cause of Liberty all over the
+World&mdash;Christopher North&mdash;Maga the Immortal.&mdash;"Nature will not suffer
+any sudden transition!" Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! His
+very own mother could not know him&mdash;he has lost all resemblance to his
+twin-brother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not have
+distinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow&mdash;so completely is
+his apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for him
+to establish an <i>alibi</i>. He sees a figure in the mirror above the
+chimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced
+Bacchanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then he takes care to
+imitate the manual exer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>cise of the phantom&mdash;lifting his glass to his
+lips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down any
+rule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in a
+day, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; but
+that nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude,
+which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating."</p>
+
+<p>We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for the
+rule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating.
+What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued&mdash;quite done up
+as it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark in
+heaven&mdash;tira-lira&mdash;or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, who
+forthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, the
+sunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day&mdash;or tripping along, all
+by her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs,
+the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand,
+to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on the
+meridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak,
+beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry!
+Where is your "sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide in
+exercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed both
+in mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy," you continue to pass over
+houseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, through
+villages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower,
+till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all the
+west, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday
+Night&mdash;for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream&mdash;and know
+not, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather,
+that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," is yet among the number
+of our bosom friends&mdash;alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune,
+the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor,
+puny, idle, and unmeaning word!</p>
+
+<p>Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." It is produced in us by
+three platefuls of hotch-potch&mdash;and, to the eyes of an ordinary
+observer, our dinner would seem to be at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> an end. But no&mdash;strictly
+speaking, it is just going to begin. About an hour ago did we, standing
+on the very beautiful bridge of Perth, see that identical salmon, with
+his back-fin just visible above the translucent tide, arrowing up the
+Tay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubting that he should spend his
+honeymoon among the gravel-beds of Kinnaird or Moulinearn, or the rocky
+sofas of the Tummel, or the green marble couches of the Tilt. What has
+become now of "the sense of satiety in eating?" John&mdash;the
+castors!&mdash;mustard&mdash;vinegar&mdash;cayenne&mdash;catchup&mdash;pease and potatoes, with a
+very little butter&mdash;the biscuit called "rusk"&mdash;and the memory of the
+hotch-potch is as that of Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton,
+exquisite though much of the five-year-old blackfaced must assuredly be,
+can, with any rational hopes of success, contend against a haunch of
+venison, will be asserted by no devout lover of truth. Try the two by
+alternate platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you leave off
+after the venison. That "sense of satiety in eating," of which Dr
+Kitchiner speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon devoured above&mdash;but of
+all the transitory feelings of us transitory creatures on our transit
+through this transitory world, in which the Doctor asserts nature will
+not suffer any sudden transitions, the most transitory ever experienced
+by us is "the sense of satiety in eating." Therefore, we have now seen
+it for a moment existing on the disappearance of the hotch-potch&mdash;dying
+on the appearance of the Tay salmon&mdash;once more noticeable as the last
+plate of the noble fish melted away&mdash;extinguished suddenly by the vision
+of the venison&mdash;again felt for an instant, and but for an instant&mdash;for a
+brace and a half of as fine grouse as ever expanded their voluptuous
+bosoms to be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety in eating indeed!
+If you please, my dear friend, one of the backs&mdash;pungent with the most
+palate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heart-warming, soul-exalting of all
+tastes&mdash;the wild bitter-sweet.</p>
+
+<p>But the Doctor returns to the subject of travelling&mdash;and fatigue. "When
+one begins," he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn often
+and be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movement
+occasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and is
+sensible of a bitter taste, <i>seek refreshment and repose</i>, if you wish
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> <span class="smcap lowercase">PREVENT ILLNESS</span>, already beginning to take place." Why, our dear
+Doctor, illness in such a deplorable case as this, is just about to end,
+and death is beginning to take place. Thank Heaven, it is a condition to
+which we do not remember having very nearly approximated! Who ever saw
+us yawn? or drowsy? or with our appetite impaired, except on the
+withdrawal of the table-cloth? or low-spirited, but when the Glenlivet
+was at ebb? Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensible
+of a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringer
+on our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, from
+January to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's or
+Kendal's chronometer.</p>
+
+<p>But the Doctor proceeds&mdash;"By raising the temperature of my room to about
+65&deg;, a broth diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a
+pint of warm water, and repeating it every half-hour till it moves the
+bowels twice or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or two sooner than
+usual, I have often very speedily got rid of colds, &amp;c."</p>
+
+<p>Why, there may be no great harm in acting as above; although we should
+far rather recommend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea-spoonful of Epsom
+salts in half a pint of warm water, reminds one, somehow or other, of
+Tims. A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so easy&mdash;and that the
+Cockneys well know&mdash;to move the bowels of old Christopher North. We do
+not believe that a tea-spoonful of anything in this world would have any
+serious effect on old "Ironsides." We should have no hesitation in
+backing him against so much corrosive sublimate. He would dine out on
+the day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic;&mdash;and would, we verily
+believe, rise triumphant from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid.</p>
+
+<p>We could mention a thousand cures for "colds, et cetera," more
+efficacious than a broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of Epsom
+salts, or early roosting. What say you, our dear Dean, to half-a-dozen
+tumblers of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to the same amount? Or
+an equal quantity, in its gradual decrease revealing deeper and deeper
+still the romantic Welsh scenery of the Devil's Punch-Bowl? <i>Adde tot</i>
+small-bearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea foam, and worthy, as
+they stud the Ambrosial brodd, to be licked off all at once by the
+lambent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> calumny against the
+character of toasted cheese&mdash;that, forsooth, it is indigestible&mdash;has
+been trampled under the march of mind; and therefore, you may tuck in a
+pound of double Gloucester. Other patients, labouring under catarrh,
+may, very possibly, prefer the roasted how-towdy&mdash;or the green goose
+from his first stubble-field&mdash;or why not, by way of a little variety, a
+roasted maukin, midway between hare and leveret, tempting as maiden
+between woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, between a frock
+and a gown? Go to bed&mdash;no need of warming-pans&mdash;about a quarter before
+one;&mdash;you will not hear that small hour strike&mdash;you will sleep sound
+till sunrise, sound as the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings of
+Scotland were crowned of old. And if you contrive to carry a cold about
+you next day, you deserve to be sent to Coventry by all sensible
+people&mdash;and may, if you choose, begin taking, with Tims, a tea-spoonful
+of Epsom salts in a half-pint of warm water every half-hour, till it
+moves your bowels twice or thrice; but if you do, be your sex, politics,
+or religion what they may, never shall ye be suffered to contribute even
+a bit of Balaam to the Magazine.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor then treats of the best Season for travelling, and very
+judiciously observes that it is during these months when there is no
+occasion for a fire&mdash;that is, just before and after the extreme heat. In
+winter, Dr Kitchiner, who was a man of extraordinary powers of
+observation, observed, "that the ways are generally bad, and often
+dangerous, especially in hilly countries, by reason of the snow and ice.
+The days are short&mdash;a traveller comes late to his lodging, and is often
+forced to rise before the sun in the morning&mdash;besides, the country looks
+dismal&mdash;nature is, as it were, half dead. The summer corrects all these
+inconveniences." Paradoxical as this doctrine may at first sight
+appear&mdash;yet we have verified it by experience&mdash;having for many years
+found, without meeting with one single exception, that the fine, long,
+warm days of summer are an agreeable and infallible corrective of the
+inconveniences attending the foul, short, cold days of winter&mdash;a season
+which is surly without being sincere, blustering rather than bold&mdash;an
+intolerable bore&mdash;always pretending to be taking his leave, yet
+domiciliating himself in another man's house for weeks together&mdash;and, to
+be plain, a season so regardless of truth, that nobody believes him till
+frost has hung an ice-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd voice
+is dumb under the wreathed snows.</p>
+
+<p>"Cleanliness when travelling," observes the Doctor, "is doubly
+necessary; to sponge the body every morning with tepid water, and then
+rub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly contribute to preserve
+health. To put the feet into warm water for a couple of minutes just
+before going to bed, is very refreshing, and inviting to sleep; for
+promoting tranquillity, both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may be
+regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience."</p>
+
+<p>Far be it from us to seek to impugn such doctrine. A dirty dog is a
+nuisance not to be borne. But here the question arises&mdash;who&mdash;what&mdash;is a
+dirty dog? Now there are men (no women) naturally&mdash;necessarily&mdash;dirty.
+They are not dirty by chance&mdash;or accident&mdash;say twice or thrice per diem;
+but they are always dirty&mdash;at all times and in all places&mdash;and never and
+nowhere more disgustingly so than when figged out for going to church.
+It is in the skin, in the blood&mdash;in the flesh, and in the bone&mdash;that
+with such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon&mdash;no
+less in the hair. Now, such persons do not know that they are
+dirty&mdash;that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often think
+themselves pinks of purity&mdash;incarnations of carnations&mdash;impersonations
+of moss-roses&mdash;the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form of
+that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons to change their linen every
+half-hour, night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight clean
+shirts in the twenty-four hours&mdash;and it might not be reasonable,
+perhaps, to demand more of them under a government somewhat too
+Whiggish&mdash;yet though we cheerfully grant that one and all of the shirts
+would be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given moment from sunrise
+to sunset, and over again, the wearer would be clean. He would be just
+every whit and bit as dirty as if he had known but one single shirt all
+his life&mdash;and firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Men again, on the other hand, there are&mdash;and, thank God, in great
+numbers&mdash;who are naturally so clean, that we defy you to make them <i>bon&acirc;
+fide</i> dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, and
+expect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing of
+swans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>&mdash;that is, Poets&mdash;when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the
+ditch,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But soars far off among the swans of Thames."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Pleasant people of this kind of constitution you see going about of a
+morning rather in dishabille&mdash;hair uncombed haply&mdash;face and hands even
+unwashed&mdash;and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are
+they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to be
+among the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake
+hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger that
+their heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of the
+highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail on
+the large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as unclouded
+skies&mdash;the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree&mdash;what need,
+in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though,
+from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little toozy? It
+is not dim&mdash;dull&mdash;oily&mdash;like half-withered sea-weeds! It will soon comb
+itself with the fingers of the west wind&mdash;that tent-like tree its
+toilette&mdash;its mirror that pool of the clear-flowing Tweed.</p>
+
+<p>Some streams, just like some men, are always dirty&mdash;you cannot possibly
+tell why&mdash;unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet
+weather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds,
+infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so many
+common-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, and
+threatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet,
+soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed into filth.
+The sun sees his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out of his
+senses. He shines no more that day. The clouds have no notion of being
+caricatured, and the trees keep cautiously away from the brink of such
+streams&mdash;save, perchance, now and then, here and there, a weak
+well-meaning willow&mdash;a thing of shreds and patches&mdash;its leafless wands
+covered with bits of old worsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle
+(see Dr Jamieson), and the remains of a pair of corduroy breeches, long
+hereditary in the family of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm Gypsies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some streams, just like some men, are always clean&mdash;you cannot well tell
+why&mdash;producible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In
+dry, the pearly waters are singing among the freshened flowers&mdash;so that
+the trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. In wet, they grow, it
+is true, dark and drumly&mdash;and at midnight, when heaven's candles are put
+out, loud and oft the angry spirit of the water shrieks. But Aurora
+beholds her face in the clarified pools and shallows&mdash;far and wide
+glittering with silver or with gold. All the banks and braes reappear
+green as emerald from the subsiding current&mdash;into which look with the
+eye of an angler, and you behold a Fish&mdash;a twenty-pounder&mdash;steadying
+himself&mdash;like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George Scougal's leister
+to strike him through the spine! Yes, these are the images of trees far
+down, as if in another world; and, whether you look up or look down,
+alike in all its blue, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morning
+sky!</p>
+
+<p>Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus illustrated&mdash;generally
+sweet&mdash;at least in their own green Isle; and that was the best argument
+in favour of Catholic Emancipation.&mdash;So are Scotsmen. Whereas,
+blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand,
+immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to your
+nose&mdash;and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit has
+substituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetid
+fives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of the
+plague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantly
+denominated dirt&mdash;one week's earth&mdash;washed off the feet of a pretty
+young girl on a Saturday night, at a single sitting in the little
+rivulet that runs almost round about her father's hut, as would have
+served him to raise his mignonette in, or his crop of cresses. How
+beautifully glowed the crimson-snow of the singing creature's new-washed
+feet! First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucid
+waters&mdash;and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of the
+heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes of
+the stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the
+Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow
+her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic
+accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of
+the Sassenach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fifty
+glorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forests
+from the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs of Cairngorm.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truth
+than perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm&mdash;"that a clean
+skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience." But the
+Doctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words
+"clean skin"&mdash;his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-hand
+basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give a
+Cockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin&mdash;just as many good people think
+that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clear
+conscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in both
+cases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass through
+nature to eternity clean-skinned and pious&mdash;with slight expense either
+in soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodily
+scrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in bad
+odour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, and
+finally go out like the stink of a candle.</p>
+
+<p>Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and a
+note-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliterated
+by the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, or
+read, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it&mdash;do this
+upon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you&mdash;at all
+events do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>Suppose all people behaved in this way&mdash;and what an absurd world we
+should have of it&mdash;every man, woman, and child who could write, jotting
+away at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see,
+hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this one
+especially&mdash;in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. The
+memory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we have
+observed, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does not
+bear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds
+himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the
+Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the
+Memory&mdash;each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by
+itself, is in a very awkward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> predicament&mdash;gets comatose&mdash;snores loudly,
+and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination
+and our Judgment&mdash;nay, our very Reason itself&mdash;than our Memory&mdash;provided
+we were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy.
+Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or they
+carelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receive
+impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a
+bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.</p>
+
+<p>The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never,
+properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in
+the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of
+its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in
+the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from
+understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of
+which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and
+the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees,
+hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge,
+either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in
+their very being spontaneous and free&mdash;the mind being even unconscious
+of them as they are going on&mdash;while the edifice has all the time been
+silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent
+workers&mdash;Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind
+or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and
+Foreman&mdash;had not only originally planned, but had even daily
+superintended the building of the Temple.</p>
+
+<p>Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple
+question&mdash;Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most
+various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney,
+without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could.
+Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth,
+what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad&mdash;a moon to a mutton chop&mdash;a
+comet to a curry&mdash;a planet to a p&acirc;t&eacute;! What gross ingratitude to the
+Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to
+remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made
+with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but
+then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature
+gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the
+slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the
+tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but
+which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their
+miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever&mdash;yea, even to the great Day
+of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>If men will but look and listen, and feel and think&mdash;they will never
+forget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, that
+to our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget our
+wives&mdash;unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimes
+will be? Do we forget our triumphs&mdash;our defeats&mdash;our ecstasies, our
+agonies&mdash;the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"&mdash;the ghost-like
+voice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes&mdash;or her seraph
+hymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we may
+enter in among the white-robed spirits, and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by
+the most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparison
+with the Library of Useful Knowledge, that <i>every</i> man&mdash;who is a
+man&mdash;carries within the Ratcliffe&mdash;the Bodleian of his own breast?</p>
+
+<p>What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebub
+of a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in the
+ceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp&mdash;vanished like a
+thought!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+<h2>DR KITCHINER.</h2>
+
+<h3>SECOND COURSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Above all things, continues Dr Kitchiner, "avoid travelling through the
+night, which, by interrupting sleep, and exposing the body to the night
+air, is always prejudicial, even in the mildest weather, and to the
+strongest constitutions." Pray, Doctor, what ails you at the night air?
+If the night air be, even in the mildest weather, prejudicial to the
+strongest constitutions, what do you think becomes of the cattle on a
+thousand hills? Why don't all the bulls in Bashan die of the asthma&mdash;or
+look interesting by moonlight in a galloping consumption? Nay, if the
+night air be so very fatal, how do you account for the longevity of
+owls? Have you never read of the Chaldean shepherds watching the courses
+of the stars? Or, to come nearer our own times, do you not know that
+every blessed night throughout the year, thousands of young lads and
+lasses meet, either beneath the milk-white thorn&mdash;or on the lea-rig,
+although the night be ne'er sae wet, and they be ne'er sae weary&mdash;or
+under a rock on the hill&mdash;or&mdash;no uncommon case&mdash;beneath a frozen
+stack&mdash;not of chimneys, but of corn-sheaves&mdash;or on a couch of snow&mdash;and
+that they are all as warm as so many pies; while, instead of feeling
+what you call "the lack of vigour attendant on the loss of sleep, which
+is as enfeebling and as distressing as the languor that attends the want
+of food," they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, "neither to haud
+nor bind;" the eyes of the young lads being all as brisk, bold, and
+bright as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of the young lasses
+shine with a soft, faint, obscure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewy
+Pleiades, over which nature has insensibly been breathing a mist almost
+waving and wavering into a veil of clouds?</p>
+
+<p>Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion for those unfor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>tunate blades,
+who, <i>nolentes-volentes</i>, must remain out perennially all night&mdash;we mean
+the blades of grass, and also the flowers? Their constitutions seem
+often far from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty night, and you
+will hear them&mdash;we have done so many million times&mdash;shivering, ay,
+absolutely shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the night air be
+indeed what Dr Kitchiner has declared it to be&mdash;Lord have mercy on the
+vegetable world! What agonies in that field of turnips! Alas, poor
+Swedes! The imagination recoils from the condition of that club of
+winter cabbages&mdash;and of what materials, pray, must the heart of that man
+be made, who could think but for a moment on the case of those carrots,
+without bursting into a flood of tears!</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor avers that the firm health and fine spirits of persons who
+live in the country, are not more from breathing a purer air, than from
+enjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the most distressing misery of "this
+Elysium of bricks and mortar," is the rareness with which we enjoy "the
+sweets of a slumber unbroke."</p>
+
+<p>Doctor&mdash;in the first place, it is somewhat doubtful whether or not
+persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits
+than persons who live in towns&mdash;even in London. What kind of persons do
+you mean? You must not be allowed to select some dozen or two of the
+hairiest among the curates&mdash;a few chosen rectors whose faces have been
+but lately elevated to the purple&mdash;a team of prebends issuing sleek from
+their golden stalls&mdash;a picked bishop&mdash;a sacred band the &eacute;lite of the
+squirearchy&mdash;with a corresponding sprinkling of superior noblemen from
+lords to dukes&mdash;and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with an equal
+number of external objects taken from the common run of Cockneys. This,
+Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at&mdash;but you must clap your
+hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural
+population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes
+first&mdash;be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag,
+tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age
+(for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and
+perennial poverty;&mdash;Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced
+in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the
+overseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> bastard, is
+about to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;&mdash;Be it a
+landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ruby cheeks, the
+whole machinery of his mouth so deranged by tippling that he
+simultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers and
+snores&mdash;pot-bellied&mdash;shanked like a spindle-strae&mdash;and bidding fair to
+be buried on or before Saturday week;&mdash;Be it a half-drunk horse-cowper,
+swinging to and fro in a wraprascal on a bit of broken-down blood that
+once won a fifty, every sentence, however short, having but two
+intelligible words, an oath and a lie&mdash;his heart rotten with falsehood,
+and his bowels burned up with brandy, so that sudden death may pull him
+from his saddle before he put spurs to his sporting filly that she may
+bilk the turnpike man, and carry him more speedily home to beat or
+murder his poor, pale, industrious char-woman of a wife;&mdash;Be it&mdash;not a
+beggar, for beggars are prohibited from this parish&mdash;but a pauper in the
+sulks, dying on her pittance from the poor-rates, which altogether
+amount in merry England but to about the paltry sum of, more or less,
+six millions a-year&mdash;her son, all the while, being in a thriving way as
+a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits
+from his business of &pound;300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore
+him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the
+bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw
+had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously
+as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters,
+and stumbling every foot-fall down that other flight of steps that
+consist of flags that are mortal damp and mortal cold, and lead to
+nothing but a parcel of rotten planks, and overhead a vault dripping
+with perpetual moisture, green and slobbery, such as toads delight in
+crawling heavily through with now and then a bloated leap, and hideous
+things more worm-like, that go wriggling briskly in and out among the
+refuse of the coffins, and are heard, by imagination at least, to emit
+faint angry sounds, because the light of day has hurt their eyes, and
+the air from the upper world weakened the rank savoury smell of
+corruption, clothing, as with a pall, all the inside walls of the
+tombs;&mdash;Be it a man yet in the prime of life as to years, six feet and
+an inch high, and measuring round the chest forty-eight inches (which is
+more, reader, than thou dost by six, we bet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> a sovereign, member
+although thou even be'st of the Edinburgh Six Feet Club), to whom
+Washington Irving's Jack Tibbuts was but a Tims&mdash;but then ever so many
+gamekeepers met him all alone in my lord's pheasant preserve, and though
+two of them died within the month, two within the year, and two are now
+in the workhouse&mdash;one a mere idiot, and the other a madman&mdash;both
+shadows&mdash;so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so sorely were their
+skulls fractured;&mdash;yet the poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and there
+he sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the edge of the wood whose
+haunts he must thread no more&mdash;for the keepers were grim bone-breakers
+enough in their way&mdash;and when they had gotten him on his back, one
+gouged him like a Yankee, and the other bit off his nose like a Bolton
+Trotter&mdash;and one smashed his <i>os frontis</i> with the nailed heel of a
+two-pound wooden clog, a Preston Purrer;&mdash;so that Master Allonby is now
+far from being a beauty, with a face of that description attached to a
+head wagging from side to side under a powerful palsy, while the
+Mandarin drinks damnation to the Lord of the Manor in a horn of
+eleemosynary ale, handed to him by the village blacksmith, in days of
+old not the worst of the gang, and who, but for a stupid jury, a
+merciful judge, and something like prevarication in the circumstantial
+evidence, would have been hanged for a murderer&mdash;as he was&mdash;dissected,
+and hung in chains;&mdash;Be it a red-haired woman, with a pug nose, small
+fiery eyes, high cheekbones, bulging lips, and teeth like
+swine-tusks,&mdash;bearded&mdash;flat-breasted as a man&mdash;tall, scambling in her
+gait, but swift, and full of wild motions in her weather-withered arms,
+all starting with sinews like whipcord&mdash;the Pedestrian Post to and fro
+the market town twelve miles off&mdash;and so powerful a pugilist that she
+hit Grace Maddox senseless in seven minutes&mdash;tried before she was
+eighteen for child-murder, but not hanged, although the man-child, of
+which the drab was self-delivered in a ditch, was found with blue
+finger-marks on its windpipe, bloody mouth, and eyes forced out of their
+sockets, buried in the dunghill behind her father's hut&mdash;not hanged,
+because a surgeon, originally bred a sow-gelder, swore that he believed
+the mother had unconsciously destroyed her offspring in the throes of
+travail, if indeed it had ever breathed, for the lungs would not swim,
+he swore, in a basin of water&mdash;so the incestuous murderess was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> let
+loose; her brother got hanged in due time after the mutiny at the
+Nore&mdash;and her father, the fishmonger&mdash;why, he went red raving mad as if
+a dog had bitten him&mdash;and died, as the same surgeon and sow-gelder
+averred, of the hydrophobia, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth,
+and some said cursing, but that was a calumny, for something seemed to
+be the matter with his tongue, and he could not speak, only
+splutter&mdash;nobody venturing, except his amiable daughter&mdash;and in that
+particular act of filial affection she was amiable&mdash;to hold in the
+article of death the old man's head;&mdash;Be it that moping idiot that would
+sit, were she suffered, on, on, on&mdash;night and day for ever, on the
+self-same spot, whatever that spot might be on which she happened to
+squat at morning, mound, wall, or stone&mdash;motionless, dumb, and, as a
+stranger would think, also blind, for the eyelids are still shut&mdash;never
+opened in sun or storm;&mdash;yet that figure&mdash;that which is now, and has for
+years been, an utter and hopeless idiot, was once a gay, laughing,
+dancing, singing girl, whose blue eyes seemed full of light, whether
+they looked on earth or heaven, the flowers or the stars&mdash;her
+sweetheart&mdash;a rational young man, it would appear&mdash;having leapt out upon
+her suddenly, as she was passing through the churchyard at night, from
+behind a tombstone, in a sack which she, having little time for
+consideration, and being naturally superstitious, supposed to be a
+shroud, and the wearer thereof, who was an active stripling of sound
+flesh and blood, to be a ghost or skeleton, all one horrid rattle of
+bones; so that the trick succeeded far beyond the most sanguine
+expectation of the Tailor who played the principal part&mdash;and sense,
+feeling, memory, imagination, and reason, were all felled by one blow of
+fear&mdash;as butcher felleth ox&mdash;while by one of those mysteries, which
+neither we, nor you, nor anybody else, can understand, life remained not
+only unimpaired, but even invigorated; and there she sits, like a clock
+wound up to go a certain time, the machinery of which being good, has
+not been altogether deranged by the shock that sorely cracked the case,
+and will work till the chain is run down, and then it will tick no
+more;&mdash;Be it that tall, fair, lovely girl, so thin and attenuated that
+all wonder she can walk by herself&mdash;that she is not blown away even by
+the gentle summer breeze that wooes the hectic of her cheek&mdash;dying all
+see&mdash;and none better than her poor old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> mother&mdash;and yet herself
+thoughtless of the coming doom, and cheerful as a nest-building
+bird&mdash;while her lover, too deep in despair to be betrayed into tears, as
+he carries her to her couch, each successive day feels the dear and
+dreadful burden lighter and lighter in his arms. Small strength will it
+need to support her bier! The coffin, as if empty, will be lowered
+unfelt by the hands that hold those rueful cords!</p>
+
+<p>In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we shall endeavour to prevent
+ourselves from pursuing this argument any further&mdash;and perhaps quite
+enough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that persons
+who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than the
+inhabitants of towns&mdash;is exceedingly problematical. But even admitting
+the fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he has
+attributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "their
+enjoying plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is entirely out in
+his conjecture. The working classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubt
+it, sound sleep&mdash;but not plenty of it. They have but a short allowance
+of sleep&mdash;and whether it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themselves;
+while as to the noises in towns and cities, they are nothing to what one
+hears in the country&mdash;unless, indeed, you perversely prefer private
+lodgings at a pewterer's. Did we wish to be personal, we could name a
+single waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all the visitors from
+town awake within a circle of four miles diameter; and in wet weather,
+not only keeps them all awake, but impresses them with a constantly
+recurring conviction during the hours of night, that there is something
+seriously amiss about the foundation of the river, and that the whole
+parish is about to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the old
+castle that over-looks the linn. Then, on another point, we are
+certain&mdash;namely, that rural thunder is many hundred times more powerful
+than villatic. London porter is above admiration&mdash;but London thunder
+below contempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it hollow. But, my
+faith! a thunderstorm in the country&mdash;especially if it be mountainous,
+with a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inevitably think of that
+land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and even our town readers
+will acknowledge that country thunder much more frequently proves mortal
+than the thunder you meet with in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> cities. In the country, few
+thunderstorms are contented to pass over without killing at least one
+horse, some milch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or turkeys, an old
+woman or two, perhaps the Minister of the parish, a man about forty,
+name unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, the child escaping with
+singed eyebrows, and a singular black mark on one of its great toes. We
+say nothing of the numbers stupified, who awake the day after, as from a
+dream, with strange pains in their heads, and not altogether sure about
+the names or countenances of the somewhat unaccountable people whom they
+see variously employed about the premises, and making themselves pretty
+much at home. In towns, not one thunderstorm in fifty that performs an
+exploit more magnanimous than knocking down an old wife from a
+chimney-top&mdash;singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an
+ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to
+dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called&mdash;or cutting a
+few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had
+been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of
+some still higher preferment.</p>
+
+<p>Our dear deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat and
+drink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they may
+indulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travelling
+itself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment is
+required than in a state of rest. What you might not consider
+intemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatal
+inflammations, &amp;c., in situations where you are least able to obtain
+medical assistance."</p>
+
+<p>All this is very loosely stated, and must be set to rights. If you shut
+yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that keeps
+wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and changes horses in
+half a minute, certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat and drink
+the better; and perhaps an hourly hundred drops of laudanum, or
+equivalent grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the transit from
+London to Edinburgh might be performed in a phantasma. But the free
+agent ought to live well on his travels&mdash;some degrees better, without
+doubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There is
+always something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost,
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an
+unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many
+unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of
+domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one
+of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling
+at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and,
+except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an
+agreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of the
+dishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus&mdash;but false that
+therefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if now
+alive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all day
+with his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the
+afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise forty
+or fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was our
+nourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What we
+want, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, under
+such circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach and
+constitution cannot over-eat himself&mdash;no, not for his immortal soul.</p>
+
+<p>We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of the
+most free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how to
+disturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literary
+characters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained," quoth
+he slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works."</p>
+
+<p>The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rather
+more common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comes
+to&mdash;and know better what is the province of their profession. Any one
+man may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any third
+man in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author&mdash;or his
+bookseller&mdash;or his parish minister&mdash;or his butcher&mdash;or his baker&mdash;or his
+"man of business"&mdash;or his house-builder&mdash;may, one and all, give such
+travellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to the
+said eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimes
+done&mdash;but fortunately we cannot speak from experience, not being
+ourselves an eminent author. The more general the intercourse between
+men of taste, feeling, cultivation, learning, genius, the better; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+that intercourse should be brought about freely and of its own accord,
+as fortunate circumstances permit, and there should be no impertinent
+interference of selfish or benevolent go-betweens. It would seem that Dr
+Kitchiner thought the commonest traveller, one who was almost, as it
+were, bordering on a Bagman, had nothing to do but call on the publisher
+of any great writer, and get a free admission into his house. Had the
+Doctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing and
+blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only to
+hope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will not
+degrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence," by thrusting
+their ugly or comely faces&mdash;both are equally odious&mdash;into the privacy of
+gentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from the
+protection of the laws of civilised society&mdash;or subject their fire-sides
+to be infested by one-half of the curious men of the country, two-thirds
+of the clever, and all the blockheads.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+<h2>DR KITCHINER.</h2>
+
+<h3>THIRD COURSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Having thus briefly instructed travellers how to get a look at Lions,
+the Doctor suddenly exclaims&mdash;"<span class="smcap">Imprimis, beware of dogs</span>!" "There have,"
+he says, "been many arguments, <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>, on the dreadful disease
+their bite produces&mdash;it is enough to prove that multitudes of men,
+women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten by
+dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily
+disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is
+of more value than all the dogs in the world&mdash;dare the most brutal cynic
+say otherwise?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise of
+one kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why,
+then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog
+leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when so
+afflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left at
+pedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fear
+hydrophobia&mdash;though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of a
+tolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "the
+rabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, to
+dread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the very
+sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have
+died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not
+run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely
+deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a
+multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical&mdash;having
+died, it is true, <i>in</i>, but not <i>of</i> hydrophobia&mdash;states of mind and
+body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies
+<i>in</i> a state of hydrophobia&mdash;for he abhorred water, and knew
+instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies
+at all <i>of</i> hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty
+years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess
+the other two&mdash;why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was
+dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself
+bitten&mdash;and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and
+measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created,
+would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its
+education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an
+impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible
+disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily
+disposed of&mdash;eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged
+at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable
+the industrious to live&mdash;two having died of drinking&mdash;one of extreme old
+age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood,
+their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by
+neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women,
+and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?</p>
+
+<p>Gentle reader&mdash;a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times
+the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe&mdash;along
+all roads, public and private&mdash;with stiles or turnpikes&mdash;metropolitan
+streets and suburban paths&mdash;and at all seasons of the revolving year and
+day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken
+by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many
+million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a
+yard&mdash;their sides panting&mdash;flag struck&mdash;and the whole dog showing
+symptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do not
+assert&mdash;they may have been mad&mdash;but they certainly were fatigued; and
+the difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness and
+insanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, would
+have fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against the
+harmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun,
+and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming a
+levy <i>en masse</i>, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor,
+sitting in his coach&mdash;like Napoleon at Waterloo&mdash;would have cried "<i>Tout
+est perdu&mdash;sauve, qui peut!</i>"&mdash;and re-galloping to a provincial town,
+would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens.</p>
+
+<p>"The life of the most humble human being," quoth the Doctor, "is of more
+value than all the dogs in the world&mdash;dare the most brutal cynic say
+otherwise?"</p>
+
+<p>This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutal
+Cynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all&mdash;being an Eclectic,
+and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
+Peripateticism&mdash;with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. The
+most brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer for
+himself&mdash;while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him,
+that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than all
+the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there is
+many a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of many
+men, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a question
+in philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt on
+the subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question,
+as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as the
+human soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an old
+woman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity,
+either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogs
+now alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a human
+soul should be lost;&mdash;but not a single human soul is going to be lost,
+although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now,
+would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on his
+Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of a
+century and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a mad
+dog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs of
+harriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, and
+cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all the
+Newfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the
+infinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> Britain
+and Ireland&mdash;to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and in
+the realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument at
+once&mdash;What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, and
+one-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one of
+Christopher North's Newfoundland dogs&mdash;Fro&mdash;Bronte&mdash;or O'Bronte?
+Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brute
+creation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses,
+hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses,
+mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese,
+and how-towdies?</p>
+
+<p>"Semi-drowning in the sea"&mdash;he continues&mdash;"and all the pretended
+specifics, are mere delusions&mdash;there is no real remedy but cutting the
+part out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannot
+always be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always prevent
+the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might
+St Paul tell us to '<i>beware of dogs</i>.' First Epistle to Philippians,
+chap. iii., v. 2."</p>
+
+<p>Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to
+be administered. It is not possible to tell, <i>a priori</i>, how much
+drowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning to
+James, is total drowning to John;&mdash;Tom is easy of resuscitation&mdash;Bob
+will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United
+Kingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, who
+turns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriest
+bungler in the anatomy of the human frame&mdash;to scarify the fleshless
+spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity,
+might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large
+blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the
+wound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to be
+attempted"&mdash;but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousand
+other cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always be
+prevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain than
+horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of
+sane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army,
+therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be
+no flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is,
+at times, sensible on dogs.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore," quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn in
+your Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be marked
+the Inches, and so it may serve for a measure.</p>
+
+<p>"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, when
+they hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwary
+visitors. Whenever <i>Counsellor Cautious</i> went to a house, &amp;c., where he
+was not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at the
+door, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against the
+Enemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, that
+it might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House till
+it was.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sword</i> and <i>Tuck Sticks</i>, as commonly made, are hardly so good a
+weapon as a stout Stick&mdash;the Blades are often inserted into the Handles
+in such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;&mdash;if
+you wish for a <i>Sword-Cane</i>, you must have one made with a good
+Regulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged for
+the entire Stick.&mdash;I have seen a Cane made by Mr <span class="smcap">Price</span>, <i>of the Stick
+and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand</i>, near Temple Bar, which was
+excellently put together.</p>
+
+<p>"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is <i>an
+Iron Stick</i> of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook
+next the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about five
+inches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted the
+colour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, while
+it is in fact a most formidable Instrument."</p>
+
+<p>We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen one
+once, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berenger
+in his <i>Helps and Hints</i> prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usually
+carried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry.
+So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walking
+alone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned upon
+me, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more than
+judgment, I gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was,
+which, screening me at the same time, <i>was an article from which he did
+not expect thrusts</i>; but which, although made at guess, for I could not
+see him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself,
+his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole being
+the work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors of
+hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."</p>
+
+<p>There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a word
+or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog,
+but a young lady of our own species. "If," says the Colonel, "you can
+seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, he
+cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping him
+thus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, with
+the other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus
+without danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at
+extrication." But here comes the Colonel's infallible <i>vade-mecum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the
+skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below,
+stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so
+strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &amp;c.,
+are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are
+glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never
+tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them;
+though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other
+kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."</p>
+
+<p>Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our
+Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments
+for drawing&mdash;a sketch and note-book&mdash;paper&mdash;ink&mdash;and <span class="smcap lowercase">PINS&mdash;NEEDLES&mdash;AND
+THREAD</span>! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond
+Street&mdash;pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street&mdash;a folding
+one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches&mdash;a
+hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement,
+in good strong silver cases&mdash;a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass&mdash;a
+night-lamp&mdash;a tinder-box&mdash;two pair of spectacles, with strong silver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+frames&mdash;an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck&mdash;a
+traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for
+taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers,
+and long corkscrew&mdash;galoches or paraloses&mdash;your own knife and fork, and
+spoon&mdash;a Welsh wig&mdash;a spare hat&mdash;umbrella&mdash;two great-coats, one for cool
+and fair weather (<i>i.e.</i> between 45&deg; and 55&deg; of Fahrenheit), and another
+for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and
+denominated a "dreadnought."</p>
+
+<p>Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will
+provide himself before leaving <i>Dulce Domum</i> to brave the perils of a
+Tour through the Hop-districts.</p>
+
+<p>"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the
+outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up
+the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have
+plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."</p>
+
+<p>In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the
+outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the
+discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to
+London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers <i>sans</i>
+drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in
+proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than
+true&mdash;no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly
+frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the
+united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to
+separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel.
+All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us&mdash;and it
+underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice.
+For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt&mdash;then with a
+flannel one&mdash;and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts.
+This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A
+plain woollen waistcoat without buttons&mdash;with hooks and eyes&mdash;took the
+lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver,
+called an under-waistcoat&mdash;the body being flannel, the breast-edges
+bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars&mdash;then came a natty red
+waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect
+on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> we remember was
+irresistible&mdash;and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of
+our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre&mdash;the
+double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine&mdash;so that
+between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of
+our dress&mdash;"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began
+the coats, which&mdash;as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats&mdash;never
+exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had
+lived to moralise over the mutability of human
+affairs&mdash;thread-bare&mdash;napless&mdash;and what ignorant people might have
+called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest,
+unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat&mdash;and not, perhaps, of
+the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty,
+what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in
+Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured
+great-coat&mdash;not braided and embroidered <i>&agrave; la militaire</i>&mdash;for we scorned
+to sham travelling-captain&mdash;but <i>simplex munditiis</i>, plain in its
+neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening
+that its wearer was up to snuff&mdash;and to close this strange eventful
+history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the
+sleets and snows&mdash;held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus,
+and "the rest"&mdash;and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.</p>
+
+<p>The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No
+stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth&mdash;beginning with singles&mdash;and then
+getting into the full uncut squares&mdash;the amount of the whole being
+somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion,
+and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an
+attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty
+to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the
+bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle&mdash;and beneath the
+cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had
+kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we
+always found sufficient&mdash;and that a black beaver&mdash;for a lily castor
+suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and
+hereditary monarchy."</p>
+
+<p>As to our lower extremities&mdash;One pair only of roomy shoes&mdash;one pair of
+stockings of the finest lamb's-wool&mdash;another of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> common close worsted,
+knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch&mdash;thirdly, Shetland hose. All
+three pair reaching well up towards the fork&mdash;each about an
+inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers&mdash;one pair
+only&mdash;within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep&mdash;then one pair of
+elderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls&mdash;one pair of Manchester white
+cords&mdash;ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"&mdash;and
+at or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as
+"Johnny's grey breeks"&mdash;neat but not gaudy&mdash;mud-repellers&mdash;themselves a
+host&mdash;never in all their lives "thoroughly wet
+through"&mdash;frost-proof&mdash;and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold,
+as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibeg
+of Ph&#339;bus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell to
+some star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured the
+cerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in the
+Western Sea.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+<h2>DR KITCHINER.</h2>
+
+<h3>FOURTH COURSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue if
+you are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive," says the Doctor,
+"and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance of
+getting a good bed&mdash;this done, order your luggage to your room. A
+travelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very
+necessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes of
+linen&mdash;a night-shirt&mdash;shaving apparatus&mdash;comb, clothes, tooth and hair
+brushes, &amp;c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that you
+can fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the first
+unostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord.
+However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen your
+flint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-hole
+every night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with spring
+bayonets."</p>
+
+<p>Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistols
+with spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace of
+black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausages
+for the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, and
+far safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duelling
+black-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;&mdash;and, that
+etiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist's
+weapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have
+to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, than
+according to the present fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout&mdash;a prodigious
+fuss&mdash;all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see
+the chambermaid, and overlook the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> airing with his own hands and eyes.
+He is also an advocate of the warming-pan&mdash;and for the adoption, indeed,
+of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goes
+on the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns&mdash;and often
+reminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers never
+can be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were not
+afflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they should
+carry their own sheets with them&mdash;namely, a "light eider-down quilt, and
+two dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder the
+disagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's own
+sheets&mdash;and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm,
+his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If the
+traveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimes
+be prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters,
+shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened."</p>
+
+<p>Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes that
+it is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water,
+fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again,
+they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reeking
+state, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams of
+that pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotest
+thing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies has
+refreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore,
+to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plenty
+of flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsome
+consideration for the liberty of choosing your bed."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles,
+what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens,
+back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed
+choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords,
+Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay
+Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the
+headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting
+fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance
+to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal
+establishments in Great Britain. But shut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>ting our eyes, for a moment,
+to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in
+the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist,
+think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system,
+if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitory
+life of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where all
+travellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept in
+inns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This would
+be inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark,
+in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of following
+the sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings of
+love and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this world
+and its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinkling
+of an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearance
+would a bedroom then exhibit!</p>
+
+<p>The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder.
+We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a few
+other occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes put
+to the fire in their presence," merely at the expense of subjugating
+themselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions,
+boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employed
+in inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As the
+Director-General would say&mdash;he deals in buttery touches.) Their feverish
+and restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on damps
+and deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They
+become the groundwork of practical jokes&mdash;perhaps are bitten to death by
+fleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel,
+has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. The
+Doctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but the
+insidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn the
+tormentor&mdash;and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair of
+blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for
+years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer
+that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable
+temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of
+one of the plagues of Egypt,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> the Doctor rises in the morning, from top
+to bottom absolutely tattooed!</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe that
+unless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformly
+robbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during the
+midnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes down
+stairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or&mdash;what is almost as
+noiseless&mdash;worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breeches
+are beneath your bolster&mdash;but that trick of travellers has long been "as
+notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of your
+breeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this
+world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cry
+out&mdash;for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is on
+your mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses your
+windpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah
+Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from
+a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off
+all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians,
+whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton
+wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar&mdash;swearing by Satan
+and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before
+daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your
+brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore you
+must use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts of
+doors, and on many occasions save the property and life of the
+traveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the
+simplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, and
+unites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door so
+fastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weight
+does not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom should
+always be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, it
+will be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table and
+chair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into the
+closets, and every place where concealment is possible&mdash;of course,
+although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend of
+the Doctor's used to place a bureau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> against the door, and "thereon he
+set a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, on
+being shook, they instantly became <i>molto agitato</i>." Upon one alarming
+occasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or some
+other Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of the
+travelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath the
+bolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnight
+assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockery
+gave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned."</p>
+
+<p>With all these fearful apprehensions&mdash;in his mind, Dr Kitchiner must
+have been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, to
+have slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers must
+we have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in the
+bed, or scamp below it&mdash;closet and chimney uninspected, door unbolted
+and unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying to
+think that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female,
+thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay,
+forgotten by the whole world&mdash;till the crowing of cocks, or the ringing
+of bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a Manchester
+Bagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose,
+and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed us
+the floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. We
+really know not whether to be most proud of having been the favourite
+child of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution did
+we ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills that
+flesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly a
+short fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all the
+happiness&mdash;let us trust it was innocent&mdash;of the day; and humbly
+imploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the time
+we speak of, we were young&mdash;and every morning, whatever the atmosphere
+might be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes of
+the soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life's
+horizon!</p>
+
+<p>But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted and
+screwed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there had
+suddenly rung through the house the cry of <span class="smcap">Fire</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Fire</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Fire</span>! how was Dr
+Kitchiner to get out? Tables,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the
+only door&mdash;all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the whole
+crockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistols
+with spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction of
+persons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaring
+flames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and over
+and above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplest
+that we have seen." The wind-board is in like manner, and by the same
+unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, so
+egress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied&mdash;no fire-engine in the
+town&mdash;but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for a
+month, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element is
+growling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling with
+something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard
+crying&mdash;"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive!
+Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor
+falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length
+fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord,
+landlady, chambermaid, and boots&mdash;each in a different key&mdash;from manly
+bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a
+madman&mdash;for, gentle reader, it has been a&mdash;Dream.</p>
+
+<p>We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of our
+journey on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with
+"Observations on Pedestrians." Here we are at home&mdash;and could, we
+imagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. The
+strength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is
+"in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is as
+the quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy of
+that organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes." This statement of
+the strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophical
+to those who are up to it&mdash;but to us it resembles a definition we have
+heard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter."
+It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of a
+strong man&mdash;but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strong
+back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With
+a strong stomach alone&mdash;yea, even the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> stomach of a horse&mdash;a man will
+make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems
+himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more
+on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on
+the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce
+that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off
+superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up
+fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of
+the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus,
+he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man,
+suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk
+ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the
+action of the body has exonerated the mind."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor warms as he walks&mdash;and is very near leaping over the fence of
+Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but
+expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be
+laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce
+its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they
+are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ
+more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by
+the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more
+miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ
+themselves in that <span class="smcap lowercase">VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE</span>."
+Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor
+throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of
+walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by
+the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when
+he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus,
+he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately
+after any great exertion, either of mind or body&mdash;that is, one might
+say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia.
+Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion,
+especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and
+remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been
+dispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach,
+when it is required." To all this we say&mdash;Fudge! The sooner you get hold
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with
+a pot of porter&mdash;then leisurely on with a clean shirt&mdash;wash your face
+and hands in gelid&mdash;none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if
+you should shave&mdash;then keep walking up and down the parlour rather
+impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act
+agreeably to nature&mdash;stir up the waiter with some original jest by way
+of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare&mdash;and
+never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the
+extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name
+fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till
+there is no vestige left of the first&mdash;a second course being looked on
+by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which
+the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nor fame I slight&mdash;nor for her favours call&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She comes unlook'd for&mdash;if she comes at all."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence,
+the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned
+from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why,
+better&mdash;better, thank ye&mdash;I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the
+return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before
+yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put
+on one of my stockings myself?"</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man
+can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this
+sentence to Will Whipcord&mdash;"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor
+of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir&mdash;a man can beat a
+horse!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a
+horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism
+on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon
+as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse&mdash;only mind, the horse
+carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We
+know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender,
+arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles
+a-day, for many days&mdash;and that for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> four days they have gone a hundred
+miles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, the
+Prince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparative
+pedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained by
+any accredited match in England.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a
+Mr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall
+be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of the
+inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says,
+"that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it
+is almost impossible to proceed;"&mdash;"at other times you are exposed to
+the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a
+hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an
+uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is
+necessarily more confined&mdash;a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an
+important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be
+considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it
+may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian
+excursion&mdash;<i>in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not
+apprised of these things till we had experienced them</i>." What! Mr
+Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not
+apprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality,
+that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, either
+in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof
+positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the
+weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge
+when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene
+atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory
+studies <i>sub dio</i>? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under the
+shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown
+friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin?
+Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had
+there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of
+you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and
+hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the
+palm of your hand? Button your jacket,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> good sir&mdash;scorn an
+umbrella&mdash;emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at the
+pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm&mdash;poor spite indeed in Densissimus
+Imber&mdash;and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour
+against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till
+you have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England
+(we forget the county)&mdash;ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your
+first-born.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's picture
+of a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one great
+inconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons," quoth he, "who take a
+pedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to the
+uncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visiting
+unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a <i>piece of
+oil-skin</i> to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they
+will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the
+breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here
+a question of great difficulty and importance arises&mdash;Breeches or
+trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he,
+"should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers.
+The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were
+exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my
+astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has
+to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more
+inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are
+collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing
+garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These
+should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the
+upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is
+much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you
+always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up
+the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to
+those who walk long distances."</p>
+
+<p>We are strongly inclined to agree with the Doctor in his panegyric on
+breeches. True, that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark colour,
+such as black, and worn with white, or even grey or bluish, stockings,
+they are apt, in the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> state of public taste, to stamp you a
+schoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress, or an exciseman going to
+a ball. We could dispense too with the knee-buckles and plush
+lining&mdash;though we allow the one might be ornamental and the other
+useful. But what think you, gentle reader, of walking with a Pedometer?
+A Pedometer is an instrument cunningly devised to tell you how far and
+how fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a "perambulator in
+miniature." The box containing the wheels is made of the size of a
+watch-case, and goes into the breeches pocket, and by means of a string
+and hook, fastened at the waistband or at the knee, the number of steps
+a man takes, in his regular paces, are registered from the action of the
+spring upon the internal wheel-work at every step, to the amount of
+30,000. It is necessary, to ascertain the distance walked, that the
+average length of one pace be precisely known, and that multiplied by
+the number of steps registered on the dial-plate.</p>
+
+<p>All this is very ingenious; and we know one tolerable pedestrian who is
+also a Pedometrist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fortune in a
+mountainous island, like Great Britain, where pedestrianism is
+indigenous to the soil. A good walker is as regular in his going as
+clock-work. He has his different paces&mdash;three, three and a half&mdash;four,
+four and a half&mdash;five, five and a half&mdash;six miles an hour&mdash;toe and heel.
+A common watch, therefore, is to him, in the absence of milestones, as
+good as a Pedometer, with this great and indisputable advantage, that a
+common watch continues to go even after you have yourself stopped,
+whereas, the moment you sit down on your oil-skin patch, why, your
+Pedometer (which, indeed, from its name and construction, is not
+unreasonable) immediately stands still. Neither, we believe, can you
+accurately note the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer.</p>
+
+<p>What pleasure on this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile
+walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the
+gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a long
+summer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyes
+with honey-dew, and stretches out, under the loving hands of nourrice
+Nature, the whole elongated animal economy, steeped in rest divine from
+the organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> it on a bed
+of down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? If in
+an inn, nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neither
+landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots;&mdash;you are left to yourself
+without being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by all
+the menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer
+appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your
+dinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by the
+rumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at your
+departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.</h2>
+
+<h3>FIRST RHAPSODY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>No weather more pleasant than that of a mild <span class="smcap">Winter</span> day. So gracious the
+season, that Hyems is like Ver&mdash;Januarius like Christopher North. Art
+thou the Sun of whom Milton said,&mdash;</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>an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian on
+a June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by the
+sleeping though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, and
+murmurs&mdash;the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake,
+her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods be
+leafless&mdash;they look as alive as when laden, with umbrage; and who can
+tell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? The
+fields laugh not now&mdash;but here and there they smile. If we see no
+flowers we think of them&mdash;and less of the perished than of the unborn;
+for regret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace there is the promise of
+joy&mdash;and therefore in the silent pastures a perfect beauty how
+restorative to man's troubled heart!</p>
+
+<p>The Shortest Day in all the year&mdash;yet is it lovelier than the Longest.
+Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancy
+filled the sky&mdash;with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In the
+air life is audible&mdash;circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by
+happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar&mdash;the self-same Robin
+Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the
+gable of the school-house his sweet winter song!</p>
+
+<p>In company we are silent&mdash;in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do we
+love our own voice that we cannot bear to hear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> it mixed with that of
+others&mdash;perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the
+hush expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the
+speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling
+itself in Ne&aelig;ra's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country,
+among trees standing still among untrodden leaves&mdash;as now&mdash;how we do
+speak! All thoughts&mdash;all feelings&mdash;desire utterance; left to themselves
+they are not happy till they have evolved into words&mdash;winged words that
+sometimes settle on the ground, like moths on flowers&mdash;sometimes seek
+the sky, like eagles above the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours&mdash;the act of
+composition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is at
+such solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among the
+clouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperceptible
+transformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spirit
+of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Who but Him who made it knoweth aught of the Laws of Spirit? All of us
+may know much of what is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," in
+obedience to them; but leaving the open day, we enter at once into
+thickest night. Why at this moment do we see a spot once only visited by
+us&mdash;unremembered for ever so many flights of black or bright winged
+years&mdash;see it in fancy as it then was in nature, with the same dewdrops
+on that wondrous myrtle beheld but on that morning&mdash;such a myrtle as no
+other eyes beheld ever on this earth but ours, and the eyes of one now
+in heaven?</p>
+
+<p>Another year is about to die&mdash;and how wags the world? "What great events
+are on the gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule&mdash;their guidance
+is but over the outer world, and almost powerless their folly or their
+wisdom over the inner region in which we mortals live, and move, and
+have our being, where the fall of a throne makes no more noise than that
+of a leaf!</p>
+
+<p>Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are both dead and buried at last, and
+white lie the snow on their graves! Youth is the season of all sorts of
+insolence, and therefore we can forgive and forget almost anything in
+<span class="smcap">Spring</span>. He has always been a privileged personage; and we have no doubt
+that he played his pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets you
+unexpectedly on the hill-side; and was there ever a face in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> this world
+so celestialised by smiles! All the features are framed of light. Gaze
+into his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there is
+something more sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, or
+in the depths of the waveless seas. More sublime, because essentially
+spiritual. There stands the young Angel, entranced in the conscious
+mystery of his own beautiful and blessed being; and the earth becomes
+all at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of the Morning. So
+might some great painter image the First-born of the Year, till nations
+adored the picture.&mdash;To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to the
+Mount of the Vision, and,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers of frost; blashes a
+storm of sleet in your face, and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a
+winding-sheet of snow, in which you would infallibly perish but for a
+pocket-pistol of Glenlivet.&mdash;The day after to-morrow, you behold
+him&mdash;Spring&mdash;walking along the firmament, sad, but not sullen&mdash;mournful,
+but not miserable&mdash;disturbed, but not despairing&mdash;now coming out towards
+you in a burst of light&mdash;and now fading away from you in a gathering of
+gloom&mdash;even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. On
+Thursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of his
+Springship. There he is, stripped to the buff&mdash;playing at hide-and-seek,
+hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-down
+waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. You turn up the whites
+of your eyes, and the browns of your hands in amazement, till the Two,
+by way of change of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and, like a
+couple of hawks diverting themselves with an owl, in conclusion buffet
+you off the premises. You insert the occurrence, with suitable
+reflections, in your Meteorological Diary, under the head&mdash;Spring.&mdash;On
+Friday, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your nose, for you
+are confined to bed by rheumatism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless
+sanctum but your condoling Mawsey. 'Tis a pity. For never since the
+flood-greened earth on her first resurrection morn laughed around
+Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! By all that is various and
+vanishing, the arch seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and all
+creation to be gladly and gloriously gathered together without being
+crowded&mdash;plains, woods, villages, towns, hills,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> and clouds, beneath the
+pathway of Spring, once more an Angel&mdash;an unfallen Angel! While the
+tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fading and
+fluctuating&mdash;deepening and dying&mdash;now gone, as if for ever&mdash;and now back
+again in an instant, as if breathing and alive&mdash;is felt, during all that
+wavering visitation, to be of all sights the most evanescent, and yet
+inspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung the
+image on the cloud&mdash;profound as the gloom it illumines&mdash;that it shone
+and is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabiteth eternity.&mdash;The
+grim noon of Saturday, after a moaning morning, and one silent
+intermediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins to gleam fitfully with
+lightning like a maniac's eye; and is not that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"The sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thunder heard remote?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On earth wind there is none&mdash;not so much as a breath. But there is a
+strong wind in heaven&mdash;for see how that huge cloud-city, a night within
+a day, comes moving on along the hidden mountain-tops, and hangs over
+the loch all at once black as pitch, except that here and there a sort
+of sullen purple heaves upon the long slow swell, and here and there
+along the shores&mdash;how caused we know not&mdash;are seen, but heard not, the
+white melancholy breakers! Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! But
+ere the thanksgiving has been worded, an airquake has split asunder the
+cloud-city, the night within the day, and all its towers and temples are
+disordered along the firmament, to a sound that might waken the dead.
+Where are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to purchase gunpowder
+explosions on Lowood bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See!
+there are our artillerymen stalking from battery to battery&mdash;all hung up
+aloft facing the west&mdash;or "each standing by his gun" with lighted match,
+moving or motionless, Shadow-figures, and all clothed in black-blue
+uniform, with blood-red facings portentously glancing in the sun, as he
+strives to struggle into heaven. The Generalissimo of all the forces,
+who is he but&mdash;Spring?&mdash;Hand in hand with Spring, Sabbath descends from
+heaven unto earth; and are not their feet beautiful on the mountains?
+Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from that humble spire,
+overtopped by its coeval trees, yet is it heard in the heart of
+infinitude. So is the bleating of these silly sheep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> on the braes&mdash;and
+so is that voice of psalms, all at once rising so spirit-like, as if the
+very kirk were animated, and singing a joyous song in the wilderness to
+the ear of the Most High. For all things are under his care&mdash;those that,
+as we dream, have no life&mdash;the flowers, and the herbs, and the
+trees&mdash;those that some dim scripture seems to say, when they die,
+utterly perish&mdash;and those that all bright scripture, whether written in
+the book of God, or the book of Nature, declares will live for ever!</p>
+
+<p>If such be the character and conduct of Spring during one week, wilt
+thou not forget and forgive&mdash;with us&mdash;much occasional conduct on his
+part that appears not only inexplicable, but incomprehensible? But we
+cannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn. <span class="smcap">Summer</span> is a
+season come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himself
+like a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing,
+his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way
+to make his best friends ashamed of him&mdash;in a way absolutely disgraceful
+to a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with the
+Sun&mdash;his benefactor, nay, his father&mdash;what else could he expect but that
+that enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenance
+from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel along
+the mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky&mdash;and
+sullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By-and-by, like
+a great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper&mdash;and when he found
+that would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Still
+the Sun would not look on him&mdash;or if he did, 'twas with a sudden and
+short half-smile half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last the
+Summer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving, the one burst out into a
+flood of tears, the other into a flood of light. In simple words, the
+Summer wept and the Sun smiled&mdash;and for one broken month there was a
+perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! How beautiful is penitence!
+How beautiful forgiveness! For one week the Summer was restored to his
+pristine peace and old luxuriance, and the desert blossomed like the
+rose.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore ask we the Summer's pardon for thanking Heaven that he was
+dead. Would that he were alive again, and buried not for ever beneath
+the yellow forest leaves! O thou first,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> faint, fair, finest tinge of
+dawning Light that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking face of
+the morn, Light and no-Light, a shadowy Something, that as we gaze is
+felt to be growing into an emotion that must be either Innocence or
+Beauty, or both blending together into devotion before Deity, once more
+duly visible in the divine colouring that forebodes another day to
+mortal life&mdash;before Thee what holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward in
+some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble with dewdrops, and the
+happy little birds are beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the
+boughs&mdash;before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, and breathe deeper and
+deeper&mdash;as the lustre waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more bright,
+till range after range arise of crimson clouds in altitude sublime, and
+breast above breast expands of yellow woods softly glittering in their
+far-spread magnificence&mdash;then what holy bliss to breathe deeper and
+deeper unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand the heavens and the
+earth, our high but most humble orisons! But now it is Day, and broad
+awake seems the whole joyful world. The clouds&mdash;lustrous no more&mdash;are
+all anchored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for the wind. Time is
+not felt&mdash;and one might dream that the Day was to endure for ever. Yet
+the great river rolls on in the light&mdash;and why will he leave those
+lovely inland woods for the naked shores? Why&mdash;responds some
+voice&mdash;hurry we on our own lives&mdash;impetuous and passionate far more than
+he with all his cataracts&mdash;as if anxious to forsake the regions of the
+upper day for the dim place from which we yet recoil in fear&mdash;the dim
+place which imagination sometimes seems to see even through the
+sunshine, beyond the bourne of this our unintelligible being, stretching
+sea-like into a still more mysterious night! Long as a Midsummer Day is,
+it has gone by like a Heron's flight. The sun is setting!&mdash;and let him
+set without being scribbled upon by Christopher North. We took a
+pen-and-ink sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere." Poor nature is much
+to be pitied among painters and poets. They are perpetually falling into</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Such perusal of her face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As they would draw it."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And often must she be sick of the Curious Impertinents. But a Curious
+Impertinent are not we&mdash;if ever there was one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> beneath the skies, a
+devout worshipper of Nature; and though we often seem to heed not her
+shrine&mdash;it stands in our imagination, like a temple in a perpetual
+Sabbath.</p>
+
+<p>It was poetically and piously said by the Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes,
+that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. Take Summer, which
+early in our soliloquy we abused in good set terms. Its weather was
+broken, but not bad; and much various beauty and sublimity is involved
+in the epithet "broken," when applied to the "season of the year."
+Commonplace people, especially town-dwellers, who <i>flit</i> into the
+country for a few months, have a silly and absurd idea of Summer, which
+all the atmospherical phenomena fail to drive out of their foolish
+fancies. They insist on its remaining with us for half a year at least,
+and on its being dressed in its Sunday's best every day in the week as
+long as they continue in country quarters. The Sun must rise, like a
+labourer, at the very earliest hour, shine all day, and go to bed late,
+else they treat him contumeliously, and declare that he is not worth his
+meat. Should he retire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems most
+natural and reasonable for one to do who lives so much in the public
+eye, why, a whole watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfied
+expostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is the Sun? Are we never to
+have any Sun?" They also insist that there shall be no rain of more than
+an hour's duration in the daytime, but that it shall all fall by night.
+Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and is
+shining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred green
+parasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in his
+chariot. A <i>broken</i> summer for us. Now and then a few continuous
+days&mdash;perhaps a whole week&mdash;but, if that be denied, now and then,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Like angels' visits, few and far between,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>one single Day&mdash;blue-spread over heaven, green-spread over earth&mdash;no
+cloud above, no shade below, save that dove-coloured marble lying
+motionless like the mansions of peace, and that pensive gloom that falls
+from some old castle or venerable wood&mdash;the stillness of a sleeping joy,
+to our heart profounder than that of death, in the air, in the sky, and
+resting on our mighty mother's undisturbed breast&mdash;no lowing on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> the
+hills, no bleating on the braes&mdash;the rivers almost silent as lochs, and
+the lochs, just visible in their aerial purity, floating dream-like
+between earth and sky, imbued with the beauty of both, and seeming to
+belong to either, as the heart melts to human tenderness, or beyond all
+mortal loves the imagination soars! Such days seem now to us&mdash;as memory
+and imagination half restore and half create the past into such weather
+as may have shone over the bridal morn of our first parents in
+Paradise&mdash;to have been frequent&mdash;nay, to have lasted all the Summer
+long&mdash;when our boyhood was bright from the hands of God. Each of those
+days was in itself a life! Yet all those sunny lives melted into one
+Summer&mdash;and all those Summers formed one continuous bliss. Storms and
+snows vanished out of our ideal year; and then morning, noon, and night,
+wherever we breathed, we <i>felt</i>, what now we but <i>know</i>, the inmost
+meaning of that profound verse of Virgil the Divine&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Devenere locos l&aelig;tos, et am&#339;na vireta<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Largior h&icirc;c campos &aelig;ther et lumine vestit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Few&mdash;no such days as those seem now ever to be born. Sometimes we indeed
+gaze through the face into the heart of the sky, and for a moment feel
+that the ancient glory of the heavens has returned on our dream of life.
+But to the perfect beatitude of the skies there comes from the soul
+within us a mournful response, that betokens some wide and deep&mdash;some
+everlasting change. Joy is not now what joy was of yore; like a fine
+diamond with a flaw is now Imagination's eye; other motes than those
+that float through ether cross between its orb and the sun; the "fine
+gold has become dim," with which morning and evening of old embossed the
+skies; the dewdrops are not now the pearls once they were, left on</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>by angels' and by fairies' wings; knowledge, custom, experience, fate,
+fortune, error, vice, and sin, have dulled, and darkened, and deadened
+all things; and the soul, unable to bring over the Present the ineffable
+bliss and beauty of the Past, almost swoons to think what a ghastly
+thunder-gloom may by Providence be reserved for the Future!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nay&mdash;nay&mdash;things are not altogether so bad with us as this
+strain&mdash;sincere though it be as a stream from the sacred
+mountains&mdash;might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a <i>broken</i> Summer. It
+would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the
+Highland hills, <i>sans</i> great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower,
+aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny
+blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs.
+Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the
+thermometer keeps ranging between 60&deg; and 70&deg;, three times a-day. What
+refreshment in the very sound&mdash;Soaking! Old bones wax dry&mdash;nerves
+numb&mdash;sinews stiff&mdash;flesh frail&mdash;and there is a sad drawback on the
+Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our
+craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the
+approach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizens
+of heaven; how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee are
+streaming, and gleaming athwart the sunny mountain-gloom, while ever as
+they descend on earth, lift up the streams along the wilderness louder
+and louder a choral song. Look now at the heather&mdash;and smile whenever
+henceforth you hear people talk of <i>purple</i>. You have been wont to call
+a gold guinea or a sovereign <i>yellow</i>&mdash;but if you have got one in your
+pocket, place it on your palm, and in the light of that broom is it not
+a <i>dirty brown</i>? You have an emerald ring on your finger&mdash;but how grey
+it looks beside the <i>green</i> of those brackens, that pasture, that wood!
+Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, sir, for the first time in
+your life. Widening and widening over your head, all the while you have
+been gazing on the heather, the broom, the bracken, the pastures, and
+the woods, have the eternal heavens been preparing for you a vision of
+the sacred <i>Blue</i>. Is not that an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn that
+mercantile and manufacturing image, steal that blue from the sky, and
+let the lady of your love tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and a
+saintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as she beseeches Heaven to
+bless thee in her prayers! Set slowly&mdash;slowly&mdash;slowly&mdash;O Sun of Suns! as
+may be allowed by the laws of Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunk
+behind those mountains into the sea, will that celestial <span class="smcap lowercase">ROSY-RED</span> be
+tabernacled in the heavens!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have so soaked and steeped our old
+crazy carcass in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of youth,
+that we should not be surprised were we to outlive that raven croaking
+in pure <i>gaiet&eacute; du c&#339;ur</i> on the cliff. Threescore and ten years!
+Poo&mdash;'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers&mdash;for twenty
+years more keep to the Highland fling&mdash;and at the close of other twenty,
+jig it into the grave to that matchless strathspey, the Reel of
+Tullochgorum!</p>
+
+<p>Having thus made our peace with last Summer, can we allow the Sun to go
+down on our wrath towards the <span class="smcap">Autumn</span>, whose back we yet see on the
+horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I
+meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season,
+and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two
+smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell,
+and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat,
+and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener
+and greener&mdash;reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and
+cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill,
+with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, and
+with unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dream
+of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvest
+treading on the heels of Christmas,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions of foolish and false
+prophets, came rustling from all the airts, far, far and wide over the
+rain-drenched kingdom, the great armament of the Autumnal Winds! Groaned
+the grain, as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its head, and knew
+that again the Sun was in Heaven. Death became life; and the hearts of
+the husbandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the reapers brandished
+their sickles in the breezy light, and every field glittered with
+Christian crescents. Auld wives and bits o' weans mingled on the
+rig&mdash;kilted to the knees, like the comely cummers, and the handsome
+hizzies, and the lo'esome lassies wi' their silken snoods&mdash;among the
+heather-legged Highlandmen, and the bandy Irishers, brawny all, and with
+hook, scythe, or flail, inferior to none of the children of men. The
+scene lies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> in Scotland&mdash;but now, too, is England "Merry England"
+indeed, and outside passengers on a thousand coaches see stooks rising
+like stacks, and far and wide, over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice
+in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest
+of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last
+ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over
+in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields
+now&mdash;but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or
+stony soil&mdash;are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, but
+some stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, as
+the huge wains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by the gates they
+hide, and then, crested perhaps with laughing boys and girls,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>no&mdash;not rings&mdash;for Beattie, in that admirable line, lets us hear a cart
+going out empty in the morning&mdash;but with a <i>cheerful dull</i> sound,
+ploughing along the black soil, <i>the clean dirt</i> almost up to the
+axletree, and then, as the wheels, rimmed you might always think with
+silver, reach the road, macadamised till it acts like a railway, how
+glides along downhill the moving mountain! And see now, the growing
+Stack glittering with a charge of pitchforks! The trams fly up from
+Dobbin's back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the mire. Up they go,
+tossed from sinewy arms like feathers, and the Stack grows before your
+eyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, without line or measure, but
+shaped by the look and the feel, true almost as the spring instinct of
+the nest-building bird. And are we not heartily ashamed of ourselves,
+amidst this general din of working mirthfulness, for having, but an hour
+ago, abused the jovial and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven that he
+was dead? Let us retire into the barn with Shoosy, and hide our blushes.</p>
+
+<p>Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore for one paragraph let us
+compare <span class="smcap">Autumn</span> with <span class="smcap">Spring</span>. Suppose ourselves sitting beneath <span class="smcap">$1</span> of Windermere! Poets call Spring Green-Mantle&mdash;and true it is
+that the groundwork of his garb is green&mdash;even like that of the proud
+peacock's changeful neck, when the creature treads in the circle of his
+own splendour, and the scholar who may have forgotten his classics, has
+yet a dream of Juno and of her watchful Argus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> with his hundred, his
+thousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, like that of Joseph, is a coat of
+many colours. Call it patch-work if you choose,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And be yourself the great sublime you draw."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some people look on nature with a milliner's or a mantua-maker's
+eye&mdash;arraying her in furbelows and flounces. But use your own eyes and
+ours, and from beneath <span class="smcap">The Sycamore</span> let us two, sitting together in
+amity, look lovingly on the <span class="smcap">Spring</span>. Felt ever your heart before, with
+such an emotion of harmonious beauty, the exquisitely delicate
+distinctions of character among the lovely tribes of trees! That is
+<span class="smcap">Belle Isle</span>. Earliest to salute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of green
+gentle as its own, is the lake-loving <span class="smcap">Alder</span>, whose home, too, is by the
+flowings of all the streams. Just one degree fainter in its hue&mdash;or
+shall we rather say brighter&mdash;for we feel the difference without knowing
+in what it lies&mdash;stands, by the Alder's rounded softness, the spiral
+<span class="smcap">Larch</span>, all hung over its limber sprays, were you near enough to admire
+them, with cones of the Tyrian dye. That stem, white as silver, and
+smooth as silk, seen so straight in the green sylvan light, and there
+airily overarching the coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy might
+picture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant as is her life on that
+Fortunate Isle, is yet said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadness
+to unsorrowing things&mdash;to belong to a Tree that <i>weeps</i>,&mdash;though a
+weight of joy it is, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses the
+<span class="smcap">Birch's</span> pendent beauty, till it droops&mdash;as we think&mdash;like that of a
+being overcome with grief! Seen standing all along by themselves, with
+something of a foreign air, and an exotic expression, yet not unwelcome
+or obtrusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, twinkling to the
+touch of every wandering wind, and restless even amidst what seemeth now
+to be everlasting rest, we cannot choose but admire that somewhat darker
+grove of columnar Lombardy <span class="smcap">Poplars</span>. How comes it that some <span class="smcap">Sycamores</span> so
+much sooner than others salute the Spring? Yonder are some but budding,
+as if yet the frost lay on the honey-dew that protects the beamy germs.
+There are others warming into expansion, half-budded and half-leaved,
+with a various light of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly from
+afar. And in that nook of the still sunnier south, trending eastward, a
+few are almost in their full summer foliage, and soon will the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> bees be
+swarming among their flowers. A <span class="smcap">Horse Chestnut</span> has a grand oriental air,
+and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yellowing in the light&mdash;that
+shows he belongs to the line of the Prophet. <span class="smcap">Elms</span> are then most
+magnificent&mdash;witness Christ-Church walk&mdash;when they hang over head in
+heaven like the chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are the
+august&mdash;and methinks "a dim religious light" is in that vault of
+branches just vivifying to the Spring, and though almost bare, tinged
+with a coming hue that ere long will be majestic brightness. Those old
+<span class="smcap">Oaks</span> seem sullen in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their power,
+like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. But they, too, are relaxing
+from their wonted sternness&mdash;soon will that faint green be a glorious
+yellow; and while the gold-laden boughs stoop boldly to the storms with
+which they love to dally, bounds not the heart of every Briton to the
+music of his national anthem,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Rule, Britannia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Britannia rules the waves!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <span class="smcap">Ash</span> is a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and
+yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the
+docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town of Kilkenny</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It shines well where it stands;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the bare grey-blue of the branches, apart but not repulsive, like
+some cunning discord in music, deepens the harmony of the Isle of
+Groves. Contrast is one of the finest of all the laws of association, as
+every philosopher, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment, it brings, by
+the bonds of beauty, though many glades intervene, close beside that
+pale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-green <span class="smcap">Pine</span> Clan,
+whose "leaf fadeth never," a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the
+English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest
+that <span class="smcap">Belle Isle</span> is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all
+over&mdash;bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some
+tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns,
+on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and
+gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of
+nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substance
+purer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night on
+the mountain-top! Trees are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> they&mdash;fruit-trees&mdash;The <span class="smcap">Wild Cherry</span>, that
+grows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood&mdash;and can
+that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of old
+in the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens into
+pink&mdash;yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purity
+of the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virgin
+lips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a glad
+fond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his arms
+open to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smiles
+that are almost tears, within her father's bosom.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"As when to those who sail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sab&aelig;an odours from the spicy shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Araby the Blest; with such delay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Shut your eyes&mdash;suppose five months gone&mdash;and lo! <span class="smcap">Belle Isle</span> in Autumn,
+like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frost
+in the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still as
+midnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand Robin
+Redbreast&mdash;God bless him!&mdash;is warbling on the copestone of that old barn
+gable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct the
+clank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its
+slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of the
+Queen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness,
+yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and how close
+together seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two opposite
+shores! But we wish you to look at <span class="smcap">Belle Isle</span>, though we ourselves are
+almost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that we
+know will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured.&mdash;Could you
+not think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the
+Isle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yet
+they burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, as
+in a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, and
+reigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all the
+canopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hung<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> with
+the richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forth
+in gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in the
+air of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of these
+Palaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living and
+dying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration,
+with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No names
+of trees are remembered&mdash;a glorious confusion comprehends in one the
+whole leafy race&mdash;orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all
+seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye
+felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable
+in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trance
+goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takes
+down all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment with
+less of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses each
+one of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less and
+less glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all the
+happiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoples
+the melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may return
+never more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in the
+dust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips have
+declared&mdash;melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets&mdash;till the
+pensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac and
+foreboding hymns&mdash;as is the Race of Leaves&mdash;now old Homer speaks&mdash;so is
+the Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any
+creature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those mysterious
+misgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysterious
+still, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God,
+and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these&mdash;the earthly, in
+its sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+<h2>SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.</h2>
+
+<h3>SECOND RHAPSODY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Have we not been speaking of all the Seasons as belonging to the
+masculine gender? They are generally, we believe, in this country,
+painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, as may be daily seen in the
+pretty prints that bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns.
+Spring is always there represented as a spanker in a blue symar, very
+pertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, in
+a style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of that
+shamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She
+holds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, or
+primrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubt
+does look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood of
+the Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey, <i>in
+puris naturalibus</i>, meant to image Musidora, or the Medicean, or rather
+the Hottentot Venus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So stands the statue that enchants the world!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She seems, at the very lightest, a good round half hundred heavier than
+Spring; and, when you imagine her plunging into the pool, you think you
+hear a porpus. May no Damon run away with her clothes, leaving behind in
+exchange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dogdays, and should one
+"imparadise himself in form of that sweet flesh," there will be a cry in
+the woods that will speedily bring to her assistance Pan and all his
+Satyrs. Autumn is a motherly matron, evidently <i>enceinte</i>, and, like
+Love and Charity, who probably are smiling on the opposite wall, she has
+a brace of bouncing babies at her breast&mdash;in her right hand a formidable
+sickle, like a Turkish scymitar&mdash;in her left an extraordinary utensil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+bearing, we believe, the heathenish appellation of cornucopia&mdash;on her
+back a sheaf of wheat&mdash;and on her head a diadem&mdash;planted there by John
+Barleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as ugly a customer as a lonely man
+would wish to encounter beneath the light of a September moon. On her
+feet are bauchles&mdash;on her legs huggers&mdash;and the breadth of her soles,
+and the thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own conjectures. Her
+fine bust is conspicuous in an open laced boddice&mdash;and her huge hips are
+set off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket that she seems to have
+picked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from a
+long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid
+of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less
+resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old
+beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble
+fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the
+melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated
+with frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained in iciness, and
+an old stump, half buried in the drift. Poor old, miserable, cowering
+crone! One cannot look at her without unconsciously putting one's hand
+in his pocket, and fumbling for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in the
+picture, especially while, on turning round your head, you behold a big
+blockhead of a vulgar bagman, with his coat-tails over his arms, warming
+his loathsome hideousness at a fire that would roast an ox.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the Seasons! And though we have spoken of them, as mere critics
+on art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always no
+inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, or
+prose-works, that&mdash;pardon our tautology&mdash;are popular with the people.
+The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations of
+persons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the old
+masters; so that, though the conception is good, the execution is, in
+general, far from perfect. Yet many a time, when lying at our ease in a
+Wayside Inn, stretched on three wooden chairs, with a little round
+deal-table before us, well laden with oatmeal cakes and cheese and
+butter, nor, you may be sure, without its "tappit hen"&mdash;have we after a
+long day's journey&mdash;perhaps the longest day&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Through moors and mosses many, O,"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>regarded with no imaginative spirit&mdash;when Joseph and his brethren were
+wanting&mdash;even such symbols of the Seasons as these&mdash;while arose to
+gladden us many as fair an image as ever nature sent from her woods and
+wildernesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimage
+to her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop
+his head below the lowest lintel, and held all men his equal who earned
+by honest industry the scanty fare which they never ate without those
+holy words of supplication and thanksgiving, "Give us this day our daily
+bread!"</p>
+
+<p>Our memory is a treasure-house of written and unwritten poetry&mdash;the
+ingots, the gifts of the great bards, and the bars of bullion&mdash;much of
+the coin our own&mdash;some of it borrowed mayhap, but always on good
+security, and repaid with interest&mdash;a legal transaction, of which even a
+not unwealthy man has no need to be ashamed&mdash;none of it stolen, nor yet
+found where the Highlandman found the tongs. But our riches are like
+those that encumbered the floor of the Sanctum of the Dey of Algiers,
+not very tidily arranged; and we are frequently foiled in our efforts to
+lay our hand, for immediate use or ornament, on a ducat or a diamond, a
+pistole or a pearl, a sovereign, or only his crown. We feel ourselves at
+this moment in that predicament, when trying to recollect the genders of
+Thomson's "Seasons"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination,
+and there is not a syllable about sex&mdash;though "ethereal mildness," which
+is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a
+Virgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that dwell between heaven and
+earth must love. Never to our taste&mdash;but our taste is inferior to our
+feeling and our genius&mdash;though you will seldom go far wrong even in
+trusting it&mdash;never had a poem a more beautiful beginning. It is not
+simple&mdash;nor ought it to be&mdash;it is rich, and even gorgeous&mdash;for the Bard
+came to his subject full of inspiration; and as it was the inspiration,
+here, not of profound thought, but of passionate emotion, it was right
+that music at the very first moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> should overflow the page, and that
+it should be literally strewed with roses. An imperfect Impersonation is
+often proof positive of the highest state of poetical enthusiasm. The
+forms of nature undergo a half humanising process under the intensity of
+our love, yet still retain the character of the insensate creation, thus
+affecting us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, blended emotion
+that scarcely belongs to either separately, but to both together clings
+as to a phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, because only the
+soul of genius can give it a presence&mdash;though afterwards all eyes dimly
+recognise it, on its being shown to them, as something more vivid than
+their own faint experience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually one
+and the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understand
+and feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarest
+genius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break their
+harps, and go drown themselves in Helicon.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Child of the Sun, refulgent <span class="smcap">Summer</span> comes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He comes attended by the sultry hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here the Impersonation is stronger&mdash;and perhaps the superior strength
+lies in the words "child of the Sun." And here in the words describing
+Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other
+passage&mdash;averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The
+poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine;
+and 'tis a jewel of a picture&mdash;for ladies should always avert their
+blushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed,
+elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks of
+his mistress,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From the keen gaze her lover turns away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sighing languishment."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as
+delicate as it is natural; but for our own simple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and single selves, we
+never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we
+cannot deny&mdash;if we did, the most credulous would not credit us&mdash;much
+agitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixing
+upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which
+the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the
+better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her
+affianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all our
+long lives got we absolutely <i>sick</i>&mdash;nor even <i>squeamish</i>&mdash;never were we
+obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth&mdash;but, on the contrary,
+we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too
+luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring for
+a few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself
+down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals.
+However, we are not now writing our Confessions&mdash;and what we wished to
+say about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented as
+turning away the face from that of the other, which may be all natural
+enough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and,
+had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would have
+read better in poetry. But for Spring to avert <i>his</i> blushful face from
+the ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasons
+seem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness," was
+unquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to the
+toe," and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed his
+boyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of his
+own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not
+fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful
+of cold water.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes jovial on," &amp;c.,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the
+sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So
+far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'er
+the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature&mdash;and
+descriptive of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> growing and ripening or ripened harvest&mdash;whereas it
+is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is
+not obscurity&mdash;or indistinctness&mdash;which, as we have said before, is
+often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a
+contradiction&mdash;and therefore indefensible on any ground either of
+conception or expression.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle of
+Indolence"&mdash;for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration to
+thought&mdash;and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, became
+celestial as an angel's song.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till through the lucid chambers of the south<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read by the bedside of a
+dying lover of nature, might</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Create a soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the ribs of death!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What in the name of goodness makes us suppose that a mean, and miserable
+November day, even while we are thus Rhapsodising, is drizzling all
+Edinburgh with the worst of all imaginable Scottish mists&mdash;an Easterly
+Haur? We know that he infests all the year, but shows his poor spite in
+its bleakest bitterness in March and in November. Earth and heaven are
+not only not worth looking at in an Easterly Haur, but the Visible is
+absolute wretchedness, and people wonder why they were born. The
+visitation begins with a sort of characterless haze, waxing more and
+more wetly obscure, till you know not whether it be rain, snow, or
+sleet, that drenches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> your clothes in dampness, till you feel it in your
+skin, then in your flesh, then in your bones, then in your marrow, and
+then in your mind. Your blinking eyes have it too&mdash;and so, shut it as
+you will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, though looking blue,
+are not puddled, and the dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is no
+eavesdropping&mdash;no gushing of waterspouts. To say it rained would be no
+breach of veracity, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy fact. The
+truth is, that <i>the weather cannot rain</i>, but keeps spit, spit,
+spitting, in a style sufficient to irritate Socrates&mdash;or even Moses
+himself; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, and authentic Rain
+could not&mdash;or if he could would not&mdash;so thoroughly soak you and your
+whole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day to do it, as that shabby
+imitation of a tenth-rate shower, in about the time of a usual sized
+sermon. So much cold and so much wet, with so little to show for it, is
+a disgrace to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the sunniest
+the weather can afford to wipe off. But the stores of sunniness which it
+is in the power of Winter in this northern latitude to accumulate,
+cannot be immense; and therefore we verily believe that it would be too
+much to expect that it ever can make amends for the hideous horrors of
+this Easterly Haur. The Cut-throat!</p>
+
+<p>On such days suicides rush to judgment. That sin is mysterious as
+insanity&mdash;their graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh!
+the brain and the heart of man! Therein is the only Hell. Small these
+regions in space, and of narrow room&mdash;but haunted may they be with all
+the Fiends and all the Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul despair
+or bliss. At the touch of something&mdash;whence and wherefore sent, who can
+say&mdash;something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars&mdash;she soars up
+into life and light, just as you may have seen a dove suddenly cleave
+the sunshine&mdash;or down she dives into death and darkness, like a shot
+eagle tumbling into the sea!</p>
+
+<p>Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should mortals, whom conscience tells
+that they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon the
+dust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dust
+dies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not that
+spirit its immortality in each sacred thought? When did ever reli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>gious
+soul fear annihilation? Or shudder to think that, having once known, it
+could ever forget God? Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternal
+death. Therefore is eternal death impossible to us who can hold
+communion with our Maker. Our knowledge of Him&mdash;dim and remote though it
+be&mdash;is a God-given pledge that He will redeem us from the doom of the
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with Coleridge, in his
+beautiful poem of the "Nightingale," that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In Nature there is nothing melancholy,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>not even November. The disease of the body may cause disease in the
+soul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful&mdash;not the
+less strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which is
+within us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like an
+earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead.
+Heaven seems to have placed a power in our Will as mighty as it is
+mysterious. Call it not Liberty, lest you should wax proud; call it not
+Necessity, lest you should despair. But turn from the oracles of
+man&mdash;still dim even in their clearest responses&mdash;to the Oracles of God,
+which are never dark; or if so, but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dark with excessive bright"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain the splendour. Bury all
+your books, when you feel the night of scepticism gathering around
+you&mdash;bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spells to
+illuminate the unfathomable&mdash;open your Bible, and all the spiritual
+world will be as bright as day.</p>
+
+<p>The disease of the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Some
+rapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingering
+death;&mdash;some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence life
+worse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of the
+grave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of meaning that
+ever was written, is&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Mens sana in corpore sano."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, what
+unutterable gladness bathes the spirit in that one feeling of&mdash;health!
+Then the mere consciousness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> existence is like that emotion which
+Milton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Paradise&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Vernal delight and joy, able to drive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All sadness but despair"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It does more&mdash;for despair itself cannot prevail against it. What a dawn
+of bliss rises upon us with the dawn of light, when our life is
+healthful as the sun! Then</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It feels that it is greater than it knows."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and at
+the uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in upon
+the spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if the
+enjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, and
+her absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over the
+ethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disordered
+matter!&mdash;from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the last
+scowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed the
+fatal fetters upon them&mdash;they see even that a link may be open, and that
+one effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery,
+and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a sudden
+sunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence is
+changed, and they see the very vanishing of their most dismal and
+desperate dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhat too much of this"&mdash;so let us strike the chords to a merrier
+measure&mdash;to a "livelier lilt"&mdash;as suits the variable spirit of our
+Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting
+rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not
+suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes
+their very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation,
+which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will
+these dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with the
+proceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worst
+comes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escape
+the galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the
+shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like a
+criminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> to
+hand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of the
+most impatient of men&mdash;and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, the
+most patient of men and women&mdash;we often stand shut up in that
+sentry-looking canvass box, dexterously and sinistrously fingering the
+string, perhaps for five shrinking, and shuddering, and <i>grueing</i>
+minutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down upon ourselves
+the rushing waterfall! Soon as the agony is over, we bounce out the
+colour of beetroot, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with an
+amazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as fresh as when
+we first experienced it,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>By-and-by we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that has
+leapt out of the pan&mdash;and then, seeming for a while to be an
+emblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we sober
+down into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside into
+our own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back upon
+ourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, reminds
+us of that line in Cowper descriptive of the November Moon&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed&mdash;we feel strong as the
+horse in Homer&mdash;a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the
+subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self&mdash;not
+self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world
+from selfishness&mdash;elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest
+regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of
+which every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the
+dogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot than
+Grimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficulties
+seem now&mdash;what they really are&mdash;facilities of which we are by far too
+much elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to appear appalling
+are felt now to be lulling securities&mdash;obstacles, like mountains, lying
+in our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus,
+we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and we
+kick them aside like an old footstool. Let the country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> ask us for a
+scheme to pay off the national debt&mdash;<i>there she has it</i>; do you request
+us to have the kindness to leap over the moon&mdash;here we go; excellent Mr
+Blackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article is
+in his hand, promotive of the sale of countless numbers of "my
+Magazine," and of the happiness of countless numbers of mankind. We
+feel&mdash;and the feeling proves the fact&mdash;as bold as Joshua the son of
+Nun&mdash;as brave as David the son of Jesse&mdash;as wise as Solomon the son of
+David&mdash;and as proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopolazzar. We survey
+our image in the mirror&mdash;and think of Adam. We put ourselves into the
+posture of the Belvidere Apollo.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then view the Lord of the unerring bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The God of life, and poesy, and light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Sun in human arms array'd, and brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All radiant from his triumph in the fight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shaft hath just been shot&mdash;the arrow bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With an immortal vengeance; in his eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nostril beautiful disdain, and might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And majesty flash their full lightnings by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Developing in that one glance the Deity."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Up four flight of stairs we fly&mdash;for the bath is in the double-sunk
+story&mdash;ten steps at a bound&mdash;and in five minutes have devoured one
+quartern loaf, six eggs, and a rizzar, washing all over with a
+punch-bowl of congou and a tea-bowl of coffee.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Enormous breakfast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild without rule or art! Where nature plays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her virgin fancies."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then, leaning back on our Easy-chair, we perform an exploit beyond
+the reach of Euclid&mdash;why, <span class="smcap">we Square the Circle</span>, and to the utter
+demolition of our admirable friend Sir David Brewster's diatribe, in a
+late number of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, on the indifference of Government
+to men of science, chuckle over our nobly-won order K.C.C.B., Knight
+Companion of the Cold Bath.</p>
+
+<p>Many analogies between the seasons of the year and the seasons of life,
+being natural, have been a frequent theme of poetry in all countries.
+Had the gods made us poetical, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> should now have poured forth, a few
+exquisite illustrations of some that are very affecting and impressive.
+It has, however, often been felt by us, that not a few of those one
+meets with in the lamentations of whey-faced sentimentalists, are false
+or fantastic, and do equal violence to all the seasons, both of the year
+and of life. These gentry have been especially silly upon the similitude
+of Old Age to Winter. Winter, in external nature, is not the season of
+decay. An old tree, for example, in the very <i>dead</i> of winter, as it is
+figuratively called, though bare of leaves, is full of life. The sap,
+indeed, has sunk down from his bole and branches&mdash;down into his toes or
+roots. But there it is, ready, in due time, to reascend. Not so with an
+old man&mdash;the present company always excepted;&mdash;his sap is not sunk down
+to his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the system&mdash;therefore,
+individual natural objects in Winter are not analogically emblematical
+of people stricken in years. Far less does the Winter itself of the
+year, considered as a season, resemble the old age of life considered as
+a season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the character and conduct of
+aged gentlemen in general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow,
+winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occasional thunder and lightning,
+bear analogy? We pause for a reply. Old men's heads, it is true, are
+frequently white, though more frequently bald, and their blood is not so
+hot as when they were springalds. But though there be no great harm in
+likening a sprinkling of white hair on mine ancient's temples to the
+appearance of the surface of the earth, flat or mountainous, after a
+slight fall of snow&mdash;and indeed, in an impassioned state of mind, we
+feel a moral beauty in such poetical expression as "sorrow shedding on
+the head of youth its untimely snows"&mdash;yet the natural propriety of such
+an image, so far from justifying the assertion of a general analogy
+between Winter and Old Age, proves that the analogies between them are
+in fact very few, and felt to be analogies at all, only when touched
+upon very seldom, and very slightly, and, for the most part, very
+vaguely&mdash;the truth being, that they scarcely exist at all in reality,
+but have an existence given to them by the power of creative passion,
+which often works like genius. Shakespeare knew this well&mdash;as he knew
+everything else; and, accordingly, he gives us Seven Ages of Life&mdash;not
+Four Seasons. But how finely does he sometimes, by the mere use of the
+names of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> Seasons of the Year, intensify to our imagination the
+mental state to which they are for the moment felt to be analogous?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now is the winter of our discontent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made glorious summer by the sun of York!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, is inspired; and the
+further analogical images which follow add nothing to <i>our</i> feeling,
+though they show the strength and depth of <i>his</i> into whose lips they
+are put. A bungler would have bored us with ever so many ramifications
+of the same idea, on one of which, in our weariness, we might have
+wished him hanged by the neck till he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>We are an Old Man, and though single not singular; yet, without vanity,
+we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like Winter, in
+particular, than we are like Spring, Summer, or Autumn. The truth is,
+that we are much less like any one of the Seasons, than we are like the
+whole Set. Is not Spring sharp? So are we. Is not Spring snappish? So
+are we. Is not Spring boisterous? So are we. Is not Spring "beautiful
+exceedingly?" So are we. Is not Spring capricious? So are we. Is not
+Spring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest,
+modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures that
+steal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for our
+similitude&mdash;a staring and striking one&mdash;to Spring. But were you to stop
+there, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For only
+ask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer.
+Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes
+cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does not Summer love the shade? So
+do we. Is not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too much i' the sun?" So
+are we. Is not Summer famous for its thunder and lightning? So are we.
+Is not Summer, when he chooses, still, silent, and serene as a sleeping
+seraph? And so too&mdash;when Christopher chooses&mdash;are not we? Though, with
+keen remorse we confess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are too
+often more like a fury or a fiend&mdash;and that completes the likeness; for
+all who know a Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaim&mdash;"So is he!" But
+our portrait is but half-drawn; you know but a moiety of our character.
+Is Autumn jovial?&mdash;ask Thomson&mdash;so are we. Is Autumn melancholy?&mdash;ask
+Alison and Gil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>lespie&mdash;so are we. Is Autumn bright?&mdash;ask the woods and
+groves&mdash;so are we. Is Autumn rich?&mdash;ask the whole world&mdash;so are we. Does
+Autumn rejoice in the yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, stored
+up in his great Magazine of Nature, are lavishly thence dispensed to all
+that hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? So do we. After that,
+no one can be so pur-and-bat-blind as not see that North is, in very
+truth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his Likeness or Eidolon.
+But&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lo, Winter comes to rule th' inverted year!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So do we,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sullen and sad, with all his rising train&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vapours, and clouds, and storms!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So are we. The great author of the "Seasons" says, that Winter and his
+train</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Exalt the soul to solemn thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And heavenly musing!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So do we. And, "lest aught less great should stamp us mortal," here we
+conclude the comparison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of a great
+master, and ask, Is not North, Winter? Thus, listener after our own
+heart! thou feelest that we are imaged aright in all our attributes
+neither by Spring, nor Summer, nor Autumn, nor Winter; but that the
+character of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected by the Entire
+Year.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Poetry, one might imagine, must be full of Snow-scenes. If so, they have
+almost all dissolved&mdash;melted away from our memory&mdash;as the transiencies
+in nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's "Winter," of course,
+we do not include in our obliviousness&mdash;and from Cowper's "Task" we
+might quote many a most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost and snow
+been done full justice to by them or any other of our poets? They have
+been well spoken of by two&mdash;Southey and Coleridge&mdash;of whose most
+poetical compositions respectively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner,"
+in some future volume we may dissert. Thomson's genius does not so often
+delight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature as
+that of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objects
+off sweepingly by bold strokes&mdash;such, indeed, as have almost always
+distinguished the mighty masters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper
+sets nature before your eyes&mdash;Thomson before your imagination. Which do
+you prefer? Both. Be assured that both poets had pored night and day
+upon her&mdash;in all her aspects&mdash;and that she had revealed herself fully to
+both. But they, in their religion, elected different modes of
+worship&mdash;and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mind
+we love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are
+almost a Task&mdash;and sometimes the Task is out of Season. There is
+delightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard of
+Olney&mdash;glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam.
+Cowper paints trees&mdash;Thomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous
+lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Burrampooter&mdash;Cowper,
+in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, or
+awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to
+anti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>thesis&mdash;a deceptive style of criticism&mdash;and see how Thomson sings
+of Snow. Why, in the following lines, as well as Christopher North in
+his Soliloquy on the Seasons&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"The cherish'd fields<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put on their winter-robe of purest white.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the mazy current."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature of an ocular spectrum.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet
+"brown," where all that is motionless is white&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The foodless wilds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pour forth their <i>brown</i> inhabitants."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That one word proves the poet. Does it not?</p>
+
+<p>The entire description from which these two sentences are selected by
+memory&mdash;a critic you may always trust to&mdash;is admirable; except in one or
+two places where Thomson seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic,
+and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceased
+to be perfectly natural. Thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Drooping, the ox<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fruit of all his toil."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The image of the ox is as good as possible. We see him, and could paint
+him in oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the fruit of
+all his toils"&mdash;to which we freely acknowledge the worthy animal was
+well entitled&mdash;sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantastical. Call
+it doubtful&mdash;for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment.
+Again&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"The bleating kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>With looks of dumb despair.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepherd agreed with us&mdash;one
+night at Ambrose's&mdash;that the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreed
+with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any
+circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own
+feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow
+their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Then, sad dispersed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>For, as they disperse, they do look very sad&mdash;and no doubt are so; but
+had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and
+uniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging, but whole flocks
+had perished.</p>
+
+<p>You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines
+that occur soon after, and which are a noble example of the sweeping
+style of description which, we said above, characterises the genius of
+this sublime poet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"From the bellowing east,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The valley to a shining mountain swells,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the sky."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Well might the Bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when
+telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, addressed
+them in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast.
+"Shepherds," says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely by
+filling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Far off its coming <i>groan'd</i>,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the poet was inspired. Had he not been so, he had not cried, "Baffle
+the raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurd
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then
+try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet.
+People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. A
+line&mdash;two words&mdash;may show that they are the Muse's sons. How exquisitely
+does Burns picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The chilly frost beneath the silver beam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit of perception&mdash;or
+conception&mdash;or memory&mdash;or whatever else you choose to call it; for our
+part, we call it genius&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Breathes a blue film</i>, and in its mid career<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arrests the bickering stream."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And afterwards, having frozen the entire stream into a "crystal
+pavement," how strongly doth he conclude thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>The whole imprison'd river growls below.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here, again, 'tis pleasant to see the peculiar genius of Cowper
+contrasted with that of Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting, for the
+most part, in tranquil images&mdash;for his life was passed amidst tranquil
+nature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power.
+Cowper says&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"On the flood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies undissolved, <i>while silently beneath,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And unperceived, the current steals away</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How many thousand times the lines we are now going to quote have been
+quoted, nobody can tell; but we quote them once more for the purpose of
+asking you, if you think that any one poet of this age could have
+written them&mdash;could have chilled one's very blood with such intense
+feeling of cold! Not one.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And to the stony deep his idle ship</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Immediate seal'd</i>, he with his hapless crew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each full exerted at his several task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Froze into statues; to the cordage glued</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The sailor, and the pilot to the helm!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The oftener&mdash;the more we read the "Winter"&mdash;especially the last two or
+three hundred lines&mdash;the angrier is our wonder with Wordsworth for
+asserting that Thomson owed the national popularity that his "Winter"
+immediately won, to his "commonplace sentimentalities, and his vicious
+style!" Yet true it is, that he was sometimes guilty of both; and, but
+for his transcendent genius, they might have obscured the lustre of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+fame. But such sins are not very frequent in the "Seasons," and were all
+committed in the glow of that fine and bold enthusiasm, which to his
+imagination arrayed all things, and all words, in a light that seemed to
+him at the time to be poetry&mdash;though sometimes it was but "false
+glitter." Admitting, then, that sometimes the style of the "Seasons" is
+somewhat too florid, we must not criticise single and separate passages,
+without holding in mind the character of the poet's genius and his
+inspirations. He luxuriates&mdash;he revels&mdash;he wantons&mdash;at once with an
+imaginative and a sensuous delight in nature. Besides, he was but young;
+and his great work was his first. He had not philosophised his poetical
+language, as Wordsworth himself has done, after long years of
+profoundest study of the laws of thought and speech. But in such study,
+while much is gained, may not something be lost? And is there not a
+charm in the free, flowing, chartered libertinism of the diction and
+versification of the "Seasons"&mdash;above all, in the closing strains of the
+"Winter," and in the whole of the "Hymn," which inspires a delight and
+wonder seldom breathed upon us&mdash;glorious poem, on the whole, as it
+is&mdash;from the more measured march of the "Excursion?"</p>
+
+<p>All those children of the Pensive Public who have been much at school,
+know Thomson's description of the wolves among the Alps, Apennines, and
+Pyrenees,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burning for blood, bony and gaunt and grim!" &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The first fifteen lines are equal to anything in the whole range of
+English descriptive poetry; but the last ten are positively bad. Here
+they are:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The godlike face of man avails him nought!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if, apprised of the severe attack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The country be shut up, lured by the scent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On churchyard drear (inhuman to relate!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Wild beasts do not like the look of the human eye&mdash;they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> think us ugly
+customers&mdash;and sometimes stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in an
+awkward but alarming attitude, of hunger mixed with fear. A single wolf
+seldom or never attacks a man. He cannot stand the face. But a person
+would need to have a godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an army of
+wolves some thousand strong. It would be the height of presumption in
+any man, though beautiful as Moore thought Byron, to attempt it. If so,
+then</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The godlike face of man avails him nought,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is, under the circumstances, ludicrous. Still more so is the trash about
+"beauty, force divine!" It is too much to expect of an army of wolves
+some thousand strong, "and hungry as the grave," that they should all
+fall down on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh and blood,
+merely because the young lady was so beautiful that she might have sat
+to Sir Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr Watts's "Souvenir." 'Tis
+all stuff, too, about the generous lion standing in softened gaze at
+beauty's bright glance. True, he has been known to look with a certain
+sort of soft surliness upon a pretty Caffre girl, and to walk past
+without eating her&mdash;but simply because, an hour or two before, he had
+dined on a Hottentot Venus. The secret lay not in his heart, but in his
+stomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely has
+Spenser changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of the
+attendant lion of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it in this passage, has
+vulgarised and blurred by it the natural and inevitable emotion of
+terror and pity. Famished wolves <i>howking</i> up the dead is a dreadful
+image&mdash;but "<i>inhuman to relate</i>," is not an expression heavily laden
+with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel,
+unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, is
+revolting, and miserably mars the terrible <i>truth</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts only frightened? And
+wherein lies the specific difference between a shade and a ghost?
+Besides, if the ghosts were frightened, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> they had good reason to
+be, why were not they off? We have frequently read of their wandering
+far from home, on occasions when they had no such excellent excuse to
+offer. This line, therefore, we have taken the liberty to erase from our
+pocket-copy of the "Seasons"&mdash;and to draw a few keelavine strokes over
+the rest of the passage&mdash;beginning with "man's godlike face."</p>
+
+<p>Go read, then, the opening of "Winter," and acknowledge that, of all
+climates and all countries, there are none within any of the zones of
+the earth that will bear a moment's comparison with those of Scotland.
+Forget the people if you can, and think only of the region. The lovely
+Lowlands undulating away into the glorious Highlands&mdash;the spirit of
+sublimity and the spirit of beauty one and the same, as it blends them
+in indissoluble union. Bury us alive in the dungeon's
+gloom&mdash;incommunicable with the light of day as the grave&mdash;it could not
+seal our eyes to the sight of Scotland. We should see it still by rising
+or by setting suns. Whatever blessed scene we chose to call on would
+become an instant apparition. Nor in that thick-ribbed vault would our
+eyes be deaf to her rivers and her seas. We should say our prayers to
+their music, and to the voice of the thunder on a hundred hills. We
+stand now in no need of senses. They are waxing dim&mdash;but our spirit may
+continue to brighten long as the light of love is allowed to dwell
+therein, thence proceeding over nature like a victorious morn.</p>
+
+<p>There are many beautiful passages in the poets about <span class="smcap">Rain</span>; but who ever
+sang its advent so passionately as in these strains?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"The effusive south<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And full of every hope and every joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wish of nature. Gradual sinks the breeze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into a perfect calm, that not a breath<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods diffused<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The falling verdure!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All that follows is, you know, as good&mdash;better it cannot be&mdash;till we
+come to the close, the perfection of poetry, and then sally out into the
+shower, and join the hymn of earth to heaven&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By such as wander through the forest walks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In universal bounty, shedding herbs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, while the milky nutriment distils,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beholds the kindling country colour round."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson, they say, was too fond of epithets. Not he, indeed. Strike out
+one of the many there&mdash;and your sconce shall feel the crutch. A poet
+less conversant with nature would have feared to say, "sits on the
+horizon round <i>a settled gloom</i>," or rather, he would not have seen or
+thought it was a settled gloom; and, therefore, he could not have said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&mdash;&mdash;"But lovely, gentle, kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And full of every hope and every joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The wish of Nature.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Leigh Hunt&mdash;most vivid of poets, and most cordial of critics&mdash;somewhere
+finely speaks of a ghastly line in a poem of Keats'&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Riding to Florence with the murder'd man;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>that is, the man about to be murdered&mdash;imagination conceiving as one,
+doom and death. Equally great are the words&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Herds and flocks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The falling verdure."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>The verdure is seen in the shower&mdash;to be the very shower&mdash;by the poet at
+least&mdash;perhaps by the cattle, in their thirsty hunger forgetful of the
+brown ground, and swallowing the dropping herbage. The birds had not
+been so sorely distressed by the drought as the beasts, and therefore
+the poet speaks of them, not as relieved from misery, but as visited
+with gladness&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Hush'd in short suspense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The plumy people streak their wings with oil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To throw the lucid moisture trickling off,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wait th' approaching sign, to strike, at once,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the general choir."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then, and not till then, the <i>humane</i> poet bethinks him of the insensate
+earth&mdash;insensate not; for beast and bird being satisfied, and lowing and
+singing in their gratitude, so do the places of their habitation yearn
+for the blessing&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"E'en mountains, vales,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And forests, seem impatient, to demand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The promised sweetness."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>religious</i> Poet then speaks for his kind&mdash;and says devoutly&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Man superior walks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the glad creation, musing praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And looking lively gratitude."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In that mood he is justified to feast his fancy with images of the
+beauty as well as the bounty of nature; and genius in one line has
+concentrated them all&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Beholds the kindling country colour round."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'Tis "an a' day's rain"&mdash;and "the well-showered earth is deep-enriched
+with vegetable life." And what kind of an evening? We have seen many
+such&mdash;and every succeeding one more beautiful, more glorious to our eyes
+than another&mdash;because of these words in which the beauty and the glory
+of one and all are enshrined&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Till, in the western sky, the downward sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rapid radiance, instantaneous, strikes<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hollow lows responsive from the vales,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fair proportion, running from the red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To where the violet fades into the sky."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How do you like our recitation of that surpassing strain? Every shade of
+feeling should have its shade of sound&mdash;every pause its silence. But
+these must all come and go, untaught, unbidden, from the fulness of the
+heart. Then indeed, and not till then, can words be said to be set to
+music&mdash;<i>to a celestial sing-song</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The mighty Minstrel recited old Ballads with a warlike march of sound
+that made one's heart leap, while his usually sweet smile was drawn in,
+and disappeared among the glooms that sternly gathered about his
+lowering brows, and gave his whole aspect a most heroic character. Rude
+verses, that from ordinary lips would have been almost meaningless, from
+his came inspired with passion. Sir Philip Sidney, who said that "Chevy
+Chase" roused him like the sound of a trumpet, had he heard Sir Walter
+Scott recite it, would have gone distracted. Yet the "best judges" said
+he murdered his own poetry&mdash;we say about as much as Homer. Wordsworth
+recites his own Poetry (catch him reciting any other)
+magnificently&mdash;while his eyes seem blind to all outward objects, like
+those of a somnambulist. Coleridge was the sweetest of sing-songers&mdash;and
+his silver voice "warbled melody." Next to theirs, we believe our own
+recitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times,
+though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have pronounced it
+detestable, and the long-eared ludicrous; their delight being in what is
+called Elocution, as it is taught by player-folk.</p>
+
+<p>O friendly reader of these our Recreations! thou needst not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> to be
+told&mdash;yet in love let us tell thee&mdash;that there are a thousand ways of
+dealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; but
+sentiment there always must be, else it is stark nought. You may infuse
+the sentiment by a single touch&mdash;by a ray of light no thicker, nor one
+thousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded by
+lady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or you
+may splash it in as with a gorgeous cloud-stain stolen from sunset; or
+you may bathe it in with a shred of the rainbow. Perhaps the highest
+power of all possessed by the sons of song, is to breathe it in with the
+breath, to let it slip in with the light of the common day!</p>
+
+<p>Then some poets there are, who show you a scene all of a sudden, by
+means of a few magical words&mdash;just as if you opened your eyes at their
+bidding&mdash;and in place of a blank, a world. Others, again, as good and as
+great, create their world gradually before your eyes, for the delight of
+your soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost
+in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap image
+upon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they were
+ransacking and robbing, and red-reavering earth, sea, and sky; yet all
+things there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, when
+consummated, is a Whole that seems to typify the universe. Others give
+you but fragments&mdash;but such as awaken imaginations of beauty and of
+power transcendent, like that famous Torso. And some show you Nature
+glimmering beneath a veil which, nunlike, she has religiously taken; and
+then call not Nature ideal only in that holy twilight, for then it is
+that she is spiritual, and we who belong to her feel that we shall live
+for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Thus&mdash;and in other wondrous ways&mdash;the great poets are the great
+painters, and so are they the great musicians. But how they are so, some
+other time may we tell; suffice it now to say, that as we listen to the
+mighty masters&mdash;"sole or responsive to each other's voice"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now, 'tis like all instruments,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now like a lonely lute;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now 'tis like an angel's song<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bids the heavens be mute!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Why will so many myriads of men and women, denied by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> nature "the vision
+and the faculty divine," persist in the delusion that they are
+poetising, while they are but versifying "this bright and breathing
+world?" They see truly not even the outward objects of sight. But of all
+the rare affinities and relationships in Nature, visible or audible to
+Fine-ear-and-Far-eye the Poet, not a whisper&mdash;not a glimpse have they
+ever heard or seen, any more than had they been born deaf-blind.</p>
+
+<p>They paint a landscape, but nothing "prates of their whereabouts," while
+they were sitting on a tripod, with their paper on their knees,
+drawing&mdash;their breath. For, in the front ground is a castle, against
+which, if you offer to stir a step, you infallibly break your head,
+unless providentially stopped by that extraordinary vegetable-looking
+substance, perhaps a tree, growing bolt upright out of an intermediate
+stone, that has wedged itself in long after there had ceased to be even
+standing-room in that strange theatre of nature. But down from "the
+swelling instep of a mountain's foot," that has protruded itself through
+a wood, while the body of the mountain prudently remains in the extreme
+distance, descends on you, ere you have recovered from your unexpected
+encounter with the old Roman cement, an unconscionable cataract. There
+stands a deer or goat, or rather some beast with horns, "strictly
+anonymous," placed for effect, contrary to all cause, in a place where
+it seems as uncertain how he got in as it is certain that he never can
+get out till he becomes a hippogriff.</p>
+
+<p>The true poet, again, has such potent eyes, that when he lets down the
+lids, he sees just as well, perhaps better than when they were up; for
+in that deep, earnest, inward gaze, the fluctuating sea of scenery
+subsides into a settled calm, where all is harmony as well as
+beauty&mdash;order as well as peace. What though he have been fated, through
+youth and manhood, to dwell in city smoke? His childhood&mdash;his
+boyhood&mdash;were overhung with trees, and through its heart went the murmur
+of waters. Then it is, we verily believe, that in all poets, is filled
+with images up to the brim, Imagination's treasury. Genius, growing, and
+grown up to maturity, is still a prodigal. But he draws on the Bank of
+Youth. His bills, whether at a short or long date, are never
+dishonoured; nay, made payable at sight, they are as good as gold. Nor
+cares that Bank for a run, made even in a panic, for besides bars and
+billets, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> wedges and blocks of gold, there are, unappreciable beyond
+the riches which against a time of trouble</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The Sultaun hides in his ancestral tombs,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>jewels and diamonds sufficient</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To ransom great kings from captivity."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We sometimes think that the power of painting Nature to the life,
+whether in her real or ideal beauty (both belong to <i>life</i>,) is seldom
+evolved to its utmost, until the mind possessing it is withdrawn in the
+body from all rural <i>environment</i>. It has not been so with Wordsworth,
+but it was so with Milton. The descriptive poetry in "Comus" is indeed
+rich as rich may be, but certainly not so great, perhaps not so
+beautiful, as that in "Paradise Lost."</p>
+
+<p>It would seem to be so with all of us, small as well as great; and were
+<i>we</i>&mdash;Christopher North&mdash;to compose a poem on Loch Skene, two thousand
+feet or so above the level of the sea, and some miles from a house, we
+should desire to do so in a metropolitan cellar. Desire springs from
+separation. The spirit seeks to unite itself to the beauty it loves, the
+grandeur it admires, the sublimity it almost fears; and all these being
+o'er the hills and far away, or on the hills cloud-hidden, why it&mdash;the
+spirit&mdash;makes itself wings&mdash;or rather wings grow up of themselves in its
+passion, and naturewards it flies like a dove or an eagle. People
+looking at us believe us present, but they never were so far mistaken in
+their lives; for in the Seamew are we sailing with the tide through the
+moonshine on Loch Etive&mdash;or hanging o'er that gulf of peril on the bosom
+of Skyroura.</p>
+
+<p>We are sitting now in a dusky den&mdash;with our eyes shut&mdash;but we see the
+whole Highlands. Our Highland Mountains are of the best possible
+magnitude&mdash;ranging between two and four thousand feet high&mdash;and then in
+what multitudes! The more familiar you become with them, the mightier
+they appear&mdash;and you feel that it is all sheer folly to seek to dwindle
+or dwarf them, by comparing them as they rise before your eyes with your
+imagination of Mont Blanc and those eternal glaciers. If you can bring
+them under your command, you are indeed a sovereign&mdash;and have a noble
+set of subjects. In some weather they are of any height you choose to
+put them&mdash;say thirty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> thousand feet&mdash;in other states of the atmosphere
+you think you could walk over their summits and down into the region
+beyond in an hour. Try. We have seen Cruachan, during a whole black day,
+swollen into such enormous bulk, that Loch Awe looked like but a sullen
+river at his base, her woods bushes, and Kilchurn no bigger than a
+cottage. The whole visible scene was but he and his shadow. They seemed
+to make the day black, rather than the day to make them so&mdash;and at
+nightfall he took wider and loftier possession of the sky&mdash;the clouds
+congregated round without hiding his summit, on which seemed to twinkle,
+like earth-lighted fires, a few uncertain stars. Rain drives you into a
+shieling&mdash;and you sit there for an hour or two in eloquent confabulation
+with the herdsman, your English against his Gaelic. Out of the door you
+creep&mdash;and gaze in astonishment on a new world. The mist is slowly
+rolling up and away in long lines of clouds, preserving, perhaps, a
+beautiful regularity on their ascension and evanescence, and between
+them</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tier above tier, a wooded theatre<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of stateliest view,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>or cliff galleries with strange stone-images sitting up aloft; and yet
+your eyes have not reached the summits, nor will they reach them, till
+all that vapoury ten-mile-long mass dissolve, or be scattered, and then
+you start to see them, as if therein had been but their bases, <span class="smcap">$1</span>, with here and there a peak illumined, reposing in the blue
+serene that smiles as if all the while it had been above reach of the
+storm.</p>
+
+<p>The power of Egoism accompanies us into solitude; nay, is even more
+life-pervading there than in the hum of men. There the stocks and stones
+are more impressible than those we sometimes stumble on in human
+society, and, moulded at our will, take what shape we choose to give
+them; the trees follow our footsteps, though our lips be mute, and we
+may have left at home our fiddle&mdash;more potent we in our actuality than
+the fabled Orpheus. Be hushed, ye streams, and listen unto Christopher!
+Be chained, ye clouds, and attentive unto North! And at our bidding
+silent the cataract on the cliff&mdash;the thunder on the sky. The sea
+beholds us on the shore&mdash;and his one huge frown transformed into a
+multitudinous smile, he turns flowing affections towards us along the
+golden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> sands&mdash;and in a fluctuating hindrance of lovely foam-wreaths
+envelopes our feet!</p>
+
+<p>To return to Thomson. Wordsworth labours to prove, in one of his
+"postliminious prefaces," that the true spirit of "The Seasons," till
+long after their publication, was neither felt nor understood. In the
+conduct of his argument he does not shine. That the poem was at once
+admired he is forced to admit; but then, according to him, the
+admiration was false and hollow&mdash;it was regarded but with that wonder
+which is the "natural product of ignorance." After having observed that,
+excepting the "Nocturnal Reverie" of Lady Winchilsea, and a passage or
+two in the "Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the period
+intervening between the publication of the "Paradise Lost" and "The
+Seasons" does not contain a single new image of external nature, he
+proceeds to call the once well-known verses of Dryden in the "Indian
+Emperor," descriptive of the hush of night, "vague, bombastic, and
+senseless," and Pope's celebrated translation of the moonlight scene in
+the "Iliad," altogether "absurd,"&mdash;and then, without ever once dreaming
+of any necessity of showing them to be so, or even, if he had succeeded
+in doing so, of the utter illogicality of any argument drawn from their
+failure to establish the point he is hammering at, he all at once says,
+with the most astounding assumption, "<i>having shown</i> that much of what
+his [Thomson's] biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact,
+have been blind wonderment&mdash;how is the rest to be accounted for?"
+<i>"Having shown"!!!</i> Why, he has shown nothing but his own arrogance in
+supposing that his mere <i>ipse dixit</i> will be taken by the whole world as
+proof that Dryden and Pope had not the use of their eyes. "Strange to
+think of an enthusiast," he says (alluding to the passage in Pope's
+translation of the "Iliad"), "as may have been the case with thousands,
+reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having
+his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their
+<i>absurdity</i>!" We are no enthusiasts&mdash;we are far too old for that folly;
+but we have eyes in our head, though sometimes rather dim and motey, and
+as good eyes, too, as Mr Wordsworth, and we often have recited&mdash;and hope
+often will recite them again&mdash;Pope's exquisite lines, not only without
+any "suspicion of their absurdity," but with the conviction of a most
+devout belief that, with some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> little vagueness perhaps, and repetition,
+and a word here and there that might be altered for the better, the
+description is most beautiful. But grant it miserable&mdash;grant all Mr
+Wordsworth has so dictatorially uttered&mdash;and what then? Though
+descriptive poetry did not flourish during the period between "Paradise
+Lost" and "The Seasons," nevertheless, did not mankind enjoy the use of
+their seven senses? Could they not see and hear without the aid of those
+oculists and aurists, the poets? Were all the shepherds and
+agriculturists of England and Scotland blind and deaf to all the sights
+and sounds of nature, and all the gentlemen and ladies too, from the
+king and queen upon the throne, to the lowest of their subjects? Very
+like a whale! Causes there were why poetry flowed during that era in
+another channel than that of the description of natural scenery; and if
+it flowed too little in that channel then&mdash;which is true&mdash;equally is it
+true that it flows now in it too much&mdash;especially among the poets of the
+Lake School, to the neglect, not of sentiments and affections&mdash;for there
+they excel&mdash;but of strong direct human passion applied to the stir and
+tumult&mdash;of which the interest is profound and eternal&mdash;of all the great
+affairs of human life. But though the descriptive poets during the
+period between Milton and Thomson were few and indifferent, no reason is
+there in this world for imagining, with Mr Wordsworth, that men had
+forgotten both the heavens and the earth. They had not&mdash;nor was the
+wonder with which they must have regarded the great shows of nature, the
+"natural product of ignorance," then, any more than it is now, or ever
+was during a civilised age. If we be right in saying so&mdash;then neither
+could the admiration which "The Seasons," on the first appearance of
+that glorious poem, excited, be said, with any truth, to have been but a
+"wonder, the natural product of ignorance."</p>
+
+<p>Mr Wordsworth having thus signally failed in his attempt to show that
+"much of what Thomson's biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in
+fact, have been blind wonderment," let us accompany him in his equally
+futile efforts to show "how the rest is to be accounted for." He
+attempts to do so after this fashion: "Thomson was fortunate in the very
+title of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared
+sympathies of every one; in the next place, notwithstanding his high
+powers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ornaments are exactly
+of that kind which would be most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> likely to strike the undiscerning. He
+likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in
+which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any
+well-used copy of 'The Seasons,' the book generally opens of itself with
+the Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon and
+Musidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, and
+are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient
+in first recommending the author to general notice."</p>
+
+<p>Thomson, in one sense, <i>was fortunate</i> in the <i>title</i> of his poem. But a
+great poet like Wordsworth might&mdash;nay, ought to have chosen another
+word&mdash;or have given of that word a loftier explanation, when applied to
+Thomson's <i>choice</i> of the Seasons for the subject of his immortal poem.
+Genius made that choice&mdash;not fortune. The "Seasons" are not merely the
+"<i>title</i>" of his poem&mdash;they are his poem, and his poem is the Seasons.
+But how, pray, can Thomson be said to have been <i>fortunate</i> in the
+<i>title</i> or the subject either of his poem, in the sense that Mr
+Wordsworth means? Why, according to him, people knew little, and cared
+less, about the Seasons. "The art of seeing had in some measure been
+learned!" That he allows&mdash;but that was all&mdash;and that all is but
+little&mdash;and surely far from being enough to have disposed people in
+general to listen to the strains of a poet who painted nature in all her
+moods, and under all her aspects. Thomson, then, we say, was either most
+<i>unfortunate</i> in the title of his poem, or there was not with the many
+that indifference to, and ignorance of natural scenery, on which Mr
+Wordsworth so strenuously insists as part, or rather whole, of his
+preceding argument.</p>
+
+<p>The title, Mr Wordsworth says, seemed "to bring the poem home to the
+<i>prepared sympathies</i> of every one!" What! to the prepared sympathies of
+those who had merely, in some measure, learned the "art of seeing," and
+who had "paid," as he says in another sentence, "little accurate
+attention to the appearances of nature!" Never did the weakest mind ever
+fall into grosser contradictions than does here one of the strongest, in
+vainly labouring to bolster up a silly assertion, which he has
+desperately ventured on from a most mistaken conceit that it was
+necessary to account for the kind of reception which his own poetry had
+met with from the present age. The truth is, that had Mr Wordsworth
+known, when he indited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> these luckless and helpless sentences, that his
+own poetry was, in the best sense of the word, a thousand times more
+popular than he supposed it to be&mdash;and Heaven be praised, for the honour
+of the age, it was and is so!&mdash;never had they been written, nor had he
+here and elsewhere laboured to prove that in proportion as poetry is
+bad, or rather as it is no poetry at all, is it, has been, and always
+will be, more and more popular in the age contemporary with the writer.
+That Thomson, in "The Seasons," <i>sometimes</i> writes a <i>vicious style</i>,
+may be true; but it is not true that he <i>often</i> does so. His style has
+its faults, no doubt, and some of them inextricably interwoven with the
+web of his composition. It is a dangerous style to imitate&mdash;especially
+to dunces. But its <i>virtue is divine</i>; and that <i>divine virtue</i>, even in
+this low world of ours, wins admiration more surely and widely than
+<i>earthly vice</i>&mdash;be it in words, thoughts, feelings, or actions&mdash;is a
+creed that we will not relinquish at the beck or bidding even of the
+great author of "The Excursion."</p>
+
+<p>That many did&mdash;do&mdash;and will admire the bad or indifferent passages in
+"The Seasons"&mdash;won by their false glitter or commonplace sentimentalism,
+is no doubt true: but the delight, though as intense as perhaps it may
+be foolish, with which boys and virgins, woman-mantuamakers and
+man-milliners, and "the rest," peruse the Rhapsody on Love&mdash;one passage
+of which we ventured to be facetious on in our Soliloquy on the
+Seasons&mdash;and hang over the picture of Musidora undressing, while Damon
+watches the process of disrobement, panting behind a tree, will never
+account for the admiration with which the whole world hailed the
+"Winter," the first published of "The Seasons;" during which, Thomson
+had not the barbarity to plunge any young lady naked into the cold bath,
+nor the ignorance to represent, during such cold weather, any young lady
+turning her lover sick by the ardour of her looks, and the vehemence of
+her whole enamoured deportment. The time never was&mdash;nor could have
+been&mdash;when such passages were generally esteemed the glory of the poem.
+Indeed, independently of its own gross absurdity, the assertion is at
+total variance with that other assertion, equally absurd, that people
+admired most in the poem what they least understood; for the Rhapsody on
+Love is certainly very intelligible, nor does there seem much mystery in
+Musidora going into the water to wash and cool herself on a hot day. Is
+it not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> melancholy, then, to hear such a man as Mr Wordsworth,
+earnestly, and even somewhat angrily, trying to prove that "these are
+the parts of the work which, after all, were probably most efficient in
+first recommending the author to general notice?"</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the "sentimental commonplaces with which Thomson
+abounds," no doubt they were and are popular; and many of them deserve
+to be so, for they are on a level with the usual current of human
+feeling, and many of them are eminently beautiful. Thomson had not the
+philosophical genius of Wordsworth, but he had a warm human heart, and
+its generous feelings overflow all his poem. These are not the most
+poetical parts of "The Seasons," certainly, where such effusions
+prevail; but still, so far from being either <i>vicious</i> or <i>worthless</i>,
+they have often a virtue and a worth that must be felt by all the
+children of men. There is something not very credible in the situation
+of the parties in the story of the "lovely young Lavinia," for example,
+and much of the sentiment is commonplace enough; but will Mr Wordsworth
+say&mdash;in support of his theory, that the worst poetry is always at first
+(and at last too, it would seem, from the pleasure with which that tale
+is still read by all simple minds) the most popular&mdash;that that story is
+a bad one? It is a very beautiful one.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Wordsworth, in all his argumentation, is so blinded by his
+determination to see everything in but one light, and that a most
+mistaken one, that he is insensible to the conclusion to which it all
+leads, or rather, which is involved in it. Why, according to him, <i>even
+now</i>, when people have not only learned the "art of seeing"&mdash;a blessing
+for which they can never be too thankful&mdash;but when descriptive poetry
+has long flourished far beyond its palmiest state in any other era of
+our literature, still are we poor common mortals who admire "The
+Seasons," just as deaf and blind now, or nearly so, to their real
+merits&mdash;allowed to be transcendent&mdash;as our unhappy forefathers were when
+that poem first appeared, "a glorious apparition." The Rhapsody on Love,
+and Damon and Musidora, are still, according to him, its chief
+attraction&mdash;its false ornaments&mdash;and its sentimental commonplaces&mdash;such
+as those, we presume, on the benefits of early rising, and,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>What a nest of ninnies must people in general be in Mr Wordsworth's
+eyes! And is "The Excursion" not to be placed by the side of "Paradise
+Lost," till the Millennium?</p>
+
+<p>Such is the <i>reasoning (!)</i> of one of the first of our English poets,
+against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentence
+there is which we had forgotten&mdash;but now remember&mdash;which is to help us
+to distinguish, in the case of the reception "The Seasons" met with,
+between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work is
+the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of
+the year; <i>and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself
+to treat his subject as became a poet</i>!" How original and profound!
+Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public,
+returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is
+the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the
+people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to
+regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of
+ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All
+poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are
+wretchedly prosaic&mdash;die and are buried, or what is worse, protract a
+miserable existence, in spite of their sentimental commonplaces, false
+ornaments, and a vicious style. But Thomson, in spite of all these,
+leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still more glorious
+immortality.</p>
+
+<p>There is no mystery in the matter. Thomson&mdash;a great poet&mdash;poured his
+genius over a subject of universal interest; and "The Seasons" from that
+hour to this&mdash;then, now, and for ever&mdash;have been, are, and will be
+loved, and admired by all the world. All over Scotland "The Seasons" is
+a household book. Let the taste and feeling shown by the Collectors of
+Elegant Extracts be poor as possible; yet Thomson's countrymen, high and
+low, rich and poor, have all along not only gloried in his illustrious
+fame, but have made a very manual of his great work. It lies in many
+thousand cottages. We have ourselves seen it in the shepherd's shieling,
+and in the woodsman's bower&mdash;small, yellow-leaved, tatter'd, mean,
+miserable, calf-skin-bound, smoked, <i>stinking</i> copies&mdash;let us not fear
+to utter the word, ugly but true&mdash;yet perused, pored, and pondered over
+by those humble dwellers, by the winter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> ingle or on the summer brae,
+perhaps with as enlightened&mdash;certainly with as imagination-overmastering
+a delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born and
+highly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly-carved tables,
+and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of painting
+strives to embody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lend its
+beauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortal
+spirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for many
+centuries in Scotland. Men, women, and children, all look up to her
+loveful blue or wrathful black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keeps
+growing from the cradle to the grave. Say not that 'tis alone</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In Scriptural language, loftier even than that, the same imagery is
+applied to the sights seen by the true believer. Who is it "that maketh
+the clouds His chariot?" The Scottish peasantry&mdash;Highland and
+Lowland&mdash;look much and often on nature thus; and they live in the heart
+of the knowledge and of the religion of nature. Therefore do they love
+Thomson as an inspired bard&mdash;only a little lower than the Prophets. In
+like manner have the people of Scotland&mdash;from time immemorial&mdash;enjoyed
+the use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not
+deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we
+have quoted&mdash;we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his
+boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far
+away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not
+thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the
+mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here
+eternise on earth" his joy&mdash;but many millions have had souls to join
+religiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one
+mighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"These, as they change, Almighty Father, these<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are but the varied God!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how
+grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that
+glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more
+delightful even than the green&mdash;and we prayed that the fine fleecy
+flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No
+sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles.
+Then, it was a year in itself&mdash;a whole life. We remember slides a
+quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down
+the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one
+leg now&mdash;not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of
+skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain
+for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of
+its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream.
+They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry
+of "swoop-swoop" is heard still&mdash;but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned
+cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make
+the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars&mdash;those
+in the sky, as well as those below the ice&mdash;till again the tumult
+subsided&mdash;and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as
+a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a
+pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on
+the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray,
+seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of
+him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his
+awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single
+crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> it fell asleep,
+like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!</p>
+
+<p>Again we see&mdash;again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of a
+drift in the minister's glebe, a drift&mdash;judging by the steeple, which
+was sixty&mdash;about twenty feet high&mdash;and purer than any marble. The roof
+was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch
+of the palace was pillared&mdash;and the character of the building outside
+was, without any servile imitation&mdash;for we worked in the glow of
+original genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or its
+picture&mdash;wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in
+a superb hall, lighted up&mdash;not with gas, for up to that era gas had not
+been used except in Pandemonium&mdash;but with a vast multitude of farthing
+candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall&mdash;while a chandelier of
+frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in
+a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North&mdash;then
+the king of boys, as now of men&mdash;and proud were his subjects to do him
+homage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered with
+hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins&mdash;furnished by these animals slain
+by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland
+parish&mdash;the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from
+Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung&mdash;in sweet single
+voice&mdash;or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on
+his way to the lone Kings-well; and then in the intermediate hush, old
+tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the
+Barns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling&mdash;or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring
+in caves among the Cartlane Craigs&mdash;or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on
+his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on
+his thundering war-steed, armed cap-&agrave;-pie, while the King of Scotland
+had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of
+the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying
+song!</p>
+
+<p>Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With
+those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss
+of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in
+flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy
+frozen palace, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people
+themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table
+stood a huge bowl&mdash;not of snow&mdash;steaming with nectar that made Hyems
+smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister
+himself&mdash;with his mother and sister&mdash;was with us in our fantastic
+festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering
+praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin
+scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle
+jig or strathspey&mdash;and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a
+confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and
+maddened by many a whoop and yell&mdash;so like savages were we in our glee,
+dancing at the marriage of some island king!</p>
+
+<p>Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away&mdash;and of all
+who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as
+then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever&mdash;let us
+then live well and wisely; and when death comes&mdash;from that sleep how
+blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost&mdash;no snow&mdash;but the sun of
+eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy on us! what a hubbub!&mdash;Can the harriers be hunting in such a
+snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous
+pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why&mdash;Imagination, thou art an
+ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a
+country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as
+in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his
+helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many
+of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet
+pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the
+Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce&mdash;all come alike to him; and
+of all the bards we have ever known&mdash;and the sum total cannot be under a
+thousand&mdash;he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye,
+labours under the blessing or the curse&mdash;we wot not whilk it be&mdash;of
+perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a
+springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil
+in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers
+up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements,
+to thrust his arm up to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The
+corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood;
+and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will
+bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels,
+by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be
+fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with
+guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground
+floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with
+a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we
+should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against
+the best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale,
+Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves&mdash;while, with the
+steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring
+would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?</p>
+
+<p>Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyes
+in your head&mdash;only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bash
+that shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue,
+<i>alias</i> the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has
+chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of
+that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School.
+Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all
+foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux
+Booby&mdash;and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The combat deepens&mdash;on, ye brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who rush to glory or the grave!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And charge with all thy schoolery!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, in
+solid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the
+dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great
+Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last
+night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall&mdash;and a better day for a
+bicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, and
+prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up in
+drifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> flung out in front,
+commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the
+yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the
+shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their
+places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, and
+scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Let fly," cries a clear voice&mdash;and the snowball storm hurtles through
+the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the
+foe&mdash;their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked
+bat-like&mdash;and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower
+of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless
+School&mdash;silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some
+doughty champion in the adverse legion.</p>
+
+<p>See&mdash;see&mdash;the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens take ignominiously to
+flight&mdash;and the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie alone are left to bear the
+brunt of battle. A dreadful brotherhood! But the bashing balls are
+showered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms&mdash;and
+the day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men than
+devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at
+them!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and earocks!" No sooner
+said than done. Bob Howie is buried&mdash;and the whole School is trampling
+on its Master!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Fontarabian echoes borne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That to King Charles did come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Rowland brave and Olivier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every paladin and peer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On Roncesvalles died!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie,
+have echoed o'er the hill, and,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the runaways, shaking the snows of panic from their pows,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Like dewdrops from the lion's mane,"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The high
+heroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, and
+the sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. What
+bashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips what
+slittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, and
+claps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that drops
+unlaunched at his feet. The School are broken&mdash;their hearts die within
+them&mdash;and&mdash;can we trust our blasted eyes?&mdash;the white livers show the
+white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs
+and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them&mdash;and "happy in my
+mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the
+tidings of this wretched overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are flying
+before Six!&mdash;and half of sixty&mdash;oh! that we should record it!&mdash;<i>are
+pretending to be dead!!</i> Would indeed that the snow were their
+winding-sheet, so that it might but hide our dishonour!</p>
+
+<p>Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the
+gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or
+rather&mdash;hear, spirit of Homer!&mdash;like some great, shaggy, outlandish
+wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a
+fortnight's famine on the bare sea-cliffs, been driven by the hunger
+that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only
+be slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till,
+snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like
+creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the
+woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless
+hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another&mdash;till, as it
+might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies
+down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the
+blood off his flews and paws&mdash;and then, looking and listening round with
+his red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious of
+crime and fearful of punishment, soon as he sees and hears that all the
+coast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind the
+ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till,
+sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and
+coiling himself up all his wiry length&mdash;now no longer lank, but swollen
+and knotted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> like that of a deer-devouring snake&mdash;he falls suddenly
+asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder.</p>
+
+<p>That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in
+that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie
+and the Mad Dominie&mdash;and the School like such silly sheep. Those other
+hell-dogs are leaping in the rear&mdash;and to the eyes of fear and flight
+each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their
+mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue the
+pell-mell of the panic.</p>
+
+<p>Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporeal fear. What
+though it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened&mdash;no, brightened
+by the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight&mdash;some
+hard as stones&mdash;some soft as slush&mdash;some blae and drippy in the cold-hot
+hand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are the
+teazers&mdash;some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken ere
+they reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria c&#339;li"&mdash;and some useless
+from the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than the
+foziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly.</p>
+
+<p>Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School!
+Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods.
+Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer!
+Twos and threes in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And
+here and there&mdash;woefullest sight of all&mdash;single boys distractedly
+ettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses&mdash;with their heads all the
+while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their
+eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over
+neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall,
+and in a moment evanished from this upper world!</p>
+
+<p>Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent,&mdash;the
+magpies chatter pert even in alarm,&mdash;the lean kine, collected on the
+lown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet&mdash;their horns moving, but not
+their tails,&mdash;while the tempest-tamed bull&mdash;almost dull now as an
+ox&mdash;gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow.</p>
+
+<p>But who is he&mdash;the tall slender boy&mdash;slender, but sinewy&mdash;a wiry
+chap&mdash;five feet eight on his stocking-soles&mdash;and on his stocking-soles
+he stands&mdash;for the snow has sucked his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> shoes from his feet&mdash;that plants
+himself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, a
+juvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, and
+fiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls and
+rallies the shattered School, that he may re-lead them to victory? The
+phantom of a visionary dream! <span class="smcap">Kit North Himself</span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In life's morning march when his spirit was young."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And once on a day was that figure&mdash;ours! Then like a chamois-hunter of
+the Alps! Now, alas! like&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But be hush'd, my dark spirit&mdash;for wisdom condemns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the faint and the feeble deplore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stems<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A thousand wild waves on the shore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vain</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall awake not a pang of remembrance again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>To bear, is to conquer our fate!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if young
+Kit had become not old Kit&mdash;but were standing now as then front to
+front, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the Mad
+Dominie and Bob Howie&mdash;both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or
+Stone bicker&mdash;in street, lane, or muir fight&mdash;hand to hand,
+single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gypsies&mdash;or in irregular
+high-road row&mdash;two to twelve&mdash;with a gang of Irish horse-coupers from
+the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 'Tis a
+strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore&mdash;to
+lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past.
+Or rather to admire One's Self as he <i>was</i>, without consciousness of the
+mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt
+with which One regards One's Self as he <i>is</i>, shrivelled up into a sort
+of shrimp of a man&mdash;or blown out into a flounder.</p>
+
+<p>The Snowball bicker owns an armistice&mdash;and Kit North&mdash;that is, we of the
+olden and the golden time&mdash;advance into the debatable ground between the
+two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad
+Dominie loved us, because then-a-days&mdash;bating and barring the cock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> and
+the squint of his eye&mdash;we were like himself a poet, and while a goose
+might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of
+a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob&mdash;God bless him!&mdash;to guard us
+from scathe would have risked his life against a whole craal of tinkers.
+With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up&mdash;and
+we are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stain
+which must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys and
+men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed of
+everlasting fame! Even so is it now with us&mdash;when sternly eyeing the
+other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge&mdash;not at
+long bowls&mdash;but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the naked
+mawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with the
+carrots, who, by moonlight nights,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly our
+jackets and stocks&mdash;it is not a day for buff&mdash;and at it like bull-dogs.
+Twice before had we fought him&mdash;at our own option&mdash;over the bonnet; for
+'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, after
+the first close, in which we lose the fall&mdash;with straight right-handers
+we keep him at off-fighting&mdash;and that was a gush of blood from his
+smeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush,
+he makes a plunge with his heavy left&mdash;for he was ker-handed&mdash;at our
+stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud
+admiration of Bob Howie&mdash;and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not
+choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the
+ogles&mdash;and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School&mdash;and, lifted
+on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised at
+Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly a
+ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We know
+that we have him&mdash;and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" And
+now we play around him,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Just like unto a trundling mop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or a wild-goose at play."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He is brought down now to our own weight&mdash;then nine stone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> jimp&mdash;his
+eyes are getting momently more and more pig-like&mdash;water-logged, like
+those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of
+the old Abbey Church of Paisley&mdash;and bat-blind, he hits past our head
+and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn.
+Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple&mdash;and down
+he sinks like a poppy&mdash;deaf to the call of "time"&mdash;and victory smiles
+upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra&mdash;hurra&mdash;hurra! Christopher
+for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie&mdash;he,
+the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the
+shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an
+overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg
+Whitelaw&mdash;shake hands cordially, and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Off to some other game we all together flew."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised in
+our Prose-Poem.</p>
+
+<p>Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry
+with them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the world
+were there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we have
+heard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood&mdash;forgetting what our great
+Philosophical Poet&mdash;after Milton and Dryden&mdash;has told them, that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The boy is father of the man,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must
+he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven.
+Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him
+on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven
+only knows how many million years old, every night sparkling in
+happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in
+his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face,
+was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in
+boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the
+ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire
+superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds
+nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or
+white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>cession.
+The soul afterwards perfects her palace&mdash;building up tier after tier of
+all imaginable orders of architecture&mdash;till the shadowy roof, gleaming
+with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the
+heavens ablaze.</p>
+
+<p>Gaze up on the highest idea&mdash;gaze down on the profoundest emotion&mdash;and
+you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You
+become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of
+metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious
+consciousness of the thought "<span class="smcap">Before!</span>" Try then to fix its date, and
+back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now
+in darkness visible&mdash;now launching along lines of steady lustre, such as
+the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes&mdash;now dazzled by
+sudden contrast&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Blind with excess of light!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras
+after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet
+instant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath,
+during all that perilous pilgrimage&mdash;and perilous must it be, haunted by
+so many ghosts&mdash;never may it reach the shrine it seeks&mdash;the fountain
+from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out
+of the world of time&mdash;dare we say&mdash;in eternity!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHRISTMAS DREAMS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifying
+the dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over the
+mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily
+before our eyes!&mdash;leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, that
+can bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier and
+steadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomable
+depth!&mdash;the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, the
+hours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a different living, and
+peopled, and haunted world. One life is a thousand lives, and each
+individual, as he fully renews the past, reappears in a thousand
+characters; yet all of them bearing a mysterious identity not to be
+misunderstood, and all of them, while every passion has been shifting
+and ceasing, and reascending into power, still under the dominion of the
+same Conscience, that feels and knows it is from God.</p>
+
+<p>Who will complain of the shortness of human life, that can re-travel all
+the windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden since
+the farthest back hour at which memory pauses, baffled and blindfolded,
+as she vainly tries to penetrate and illumine the palpable, the
+impervious darkness that shrouds the few first years of our inscrutable
+being? Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now remember
+it, the Time we first pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wondering
+in our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softness
+all their own&mdash;a yellowness nowhere else so vivid&mdash;"the bright
+consummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among the
+lowly grass&mdash;lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all the
+stars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the blue
+fields of heaven!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand in
+hand with our golden-haired sister! Long, long, long ago, the day on
+which she died&mdash;the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that can now
+darken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, slowly into
+the horrid clay, and we were borne death-like, and wishing to die, out
+of the churchyard, that, from that moment, we thought we could enter
+never more! What a multitudinous being must ours have been, when, before
+our boyhood was gone, we could have forgotten her buried face! or at the
+dream of it, dashed off a tear, and away, with a bounding heart, in the
+midst of a cloud of playmates, breaking into fragments on the hill-side,
+and hurrying round the shores of those wild moorland lochs, in vain hope
+to surprise the heron that slowly uplifted his blue bulk, and floated
+away, regardless of our shouts, to the old castle woods. It is all like
+a reminiscence of some other state of existence.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after all the joys and sorrows of those few years, which we now
+call transitory, but which our <span class="smcap">Boyhood</span> felt as if they would be
+endless&mdash;as if they would endure for ever&mdash;arose upon us the glorious
+dawning of another new life&mdash;<span class="smcap">Youth</span>&mdash;with its insupportable sunshine, and
+its agitating storms. Transitory, too, we now know, and well deserving
+the same name of dream. But while it lasted, long, various, and
+agonising; as, unable to sustain the eyes that first revealed to us the
+light of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, looking up to
+moon and stars, invocated in sacred oaths, hugged the very heavens to
+our heart. Yet life had not then nearly reached its meridian, journeying
+up the sunbright firmament. How long hung it there exulting, when "it
+flamed on the forehead of the noontide sky!" Let not the Time be
+computed by the lights and shadows of the years, but by the innumerable
+array of visionary thoughts, that kept deploying as if from one eternity
+into another&mdash;now in dark sullen masses, now in long array, brightened
+as if with spear-points and standards, and moving along through chasm,
+abyss, and forest, and over the summits of the highest mountains, to the
+sound of ethereal music, now warlike and tempestuous&mdash;now, as "from
+flutes and soft recorders" accompanying not p&aelig;ans of victory but hymns
+of peace. That Life, too, seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a
+thousand years. Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon.
+And is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which men fear
+to face&mdash;Age, Old Age! Four dreams within a dream&mdash;and <i>where</i> to awake?</p>
+
+<p>At dead of night&mdash;and it is now dead of night&mdash;how the heart quakes on a
+sudden at the silent resurrection of buried thoughts! Perhaps the
+sunshine of some one single Sabbath of more exceeding holiness comes
+first glimmering, and then brightening upon us, with the very same
+sanctity that filled all the air at the tolling of the kirk-bell, when
+all the parish was hushed, and the voice of streams heard more
+distinctly among the banks and braes. Then, all at once, a thunderstorm,
+that many years before, or many years after, drove us, when walking
+alone over the mountains, into a shieling, will seem to succeed; and we
+behold the same threatening aspect of the heavens that then quailed our
+beating hearts, and frowned down our eyelids before the lightning began
+to flash, and the black rain to deluge all the glens. No need now for
+any effort of thought. The images rise of themselves&mdash;independently of
+our volition&mdash;as if another being, studying the working of our minds,
+conjured up the phantasmagoria before us who are beholding it with love,
+wonder, and fear. Darkness and silence have a power of sorcery over the
+past; the soul has then, too, often restored to it feelings and thoughts
+that it had lost, and is made to know that nothing it once experiences
+ever perishes, but that all things spiritual possess a principle of
+immortal life.</p>
+
+<p>Why linger on the shadowy wall some of those phantasmagoria&mdash;returning
+after they have disappeared&mdash;and reluctant to pass away into their
+former oblivion? Why shoot others athwart the gloom, quick as spectral
+figures seen hurrying among mountains during a great storm? Why do some
+glare and threaten&mdash;why others fade away with a melancholy smile? Why
+<i>that one</i>&mdash;a Figure all in white, and with white roses in her
+hair&mdash;come forward through the haze, beautifying into distincter form
+and face, till her pale beseeching hands almost touch our neck&mdash;and
+then, in a moment, it is as nothing?</p>
+
+<p>But now the room is disenchanted&mdash;and feebly our lamp is glimmering,
+about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it is
+trimmed again&mdash;and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within
+us like a festal strain. And To-Morrow&mdash;To-Morrow is Merry Christmas;
+and when its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> night descends there will be mirth and music, and the
+light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy
+walls&mdash;and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room,
+will be banished far over the sea&mdash;and morning will be reluctant to
+allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.</p>
+
+<p>Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration,
+painted according to nature&mdash;what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a
+sameness would pervade them all&mdash;but only that kind of sameness that
+pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common
+eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon
+and some stars&mdash;a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few
+castellated, clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a family
+resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him
+who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and
+frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with
+the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that
+illumine those skies&mdash;and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be
+black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is a fine line of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces
+the air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will last
+to the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor
+irrecoverable by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike;
+though many a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems
+to be buried among the dead. But they are not dead&mdash;but only sleep;
+though to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, and
+we, wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passing
+sweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in our
+solitude?&mdash;as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our
+youth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly
+stand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment,
+and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close
+upon our heart.</p>
+
+<p>My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> spring, with the
+din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds
+on earth. It is the Christmas Holidays&mdash;Christmas Day itself&mdash;Christmas
+Night&mdash;and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were we
+brothers and sisters so dear to one another&mdash;never before had our hearts
+so yearned towards the authors of our being&mdash;our blissful being! There
+they sit&mdash;silent in all that outcry&mdash;composed in all that
+disarray&mdash;still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp
+sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a
+prisoner&mdash;a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be
+felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy-flight. One
+old game treads on the heels of another&mdash;twenty within the hour&mdash;and
+many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the
+collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of
+genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is a
+hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a forest when
+the moon drops behind the mountain, and the small green-robed People of
+Peace at once cease their pastime, and evanish. For She&mdash;the
+Silver-Tongued&mdash;is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alike
+hundreds of years old&mdash;and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall,
+with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below&mdash;and, ere
+another Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be
+mute on earth&mdash;but to be hymning in Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Of that House&mdash;to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings&mdash;with its
+old ivied turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and with
+flowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed its
+foundations has vanished along with them&mdash;and a crowd of other
+buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single
+tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne;
+which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for
+one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we
+ourselves&mdash;then so linked in love that the band which bound us all
+together was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood&mdash;to be
+scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wild
+parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought
+together no more! The old Abbey&mdash;it still survives; and there, in that
+corner of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> burial-ground, below that part of the wall which was
+least in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers and
+nests&mdash;there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and
+Venerated&mdash;for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years have
+fled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to
+have ceased to weep&mdash;so seldom to have remembered!&mdash;And then, with a
+powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the
+floods we all wept together&mdash;at no long interval&mdash;on those pale and
+placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, in
+their coffins.</p>
+
+<p>We believe that there is genius in all childhood. But the creative joy
+that makes it great in its simplicity dies a natural death or is killed,
+and genius dies with it. In favoured spirits, neither few nor many, the
+joy and the might survive; for you must know that unless it be
+accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it
+brings before us must be inspired with beauty&mdash;that is, with affection
+or passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their
+youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that
+blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely
+recollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys&mdash;if any such
+there were&mdash;in which their childhood played, the torrents, the
+waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the rocks, the heaven's imperial
+dome, the raven floating only a little lower than the eagle in the sky.
+To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must imagine his own nature.
+He must collect from many vanished hours the power of his untamed heart,
+and he must, perhaps, transfuse also something of his maturer mind into
+these dreams of his former being, thus linking the past with the present
+by a continuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken.
+So is it too with the calmer affections that have grown within the
+shelter of a roof. We do not merely remember, we imagine our father's
+house, the fireside, all his features then most living, now dead and
+buried; the very manner of his smile, every tone of his voice. We must
+combine with all the passionate and plastic power of imagination the
+spirit of a thousand happy hours into one moment; and we must invest
+with all that we ever felt to be venerable such an image as alone can
+satisfy our filial hearts. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> thus that imagination, which first
+aided the growth of all our holiest and happiest affections, can
+preserve them to us unimpaired&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For she can give us back the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even in the loveliest looks they wore."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated one year in this
+family, another year in that&mdash;none present but those whom Charles Lamb
+the Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in all
+features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin
+from one root&mdash;relations all, happy, and with no reason either to be
+ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth&mdash;their lot being
+cast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean," where the dwellings
+are connecting-links between the hut and the hall&mdash;fair edifices
+resembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expands
+or contracts their dimensions&mdash;in which Competence is next-door
+neighbour to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk of
+Contentment.</p>
+
+<p>Merry Christmases they were indeed&mdash;one Lady always presiding, with a
+figure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but then
+somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most
+venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her
+grandchildren's ears. Nor did those solemn eyes, bedimmed into a
+pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbs
+that had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity. Dearly
+she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave;
+but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voice
+that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that its
+accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that was
+heard in the silence, as from another world.</p>
+
+<p>Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves&mdash;uncles,
+aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and "the rest," it
+might be presumptuous in us, who were considered by ourselves and a few
+others not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of time
+to decide&mdash;especially in the affirmative; but how the roof did ring with
+sally, pun, retort, and repartee! Ay, with pun&mdash;a species of
+impertinence for which we have therefore a kindness even to this day.
+Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> fortune to have been born a
+cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone at
+those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its
+different branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears;
+and we think we hear ourselves&mdash;all those uncles and aunts, nephews and
+nieces, and cousins&mdash;singing now! Easy is it to "warble melody" as to
+breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to
+people in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts ours
+used to be at Seconds! Yet the most woeful failures were rapturously
+encored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most extraordinary
+voices indeed, every one hoarser than another, till at last, walking
+home with a fair cousin, there was nothing left for it but a tender
+glance of the eye&mdash;a tender pressure of the hand&mdash;for cousins are not
+altogether sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character,
+possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms of their own;
+as didst thou, Emily the "Wild-cap!"&mdash;That <i>sobriquet</i> all forgotten
+now&mdash;for now thou art a matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elf
+fair and frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest and
+wisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancings, thy singings, and thy
+showering smiles.</p>
+
+<p>On rolled Suns and Seasons&mdash;the old died&mdash;the elderly became old&mdash;and
+the young, one after another, were wafted joyously away on the wings of
+hope, like birds almost as soon as they can fly ungratefully forsaking
+their nests and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed their
+pinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few days trimmed
+their snow-white sails in the land-locked bay, close to whose shores of
+silvery sand had grown the trees that furnished timber both for hull and
+mast, slip their tiny cables on some summer-day, and gathering every
+breeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in sunshine, and melt far
+off into the main. Or, haply, some were like fair young trees,
+transplanted during no favourable season, and never to take root in
+another soil, but soon leaf and branch to wither beneath the tropic sun,
+and die almost unheeded by those who knew not how beautiful they had
+been beneath the dews and mists of their own native climate.</p>
+
+<p>Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too painfully to touch
+the heart. For some hearts grow cold and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> forbidding with selfish
+cares&mdash;some, warm as ever in their own generous glow, were touched by
+the chill of Fortune's frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenly
+succeeding her smiles&mdash;some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took
+refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past&mdash;duty
+banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home&mdash;estrangements
+there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet ere long, though
+causeless, complete&mdash;changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in
+the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came
+thereby at last to be friends no more&mdash;unrequited love broke some
+bonds&mdash;requited love relaxed others&mdash;the death of one altered the
+conditions of many&mdash;and so&mdash;year after year&mdash;the Christmas Meeting was
+interrupted&mdash;deferred&mdash;till finally it ceased with one accord, unrenewed
+and unrenewable. For when Some Things cease for a time&mdash;that time turns
+out to be for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be&mdash;should these imperfect
+remembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life's
+busy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards the
+inditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts&mdash;for his,
+though "absent long and distant far," has never been utterly forgetful
+of the loves and friendships that charmed his youth. To be parted in
+body is not to be estranged in spirit&mdash;and many a dream and many a
+vision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pass before the mind of
+one whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather the
+expression of a doubt&mdash;of a fear&mdash;than of a belief or a conviction. The
+soul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through all
+intervening darkness&mdash;and of those more especially dear it keeps within
+itself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think it
+not, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishable
+as they are hallowed.</p>
+
+<p>All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists of
+morning&mdash;ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing that
+famous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnight
+hush&mdash;methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pealing anthem swells the note of praise!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale,
+pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with here
+and there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to the
+memory of the pious&mdash;the immortal dead. Some great clock is striking
+from one of many domes&mdash;from the majestic Tower of St Mary Magdalen&mdash;and
+in the deepened hush that follows the solemn sound, the mingling waters
+of the Cherwell and the Isis soften the severe silence of the holy
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Remote from kindred, and from all the friendships that were the native
+growth of the fair fields where our boyhood and our youth had roamed and
+meditated and dreamed, those were indeed years of high and lofty mood
+which held us in converse with the shades of great Poets and Sages of
+old in Rhedicyna's hallowed groves, still, serene, and solemn, as that
+Attic Academe where divine Plato, with all Hybla on his lips, discoursed
+such excellent music that his life seemed to the imagination
+spiritualised&mdash;a dim reminiscence of some former state of being. How
+sank then the Christmas Service of that beautiful Liturgy into our
+hearts! Not faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers had
+loved; but Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings that
+rose within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir of
+youthful voices so sweetly to join the diapason,&mdash;our eyes fixed all the
+while on that divine Picture over the Altar, of our Saviour</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Bearing his cross up rueful Calvary."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The City of Palaces disappears&mdash;and in the setting sunlight we behold
+mountains of soft crimson snow! The sun hath set, and even more
+beautiful are the bright-starred nights of winter, than summer in all
+its glories beneath the broad moons of June. Through the woods of
+Windermere, from cottage to cottage, by coppice-pathways winding up to
+dwellings among the hill-rocks where the birch-trees cease to grow&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nodding their heads, before us go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The merry minstrelsy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young by
+their Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales to
+the hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of the
+dancers ever and anon cross<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>ing the light of the star-like window, and
+the merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. Across those
+humble thresholds often did we on Christmas-week nights of
+yore&mdash;wandering through our solitary sylvan haunts, under the branches
+of trees within whose hollow trunk the squirrel slept&mdash;venture in,
+unasked perhaps, but not unwelcome, and, in the kindly spirit of the
+season, did our best to merrify the Festival by tale or song. And now
+that we behold them not, are all those woods, and cliffs, and rivers,
+and tarns, and lakes, as beautiful as when they softened and brightened
+beneath our living eyes, half-creating, as they gazed, the very world
+they worshipped? And are all those hearths as bright as of yore, without
+the shadow of our figure? And the roofs, do they ring as mirthfully,
+though our voice be forgotten? We hang over Westmoreland, an
+unobserved&mdash;but observant star. Mountains, hills, rocks, knolls, vales,
+woods, groves, single trees, dwellings&mdash;all asleep! O Lakes! but ye are,
+indeed, by far too beautiful! O fortunate Isles! too fair for human
+habitation, fit abode for the Blest! It will not hide itself&mdash;it will
+not sink into the earth&mdash;it will rise; and risen, it will stand steady
+with its shadow in the overpowering moonlight, that <span class="smcap">One Tree</span>! that <span class="smcap">$1</span>!&mdash;and well might the sight of ye two together&mdash;were it
+harder&mdash;break our heart. But hard at all it is not&mdash;therefore it is but
+crushed.</p>
+
+<p>Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higher
+than the Andes in heaven&mdash;but sole-sitting at midnight in a small
+chamber&mdash;a melancholy man are we&mdash;and there seems a smile of
+consolation, O Wordsworth! on thy sacred Bust.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! how many heavenly days, "seeming immortal in their depth of rest,"
+have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memory
+even of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Our
+spirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in her
+records&mdash;blanks are there that ought to have been painted with
+imperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning on
+life's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensation&mdash;for who
+can bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on the
+ghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come when
+we call on them to comfort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> us, are too often at our side when in our
+anguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion.
+Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary&mdash;they come and
+go like forms and shapes still imbued with life. Shall we vainly stretch
+out our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek to
+intrench ourselves by thoughts of this world against their visitation?
+The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love to
+resign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, they
+being dead! Shall we the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in
+other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on
+their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and
+show to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed by
+remorse and penitence!</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes we have fears about our memory&mdash;that it is decaying; for,
+lately, many ordinary yet interesting occurrences and events, which we
+regarded at the time with pain or pleasure, have been slipping away
+almost into oblivion, and have often alarmed us of a sudden by their
+return, not to any act of recollection, but of themselves, sometimes
+wretchedly out of place and season, the mournful obtruding upon the
+merry, and worse, the merry upon the mournful&mdash;confusion, by no fault of
+ours, of piteous and of gladsome faces&mdash;tears where smiles were a duty
+as well as a delight, and smiles where nature demanded, and religion
+hallowed, a sacrifice of tears.</p>
+
+<p>For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters as
+fine as frostwork filigree, which we could not break without destroying
+a whole world of endearment. That seems an obscure image; but it means
+what the Germans would call in English&mdash;our winter environment. We are
+imprisoned in a net of our own weaving&mdash;an invisible net; yet we can see
+it when we choose&mdash;just as a bird can see, when he chooses, the wires of
+his cage, that are invisible in his happiness, as he keeps hopping and
+fluttering about all day long, or haply dreaming on his perch with his
+poll under his plumes&mdash;as free in confinement as if let loose into the
+boundless sky. That seems an obscure image too; but we mean, in truth,
+the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is; and we have
+improved on that idea, for we have built our own&mdash;and are prisoner,
+turnkey, and jailer all in one, and 'tis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> noiseless as the house of
+sleep. Or what if we declare that Christopher North is a king in his
+palace, with no subjects but his own thoughts&mdash;his rule peaceful over
+those lights and shadows&mdash;and undisputed to reign over them his right
+divine.</p>
+
+<p>The opening year in a town, now, answers in all things to our heart's
+desire. How beautiful the smoky air! The clouds have a homely look as
+they hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they loved
+their birthplace; all unlike those heartless clouds that keep
+<i>stravaiging</i> over mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the sky! Poets
+speak of living rocks, but what is their life to that of houses? Who
+ever saw a rock with eyes&mdash;that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, and
+stone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house
+without eyes&mdash;that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the good old
+Conservative grudges not the assessed taxes&mdash;his optics are as cheerful
+as the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the setting
+sun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a
+mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an
+avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you
+to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a
+Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A
+grove in winter, bole and branch&mdash;leaves it has none&mdash;is as dry as a
+volume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparks
+of heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the heart's blood
+circulates through the system like rosy wine.</p>
+
+<p>But a truce to comparisons; for we are beginning to feel contrition for
+our crime against the country, and, with humbled head and heart, we
+beseech you to pardon us&mdash;ye rocks of Pavey-Ark, the pillared palaces of
+the storms&mdash;ye clouds, now wreathing a diadem for the forehead of
+Helvellyn&mdash;ye trees, that hang the shadows of your undying beauty over
+the "one perfect chrysolite" of blessed Windermere!</p>
+
+<p>Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an apparition waving peace
+and goodwill to all dwellers in the land of dreams. In plainer but not
+simpler words (for words are like flowers, often rich in their
+simplicity&mdash;witness the Lily, and Solomon's Song)&mdash;Christian people all,
+we wish you a Merry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Christmas and Happy New-Year, in town or in
+country&mdash;or in ships at sea.</p>
+
+<p>A Happy New-Year!&mdash;Ah! ere this <span class="smcap">Aria</span>, sung <i>sotto voce</i>, reach your ears
+(eyes are ears, and ears eyes), the week of all weeks will be over and
+gone, and the New-Year will seem growing out of the old year's
+ashes!&mdash;for the year is your only Ph&#339;nix. But what with time to do
+has a wish&mdash;a hope&mdash;a prayer! Their power is in the Spirit that gives
+them birth. And what is Spirit but the well-head of thoughts and
+feelings flowing and overflowing all life, yet leaving the well-head
+full of water as ever&mdash;so lucid, that on your gazing intently into its
+depths, it seems to become a large soft spiritual eye, reflecting the
+heavens and the earth; and no one knows what the heavens and the earth
+are, till he has seen them there&mdash;for that God made the heavens and the
+earth we feel from that beautiful revelation&mdash;and where feeling is not,
+knowledge is dead, and a blank the universe. Love is life. The unloving
+merely breathe. A single sweet beat of the heart is token of something
+spiritual that will be with us again in Paradise. "O, bliss and beauty!
+are these our feelings"&mdash;thought we once in a dream&mdash;"all circling in
+the sunshine&mdash;fair-plumed in a flight of doves!" The vision kept sailing
+on the sky&mdash;"to and fro for our delight"&mdash;no sound on their wings more
+than on their breasts; and they melted away in light as if they were
+composed of light&mdash;and in the hush we heard high-up and far-off
+music&mdash;as of an angel's song.</p>
+
+<p>That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broad
+awake&mdash;and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of the
+common day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof&mdash;and it
+inspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the whole
+world, then, promise henceforth to love us?&mdash;and we promise henceforth
+to love the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>It seems the easiest of all easy things to be kind and good&mdash;and then it
+is so pleasant! "Self-love and social are the same," beyond all
+question; and in that lies the nobility of our nature. The intensest
+feeling of self is that of belonging to a brotherhood. All selves then
+know they have duties which are in truth loves&mdash;and loves are
+joys&mdash;whether breathed in silence, or uttered in words, or embodied in
+actions; and if they filled all life, then all life would be good&mdash;and
+heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> would be no more than a better earth. And how may all men go to
+heaven? By making themselves a heaven on earth, and thus preparing their
+spirits to breathe empyreal air when they have dropped the dust. And how
+may they make for themselves a heaven on earth? By building up a happy
+<span class="smcap lowercase">HOME FOR THE HEART</span>. Much, but not all&mdash;oh! not nearly all&mdash;is in the
+site. But it must be within the precincts of the holy ground&mdash;and within
+hearing of the waters of life.</p>
+
+<p>Pleasures of Imagination! Pleasures of Memory! Pleasures of Hope! All
+three most delightful poems; yet all the thoughts and all the feelings
+that inspired them&mdash;etherealised&mdash;will not make&mdash;<span class="smcap lowercase">FAITH</span>! "The day-spring
+from on high hath visited us!" Blessed is he who feels that line&mdash;nor
+need his heart die within him, were a voice to be heard at midnight
+saying&mdash;"This New-Year's day shall be thy last!"</p>
+
+<p>One voice&mdash;one young voice&mdash;all by its sweet, sad, solitary self,
+singing to us a Christmas Hymn! Listening to that music is like looking
+at the sky with all its stars.</p>
+
+<p>Was it a spirit?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Millions of spiritual creatures walk unseen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sole or responsive to each other's voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hymning their great Creator."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No, the singer, like ourselves, is mortal; and in that thought, to our
+hearts, lies the pathos of her prayers. The angels, veiling their faces
+with their wings, sing in their bliss hallelujahs round the throne of
+heaven; but she&mdash;a poor child of clay, with her face veiled but with the
+shades of humility and contrition, while</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Some natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sings, in her sorrow, supplications to be suffered to see afar-off its
+everlasting gates&mdash;opening not surely for her own sake&mdash;for all of woman
+born are sinful&mdash;and even she in what love calls her innocence feels
+that her fallen being does of itself deserve but to die. The hymn is
+fading away, liker and liker an echo, and our spirit having lost it in
+the distance, returns back holier to the heart-hush of home.</p>
+
+<p>The million hunger and thirst after the stronger and darker passions;
+nothing will go down with them but <i>the intense</i>. They are
+intolerant&mdash;or careless&mdash;or even ashamed of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> emotions and
+affections that compose the blessing of our daily life, and give its
+lustre to the fire on the hearth of every Christian household. Yet, for
+all that, they are inexperienced in those same stronger and darker
+passions of which they prate, and know nothing of the import of those
+pictures of them painted, with background of gloom and foreground of
+fire, in the works of the truly great masters. The disturbed spirit of
+such delineations is far beyond the reaches of their souls; and they
+mistake their own senseless stupor for solemn awe&mdash;or their own mere
+physical excitement for the enthusiasm of imagination soaring through
+the storm on the wings of intellect. There are such things in "Satan's
+Invisible World Displayed" in poetry, as strong and dark passions; and
+they who are acquainted with their origin and end call them <i>bad</i>
+passions; but the good passions are not dark, but bright&mdash;and they are
+strong too, stronger than death or the grave.</p>
+
+<p>All human beings who know how to reap</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The harvest of a quiet eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>feel, by the touch, the flowers of affection in every handful of beauty
+they gather up from those fortunate fields on which shines, for ever
+through all seasons, the sun of life. How soft the leaves! and, as they
+meet the eye, how fair! Framed, so might it seem, of green dew
+consolidated into fragrance. Nor do they fade when gently taken from
+their stalk on its native bed. They flourish for ever if you bruise them
+not&mdash;sensitive indeed; and, if you are so forgetful as to treat them
+rashly, like those of the plant that bears that name, they shrink, and
+seem to shrivel for a time&mdash;growing pale, as if upbraiding your
+harshness; but cherished, they are seen to be all of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Immortal amaranth, the tree that grows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fast by the throne of God;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>for the seeds have fallen from heaven to earth, and for eighteen hundred
+years have been spreading themselves over all soils fit for their
+reception&mdash;and what soil is not fit? Even fit are stony places, and
+places full of thorns. For they will live and grow there in spite of
+such obstruction&mdash;and among rank and matted weeds will often be seen
+peering out like primroses gladdening the desert.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That voice again&mdash;"One of old Scotland's songs, so sad and slow!" Her
+heart is now blamelessly with things of earth. "Sad and slow!" and most
+purely sweet. Almost mournful although it be, it breathes of
+happiness&mdash;for the joy dearest to the soul has ever a faint tinge of
+grief. O innocent enchantress! thou encirclest us with a wavering haze
+of beautiful imagery, by the spell of that voice awakening after a mood
+of awe, but for thy own delight. From the long dim tracts of the past
+come strangely blended recognitions of woe and bliss, undistinguishable
+now to our own heart&mdash;nor knows that heart if it be a dream of
+imagination or of memory. Yet why should we wonder? In our happiest
+hours there may have been something in common with our most
+sorrowful&mdash;some shade of sadness cast over them by a passing cloud, that
+now allies them in retrospect with the sombre spirit of grief; and in
+our unhappiest hours there may have been gleams of gladness, that seem
+now to give the return the calm character of peace. Do not all thoughts
+and feelings, almost all events, seem to resemble each other&mdash;when they
+are dreamt of as all past? All receive a sort of sanctification in the
+stillness of the time that has gone by&mdash;just like the human being whom
+they adorned or degraded&mdash;when they, too, are at last buried together in
+the bosom of the same earth.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps none among us ever wrote verses of any worth, who had not been,
+more or less, readers of our old ballads. All our poets have been
+so&mdash;and even Wordsworth would not have been the veritable and only
+Wordsworth, had he not in boyhood pored&mdash;oh, the miser!&mdash;over Percy's
+"Reliques." From the highest to the humblest, they have all drunk from
+those silver springs. Shepherds and herdsmen and woodsmen have been the
+masters of the mighty&mdash;their strains have, like the voice of a solitary
+lute, inspired a power of sadness into the hearts of great poets that
+gave their genius to be prevalent over all tears, or with a power of
+sublimity that gave it dominion over all terror, like the sound of a
+trumpet. "The Babes in the Wood!" "Chevy Chace!" Men become women while
+they weep&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or start up heroes from the glorious strain."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Sing then "The Dirge," my Margaret, to the Old Man, "so tender and so
+true" to the spirit of those old ballads, which we might think were
+written by Pity's self.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>DIRGE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O dig a grave, and dig it deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I and my true love may sleep!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We'll dig a grave, and dig it deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where thou and thy true love shall sleep!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And let it be five fathom low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where winter winds may never blow!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And it shall be five fathom low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where winter winds shall never blow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And let it be on yonder hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where grows the mountain daffodil!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And it shall be on yonder hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where grows the mountain daffodil!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And plant it round with holy briers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fright away the fairy fires!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We'll plant it round with holy briers!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To fright away the fairy fires!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And set it round with celandine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nodding heads of columbine!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We'll set it round with celandine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And nodding heads of columbine!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And let the ruddock build his nest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just above my true love's breast!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The ruddock he shall build his nest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Just above thy true love's breast!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And warble his sweet wintry song<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er our dwelling all day long!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And he shall warble his sweet song<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er your dwelling all day long.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, tender friends, my garments take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lay me out for Jesus' sake!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And we will now thy garments take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And lay thee out for Jesus' sake!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And lay me by my true love's side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may be a faithful bride!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We'll lay thee by thy true love's side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That thou may'st be a faithful bride!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Ay&mdash;ay&mdash;thou too art gone, <span class="smcap">William Stanley Roscoe</span>! What years have flown
+since we walked among the "alleys green" of Allerton with thee and thy
+illustrious father! and who ever conversed with him for a few hours in
+and about his own home&mdash;where the stream of life flowed on so full and
+clear&mdash;without carrying away impressions that never seemed to be
+remembrances&mdash;so vivid have they remained amidst the obscurations and
+obliterations of Time, that sweeps with his wings all that lies on the
+surface, but has no power to disturb, much less destroy, the record
+printed on the heart.</p>
+
+<p>We are all of us getting old&mdash;or older; nor would we, for our own
+part&mdash;if we could&mdash;renew our youth. Methinks the river of life is nobler
+as it nears the sea. The young are dancing in their skiffs on the
+pellucid shallows near the source on the Sacred Mountains of the Golden
+East. They whose lot it is to be in their prime, are dropping down the
+longer and wider reaches, that seem wheeling by with their sylvan
+amphitheatres, as if the beauty were moving morn-wards, while the
+voyagers are stationary among the shadows, or slowly descending the
+stream to meet the meridian day. Many forget</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and are lost in the roaring whirlpool. Under Providence, we see
+ourselves on the river expanded into a sea-like lake, or arm of the sea;
+and for all our soul has escaped and suffered, we look up to the stars
+in gratitude&mdash;and down to the stars&mdash;for the water too is full of stars
+as well as the sky&mdash;faint and dim indeed&mdash;but blended by the pervading
+spirit of beauty, with the brighter and bolder luminaries reposing on
+infinitude.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+<h2>OUR WINTER QUARTERS.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Buchanan Lodge</span>&mdash;for a few months&mdash;farewell! 'Tis the Twelfth of
+November; and for the City we leave thee not without reluctance, early
+in March by the blessing of Heaven again to creep into thy blooming
+bourne. Yet now and then we shall take a drive down, to while away a
+sunny forenoon among thy undecaying evergreens, to breathe the balm of
+thy Christmas roses, and for one <i>Gentle</i> bosom to cull the earliest
+crocuses that may be yellowing through the thin snows of Spring.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, we know not well why we should ever leave thee, for thou art
+the Darling of all the Seasons; and Winter, so churlish elsewhere, is
+ever bland to thee, and, daily alighting in these gardens, loves to fold
+and unfold, in the cool sunshine, the stainless splendour of his
+pale-plumaged wings. But we are no hermit. Dear to us though Nature be,
+here, hand-in-hand with Art walking through our peaceful but not
+unpeopled <span class="smcap">Policy</span>, a voice comes to us from the city-heart&mdash;winning us
+away from the stillness of solitude into the stir of life. Milton speaks
+of a region</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Above the stir and smoke of this dim spot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which men call earth;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and oft have we visited it; but while yet we pursue the ends of this our
+mortal being, in the mystery of the brain whence ideas arise, and in the
+mystery of the heart whence emotions flow&mdash;kindred and congenial
+all&mdash;thought ever blending with feeling, reason with imagination, and
+conscience with passion&mdash;'tis our duty to draw our delight from
+intercommunion with the spirit of our kind. Weakest or wickedest of
+mortals are your soul-sick, life-loathing, world-wearied men. In
+solitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> we are prone to be swallowed up in selfishness; and out of
+selfishness what sins and crimes may not grow! At the best, moral
+stagnation ensues&mdash;and the spirit becomes, like "a green-mantled pool,"
+the abode of reptiles. Then ever welcome to us be living faces, and
+living voices, the light and the music of reality&mdash;dearer far than any
+mere ideas or emotions hanging or floating aloof by themselves in the
+atmosphere of imagination. Blest be the cordial grasp of the hand of
+friendship&mdash;blest the tender embrace of the arms of love! Nay, smile
+not, fair reader, at an old man's fervour; for Love is a gracious
+spirit, who deserteth not declining age.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="smcap">Drosky</span> is at the door&mdash;and, my eye! what a figure is Peter! There he
+sits, like a bear, with the ribbons in his paws&mdash;no part visible of his
+human face or form divine, but his small red eyes&mdash;and his ruby nose,
+whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the
+knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a
+Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish
+turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him
+like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland
+tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail&mdash;and the hair on his
+ears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely reminds us of Hogg's
+Bonassus. Ay, bless these patent steps&mdash;on the same principle as those
+by which we ascend our nightly couch&mdash;we are self-deposited in our
+Drosky. Oh! the lazy luxury of an air-seat! We seem to be sitting on
+nothing but a voluptuous warmth, restorative as a bath. And then what
+furry softness envelopes our feet! Yes&mdash;Mrs Gentle&mdash;Mrs Gentle&mdash;thy
+Cashmere shawl, twined round our bust, feels almost as silken-smooth as
+thine own, and scented is it with the balm of thy own lips. Boreas blows
+on it tenderly as a zephyr&mdash;and the wintry sunshine seems summery as it
+plays on the celestial colours. Thy pelisse, too, over our old happy
+shoulders, purple as the neck of the dove when careering round his mate.
+Thy comforter, too, in our bosom&mdash;till the dear, delightful, delicious,
+wicked worsted thrills through skin and flesh to our very heart. It
+dirls. Drive away, Peter. Farewell Lodge&mdash;and welcome, in a jiffy, Moray
+Place.</p>
+
+<p>And now, doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven by
+Peter, proud as Punch to tool along the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> staring streets the
+great-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet&mdash;yet&mdash;couldst thou lead the
+field, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day be
+not quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, a
+little further on in the solemn vista, the darkness of night; and
+therefore, like wise children of nature, not unproud of the past, not
+ungrateful for the present, and unfearful of the future, thus do we now
+skim along the road of life, broad and smooth to our heart's content,
+able to pay the turnpikes, and willing, when we shall have reached the
+end of our journey, to lie down, in hope, at the goal.</p>
+
+<p>What pretty, little, low lines of garden-fronted cottages! leading us
+along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and
+past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the
+full view of <span class="smcap">Pitt</span> Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight
+cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic&mdash;yea, call it at once
+magnificent&mdash;right up to the great city's heart. "There goes Old
+Christopher North!" the bright boys in the playground of the New Academy
+exclaim. God bless you, you little rascals!&mdash;We could almost find it in
+our heart to ask the Rector for a holiday. But, under him, all your days
+are holidays&mdash;for when the precious hours of study are enlightened by a
+classic spirit, how naturally do they melt into those of play!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Gay hope is yours, by fancy fed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Less pleasing when possest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tear forgot as soon as shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sunshine of the breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yours buxom health, of rosy hue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wild wit, invention ever new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lively cheer, of vigour born;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The thoughtless day, the easy night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The spirits pure, the slumbers light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That fly th' approach of morn."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Descending from our Drosky, we find No. 99 Moray Place, exhibiting
+throughout all its calm interior the self-same expression it wore the
+day we left it for the Lodge, eight months ago. There is our venerable
+winter Hat&mdash;as like Ourselves, it is said, as he can stare&mdash;sitting on
+the Circular in the Entrance-hall. Everything has been tenderly dusted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+as if by hands that touched with a Sabbath feeling; and though the
+furniture cannot be said to be new, yet while it is in all sobered, it
+is in nothing faded. You are at first unaware of its richness on account
+of its simplicity&mdash;its grace is felt gradually to grow out of its
+comfort&mdash;and that which you thought but ease lightens into elegance,
+while there is but one image in nature which can adequately express its
+repose&mdash;that of a hill-sheltered field by sunset, under a fresh-fallen
+vest of virgin snow. For then snow blushes with a faint crimson&mdash;nay,
+sometimes when Sol is extraordinarily splendid, not faint, but with a
+gorgeousness of colouring that fears not to face in rivalry the western
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>Let no man have two houses with one set of furniture. Home's deepest
+delight is undisturbance. Some people think no articles fixtures&mdash;not
+even grates. But sofas and ottomans, and chairs and footstools, and
+screens&mdash;and above all, beds&mdash;all are fixtures in the dwelling of a wise
+man, cognoscitive and sensitive of the blessings of this life. Each has
+its own place assigned to it by the taste, tact, and feeling of the
+master of the mansion, where order and elegance minister to comfort, and
+comfort is but a homely word for happiness. In various moods we vary
+their arrangement&mdash;nor is even the easiest of all Easy-chairs secure for
+life against being gently pushed on his wheels from chimney-nook to
+window-corner, when the sunshine may have extinguished the fire, and the
+blue sky tempts the <i>Paterfamilias</i>, or him who is but an uncle, to lie
+back with half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like a
+shepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements serve
+but to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which the
+very virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against the
+Lares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret to
+cellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, a
+Turkey or a Persian, or even a Wilton or a Kidderminster carpet, is as
+much the garb of the wooden floor inside, as the grass is of the earthen
+floor outside of your house. Would you lift and lay down the greensward?
+But without further illustration&mdash;be assured the cases are kindred&mdash;and
+so, too, with sofas and shrubs, tent-beds and trees. Independently,
+however, of these analogies, not fanciful, but lying deep in the nature
+of things, the inside of one's tabernacle, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> town and country, ought
+ever to be sacred from all radical revolutionary movements, and to lie
+for ever in a waking dream of graceful repose. All our affections
+towards lifeless things become tenderer and deeper in the continuous and
+unbroken flow of domestic habit. The eye gets lovingly familiarised with
+each object occupying its own peculiar and appropriate place, and feels
+in a moment when the most insignificant is missing or removed. We say
+not a word about children, for fortunately, since we are yet unmarried,
+we have none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissenters
+from this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-kept
+parlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice do
+they glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as a
+<i>flitting</i> ever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a long
+huge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors,
+moving along the dust-driving or mire-choked streets with furniture from
+a gutted town-house towards one standing in the rural shades with an
+empty stomach! All is dimmed or destroyed&mdash;chairs crushed on the
+table-land, and four-posted beds lying helplessly with their astonished
+feet up to heaven&mdash;a sight that might make the angels weep!</p>
+
+<p>People have wondered why we, an old barren bachelor, should live in such
+a large house. It is a palace; but never was there a greater mistake
+than to seek the solution in our pride. Silence can be had but in a
+large house. And silence is the chief condition of home happiness. We
+could now hear a leaf fall&mdash;a leaf of the finest wire-wove. Peter and
+Betty, Polly and the rest, inhabit the second sunk story&mdash;and it is
+delightful to know that they may be kicking up the most infernal
+disturbance at this blessed moment, and tearing out each other's hair in
+handfuls, without the faintest whisper of the uproar reaching us in our
+altitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there is
+regularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondly
+imagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years on
+the shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrown
+up both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew that
+he had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk story, immediately
+below <i>that</i>, having been for a season consumptive, we kept a Jenny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> ass
+and her daughter&mdash;and though we believe it was not unheard around Moray
+and Ainslie Places, and even in Charlotte Square, we cannot charge our
+memory with an audit of their bray. In the sunk story immediately below
+that again, that distinguished officer on half-pay, Captain Campbell of
+the Highlanders&mdash;when on a visit to us for a year or two&mdash;though we
+seldom saw him&mdash;got up a <i>Sma' still</i>&mdash;and though a more harmless
+creature could not be, there he used to sit for hours together, with the
+worm that never dies. On one occasion, it having been supposed by Peter
+that the Captain had gone to the East Neuk of Fife, weeks elapsed, we
+remember, ere he was found sitting dead, just as if he had been alive,
+in his usual attitude in his arm-chair, commanding a view of the
+precipice of the back court.</p>
+
+<p>Just as quiet are the Attics. They, too, are furnished; for the feeling
+of there being one unfurnished room, however small, in the largest
+house, disturbs the entire state of mind of such an occupant, and when
+cherished and dwelt on, which it must not unfrequently be, inspires a
+cold air of desolation throughout the domicile, till "thoughts of
+flitting rise." There is no lumber-room. The room containing
+Blue-Beard's murdered wives might in idea be entered without distraction
+by a bold mind.&mdash;But oh! the lumber-room, into which, on an early walk
+through the house of a friend on whom we had been sorning, all
+unprepared did we once set our foot! From the moment&mdash;and it was but for
+a moment, and about six o'clock&mdash;far away in the country&mdash;that appalling
+vision met our eyes&mdash;till we found ourselves, about another six o'clock,
+in Moray Place, we have no memory of the flight of time. Part of the
+journey&mdash;or voyage&mdash;we suspect, was performed in a steamer. The noise of
+knocking, and puffing, and splashing seems to be in our inner ears; but
+after all it may have been a sail-boat, possibly a yacht!&mdash;In the Attics
+an Aviary open to the sky. And to us below, the many voices, softened
+into one sometimes in the pauses of severer thought, are sometimes very
+affecting, so serenely sweet it seems, as the laverock's in our youth at
+the gates of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>At our door stand the Guardian Genii, Sleep and Silence. We had an ear
+to them in the building of our house, and planned it after a long summer
+day's perusal of the "Castle of Indolence." O Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy
+Thomson!&mdash;O that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> thou and we had been rowers in the same boat on the
+silent river! Rowers, indeed! Short the spells and far between that we
+should have taken&mdash;the one would not have turned round the other, but
+when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand&mdash;and the canoe
+would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our
+backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the
+slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove&mdash;the cloud-mountains,
+immovable as those of earth, and in spirit one world.</p>
+
+<p>Ay! Great noise as we have made in the world&mdash;our heart's desire is for
+silence&mdash;its delight is in peace. And is it not so with all men,
+turbulent as may have been their lives, who have ever looked into their
+own being? The soul longs for peace in itself; therefore, wherever it
+discerns it, it rejoices in the image of which it seeks the reality. The
+serene human countenance, the wide water sleeping in the moonlight, the
+stainless marble-depth of the immeasurable heavens, reflect to it that
+tranquillity which it imagines within itself, though it never long dwelt
+there, restless as a dove on a dark tree that cannot be happy but in the
+sunshine. It loves to look on what it loves, even though it cannot
+possess it; and hence its feeling, on contemplating such calm, is not of
+simple repose, but desire stirs in it, as if it would fain blend itself
+more deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would not
+so affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference&mdash;that attracts
+spirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised&mdash;but
+matter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imagination
+between earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there is
+apprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spirit
+throughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, the moon, the deep
+bright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower&mdash;none of them
+ever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical and
+unconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are; but we
+could have no pleasure in them, if we knew them as such. There is
+illusion, then, of some sort, and to what does it amount? We cannot well
+tell. But if there is really a love in human hearts to these distant
+orbs&mdash;if there is an emotion of tenderness to the fair, opening,
+breathing blossom that we would not crush it&mdash;"in gentleness of heart
+touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves"&mdash;it must be that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> do not
+see them as they are, but "create a soul under the ribs of death." We
+could not be touched, or care for what has no affinity to ourselves&mdash;we
+make the affinity&mdash;we animate, we vivify them, and thenceforward,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now you do believe that we do love Silence&mdash;and every other thing worthy
+to be loved&mdash;you and yours&mdash;and even that romp, your shock-headed Coz,
+to whom Priscilla Tomboy was an Imogen.</p>
+
+<p>All our ceilings are deadened&mdash;we walk ankle-deep in carpeting&mdash;nobody
+is suffered to open a door but ourselves&mdash;and they are so constructed,
+that it is out of their power to <i>slam</i>. Our winter furniture is all
+massy&mdash;deepening the repose. In all the large rooms two fireplaces&mdash;and
+fires are kept perpetually burning day and night, in them all, which,
+reflected from spacious mirrors, give the mansion quite the appearance
+of a Pandemonium. <i>Not gas always.</i> Palm-oil burns scentless as
+moonlight; and when motion, not rest, in a place is signified, we
+accompany ourselves with a wax candle, or taper from time immemorial
+green. Yet think not that there is a blaze of light. We have seen the
+midnight heaven and earth nearly as bright, with but one moon and a
+small scatter of stars. And places of glimmer&mdash;and places of gloom&mdash;and
+places "deaf to sound and blind to light" there are in this our mansion,
+known but to ourselves&mdash;cells&mdash;penitentiaries&mdash;where an old man may sit
+sighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery&mdash;or at times almost
+happy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortal
+tribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, by
+its own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best."</p>
+
+<p>And thus is our domicile a domain&mdash;a kingdom. We should not care to be
+confined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave our
+own door&mdash;yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping
+like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range
+of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch.
+Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad step
+not above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-places
+illumined by the dim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> religious light of stained windows, on which
+pilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, are
+travelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores&mdash;or
+shepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles of
+Ne&aelig;ra's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrow
+bounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendid
+segments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of them
+ourselves&mdash;now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, now
+a Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise.</p>
+
+<p>Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point of
+sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through;
+and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;"
+such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary
+mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we
+observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one
+dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on
+being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency
+from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. They
+are all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; in
+number, nine&mdash;each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms&mdash;those on the
+same story communicating with one another, and with the parlours,
+drawing-rooms, and libraries&mdash;"a mighty maze, but not without a plan,"
+and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit of
+quietude by day and by night, awake or asleep&mdash;the chairs being
+couch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy,
+enveloped in a drapery of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>We go to bed at no stated hour&mdash;but when we are tired of sitting up,
+then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise,
+neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock,
+nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, nor
+Aurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, or
+crimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's
+visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of
+a certainty that <i>these</i> are real web-and-woof damask curtains, <i>that</i>
+flock palpable on substantial walls.</p>
+
+<p>True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> or inevitable
+change&mdash;but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however sudden
+and strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all its
+familiar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Place
+for a week&mdash;nay, not for two days and nights&mdash;till you might swear we
+had been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air of
+the Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan.
+You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that the
+eyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and who
+preserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress and
+demeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and his
+character. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish days
+served under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sable
+silvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten to
+our study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at our
+protracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes are
+old," we feel as if we had belonged to <i>this</i> house alone, and it to us,
+from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, far
+away! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating upon
+the cheerful present&mdash;like birds of fairest plumage floating far inland
+from the main. But there is no idle longing&mdash;no vain regret. This, we
+say, is true wisdom. For each scene and season&mdash;each pleasure and
+place&mdash;ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, and
+to be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in the
+country are often restless to return to town&mdash;and people in town unhappy
+till they rush away into the country&mdash;thus cheating their entire
+existence out of its natural calm and satisfaction. Not so we. We give
+both their due&mdash;and that due is an almost undivided delight in each
+while we live under its reign. For Nature, believe us, is no jealous
+mistress. She is an affectionate wife, who, being assured of his
+fidelity, is not afraid to trust her husband out of her sight,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When still the town affairs do call him thence,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and who waits with cheerful patience for his return, duly welcomed with
+a conjugal shower of smiles and kisses.</p>
+
+<p>But what is this we see before us? Winter&mdash;we declare&mdash;and in full fig
+with his powdered wig! On the mid-day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> of November, absolutely snow! a
+full, fair, and free fall of indisputable snow.</p>
+
+<p>Not the slightest idea had we, the day before, that a single flake had
+yet been formed in the atmosphere, which, on closing of our shutters,
+looked through the clear-obscure, indicative of a still night and a
+bright morning. But we had not seen the moon. She, we are told by an
+eyewitness, early in the evening, <i>stared</i> from the south-east, "through
+the misty horizontal air," with a face of portentous magnitude and
+brazen hue, symptomatic, so weatherwise seers do say, of the approach of
+the Snow-king. On such occasions it requires all one's astronomical
+science to distinguish between sun and moon; for then sister resembles
+brother in that wan splendour, and you wonder for a moment, as the large
+beamless orb (how unlike Dian's silver bow!) is in ascension, what can
+have brought the lord of day, at this untimeous hour, from his sea-couch
+behind the mountains of the west. Yet during the night-calm we suspected
+snow&mdash;for the hush of the heavens had that downy feel, to our
+half-sleeping fancy, that belongs to the eider-pillow in which
+disappears our aged, honoured, and un-nightcap'd head. Looking out by
+peep of day&mdash;rather a ghostlike appearance in our long night-shirt,
+which trails a regal train&mdash;we beheld the fair feathers dimly descending
+through the glimmer, while momently the world kept whitening and
+whitening, till we knew not our home-returning white cat on what was
+yesterday the back-<i>green</i>, but by the sable tail that singularly shoots
+from the rump of that phenomenon. We were delighted. Into the cold
+plunge-bath we played plop like a salmon&mdash;and came out as red as a cut
+of that incomparable fish. One ply of leather&mdash;one of flannel&mdash;and one
+of the linen fine; and then the suit of pepper-and-salt over all; and
+you behold us welcoming, hailing, and blessing the return of day. Frost,
+too, felt at the finger and toe tips&mdash;and in unequivocal true-blue at
+the point, Pensive Public, of thy Grecian or Roman nose. Furs, at once,
+are all the rage; the month of muffs has come; and round the neck of
+Eve, and every one of all her daughters, is seen harmlessly coiling a
+boa-constrictor. On their lovely cheeks the Christmas roses are already
+in full blow, and the heart of Christopher North sings aloud for joy.
+Furred, muffed, and boa'd, Mrs Gentle adventures abroad in the blast;
+and, shouldering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> his Crutch, the rough, ready, and ruddy old man shows
+how widows are won, whispers in that delicate ear of the publication of
+bans, and points his gouty toe towards the hymeneal altar. In the
+bracing air, his frame is strung like Paganini's fiddle, and he is felt
+to be irresistible in the <i>piggicato</i>. "Lord of his presence, and small
+land beside," what cares he even for a knight of the Guelphic order? On
+his breast shines a star&mdash;may it never prove a cross&mdash;beyond bestowal by
+king or kaisar; nor is Maga's self jealous or envious of these wedded
+loves. And who knows but that ere another November snow sheets the
+Shotts, a curious little Kit, with the word North distinctly traceable
+in blue letters on the whites of his eyes, may not be playing antics on
+his mother's knee, and with the true Tory face in miniature, smiling
+upon the guardian of the merry fellow's own and his country's
+constitution?</p>
+
+<p>What kind of a Winter&mdash;we wonder&mdash;are we to have in the way of wind and
+weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual
+severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an
+occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come
+out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire,
+combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-day
+garb&mdash;we mean his garments of black and his garments of white frost. He
+looks best in the former, we think, on to about Christmas&mdash;and the
+latter become the old gentleman well from that festival season, on to
+about the day sacred to a class of persons who will never read our
+Recreations.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the months of the year, November&mdash;in our climate&mdash;whether in town
+or country, bears the worst character. He is almost universally thought
+to be a sour, sulky, sullen, savage, dim, dull, dark, disconsolate, yet
+designing month&mdash;in fewer words, a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorring
+all personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this national
+abuse of November. We know him well&mdash;and though we admit at once that he
+is no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worst
+repulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, his
+character continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they come
+at last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer his company "in
+the season of the year," to that of other more brilliant visitors. So
+true is it with months and men, that it requires only to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> know the most
+unpleasant of them, and to see them during a favourable phasis, in order
+to regard them with that Christian complacency which a good heart sheds
+over all its habits. 'Tis unlucky for November&mdash;poor fellow!&mdash;that he
+follows October. October is a month so much admired by the world, that
+we often wonder he has not been spoiled. "What a glorious October!"
+"Why, you will surely not leave us till October comes!" "October is the
+month of all months&mdash;and, till you see him, you have not seen the
+Lakes." We acknowledge his claims. He is often truly delightful; but,
+like other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only privileged to be
+at times extremely dull, but his intensest stupidity is panegyrised as
+wit of the first water&mdash;while his not unfrequent rudeness, of which many
+a common month would be ashamed, passes for the ease of high birth or
+the eccentricity of genius. A very different feeling indeed exists
+towards unfortunate November. The moment he shows his face, all other
+faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make
+himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and
+that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions,
+manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced
+is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will&mdash;yea, even more
+like an angel than a man or a month&mdash;every eyebrow arches&mdash;every nostril
+distends&mdash;every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over the
+ice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chill
+whisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozen
+atmosphere, eloquence would be congealed on the lips of an
+Ulysses&mdash;Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo.</p>
+
+<p>Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a far more solitary place than
+Glenetive, Glenevis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so much danger of
+being lost in it as in the Moor of Rannoch&mdash;for streets and squares,
+though then utterly tenantless, are useful as landmarks to the pilgrim
+passing through what seems to be</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A still forsaken City of the Dead!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But, like a frost-bound river suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, and
+coming down in spate from the mountains to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> low lands, about the
+beginning of November life annually re-overflows our metropolis, with a
+noise like "the rushing of many chariots." The streets, that for months
+had been like the stony channels of dried-up streams&mdash;only not quite so
+well paved&mdash;are again all a-murmur, and people addicted to the study of
+political economy begin to hold</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Each strange tale devoutly true"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>in the Malthusian theory of population. What swarms keep hovering round
+the great Northern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, and still seems
+it too small to contain all the insects. Edinburgh is almost as large as
+London. Nay, don't stare! We speak comparatively; and as England is
+somewhere about six times more populous than Scotland, you may, by
+brushing up your arithmetic, and applying to the Census, discover that
+we are not so far wrong in our apparent paradox.</p>
+
+<p>Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburgh
+would nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all his gloom, even as a
+wood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows into the
+town&mdash;all its life seems to do so&mdash;and to leave nothing behind but the
+bare trees and hedges. Equipages again go glittering along all the
+streets, squares, circuses, and crescents; and one might think that the
+entire "nation of ladies and gentlemen"&mdash;for King George the Fourth, we
+presume, meant to include the sex in his compliment&mdash;were moving through
+their metropolis. Amusement and business walk hand-in-hand&mdash;you hardly
+know, from their cheerful countenances, which is which; for the Scots,
+though a high-cheeked, are not an ill-favoured folk in their
+features&mdash;and though their mouths are somewhat of the widest, their
+teeth are white as well as sharp, and on the opening of their ruddy
+lips, their ivory-cases are still further brightened by hearty smiles.
+'Twould be false to say that their figures are distinguished by an air
+of fashion&mdash;for we have no court, and our nobles are almost all
+absentees. But though, in one sense, the men are ugly customers, as they
+will find</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe,"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions in
+marching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"That small infantry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warr'd on by cranes."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universally
+allowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism does
+not so readily recall to the imagination Virgil's picture of Camilla
+flying along the heads of corn without touching their ears, as the
+images of paviers with post-looking mallets driving down dislodged
+stones into the streets. Intermingling with the lighter and more elastic
+footsteps of your Southron dames, the ongoings of our native virgins
+produce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon m&ecirc;l&eacute;e that along
+the Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Amid the general dance and minstrelsy"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his length
+of ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you cannot see the
+city for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and as for finding
+one particular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile,
+you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay.</p>
+
+<p>But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinct
+place&mdash;then a faint mixture of a clear chime that is almost music&mdash;now a
+tune&mdash;and at last, rousing the massy multitude to enthusiasm, a military
+march, swelling various, profound, and high, with drum, trombone,
+serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on
+(is it the measured tramp of the feet of men, or the confused trampling
+of horses?) banners floating over the procession, above the glitter of
+steel, and the golden glow of helmets. 'Tis a regiment of
+cavalry&mdash;hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There England sends her men, of men the chief,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight
+forward from between sabres; while beneath the equable but haughty
+motion of their steeds, almost disciplined as their riders, with long
+black horse-hair flowing in martial majesty, nod their high Roman
+casques. The sweet storm of music<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> has been passing by while we were
+gazing, and is now somewhat deadened by the retiring distance and by
+that mass of buildings (how the windows are alive, and agaze with
+faces!) while troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is felt by
+all, to the motion of the warlike tune, though now across the Waterloo
+Bridge sounding like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant is all gone
+by, and the dull day is deadened down again into the stillness and
+silence of an ignoble peace.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind,
+invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in all
+professions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with
+a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the
+Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put
+Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter.
+The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long
+vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we
+seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more <i>gash</i> than another,
+and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law,
+Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endless
+litigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends the
+prosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing of
+the great institution of Property! For without it, how could people go
+together by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? All
+the strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their natural
+element, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive to
+the commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to the
+lowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. Our
+Parliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foul
+steam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the State,
+blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how the
+engine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stephenson's
+Rocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then,
+such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collision
+into the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by the
+hoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> county, yet few or none are
+likely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket,
+like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shape
+of waggons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerce
+exult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion all over the world.</p>
+
+<p>But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lull
+at sea, or <i>lown</i> on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's
+toilsome lot. The lull and the lown, what are they when most profound,
+but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and waters&mdash;a
+change wrought for an hour of peace in the heart of the hurricane!
+Therefore the sailor enjoys it on the green wave&mdash;the shepherd on the
+greensward; while the memory of mists and storms deepens the
+enchantment. Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those who are
+permitted to indulge it, while enduring the labours of an active or a
+contemplative life. To use another, and a still livelier image&mdash;see the
+pedlar toiling along the dusty road, with an enormous pack, on his
+excursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on the
+bank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys,
+like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through
+the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the
+wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or a
+botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with
+a mute prayer and a munching appetite&mdash;not idle, it must be confessed,
+in that sense&mdash;but in every other idle even as the shadow of the
+sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open&mdash;for by hypothesis he
+is a Scotsman&mdash;he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep.
+"Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you <i>idle</i> fellow?" bawls some
+beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of
+those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly
+sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom&mdash;though the ant, Heaven
+bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sick-nurse.</p>
+
+<p>We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men.
+Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the
+self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars
+that move along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was
+allowed by all the best watermen, that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has
+been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights,
+leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man
+himself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the things
+that ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated,
+or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy.
+They too have all an image-like appearance, and 'tis wondrous strange
+how silent they all are, actors and actresses on the stage of that
+revived drama, which sometimes seems to be a genteel comedy, and
+sometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfiguration
+into a tragedy deep as death.</p>
+
+<p>We presume that the Public read in her own papers&mdash;we cannot be but hurt
+that no account of it has appeared in the "Court Journal"&mdash;that on
+Thursday the 12th current, No. 99 Moray Place was illuminated by our
+annual Soire&eacute;, Conversazione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes&mdash;for
+Christopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite James
+Thomson,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"No purpose gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For happiness and true philosophy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are of the social, still, and smiling kind."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All the rooms in the house were thrown open, except the cellars and the
+Sanctum. To the people congregated outside, the building, we have been
+assured, had all the brilliancy of the Bude Light. It was like a palace
+of light, of which the framework or skeleton was of white unveined
+marble. So strong was the reflection on the nocturnal heavens, that a
+rumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place,
+nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of several
+engines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most part
+of the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while, in the Lothians, our
+illumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of the
+Aurora Borealis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"From the arch'd roof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pendent by subtle magic, many a row<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As from a sky. The hasty multitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Admiring enter'd."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We need not say who received the company, and with what grace <span class="smcap lowercase">SHE</span> did
+so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sable
+stole; for the widow's weeds have not <i>yet</i> been doffed for the robes of
+saffron&mdash;with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and
+ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her
+hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one star-bright diamond.
+Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then and
+there, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. The
+weeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairly
+entitled to; but the flowers&mdash;to speak figuratively&mdash;he would have
+cheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became both
+face and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room to
+another, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity of
+those Virgilian words,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Incedit Regina."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Surely there is something very poetical in the gradual flowing in of the
+tide of grace, elegance, and beauty, over the floors of a suite of
+regal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. Each party as it comes on
+has its own peculiar picturesqueness, and affects the heart or
+imagination by some novel charm, gently gliding onward a little while by
+itself, as if not unconscious of its own attractions, nor unproud of the
+gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive
+movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the
+radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and
+matrons&mdash;provided they be not "dumpy women"&mdash;tall, white, blue, and pink
+plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate,
+stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their
+cheeks&mdash;not with kisses&mdash;for they would be out of order both of time and
+place&mdash;but with words almost as tender as kisses, and awakening almost
+as tender a return&mdash;a few sweet syllables<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> breathed in a silver voice,
+with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, are
+seen to be from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>A long hour ago, and all the mansion was empty and motionless&mdash;with us
+two alone sitting by each other's side affectionately and respectfully
+on a sofa. Now it is filled with life, and heard you ever such a happy
+murmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speaking
+much above breath, so gentle is true refinement, like a delightful
+fragrance</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From the calm manners quietly exhaled."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great, big, hearty, huge, hulking,
+horse-laugh, in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gathered
+gracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, the
+urbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The pagan
+who perpetrates it should be burnt alive&mdash;not at a slow fire&mdash;though
+that would be but justice&mdash;but at a quick one&mdash;that all remnants of him
+and his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield has
+been loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema against
+laughter. But though often wrong, there his lordship was right, and for
+that one single rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having been
+one of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle&mdash;and that
+sweet, soft, low sound be heard, the <i>susurrus</i>. Let there be a
+many-voiced quiet music, like that of the summer moonlight sea when the
+stars are in its breast. But laughter&mdash;loud peals of laughter&mdash;are like
+breakers&mdash;blind breakers on a blind coast, where no verdure grows except
+that of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of all
+commodities, kelp.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis not a literary conversazione, mind ye, gentle reader; for we leave
+that to S. T. Coleridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But all
+speak&mdash;talk&mdash;whisper&mdash;or smile, of all the speakable, talkable,
+whisperable, and smileable little interesting affairs, incidents, and
+occurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, or
+demi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and melt
+away as fast in the stream of social pleasure,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A moment white, then gone for ever!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not a little scandal&mdash;much gossip, we daresay; but as for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> scandal, it
+is the vulgarest error in the world to think that it either means, or
+does any harm to any mortal. It does infinite good. It ventilates the
+atmosphere, and prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from becoming "a
+foul congregation of vapours." As for gossip, what other vindication
+does it need, than an order for you to look at a soir&eacute;e of swallows in
+September on a slate-roof, the most innocent and white-breasted
+creatures that pay</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Their annual visits round the globe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Companions of the sun,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but such gossipers that the whole air is a-twitter with their talk about
+their neighbours' nest&mdash;when&mdash;whew! off and away they go, winnowing
+their way westwards, through the setting sunlight, and all in perfect
+amity with themselves and their kind, while</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The world is all before them, where to choose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Providence their guide."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And, madam, you do not matronise&mdash;and, sir, you do not
+patronise&mdash;<i>waltzing</i>? 'Tis very O fie-fieish, you think&mdash;and in danger
+of becoming very, very faux-papa-ish!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>whose mind-motto was still&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>Honi soit qui mal y pense!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but be
+not terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your
+censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitely sensitive
+modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have
+suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged
+in even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where
+it is not&mdash;and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them open-armed,
+bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like
+the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish
+modesty and mouthing morality&mdash;for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite.
+Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling
+Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> and we think we see the
+realisation of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lead on the eternal spring!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental
+Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for,
+blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, <span class="smcap">The Star of Eve</span>&mdash;so call we
+her who is our heart's-ease and heart's-delight&mdash;the granddaughter of
+one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned
+passion&mdash;but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The course of true love never yet ran smooth"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed
+whisperingly into her ear&mdash;a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate
+as a leaf&mdash;just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost
+stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would
+have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand
+of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions
+of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings
+accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St
+Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A Hebrew melody! And now your heart
+feels the utter mournfulness of these words,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"By Babel's streams we sat and wept!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings!
+Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul
+that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance
+to her sway, but yields itself up entirely to all its moods and
+measures, led captive by each successive strain through the whole
+mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush.
+Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh&mdash;almost a
+sob&mdash;is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's self
+seems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> the
+pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in
+her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!</p>
+
+<p>How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity
+to all who have roofs overhead&mdash;towards the houseless and them who
+huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets
+must have been a God-send indeed to not a few families, and your plan is
+preferable to a Fancy-Fair. Yet that is good too&mdash;nor do we find fault
+with them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give
+relief to misery&mdash;and the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the
+poor.</p>
+
+<p>Again, what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows,
+and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the night be about?
+and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He has
+driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our noddle&mdash;and to-morrow we
+must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to
+bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish
+acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power of
+King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not&mdash;though Ultra-Trimmers try
+to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we
+shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the devil,
+and the Chartists.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+<h2>STROLL TO GRASSMERE.</h2>
+
+<h3>FIRST SAUNTER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather
+of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been
+in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular
+intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on
+the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the
+fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we
+live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed
+that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the
+head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in
+thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls
+down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take to
+bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries them off, victims to their
+confidence in that treacherous tube. But we mean to ask have you an eye,
+an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all the
+prognosticating sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, of nature?
+Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, and
+spirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, come
+and go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from
+moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you
+listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them
+prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as
+that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when
+grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with
+the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes
+visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And
+know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac? When a
+mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads
+every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when
+one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly
+off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty
+distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely
+lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of
+prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The
+prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when
+the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty
+for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is
+beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the
+blue of a midsummer's meridian day?</p>
+
+<p>Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser
+than ourselves; yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of
+the Mountains;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we know
+somewhat more than the vocabulary of the languages of calm and storm.
+Remember that we are now at Ambleside&mdash;and one week's residence there
+may let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St
+Cloud.</p>
+
+<p>One advice we give you, and by following it you cannot fail to be happy
+at Ambleside, and everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, love,
+admire, and delight in it, and vow that you would not change it for the
+atmosphere of a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be thankful for
+the faint air that comes down fitfully from cliff and chasm, or the
+breeze that ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. If the heavens
+are filled with sunshine, and you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool
+the sylvan shade for ever moistened by the murmurs of that fairy
+waterfall! Should it blow great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder
+magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements are warded even from the
+thunder-bolt by the dense umbrage of unviolated woods?
+Rain&mdash;rain&mdash;rain&mdash;an even-down pour of rain, that forces upon you
+visions of Noah and his ark, and the top of Mount Ararat&mdash;still, we
+beseech you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; the thing is
+impossible. Even this very afternoon will the rainbow span the blue
+entrance into Rydal's woody vale, as if to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> hail the westering sun on
+his approach to the mountains&mdash;and a hundred hill-born torrents will be
+seen flashing out of the upfolding mists. What a delightful dazzle on
+the light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald;
+and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigality
+of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled
+Fairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest.</p>
+
+<p>You will not imagine, from anything we have ever said, that we are
+enemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embrace
+the new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At such
+hour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in the
+world. The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues
+everything to itself, and life is love.</p>
+
+<p>Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for having overslept the assignation
+hour, and allowed thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude,
+wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest
+phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us&mdash;for not
+clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead: the
+unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us&mdash;a loving murmur
+steals into our heart from thine&mdash;and pure as a child's, daughter of
+Heaven! is thy breath.</p>
+
+<p>In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the idea of
+morning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of common
+day"&mdash;the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during the
+night&mdash;enough, and no more, to enliven nature&mdash;the mists are ascending
+composedly with promise of gentle weather&mdash;and the sun, so mild that we
+can look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance that as he
+has risen so will he reign, and so will he set in peace.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we cannot help thinking it somewhat remarkable, that, to the best of
+our memory, never once were we the very first out into the dawn. We say
+nothing of birds&mdash;for they, with their sweet jargoning, anticipate it,
+and from their bed on the bough feel the forerunning warmth of the
+sunrise; neither do we allude to hares, for they are "hirpling hame," to
+sleep away the light hours, open-eyed, in the briery quarry in the
+centre of the trackless wood. Even cows and horses we can excuse being
+up before us, for they have bivouacked; and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> latter, as they often
+sleep standing, are naturally somnambulists. Weasels, too, we can pardon
+for running across the road before us, and as they reach the
+hole-in-the-wall, showing by their clear eyes that they have been awake
+for hours, and have probably breakfasted on leveret. We have no spite at
+chanticleer, nor the hooting owls against whom he is so lustily crowing
+hours before the orient; nor do we care although we know that is not the
+first sudden plunge of the tyrant trout into the insect cloud already
+hovering over the tarn. But we confess that it is a little mortifying to
+our pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from the
+dust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her last
+night's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity,
+at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleeping
+on her pallet of straw. A pedlar, too, who has got through a portion of
+the Excursion before the sun has illumed the mountain-tops, is
+mortifying, with his piled pack and ellwand. There, as we are a
+Christian, is Ned Hurd, landing a pike on the margin of the Reed-pool,
+on his way from Hayswater, where he has been all night angling, till his
+creel is as heavy as a sermon; and a little further on, comes issuing
+like a Dryad's daughter, from the gate in the lane, sweet little Alice
+Elleray, with a basket dangling beneath her arm, going in her orphan
+beauty to gather, in their season, wild strawberries or violets in the
+woods.</p>
+
+<p>Sweet orphan of Wood-edge! what would many a childless pair give for a
+creature one-half so beautiful as thou, to break the stillness of a home
+that wants but one blessing to make it perfectly happy! Yet there are
+few or none to lay a hand on that golden head, or leave a kiss upon its
+ringlets. The father of Alice Elleray was a wild and reckless youth,
+and, going to the wars, died in a foreign land. Her mother soon faded
+away of a broken heart;&mdash;and who was to care for the orphan child of the
+forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely
+distinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to
+take her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her own
+subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the
+solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray
+never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it&mdash;never
+entered the door without bringing the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> sunshine. Where can the small,
+lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old
+songs&mdash;as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? She
+is now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for
+a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may
+mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge
+will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on
+leaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-off
+city some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside and
+Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid
+waters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from the
+fair basket-maker, an ornament for your parlour, that will not disgrace
+its fanciful furniture, and, as you sit at your dreamy needlework, will
+recall the green forest glades of Brathy or Calgarth. Industrious
+creature! each day is to thee, in thy simplicity, an entire life. All
+thoughts, all feelings, arise and die in peace between sunrise and
+sunset. What carest thou for being an orphan! knowing, as thou well
+dost, that God is thy father and thy mother, and that a prayer to Him
+brings health, food, and sleep to the innocent.</p>
+
+<p>Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, Alice
+Elleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden,
+trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in its
+cheerfulness has now and then a melancholy fall, and, at the close of
+the song, hers are the only eyes that are not dimmed with the haze of
+tears. Then away she glides with a thankful smile, and dancing over the
+greensward, like an uncertain sunbeam, lays the treasure, won by her
+beauty, her skill, and her industry, on the lap of her old guardian, who
+blesses her with the uplifting of withered hands.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, we request you to walk away with us up to Stockgill-force.
+There has been a new series of dry weather, to be sure; but to our
+liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the
+noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified till your
+head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn-door&mdash;we are
+speaking to you, sir&mdash;and roar into a friend's ear all in vain a remark
+on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as
+completely drenched in spray as if you had fallen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> out of a boat&mdash;and
+descend to dinner with a toothache that keeps you in starvation in the
+presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry
+weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of
+tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why, it slides
+and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks,
+and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose
+foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache
+have you&mdash;speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent
+observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dewdrops have
+been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of
+the cushat&mdash;and as for toothache interfering with dinner, you eat as if
+your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss
+nuts, upper-and-lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the
+county. And all this comes of looking at Stockgill-force, or any other
+waterfall, in dry weather, after a few refreshing and fertilising
+showers that make the tributary rills to murmur, and set at work a
+thousand additional feeders to every Lake.</p>
+
+<p>Ha! Matutine Roses!&mdash;budding, half-blown, consummate&mdash;you are, indeed,
+in irresistible blush! We shall not say which of you we love best&mdash;<i>she
+knows it</i>; but we see there is no hope to-day for the old man&mdash;for you
+are all paired&mdash;and he must trudge it <i>solus</i>, in capacity of
+Guide-General of the Forces. What! the nymphs are going to pony it? And
+you intend, you selfish fellows, that we shall hold all the reins
+whenever the spirit moveth you to deviate from bridle-path, to clamber
+cliff for a bird's-eye view, or dive into dells for some rare plant?
+Well, well&mdash;there is a tradition, that once we were young ourselves; and
+so redolent of youth are these hills, that we are more than half
+inclined to believe it&mdash;so blush and titter, and laugh and look down, ye
+innocent wicked ones, each with her squire by her palfrey's mane, while
+good old Christopher, like a true guide, keeps hobbling in the rear on
+his Crutch. Holla there!&mdash;to the right of our friend Mr Benson's
+smithy&mdash;and to Rothay-bridge. Turn in at a gate to the right hand,
+which, twenty to one, you will find open, that the cattle may take an
+occasional promenade along the turnpike, and cool their palates with a
+little ditch grass, and saunter along by Millar-bridge and Foxgill on to
+Pelter-bridge,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> and, if you please, to Rydal-mere. Thus, and thus only,
+is seen the vale of Ambleside; and what a vale of grove, and glade, and
+stream, and cliff, and cottage, and villa, and grassfield, and garden,
+and orchard, and&mdash;But not another word, for you would forthwith compare
+our description with the reality, and seeing it faint and feeble, would
+toss it into the Rothay, and laugh as the Vol. plumped over a waterfall!</p>
+
+<p>The sylvan&mdash;or say rather the forest scenery&mdash;(for there is to us an
+indescribable difference between these two words)&mdash;of Rydal-park, was,
+in memory of living men, magnificent, and it still contains a treasure
+of old trees. Lady Diana's white pea-fowl, sitting on the limbs of that
+huge old tree like creatures newly alighted from the Isles of Paradise!
+all undisturbed by the waterfalls, which, as you keep gazing on the
+long-depending plumage illumining the forest gloom, seem indeed to lose
+their sound, and to partake the peace of that resplendent show&mdash;each
+splendour a wondrous Bird! For they stretch themselves all up, with
+their graceful crests, o'ercanopied by the umbrage draperied as from a
+throne. And never surely were seen in this daylight world such
+unterrestrial creatures&mdash;though come from afar, all happy as at home in
+the Fairies' Oak.</p>
+
+<p>By all means ride away into these woods, and lose yourself for half an
+hour among the cooing of cushats, and the shrill shriek of startled
+blackbirds, and the rustle of the harmless slow-worm among the last
+year's red beech-leaves. No very great harm in a kiss under the shadow
+of an oak (oh fie!) while the magpie chatters angrily at safe distance,
+and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of the
+canopy, and, hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of the
+loftiest umbrage. You still continue to see and hear; but the sight is a
+glimmer, and the sound a hum, as if the forest-glade were swarming with
+bees, from the ground-flowers to the herons' nests. Refreshed by your
+dream of Dryads, follow a lonesome din that issues from a pile of wooded
+cliffs, and you are led to a Waterfall. Five minutes are enough for
+taking an impression, if your mind be of the right material, and you
+carry it away with you further down the Forest. Such a torrent will not
+reach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; and
+saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied
+bridge into a cir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>cular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of
+many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in
+which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were
+grey, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt of the noisy
+world?</p>
+
+<p>You are now all standing together in a group beside Ivy-cottage, the
+river gliding below its wooden bridge from Rydal-mere. It is a perfect
+model of such architecture&mdash;breathing the very spirit of Westmoreland.
+The public road, skirted by its front paling, does not in the least
+degree injure its character of privacy and retirement; so we think at
+this dewy hour of prime, when the gossamer meets our faces, extended
+from the honey-suckled slate-porch to the trees on the other side of the
+turnpike. And see how the multitude of low-hanging roofs and gable-ends,
+and dovecot-looking windows, steal away up a green and shrubberied
+acclivity, and terminating in wooded rocks that seem part of the
+building, in the uniting richness of ivy, lichens, moss-roses, broom,
+and sweet-brier, murmuring with birds and bees, busy near hive and nest!
+It would be extremely pleasant to breakfast in that deep-windowed room
+on the ground-floor, on cream and barley cakes, eggs, coffee, and
+dry-toast, with a little mutton-ham not too severely salted, and at the
+conclusion, a nut-shell of Glenlivet or Cognac. But, Lord preserve ye!
+it is not yet six o'clock in the morning; and what Christian kettle
+simmereth before seven? Yes, my sweet Harriet, that sketch does you
+credit, and it is far from being very unlike the original. Rather too
+many chimneys by about half-a-dozen; and where did you find that steeple
+immediately over the window marked "Dairy?" The pigs are somewhat too
+sumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen-roost might
+accommodate a ph&#339;nix. But the features of the chief porch are very
+happily hit off&mdash;you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof&mdash;and
+some of the windows may be justly said to be staring
+likenesses.&mdash;Ivy-cottage is slipped into our portfolio, and we shall
+compare it, on our return to Scotland, with Buchanan Lodge.</p>
+
+<p>Gallantry forbids, but Truth demands to say, that young ladies are but
+indifferent sketchers. The dear creatures have no notion of perspective.
+At flower-painting and embroidery, they are pretty fair hands, but they
+make sad work among waterfalls and ruins. Notwithstanding, it is
+pleasant to hang<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> over them, seated on stone or stool, drawing from
+nature; and now and then to help them in with a horse or a hermit. It is
+a difficult, almost an impossible thing&mdash;that foreshortening. The most
+speculative genius is often at a loss to conjecture the species of a
+human being foreshortened by a young lady. The hanging Tower at Pisa is,
+we believe, some thirty feet or so off the perpendicular, and there is
+one at Caerphilly about seventeen; but these are nothing to the castles
+in the air we have seen built by the touch of a female magician; nor is
+it an unusual thing with artists of the fair sex to order their plumed
+chivalry to gallop down precipices considerably steeper than a house, on
+animals apparently produced between the tiger and the bonassus. When
+they have succeeded in getting something like the appearance of water
+between what may be conjectured banks, they are not very particular
+about its running occasionally up-hill; and it is interesting to see a
+stream stealing quietly below trees in gradual ascension, till,
+disappearing for a few minutes over one summit, it comes thundering down
+another, in the shape of a waterfall, on the head of an elderly
+gentleman, unsuspectingly reading Mr Wordsworth's "Excursion," perhaps,
+in the foreground. Nevertheless, we repeat, that it is delightful to
+hang over one of the dear creatures, seated on stone or stool, drawing
+from nature; for whatever may be the pencil's skill, the eye may behold
+the glimpse of a vision whose beauty shall be remembered when even
+Windermere herself has for a while faded into oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>On such excursions there are sure to occur a few enviable adventures.
+First, the girths get wrong, and, without allowing your beloved virgin
+to alight, you spend more time than is absolutely necessary in arranging
+them; nor can you help admiring the attitude into which the graceful
+creature is forced to draw up her delicate limbs, that her fairy feet
+may not be in the way to impede your services. By-and-by a calf&mdash;which
+you hope will be allowed to grow up into a cow&mdash;stretching up her curved
+red back from behind a wall, startles John Darby, albeit unused to the
+starting mood, and you leap four yards to the timely assistance of the
+fair shrieker, tenderly pressing her bridle-hand as you find the rein
+that has not been lost, and wonder what has become of the whip that
+never existed. A little further on, a bridgeless stream crosses the
+road&mdash;a dangerous-looking ford indeed&mdash;a foot deep at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> the very least,
+and scorning wet feet, as they ought to be scorned, you almost carry,
+serene in danger, your affianced bride (or she is in a fair way of
+becoming so) in your arms off the saddle, nor relinquish the delightful
+clasp till all risk is at an end, some hundred yards on, along the
+velvet herbage. Next stream you come to has indeed a bridge&mdash;but then
+what a bridge! A long, coggly, cracked slate-stone, whose unsteady
+clatter would make the soberest steed jump over the moon. You beseech
+the timid girl to sit fast, and she almost leans down to your breast as
+you press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady old
+stager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each side
+of the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after due
+disentanglement, from that awkward, old-fashioned crutch and pummel, and
+from a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like a
+mouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, and
+difficult to open for releasement. You feel that all you love in the
+world is indeed fully, freshly, and warmly in your arms, nor can you
+bear to set the treasure down on the rough stony road, but look round,
+and round, and round, for a soft spot, which you finally prophesy at
+some distance up the hill, whitherwards, in spite of pouting Yea and
+Nay, you persist in carrying her whose head is ere long to lie in your
+tranquil bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy-cottage, you see, is the domicile of gentlemen and lady folk; but
+look through yonder dispersion, and in a minute or two your eyes will
+see distinctly, in spite of the trees, a <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> farmhouse,
+inhabited by a family whose head is at once an agriculturist, a
+shepherd, and a woodsman. A Westmoreland cottage has scarcely any
+resemblance to a Scottish one. A Scottish cottage (in the Lowlands) has
+rarely any picturesque beauty in itself&mdash;a narrow oblong, with steep
+thatched roof, and an ear-like chimney at each of the two gable-ends.
+Many of the Westmoreland cottages would seem, to an ignorant observer,
+to have been originally built on a model conceived by the finest
+poetical genius. In the first place, they are almost always built
+precisely where they ought to be, had the builder's prime object been to
+beautify the dale; at least, so we have often felt in moods, when
+perhaps our emotions were unconsciously soothed into complacency by the
+spirit of the scene. Where the sedgy brink of the lake or tarn circles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
+into a lone bay, with a low hill of coppice-wood on one side, and a few
+tall pines on the other, no&mdash;it is a grove of sycamores&mdash;there, about a
+hundred yards from the water, and about ten above its ordinary level,
+peeps out from its cheerful seclusion that prettiest of all
+hamlets&mdash;Braithwaite-fold. The hill behind is scarcely sylvan&mdash;yet it
+has many hazels&mdash;a few bushes&mdash;here and there a holly&mdash;and why or
+wherefore, who can now tell, a grove of enormous yews. There is sweet
+pasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mild
+without much sunshine, there is a bleating of lambs, a twitter of small
+birds, and the deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always a
+feature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, for
+probably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire,
+since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire on
+the hearth. No. There is a volume of smoke, as if the chimney were in
+flame&mdash;a tumultuous cloud pours aloft, straggling and broken, through
+the broad slate stones that defend the mouth of the vomitory from every
+blast. The matron within is doubtless about to prepare breakfast, and
+last year's rotten pea-sticks have soon heated the capacious grid-iron.
+Let the smoke-wreath melt away at its leisure, and do you admire, along
+with us, the infinite variety of all those little shelving and sloping
+roofs. To feel the full force of the peculiar beauty of these antique
+tenements, you must understand their domestic economy. If ignorant of
+that, you can have no conception of the meaning of any one thing you
+see&mdash;roofs, eaves, chimneys, beams, props, doors, hovels, and sheds, and
+hanging staircase, being all huddled together, as you think, in
+unintelligible confusion; whereas they are all precisely what and where
+they ought to be, and have had their colours painted, forms shaped, and
+places allotted by wind and weather, and the perpetually but pleasantly
+felt necessities Of the natural condition of mountaineers.</p>
+
+<p>Dear, dear is the thatch to the eyes of a son of Caledonia, for he may
+remember the house in which he was born; but what thatch was ever so
+beautiful as that slate from the quarry of the White-moss? Each
+one&mdash;no&mdash;not each one&mdash;but almost each one&mdash;of these little overhanging
+roofs seems to have been slated, or repaired at least, in its own
+separate season, so various is the lustre of lichens that bathes the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+whole, as richly as ever rock was bathed fronting the sun on the
+mountain's brow. Here and there is seen some small window, before
+unobserved, curtained perhaps&mdash;for the statesman, and the statesman's
+wife, and the statesman's daughters, have a taste&mdash;a taste inspired by
+domestic happiness, which, seeking simply comfort, unconsciously creates
+beauty, and whatever its homely hand touches, that it adorns. There
+would seem to be many fireplaces in Braithwaite-fold, from such a number
+of chimney-pillars, each rising up to a different altitude from a
+different base, round as the bole of a tree&mdash;and elegant, as if shaped
+by Vitruvius. To us, we confess, there is nothing offensive in the most
+glaring white rough-cast that ever changed a cottage into a patch of
+sunny snow. Yet here that greyish-tempered unobtrusive hue does
+certainly blend to perfection with roof, rock, and sky. Every instrument
+is in tune. Not even in sylvan glade, nor among the mountain rocks, did
+wanderer's eyes ever behold a porch of meeting tree-stems, or reclining
+cliffs, more gracefully festooned than the porch from which now issues
+one of the fairest of Westmeria's daughters. With one arm crossed before
+her eyes in a sudden burst of sunshine, with the other Ellinor Inman
+waves to her little brother and sisters among the bark-peelers in the
+Rydal woods. The graceful signal is repeated till seen, and in a few
+minutes a boat steals twinkling from the opposite side of the lake, each
+tug of the youthful rowers distinctly heard through the hollow of the
+vale. A singing voice rises and ceases&mdash;as if the singer were watching
+the echo&mdash;and is not now the picture complete?</p>
+
+<p>After a time old buildings undergo no perceptible change, any more than
+old trees; and after they have begun to feel the touch of decay, it is
+long before they look melancholy; for while they continue to be used,
+they cannot help looking cheerful, and even dilapidation is painful only
+when felt to be lifeless. The house now in ruins, that we passed a few
+hundred yards ago without your seeing it&mdash;we saw it with a sigh&mdash;among
+some dark firs, just before we began to ascend the hill, was many years
+ago inhabited by Miles Mackareth, a man of some substance, and
+universally esteemed for his honest and pious character. His integrity,
+however, wanted the grace of courteousness, and his religion was
+somewhat gloomy and austere, while all the habits of his life were sad,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+secluded, and solitary. His fireside was always decent, but never
+cheerful&mdash;there the passing traveller partook of an ungrudging, but a
+grave hospitality; and although neighbours dropping in unasked were
+always treated as neighbours, yet seldom were they invited to pass an
+evening below his roof, except upon the stated festivals of the seasons,
+or some domestic event demanding sociality, according to the country
+custom. Year after year the gloom deepened on his strong-marked
+intellectual countenance; and his hair, once black as jet, became
+untimely grey. Indeed, although little more than fifty years old, when
+you saw his head uncovered, you would have taken him for a man
+approaching to threescore and ten. His wife and only daughter, both
+naturally of a cheerful disposition, grew every year more retired, till
+at last they shunned society altogether, and were seldom seen but at
+church. And now a vague rumour ran through the hamlets of the
+neighbouring valleys, that he was scarcely in his right mind&mdash;that he
+had been heard by shepherds on the hills talking to himself wild words,
+and pacing up and down in a state of distraction. The family ceased to
+attend divine worship, and as for some time the Sabbath had been the
+only day they were visible, few or none now knew how they fared, and by
+many they were nearly forgotten. Meanwhile, during the whole summer, the
+miserable man haunted the loneliest places; and, to the terror of his
+wife and daughter, who had lost all power over him, and durst not speak,
+frequently passed whole days they knew not where, and came home, silent,
+haggard, and ghastly, about midnight. His widow afterwards told that he
+seldom slept, and never without dreadful dreams&mdash;that often he would sit
+up all night in his bed, with his eyes fixed and staring on nothing, and
+uttering ejaculations for mercy for all his sins.</p>
+
+<p>What these sins were he never confessed&mdash;nor, as far as man may judge of
+man, had he ever committed any act that needed to lie heavy on his
+conscience. But his whole being, he said, was one black sin&mdash;and a
+spirit had been sent to tell him, that his doom was to be with the
+wicked through all the ages of eternity. That spirit, without form or
+shadow&mdash;only a voice&mdash;seldom left his side day or night, go where he
+would; but its most dreadful haunt was under a steep rock called
+Blakerigg-scaur; and thither, in whatever direction he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> turned his face
+on leaving his own door, he was led by an irresistible impulse, even as
+a child is led by the hand. Tenderly and truly had he once loved his
+wife and daughter, nor less because that love had been of few words, and
+with a shade of sorrow. But now he looked on them almost as if they had
+been strangers&mdash;except at times, when he started up, kissed them, and
+wept. His whole soul was possessed by horrid fantasies, of which it was
+itself object and victim; and it is probable that had he seen them both
+lying dead, he would have left their corpses in the house, and taken his
+way to the mountains. At last one night passed away and he came not. His
+wife and daughter, who had not gone to bed, went to the nearest house
+and told their tale. In an hour a hundred feet were traversing all the
+loneliest places&mdash;till a hat was seen floating on Loughrigg-tarn, and
+then all knew that the search was near an end. Drags were soon got from
+the fishermen on Windermere, and a boat crossed and recrossed the tarn
+on its miserable quest, till in an hour, during which wife and daughter
+sat without speaking on a stone by the water-edge, the body came
+floating to the surface, with its long silver hair. One single shriek
+only, it is said, was heard, and from that shriek till three years
+afterwards, his widow knew not that her husband was with the dead. On
+the brink of that small sandy bay the body was laid down and cleansed of
+the muddy weeds&mdash;his daughter's own hands assisting in the rueful
+work&mdash;and she walked among the mourners, the day before the Sabbath,
+when the funeral entered the little burial-ground of Langdale chapel,
+and the congregation sung a Christian psalm over the grave of the
+forgiven suicide.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot patronise the practice of walking in large parties of ten or a
+score, ram-stam and helter-skelter, on to the front-green or gravel-walk
+of any private nobleman's or gentleman's house, to enjoy, from a
+commanding station, an extensive or picturesque view of the circumjacent
+country. It is too much in the style of the Free and Easy. The family
+within, sitting perhaps at dinner with the windows open, or sewing and
+reading in a cool dishabille, cannot like to be stared in upon by so
+many curious and inquisitive pupils all a-hunt for prospects; nor were
+these rose-bushes planted there for public use, nor that cherry-tree in
+vain netted against the black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>birds. Not but that a party may now and
+then excusably enough pretend to lose their way in a strange country;
+and looking around them in well-assumed bewilderment, bow hesitatingly
+and respectfully to maid or matron at door or window, and, with a
+thousand apologies, lingeringly offer to retire by the avenue gate, on
+the other side of the spacious lawn, that terrace-like hangs over vale,
+lake, and river. But to avoid all possible imputation of impertinence,
+follow you our example, and make all such incursions by break of day. We
+hold that, for a couple of hours before and after sunrise, all the earth
+is common property. Nobody surely would think for a moment of looking
+black on any number of freebooting lakers coming full sail up the
+avenue, right against the front, at four o'clock in the morning? At that
+hour, even the poet would grant them the privilege of the arbour where
+he sits when inspired, and writing for immortality. He feels conscious
+that he ought to have been in bed; and hastens, on such occasions, to
+apologise for his intrusion on strangers availing themselves of the
+rights and privileges of the Dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Ivy-cottage, then, and its yet unbreathing chimneys, turn in at
+the first gate to your right (if it be not built up, in which case leap
+the wall), and find your way the best you can through among old
+pollarded and ivied ash-trees, intermingled with yews, and over knolly
+ground, brier-woven, and here and there whitened with the jagged thorn,
+till you reach, through a slate-stile, a wide gravel walk, shaded by
+pine-trees, and open on the one side to an orchard. Proceed&mdash;and little
+more than a hundred steps will land you on the front of Rydal-mount, the
+house of the great Poet of the Lakes. Mr Wordsworth is not at home, but
+away to cloudland in his little boat so like the crescent moon. But do
+not by too much eloquence awaken the family, or scare the silence, or
+frighten "the innocent brightness of the new-born day." We hate all
+sentimentalism; but we bid you, in his own words,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"With gentle hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From a quaint platform of evergreens you see a blue gleam of Windermere
+over the grove-tops&mdash;close at hand are Rydal-hall and its ancient
+woods&mdash;right opposite the Loughrigg-fells, ferny, rocky, and sylvan, but
+the chief breadth of breast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> pastoral&mdash;and to the right Rydal-mere,
+seen, and scarcely seen, through embowering trees, and mountain-masses
+bathed in the morning light, and the white-wreathed mists for a little
+while longer shrouding their summits. A lately erected private chapel
+lifts its little tower from below, surrounded by a green, on which there
+are yet no graves&mdash;nor do we know if it be intended for a place of
+burial. A few houses are sleeping beyond the chapel by the river-side;
+and the people beginning to set them in order, here and there a pillar
+of smoke ascends into the air, giving cheerfulness and animation to the
+scene.</p>
+
+<p>The Lake-Poets! ay, their day is come. The lakes are worthy of the
+poets, and the poets of the lakes. That poets should love and live among
+lakes, once seemed most absurd to critics whose domiciles were on the
+Nor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerable
+quagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock&mdash;so are the Salisbury Craigs
+noble craigs&mdash;and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he to
+leap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in the
+Cowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour of
+Glaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack of
+cards. Who, pray, are the Nor-Loch poets? Not the Minstrel&mdash;he holds by
+the tenure of the Tweed. Not Campbell&mdash;"he heard in dreams the music of
+the Clyde." Not Joanna Baillie&mdash;her inspiration was nursed on the
+Calder's sylvan banks and the moors of Strathaven. Stream-loving Coila
+nurtured Burns; and the Shepherd's grave is close to the cot in which he
+was born&mdash;within hearing of the Ettrick's mournful voice on its way to
+meet the Yarrow. Skiddaw overshadows, and Greta freshens the bower of
+him who framed,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here the woods, mountains, and waters of Rydal imparadise the abode of
+the wisest of nature's bards, with whom poetry is religion. And where
+was he ever so happy as in that region, he who created "Christabelle,"
+"beautiful exceedingly;" and sent the "Auncient Mariner" on the wildest
+of all voyagings, and brought him back with the ghastliest of all crews,
+and the strangest of all curses that ever haunted crime?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of all Poets that ever lived Wordsworth has been at once the most
+truthful and the most idealising; external nature from him has received
+a soul, and becomes our teacher; while he has so filled our minds with
+images from her, that every mood finds some fine affinities there, and
+thus we all hang for sustenance and delight on the bosom of our mighty
+Mother. We believe that there are many who have an eye for Nature, and
+even a sense of the beautiful, without any very profound feeling; and to
+them Wordsworth's finest descriptive passages seem often languid or
+diffuse, and not to present to their eyes any distinct picture. Perhaps
+sometimes this objection may be just; but to paint to the eye is easier
+than to the imagination&mdash;and Wordsworth, taking it for granted that
+people can now see and hear, desires to make them feel and understand;
+of his pupil it must not be said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A primrose by the river's brim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A yellow primrose is to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it is nothing more;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the poet gives the something more till we start at the disclosure as at
+a lovely apparition&mdash;yet an apparition of beauty not foreign to the
+flower, but exhaling from its petals, which till that moment seemed to
+us but an ordinary bunch of leaves. In these lines is a humbler example
+of how recondite may be the spirit of beauty in any most familiar thing
+belonging to the kingdom of nature; one higher far&mdash;but of the same
+kind&mdash;is couched in two immortal verses&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To me the humblest flower that blows, can give<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In what would the poet differ from the worthy man of prose, if his
+imagination possessed not a beautifying and transmuting power over the
+objects of the inanimate world? Nay, even the naked truth itself is seen
+clearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become a
+poet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad. Yonder ass licking his
+lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow
+with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at
+Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing
+with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally
+Chambermaid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has
+cultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns their
+phraseology, and declares the sunset to be exceedingly handsome. The
+Laker, who sometimes has a soul, feels it rise within him as the rim of
+the orb disappears in the glow of softened fire. The artist compliments
+Nature, by likening her evening glories to a picture of Claud
+Lorraine&mdash;while the poet feels the sense sublime</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Of something far more deeply interfused,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the round ocean and the living air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A motion and a spirit that impels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rolls through all things."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Compare any one page, or any twenty pages, with the character given of
+Wordsworth's poetry in the obsolete criticism that sought to send it to
+oblivion. The poet now sits on his throne in the blue serene&mdash;and no
+voice from below dares deny his supremacy in his own calm dominions. And
+was it of him, whom devout imagination, dreaming of ages to come, now
+sees, placed in his immortality between Milton and Spenser, that the
+whole land once rang with ridicule, while her wise men wiped their eyes
+"of tears that sacred <i>pity</i> had engendered," and then relieved their
+hearts by joining in the laughter "of the universal British nation?" All
+the ineffable absurdities of the bard are now embodied in Seven
+Volumes&mdash;the sense of the ridiculous still survives among us&mdash;our men of
+wit and power are not all dead&mdash;we have yet our satirists, great and
+small&mdash;editors in thousands, and contributors in tens of thousands&mdash;yet
+not a whisper is heard to breathe detraction from the genius of the
+high-priest of nature; while the voice of the awakened and enlightened
+land declares it to be divine&mdash;using towards him not the language merely
+of admiration but of reverence&mdash;of love and gratitude due to the
+benefactor of humanity, who has purified its passions by loftiest
+thoughts and noblest sentiments, stilling their turbulence by the same
+processes that magnify their power, and showing how the soul, in ebb and
+flow, and when its tide is at full, may be at once as strong and as
+serene as the sea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are few pictures painted by him merely for the pleasure of the
+eye, or even the imagination, though all the pictures he ever painted
+are beautiful to both; they have all a moral meaning&mdash;many a meaning
+more than moral&mdash;and his poetry can be comprehended, in its full scope
+and spirit, but by those who feel the sublimity of these four lines in
+his "Ode to Duty,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fragrance in thy footing treads;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Is thy life disturbed by guilty or sinful passions? Have they gained a
+mastery of thee&mdash;and art thou indeed their slave? Then the poetry of
+Wordsworth must be to thee</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As is a picture to a blind man's eye;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>or if thine eyes yet see the light in which it is enveloped, and thy
+heart yet feels the beauty it reveals, in spite of the clouds that
+overhang and the storms that trouble them, that beauty will be
+unbearable, till regret become remorse, and remorse penitence, and
+penitence restore thee to those intuitions of the truth that illumine
+his sacred pages, and thou knowest and feelest once more that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The primal duties shine aloft&mdash;like stars,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>that life's best pleasures grow like flowers all around and beneath thy
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>Nor are we not privileged to cherish a better feeling than pride in the
+belief, or rather knowledge, that <span class="smcap">We</span> have helped to diffuse Wordsworth's
+poetry not only over this Island, but the furthest dependencies of the
+British empire, and throughout the United States of America. Many
+thousands have owed to us their emancipation from the prejudices against
+it, under which they had wilfully remained ignorant of it during many
+years; and we have instructed as many more, whose hearts were free, how
+to look on it with those eyes of love which alone can discover the
+Beautiful. Communications have been made to us from across the Atlantic,
+and from the heart of India&mdash;from the Occident and the Orient&mdash;thanking
+us for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> having vindicated and extended the fame of the best of our
+living bards, till the name of Wordsworth has become a household word on
+the banks of the Mississippi and the Ganges. It would have been so had
+we never lived, <i>but not so soon</i>; and many a noble nature has
+worshipped his genius, as displayed in our pages, not in fragments but
+in perfect poems, accompanied with our comments, who had no means in
+those distant regions of possessing his volumes, whereas Maga flies on
+wings to the uttermost parts of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>As for our own dear Scotland&mdash;for whose sake, with all her faults, the
+light of day is sweet to our eyes&mdash;twenty years ago there were not
+twenty copies&mdash;we question if there were ten&mdash;of the "Lyrical Ballads"
+in all the land of the mountain and the flood. Now Wordsworth is studied
+all Scotland over&mdash;and Scotland is proud and happy to know, from his
+Memorials of the Tours he has made through her brown heaths and shaggy
+woods, that the Bard's heart overflows with kindness towards her
+children&mdash;that his songs have celebrated the simple and heroic character
+of her olden times, nor left unhonoured the virtues that yet survive in
+her national character. All her generous youth regard him now as a great
+Poet; and we have been more affected than we should choose to confess,
+by the grateful acknowledgment of many a gifted spirit, that to us it
+was owing that they had opened their eyes and their hearts to the
+ineffable beauty of that poetry in which they had, under our
+instructions, found not a vain visionary delight, but a strength and
+succour and consolation, breathed as from a shrine in the silence and
+solitude of nature, in which stood their father's hut, sanctifying their
+humble birthplace with pious thoughts that made the very weekdays to
+them like Sabbaths&mdash;nor on the evening of the Sabbath might they not
+blamelessly be blended with those breathed from the Bible, enlarging
+their souls to religion by those meditative moods which such pure poetry
+inspires, and by those habits of reflection which its study forms, when
+pursued under the influence of thoughtful peace.</p>
+
+<p>Why, if it were not for that everlasting&mdash;we beg pardon&mdash;immortal
+Wordsworth&mdash;the <span class="smcap">Lakes</span>, and all that belong to them, would be our
+own&mdash;<i>jure divino</i>&mdash;for we are the heir-apparent to the</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sole King of rocky Cumberland."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>But Wordsworth never will&mdash;never can die; and so we are in danger of
+being cheated out of our due dominion. We cannot think this fatherly
+treatment of such a son&mdash;and yet in our loftiest moods of filial
+reverence we have heard ourselves exclaiming, while</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The Cataract of Lodore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peal'd to our orisons,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>O King! live for ever!</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, with the fear of "The Excursion" before our eyes, we took to
+prose&mdash;to numerous prose&mdash;ay, though we say it that should not say it,
+to prose as numerous as any verse&mdash;and showed such scenes</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here an English Lake&mdash;there a Scottish loch&mdash;till Turner grew jealous,
+and Thomson flung his brush at one of his own unfinished mountains&mdash;when
+lo! a miracle! Creative of grandeur in his very despair, he stood
+astonished at the cliff that came prerupt from his canvass, and
+christened itself "the Eagle's Eyrie," as it <i>frowned serenely</i> upon the
+sea, maddening in a foamy circle at its inaccessible feet.</p>
+
+<p>Only in such prose as ours can the heart pour forth its effusions like a
+strong spring discharging ever so many gallons in a minute, either into
+pipes that conduct it through some great Metropolitan city, or into a
+water-course that soon becomes a rivulet, then a stream, then a river,
+then a lake, and then a sea. Would Fancy luxuriate? Then let her expand
+wings of prose. In verse, however irregular, her flight is lime-twigged,
+and she soon takes to hopping on the ground. Would Imagination dive? Let
+the bell in which she sinks be constructed on the prose principle, and
+deeper than ever plummet sunk, it will startle monsters at the roots of
+the coral caves, yet be impervious to the strokes of the most tremendous
+of tails. Would she soar? In a prose balloon she seeks the stars. There
+is room and power of ascension for any quantity of ballast&mdash;fling it
+out, and up she goes! Let some gas escape, and she descends far more
+gingerly than Mrs Graham and his Serene Highness; the grapnel catches a
+stile, and she steps "like a dreadless angel unpursued" once more upon
+<i>terra firma</i>, and may then celebrate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> her aerial voyage, if she choose,
+in an Ode which will be sure near the end to rise&mdash;into prose.</p>
+
+<p>Prose, we believe, is destined to drive what is called Poetry out of the
+world. Here is a fair challenge. Let any Poet send us a poem of five
+hundred lines&mdash;blanks or not&mdash;on any subject; and we shall write on that
+subject a passage of the same number of words in prose; and the Editors
+of the Quarterly, Edinburgh, and Westminster, shall decide which
+deserves the prize. Milton was woefully wrong in speaking of "prose or
+numerous verse." Prose is a million times more numerous than verse. Then
+prose improves the more poetical it becomes; but verse, the moment it
+becomes prosaic, goes to the dogs. Then, the connecting links between
+two fine passages in verse, it is enjoined, shall be as little like
+verse as possible; nay, whole passages, critics say, should be of that
+sort; and why, pray, not prose at once? Why clip the King's English, or
+the Emperor's German, or the Sublime Porte's Turkish, into bits of dull
+jingle&mdash;pretending to be verses merely because of the proper number of
+syllables&mdash;some of them imprisoned perhaps in parentheses, where they
+sit helplessly protruding the bare soles of their feet, like folks that
+have got muzzy, in the stocks?</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth says well, that the language of common people, when giving
+utterance to passionate emotions, is highly figurative; and hence he
+concludes not so well fit for a lyrical ballad. Their volubility is
+great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by
+the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never&mdash;the utmost they
+reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk!
+The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream
+of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion!
+The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever
+yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet,
+in his sublimest moods, speaks in prose&mdash;Lady Macbeth talks prose in her
+sleep&mdash;and so it should be printed. "Out damned spot!" are three words
+of prose; and who that beheld Siddons wringing her hands to wash them of
+murder, did not feel that they were the most dreadful ever extorted by
+remorse from guilt?</p>
+
+<p>A green old age is the most loving season of life, for almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> all the
+other passions are then dead or dying&mdash;or the mind, no more at the mercy
+of a troubled heart, compares the little pleasure their gratification
+can ever yield now with what it could at any time long ago, and lets
+them rest. Envy is the worst disturber or embitterer of man's declining
+years; but it does not deserve the name of a passion&mdash;and is a disease,
+not of the poor in spirit&mdash;for they are blessed&mdash;but of the mean, and
+then they indeed are cursed. For our own parts, we know Envy but as we
+have studied it in others&mdash;and never felt it except towards the wise and
+good; and then 'twas a longing desire to be like them&mdash;painful only when
+we thought that might never be, and that all our loftiest aspirations
+might be in vain. Our envy of Genius is of a nature so noble, that it
+knows no happiness like that of guarding from mildew the laurels on the
+brows of the Muses' Sons. What a dear kind soul of a critic is old
+Christopher North! Watering the flowers of poetry, and removing the
+weeds that might choke them&mdash;letting in the sunshine upon them, and
+fencing them from the blast&mdash;proclaiming where the gardens grow, and
+leading boys and virgins into the pleasant alleys&mdash;teaching hearts to
+love and eyes to see their beauty, and classifying, by the attributes it
+has pleased nature to bestow on the various orders, the plants of
+Paradise&mdash;This is our occupation&mdash;and the happiness of witnessing them
+all growing in the light of admiration is our reward.</p>
+
+<p>Finding our way back as we choose to Ivy-cottage, we cross the wooden
+bridge, and away along the western shore of Rydal-mere. Hence you see
+the mountains in magnificent composition, and craggy coppices with
+intervening green fields shelving down to the lake margin. It is a small
+lake, not much more than a mile round, and of a very peculiar character.
+One memorable cottage only, as far as we remember, peeps on its shore
+from a grove of sycamores, a statesman's pleasant dwelling; and there
+are the ruins of another on a slope near the upper end, the circle of
+the garden still visible. Everything has a quiet but wildish pastoral
+and sylvan look, and the bleating of sheep fills the hollow of the
+hills. The lake has a reedy inlet and outlet, and the angler thinks of
+pike when he looks upon such harbours. There is a single boat-house,
+where the Lady of the Hall has a padlocked and painted barge for
+pleasure parties; and the heronry on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> high pine-trees of the only
+island connects the scene with the ancient park of Rydal, whose oak
+woods, though thinned and decayed, still preserve the majestic and
+venerable character of antiquity and baronial state.</p>
+
+<p>Having taken a lingering farewell of Rydal-mere, and of the new
+Chapel-tower, that seems among the groves already to be an antique, we
+may either sink down to the stream that flows out of Grassmere and
+connects the two lakes, crossing a wooden bridge, and then joining the
+new road that sweeps along to the Village, or we may keep up on the face
+of the hill, and by a terrace-path reach the Loughrigg-road, a few
+hundred yards above Tail-end, a pretty cottage-orn&eacute;e which you will
+observe crowning a wooded eminence, and looking cheerfully abroad over
+all the vale. There is one Mount in particular, whence we see to
+advantage the delightful panorama&mdash;encircling mountains&mdash;Grassmere Lake
+far down below your feet, with its one green pastoral isle, sylvan
+shores, and emerald meadows&mdash;huts and houses sprinkled up and down in
+all directions&mdash;the village partly embowered in groves, and partly open
+below the shadow of large single trees&mdash;and the Church-tower, almost
+always a fine feature in the scenery of the north of England, standing
+in stately simplicity among the clustering tenements, nor dwindled even
+by the great height of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to lose sight entirely of a beautiful scene, and to plod
+along for a few hundred yards in almost objectless shadow. Our
+conceptions and feelings are bright and strong from the nearness of
+their objects, yet the dream is somewhat different from the reality. All
+at once, at a turning of the road, the splendour reappears like an
+unfurled banner, and the heart leaps in the joy of the senses. This sort
+of enjoyment comes upon you before you reach the Village of Grassmere
+from the point of vision above described, and a stranger sometimes is
+apt to doubt if it be really the same Lake&mdash;that one island, and those
+few promontories, shifting into such varied combinations with the
+varying mountain-ridges and ranges, that show top over top in
+bewildering succession, and give hints of other valleys beyond, and of
+Tarns rarely visited, among the moorland wastes. A single long dim
+shadow, falling across the water, alters the whole physiognomy of the
+scene&mdash;nor less a single bright streak of sunshine, brighten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>ing up some
+feature formerly hidden, and giving animation and expression to the
+whole face of the Lake.</p>
+
+<p>About a short mile from the Village Inn, you will pass by without seeing
+it&mdash;unless warned not to do so&mdash;one of the most singularly beautiful
+habitations in the world. It belongs to a gentleman of the name of
+Barber, and, we believe, has been almost entirely built by him&mdash;the
+original hut on which his taste has worked having been a mere shell. The
+spirit of the place seems to us to be that of Shadowy Silence. Its
+bounds are small; but it is an indivisible part of a hill-side so secret
+and sylvan, that it might be the haunt of the roe. You hear the tinkle
+of a rill, invisible among the hazels&mdash;a bird sings or flutters&mdash;a bee
+hums his way through the bewildering wood&mdash;but no louder sound. Some
+fine old forest-trees extend widely their cool and glimmering shade; and
+a few stumps or armless trunks, whose bulk is increased by a load of ivy
+that hides the hollow wherein the owls have their domicile, give an air
+of antiquity to the spot, that, but for other accompaniments, would
+almost be melancholy. As it is, the scene has a pensive character. As
+yet you have seen no house, and wonder whither the gravel-walks are to
+conduct you, winding fancifully and fantastically through the
+smooth-shaven lawn, bestrewed by a few large leaves of the
+horse-chestnut or sycamore. But there are clustered verandas where the
+nightingale might woo the rose, and lattice-windows reaching from eaves
+to ground-sill, so sheltered that they might stand open in storm and
+rain, and tall circular chimneys, shaped almost like the stems of the
+trees that overshadow the roof irregular, and over all a gleam of blue
+sky and a few motionless clouds. The noisy world ceases to be, and the
+tranquil heart, delighted with the sweet seclusion, breathes, "Oh! that
+this were my cell, and that I were a hermit!"</p>
+
+<p>But you soon see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere you
+discern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement that
+belong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yet
+nothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep their
+own places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunny
+slope, not a weed is to be seen, for weeds are beautiful only by the
+wayside, in the matting of hedge-roots, by the mossy stone, and the
+brink of the well in the brae&mdash;and are offensive only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> when they intrude
+into society above their own rank, and where they have the air and
+accent of aliens. By pretty pebbled steps of stairs you mount up from
+platform to platform of the sloping woodland banks&mdash;the prospect
+widening as you ascend, till from a bridge that spans a leaping rivulet,
+you behold in full blow all Grassmere Vale, Village, Church-tower, and
+Lake, the whole of the mountains, and a noble arch of sky, the
+circumference of that little world of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Circumscribed as are the boundaries of this place, yet the grounds are
+so artfully, while one thinks so artlessly, laid out, that, wandering
+through their labyrinthine recesses, you might believe yourself in an
+extensive wilderness. Here you come out upon a green open glade (you see
+by the sun-dial it is past seven o'clock)&mdash;there the arms of an immense
+tree overshadow what is in itself a scene&mdash;yonder you have an alley that
+serpentises into gloom and obscurity&mdash;and from that cliff you doubtless
+would see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all its
+natural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows the
+owner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almost
+caprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments&mdash;the
+barn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of a
+chapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of being
+sick of the world, is attached to all elegant socialities and amities;
+that he uses silver cups instead of maple bowls, shows his scallop-shell
+among other curiosities in his cabinet, and will treat the passing
+pilgrim with pure water from the spring, if he insists upon that
+beverage, but will first offer him a glass of the yellow cowslip-wine,
+the cooling claret, or the sparkling champagne.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we are all beginning to get a little hungry, but it is too soon
+to breakfast; so, leaving the village of Grassmere on the right, keep
+your eye on Helm-crag, while we are finding, without seeking, our way up
+Easdale. Easdale is an arm of Grassmere, and in the words of Mr Green
+the artist, "it is in places profusely wooded, and charmingly
+sequestered among the mountains." Here you may hunt the waterfalls, in
+rainy weather easily run down, but difficult of detection in a drought.
+Several pretty rustic bridges cross and recross the main stream and its
+tributaries; the cottages, in nook and on hill-side, are among the most
+picturesque and engaging in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> the whole country; the vale widens into
+spacious and noble meadow-grounds, on which might suitably stand the
+mansion of any nobleman in England&mdash;as you near its head, everything
+gets wild and broken, with a slight touch of dreariness, and by no very
+difficult ascent we might reach Easdale-tarn in less than an hour's
+walking from Grassmere&mdash;a lonely and impressive scene, and the haunt of
+the angler almost as frequently as of the shepherd.</p>
+
+<p>How far can we enjoy the beauty of external nature under a sharp
+appetite for breakfast or dinner? On our imagination the effect of
+hunger is somewhat singular. We no longer regard sheep, for instance, as
+the fleecy or the bleating flock. Their wool or their baaing is nothing
+to us&mdash;we think of necks, and jigots, and saddles of mutton; and even
+the lamb frisking on the sunny bank is eaten by us in the shape of
+steaks and fry. If it is in the morning, we see no part of the cow but
+her udder, distilling richest milkiness. Instead of ascending to heaven
+on the smoke of a cottage chimney, we put our arms round the column, and
+descend on the lid of the great pan preparing the family breakfast.
+Every interesting object in the landscape seems edible&mdash;our mouth waters
+all over the vale&mdash;as the village clock tolls eight, we involuntarily
+say grace, and Price on the Picturesque gives way to Meg Dods's Cookery.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Bell of the Red Lion Inn, Grassmere, can give a breakfast with any
+woman in England. She bakes incomparable bread&mdash;firm, close, compact,
+and white, thin-crusted, and admirably raised. Her yeast always works
+well. What butter! Before it a primrose must hide its unyellowed head.
+Then jam of the finest quality, goose, rasp, and strawberry! and as the
+jam is, so are her jellies. Hens cackle that the eggs are fresh&mdash;and
+these shrimps were scraping the sand last night in the Whitehaven sea.
+What glorious bannocks of barley-meal! Crisp wheaten cakes, too, no
+thicker than a wafer. Do not, our good sir, appropriate that cut of
+pickled salmon; it is heavier than it looks, and will weigh about four
+pounds. One might live a thousand years, yet never weary of such
+mutton-ham. Virgin honey, indeed! Let us hope that the bees were not
+smothered, but by some gracious disciple of Bonar or Huber decoyed from
+a full hive into an empty one, with half the summer and all the autumn
+before them to build<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> and saturate their new Comb-Palace. No bad thing
+is a cold pigeon-pie, especially of cushats. To hear them cooing in the
+centre of a wood is one thing, and to see them lying at the bottom of a
+pie is another&mdash;which is the better, depends entirely on time, place,
+and circumstance. Well, a beef-steak at breakfast is rather
+startling&mdash;but let us try a bit with these fine ingenuous youthful
+potatoes, from a light sandy soil on a warm slope. Next to the country
+clergy, smugglers are the most spiritual of characters; and we verily
+believe that to be "sma' still." Our dear sir&mdash;you are in orders, we
+believe&mdash;will you have the goodness to return thanks? Yes, now you may
+ring the bell for the bill. Moderate indeed! With a day's work before
+one, there is nothing like the deep broad basis of breakfast.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+<h2>STROLL TO GRASSMERE.</h2>
+
+<h3>SECOND SAUNTER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is yet only ten o'clock&mdash;and what a multitude of thoughts and
+feelings, sights and sounds, lights and shadows, have been ours since
+sunrise! Had we been in bed, all would have remained unfelt and unknown.
+But, to be sure, one dream might have been worth them all. Dreams,
+however, when they are over, are gone, be they of bliss or bale, heaven
+or the shades. No one weeps over a dream. With such tears no one would
+sympathise. Give us reality, "the sober certainty of waking bliss," and
+to it memory shall cling. Let the object of our sorrow belong to the
+living world, and, transient though it be, its power may be immortal.
+Away then, as of little worth, all the unsubstantial and wavering world
+of dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, so
+much the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like this,
+where all is steadfast but the clouds, whose very being is change, and
+the flow of waters that have been in motion since the Flood.</p>
+
+<p>Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by her
+elated husband, a high-born beautiful and graceful bride. They are
+making a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled her
+horns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, here
+it is&mdash;youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love&mdash;all united in
+ties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other&mdash;the
+blissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came to
+admire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can see
+only one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother,
+and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself&mdash;every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
+one&mdash;that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virgin
+youthhood. With her, as with Genevieve&mdash;</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>And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No&mdash;it will fade, and
+fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like the
+shortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of the
+light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal
+twilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not
+how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth,
+and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die.</p>
+
+<p>Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all such
+occasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that of
+wedded life it may generally be said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O, happy state, where souls together draw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where love is liberty, and nature law!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and
+religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul!
+And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine
+dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within
+bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them
+the cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good must
+flourish under that holy necessity&mdash;everything foul and bad fade away;
+and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrims
+travelling together through time to eternity, whether their path lead
+through an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to be
+gracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that very
+reason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and if
+the present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in rapture
+as it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice to
+them whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the past
+and future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulge
+tempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+How much tranquillity and contentment in human homes! Calm onflowings of
+life shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out into
+the open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautiful
+resignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away&mdash;yet
+without and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not an
+unhappy lot&mdash;The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as if
+they were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in the
+gloom&mdash;The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearly
+dried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven&mdash;Children,
+those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as the
+glades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in the
+mother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether without
+relief&mdash;for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now in
+the bowers of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Reverse the picture&mdash;and tremble for the fate of those whom God hath
+made one, and whom no one man must put asunder. In common natures, what
+hot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference,
+disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to
+madness, lies in that mean but mighty word&mdash;Temper! The face, to whose
+meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows
+now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape of
+those features is still fine&mdash;the eye of the gazelle&mdash;the Grecian nose
+and forehead&mdash;the ivory teeth, so small and regular&mdash;and thin line of
+ruby lips breathing Circassian luxury&mdash;the snow-drifts of the bosom
+still heave there&mdash;a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping from
+the chariot of the sun&mdash;nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veil
+beneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend&mdash;a devil
+incarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made your
+house a hell.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homely
+wife&mdash;or one comely at the best&mdash;nay, even that you have sought to
+secure your peace by admitted ugliness&mdash;or wedded a woman whom all
+tongues call&mdash;plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame like
+the sun in miniature on the front of your house&mdash;but what Joint-Stock
+Company can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetual
+singeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> up without
+warning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire?
+We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantly
+contradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure,
+at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine at
+home every day for a month, she wonders why nobody asks you out, and
+fears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine from
+home one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted to
+tavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention&mdash;there is
+hatred and sorrow in house-bills&mdash;rent and taxes are productive of
+endless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing&mdash;indeed
+quite a fortune in itself&mdash;especially to a poor Scotsman going to
+England, where all the people are barbarous&mdash;yet is it irritatingly
+expensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawky
+hoydens and hobbletehoys are getting themselves accomplished in the
+foreign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, and
+the dumb-bells.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Let observation, with extensive view,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Survey mankind from China to Peru,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(two bad lines, by the way, though written by Dr Johnson)&mdash;and
+observation will find the literature of all countries filled with
+sarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and ballads
+especially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous misery
+and discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns&mdash;the dilemma of
+English wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, of
+every individual hour of every individual day, and so on, has its
+peculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yet
+the delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing,
+and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger&mdash;marrying and
+giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of
+prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about
+every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth&mdash;double
+houses become villages&mdash;villages towns&mdash;towns cities&mdash;and our Metropolis
+is itself a world!</p>
+
+<p>While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach against
+wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> the tender passion that
+leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the
+mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of
+the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's
+bosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under a
+fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful
+embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselves
+spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and the
+weak fall&mdash;bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as
+the day&mdash;fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken
+heart&mdash;hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to
+despair&mdash;crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of
+appetite, grows by what it feeds on&mdash;wide, but unseen, over all the
+regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy,
+dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge&mdash;beseechings, seductions,
+suicides, and insanities&mdash;and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet
+all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time
+endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage,
+of which every other golden globe is poison and death.</p>
+
+<p>Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou
+young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears
+to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile
+can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also
+the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and
+religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and
+unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, mayst thou be, as the dove in the
+sunshine on the Tower-top&mdash;and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on
+her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood!</p>
+
+<p>Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquainted
+with your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects to
+gaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Of
+yourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the pretty
+white-washed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine with
+each other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be there
+pathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes.
+Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you will
+disappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woody
+wildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and a
+glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is best
+society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or
+voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained
+in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an
+incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of
+nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song&mdash;and of the
+hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweet
+the cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears by far the most
+beautiful place in all the Lake-country. You buy a field&mdash;build a
+cottage&mdash;and in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you to
+sit) beneath the shadow of your own trees!</p>
+
+<p>In an English village&mdash;highland or lowland&mdash;seldom is there any spot so
+beautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, with
+the pensive shadows of the old church-tower settling over its cheerful
+graves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as too
+strong&mdash;for the pigeons are cooing in the belfry, the stream is
+murmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on the
+mounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead.
+But hark! the bell tolls&mdash;one&mdash;one&mdash;one&mdash;a funeral knell, speaking not
+of time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial&mdash;and close to
+the wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave.</p>
+
+<p>Hush! The sound of singing voices in yonder wood, deadened by the weight
+of umbrage! Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now all is
+silence&mdash;but the pause speaks of death. Again the melancholy swell
+ascends the sky&mdash;and then comes slowly along the funeral procession, the
+coffin borne aloft, and the mourners all in white; for it is a virgin
+who is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncovered
+while the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites
+along the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. A
+smothered sobbing disturbeth not the service&mdash;'tis a human spirit
+breathing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for the
+immortal&mdash;Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger
+from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost
+all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole
+delight of her greyhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy
+extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been
+beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her
+heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All
+that we know is her name and age&mdash;you see them glittering on her
+coffin&mdash;"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years"!</p>
+
+<p>The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to
+Ambleside; and although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous
+than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not
+indulge too long in a mournful mood&mdash;yet let us all sit down under the
+shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of
+Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears.</p>
+
+<p>Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for
+ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius
+has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves
+heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have
+well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now
+almost like a fallen wall&mdash;at best, the remnants of a cattle-shed shaken
+down by the storm.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty years ago&mdash;how short a time in national history&mdash;how long in that
+of private sorrows!&mdash;all tongues were speaking of the death that there
+befell; and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the
+funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on
+the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not
+even their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It was
+inhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known
+familiarly in her own small world by the name of <span class="smcap">Lucy of the Fold</span>. In
+almost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiar
+pride&mdash;some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and
+whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of
+mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of
+attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending
+year. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished her
+thirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness,
+often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her
+parents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why they
+should dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so many
+regarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, but as fond too of her
+nest; and when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life was
+almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadness, and from sadness to joy;
+from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like that
+of the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creature
+wavering in the sunshine over the wood-top&mdash;was to Lucy as welcome a
+change as the change of lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the
+mountain-country of her birth.</p>
+
+<p>One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house,
+and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they
+would let him have lodging with them for a few months&mdash;a single room for
+bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family.
+Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever
+creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of
+imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the
+confinement of college walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a
+rainbow. No eyes had he for realities&mdash;all nature was seen in the light
+of genius&mdash;not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was
+beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in
+the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends,
+colleges, cities&mdash;all sunk away into oblivion, and <span class="smcap">Harry Howard</span> felt as
+if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond
+the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect
+and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a
+spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that
+cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in
+all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the
+countryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the
+Fold.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every day&mdash;and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among
+the hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyes&mdash;and every
+hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr Howard
+was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none
+doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever
+conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland
+and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured
+the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of
+the Fold. It was indeed even so&mdash;for, before the long summer days were
+gone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slept
+on the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none&mdash;indeed,
+scarcely one near relation&mdash;although he was rich in this world's riches,
+but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature had
+lavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed of the splendid
+but wayward youth&mdash;and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him,
+were it even to some savage land. Thus the Fold became to him the one
+dearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple ongoings of that
+humble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all the
+rough or coarser edges of lowly life were softened away in the light of
+genius that transmuted everything on which it fell; while all the silent
+intimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hut
+as fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spirit
+pre-eminently lovely, and chained it to the hearth, around which was
+read the morning and the evening prayer.</p>
+
+<p>What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very
+impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in
+place of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till in
+a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away,
+perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creature
+will have the soul of a very angel&mdash;and then, before God and at His holy
+altar, mine shall she become for ever&mdash;here and hereafter&mdash;in this
+paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of
+heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the
+change, imperceptible from day to day, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> glorious at last, wrought on
+Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely
+could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was
+dutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiar
+objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now
+grown to woman's stature&mdash;tall, though she scarcely seemed so except
+when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling,
+and far more than fulfilling, the fair promise of her childhood. Never
+once had the young stranger&mdash;stranger no more&mdash;spoken to daughter,
+father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towards
+Lucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, which
+was almost pity&mdash;an affection that was often sad&mdash;wonder at her
+surpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of its
+power&mdash;admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meet
+instruction as if already formed&mdash;and that heart-throbbing that stirs
+the blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in the
+twilight through smiles or through tears,&mdash;these, and a thousand other
+feelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, now
+constituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook him
+when he was alone among the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>At last it was known through the country that Mr Howard&mdash;the stranger,
+the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much,
+but whom everybody loved, and whose father must at the least have been a
+lord, was going&mdash;in a year or less&mdash;to marry the daughter of Allan
+Fleming&mdash;Lucy of the Fold. O, grief and shame to the parents&mdash;if still
+living&mdash;of the noble Boy! O, sorrow for himself when his passion
+dies&mdash;when the dream is dissolved&mdash;and when, in place of the angel of
+light who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowly
+born, and long rudely bred&mdash;a being only fair as many others are fair,
+sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, and
+partaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown to
+herself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one to
+rescue them from such a fate&mdash;from a few months of imaginary bliss, and
+from many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming be
+so infatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who would soon desert
+her broken-hearted? Yet kind thoughts, wishes, hopes, and beliefs
+prevailed;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> nor were there wanting stories of the olden time, of
+low-born maidens married to youths of high estate, and raised from hut
+to hall, becoming mothers of a lordly line of sons, that were
+counsellors to Kings and Princes.</p>
+
+<p>In Spring, Mr Howard went away for a few months&mdash;it was said to the
+great city&mdash;and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride.
+They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were still
+together. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath he
+would be at the Fold. A few fields in Easdale, long mortgaged beyond
+their fee-simple by the hard-working statesman from whom they
+reluctantly were passing away, had meanwhile been purchased by Mr
+Howard, and in that cottage they were to abide, till they had built for
+themselves a house a little further up the side of the sylvan hill,
+below the shadow of Helm-crag. Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return and
+its golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was to
+descend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of living
+things.</p>
+
+<p>Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun;
+and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic pass of the
+Hawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose as
+lustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnight
+hour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached the
+cliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning in
+the low window, the very planet of love. It seemed to shed a bright
+serenity over all the vale, and the moon-glittering waters of Rydal-mere
+were as an image of life, pure, lonely, undisturbed, and at the pensive
+hour how profound! "Blessing and praise be to the gracious God! who
+framed my spirit so to delight in His beautiful and glorious
+creation&mdash;blessing and praise to the Holy One, for the boon of my Lucy's
+innocent and religious love!" Prayers crowded fast into his soul, and
+tears of joy fell from his eyes, as he stood at the threshold, almost
+afraid, in the trembling of life-deep affection, to meet her first
+embrace.</p>
+
+<p>In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then in
+another moment, he saw, through the open door of the room where Lucy
+used to sleep, several figures moving to and fro in the light, and one
+figure upon its knees&mdash;who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed he
+became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> one of the pale-faced company&mdash;and there he beheld her on her
+bed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorable
+beauty&mdash;eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead,
+dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he fell
+down in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Encircled with arms that lay round him softer and silkier far than
+flower-wreaths on the neck of a child who has laid him down from play,
+was he when he awoke from that fit&mdash;lying even on his own maiden's bed,
+and within her very bosom, that beat yet, although soon about to beat no
+more. At that blest awakening moment, he might have thought he saw the
+first glimpse of light of the morning after his marriage-day; for her
+face was turned towards his breast, and with her faint breathings he
+felt the touch of tears. Not tears alone now bedimmed those eyes, for
+tears he could have kissed away; but the blue lids were heavy with
+something that was not slumber&mdash;the orbs themselves were scarcely
+visible&mdash;and her voice&mdash;it was gone, to be heard never again, till in
+the choir of white-robed spirits that sing at the right hand of God.</p>
+
+<p>Yet no one doubted that she knew him&mdash;him who had dropt down, like a
+superior being, from another sphere, on the innocence of her simple
+childhood&mdash;had taught her to know so much of her own soul&mdash;to love her
+parents with a profounder and more holy love&mdash;to see, in characters more
+divine, Heaven's promises of forgiveness to every contrite heart&mdash;and a
+life of perfect blessedness beyond death and the grave. A smile that
+shone over her face the moment that she had been brought to know that he
+had come at last, and was nigh at hand&mdash;and that never left it while her
+bosom moved&mdash;no&mdash;not for all the three days and nights that he continued
+to sit beside the corpse, when father and mother were forgetting their
+cares in sleep&mdash;that smile told all who stood around, watching her
+departure, neighbour, friend, priest, parent, and him the suddenly
+distracted and desolate, that in the very moment of expiration she knew
+him well, and was recommending him and his afflictions to the pity of
+One who died to save sinners.</p>
+
+<p>Three days and three nights, we have said, did he sit beside her who so
+soon was to have been his bride; and come or go who would into the room,
+he saw them not&mdash;his sight was fixed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> on the winding-sheet, eyeing it,
+without a single tear, from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking up
+to heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably long
+without food, so did he&mdash;and so he would have done, on and on to the
+most far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, he
+never rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he never
+slept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunderstorm,
+the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed that
+he heard it not&mdash;and during the floods of next day, to him the roaring
+vale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people&mdash;for now
+they seemed to be old&mdash;wept to see him sitting still beside their dead
+child; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office,
+and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenly
+alighted on the face of the corpse&mdash;and then off&mdash;and on&mdash;and away&mdash;and
+returning&mdash;was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty in
+its corruption. "Ha&mdash;ha!" starting up, he cried in horror&mdash;"What birds
+of prey are these, whom Satan has sent to devour the corpse?" He became
+stricken with a sort of palsy&mdash;and, being led out to the open air, was
+laid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf,
+where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat,
+building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life.</p>
+
+<p>The company assembled&mdash;but not before his eyes&mdash;the bier was lifted up
+and moved away down the sylvan slope, and away round the head of the
+Lake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied, here and there, as it
+passed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound of
+psalms&mdash;but he saw&mdash;he heard not;&mdash;when the last sound of the spade
+rebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by&mdash;but all the
+while he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmen
+at his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage of
+the Fold was as if she had never been born&mdash;for she had vanished for
+ever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguished
+in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in his
+eyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of a
+reasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or in
+what part of the earth, yet, when left by himself, he never sought to
+move beyond the bounda<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>ries of the Fold. During the first faint
+glimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and over
+many times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she was
+dead&mdash;then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleep
+had fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate&mdash;then
+with groans too affecting to be borne by those who heard them, he would
+ask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, her
+husband, in life; and finally, and last of all, he imagined himself in
+Grassmere Churchyard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which it
+was evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours and
+hours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes all
+at once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting-fits
+returned, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone-dead. As
+for his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms,
+little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposed
+that one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days be
+alive&mdash;yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun did that
+body die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks of
+Rydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passing
+like a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage in
+Palestine, even beneath the shadow of Mount Sion, and was laid, with a
+lock of hair&mdash;which, from the place it held, strangers knew to have
+belonged to one dearly beloved&mdash;close to his heart, on which it had lain
+so long, and was to moulder away in darkness together, by Christian
+hands and in a Christian sepulchre.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+<h2>L'ENVOY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Periodical literature is a type of many of the most beautiful things and
+interesting events in nature; or say, rather, that <i>they</i> are types of
+<i>it</i>&mdash;the Flowers and the Stars. As to Flowers, they are the prettiest
+periodicals ever published in folio&mdash;the leaves are wire-wove and
+hot-pressed by Nature's self; their circulation is wide over all the
+land; from castle to cottage they are regularly taken in; as old age
+bends over them, his youth is renewed; and you see childhood poring upon
+them pressed close to its very bosom. Some of them are ephemeral&mdash;their
+contents are exhaled between the rising and setting sun. Once a-week
+others break through their green, pink, or crimson cover; and how
+delightful, on the seventh day, smiles in the sunshine the Sabbath
+Flower&mdash;a Sunday publication perused without blame by the most
+religious&mdash;even before morning prayer! Each month, indeed, throughout
+the whole year, has its own Flower periodical. Some are annual, some
+biennial, some triennial, and there are perennials that seem to live for
+ever&mdash;and yet are still periodical&mdash;though our love will not allow us to
+know when they die, and ph&#339;nix-like reappear from their own ashes. So
+much for Flowers&mdash;typifying or typified;&mdash;leaves emblematical of
+pages&mdash;buds of binding&mdash;dew-veils of covers&mdash;and the wafting away of
+bloom and fragrance like the dissemination of fine feelings, bright
+fancies, and winged thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The Flowers are the periodicals of the earth&mdash;the Stars are the
+periodicals of heaven. With what unfailing regularity do the numbers
+issue forth! Hesperus and Lucifer! ye are one concern. The Pole-star is
+studied by all nations. How popular the poetry of the Moon! On what
+subject does not the Sun throw light? No fear of hurting your eyes by
+reading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> that fine clear large type on that softened page. As you turn
+them over, one blue, another yellow, and another green, all are alike
+delightful to the pupil, dear as the very apple of his eye. Yes, the
+great Periodical Press of heaven is unceasingly at work&mdash;night and day;
+the only free power all over the world&mdash;'tis indeed like the air we
+breathe&mdash;if we have it not, we die.</p>
+
+<p>Look, then, at all paper periodicals with pleasure, for sake of the
+Flowers and the Stars. Suppose them all extinct, and life would be like
+a flowerless earth, a starless heaven. We should soon forget the
+Seasons. The periodicals of the External would soon all lose their
+meaning, were there no longer any periodicals of the Internal. These are
+the lights and shadows of life, merrily dancing or gravely stealing over
+the dial; remembrancers of the past&mdash;teachers of the present&mdash;prophets
+of the future hours. Were they all dead, Spring would in vain renew her
+promise&mdash;wearisome would be the interminable summer days&mdash;the fruits of
+autumn tasteless&mdash;the winter ingle blink mournfully round the hearth.
+What are the blessed Seasons themselves, in nature and in Thomson, but
+periodicals of a larger growth? We should doubt the goodness of that
+man's heart, who loved not the periodical literature of earth and
+sky&mdash;who would not weep to see one of its flowers wither&mdash;one of its
+stars fall&mdash;one beauty die on its humble bed&mdash;one glory drop from its
+lofty sphere. Let them bloom and burn on&mdash;flowers in which there is no
+poison, stars in which there is no disease&mdash;whose blossoms are all
+sweet, and whose rays are all sanative&mdash;both alike steeped in dew, and
+both, to the fine ear of nature's worshipper, bathed in music.</p>
+
+<p>Pomposo never reads Magazine poetry&mdash;nor, we presume, ever looks at a
+field or wayside flower. He studies only the standard authors. He walks
+only in gardens with high brick walls&mdash;and then admires only at a hint
+from the head-gardener. Pomposo does not know that many of the finest
+poems of our day first appeared in magazines&mdash;or, worse still, in
+newspapers; and that in our periodicals, daily and weekly, equally with
+the monthlies and quarterlies, is to be found the best criticism of
+poetry anywhere extant, superior far, in that unpretending form, to
+nine-tenths of the learned lucubrations of Germany&mdash;though some of it,
+too, is good&mdash;almost as one's heart could desire. What is the
+circulation even of a popular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> volume of verses&mdash;if any such there
+be&mdash;to that of a number of Maga? Hundreds of thousands at home peruse it
+before it is a week old&mdash;as many abroad ere the moon has thrice renewed
+her horns; and the Series ceases not&mdash;regular as the Seasons that make
+up the perfect year. Our periodical literature&mdash;say of it what you
+will&mdash;gives light to the heads and heat to the hearts of millions of our
+race. The greatest and best men of the age have not disdained to belong
+to the brotherhood; and thus the hovel holds what must not be missing in
+the hall&mdash;the furniture of the cot is the same as that of the
+palace&mdash;and duke and ditcher read their lessons from the same page.</p>
+
+<p>Good people have said, and it would be misanthropical to disbelieve or
+discredit their judgment, that our Prose is original&mdash;nay, has created a
+new era in the history of Periodical Literature. Only think of that,
+Christopher, and up with your Tail like a Peacock! Why, there is some
+comfort in that reflection, while we sit rubbing our withered hands up
+and down on these shrivelled shanks. Our feet are on the fender, and
+that fire is felt on our face; but we verily believe our ice-cold shanks
+would not shrink from the application of the red-hot poker. Peter has a
+notion that but for that red-hot poker the fire would go out; so to
+humour him we let it remain in the ribs, and occasionally brandish it
+round our head in moments of enthusiasm when the Crutch looks tame, and
+the Knout a silken leash for Italian Greyhound.</p>
+
+<p>Old Simonides&mdash;old Mimnermus&mdash;old Theognis&mdash;old Solon-old Anacreon&mdash;old
+Sophocles&mdash;old Pindar&mdash;old Hesiod&mdash;old Homer&mdash;and old Methuselah! What
+mean we by the word <i>old</i>? All these men are old in three lights&mdash;they
+lived to a raven age&mdash;long long ago&mdash;and we heard tell of them in our
+youth. Their glory dawned on us in a dream of life's golden prime&mdash;and
+far away seems now that dawn, as if in another world beyond a million
+seas! In that use of the word "old," far from us is all thought of
+dotage or decay. Old are those great personages as the stars are old; a
+heaven there is in which are seen shining, for ever young, all the most
+ancient spiritual "orbs of Song."</p>
+
+<p>In our delight, too, we love to speak of old Venus and of old Cupid&mdash;of
+old Eve and of old Cleopatra&mdash;of old Helen and of old Dalilah; yea, of
+old Psyche, though her aerial wings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> are as rainbow bright as the first
+hour she waved them in the eye of the youthful Sun.</p>
+
+<p>How full of endearment "old boy!"&mdash;"old girl!" "Old Christopher
+North!"&mdash;"old Maga!" To our simplest sayings age seems to give a
+consecration which youth reveres. And why may not our hand, withered
+somewhat though it be, but yet unpalsied, point out aloft to heedless
+eyes single light or constellation, or lily by herself or in groups
+unsuspected along the waysides of our mortal pilgrimage?</p>
+
+<p>Age like ours is even more lovable than venerable; and, thinking on
+ourselves, were we a young woman, we should assuredly marry an old man.
+Indeed, no man ought to marry before thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty;
+and, were it not that life is so short, soon enough at threescore and
+ten. At seventy you are sager than ever, though scarcely so strong. You
+and life love each other as well as ever; yet 'tis unpleasant, when
+sailing on Windermere or Lochlomond with your bride, to observe the Man
+in the Honeymoon looking at you with a congratulatory grin of
+condolence, to fear that the old villain will smile over your grave in
+the Season of Kirns and Harvest Homes, when the fiddle is heard in every
+farmhouse, and the bagpipes are lowing like cattle on a thousand hills.
+Fain would he insure his life on the Tipperary Tables. But the enamoured
+annuitant is haunted with visions of his own Funeral deploying in a long
+line of chariots&mdash;one at the head of all armed with scythes&mdash;through the
+city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in
+white, nor less so his widow in black&mdash;more so in grey, portentous of a
+great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his
+first-born as yet unborn&mdash;or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a
+precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing
+ten years at least from his own father&mdash;auld-farrant as a Fairy, and
+gash as the Last of the Lairds.</p>
+
+<p>Dearly do we love the young&mdash;yea, the young of all animals&mdash;the young
+swallows twittering from their straw-built shed&mdash;the young lambs
+bleating on the lea&mdash;the young bees, God bless them! on their first
+flight away off to the heather&mdash;the young butterflies, who, born in the
+morning, will die of old age ere night&mdash;the young salmon-fry glorying in
+the gravel at the first feeling of their fins&mdash;the young adders basking,
+ere they can bite, in the sun, as yet unconscious, like sucking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
+satirists, of their stings&mdash;young pigs, pretty dears! all a-squeak with
+their curled tails after prolific grumphie&mdash;young lions and tigers,
+charming cubs! like very Christian children nuzzling in their nurse's
+breast&mdash;young devils, ere Satan has sent them to Sin, who keeps a
+fashionable boarding-school in Hades, and sends up into the world
+above-ground only her finished scholars.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! lad of the lightsome forehead! Thou art smiling at Us; and for the
+sake of our own Past we enjoy thy Present, and pardon the contumely with
+which thou silently insultest our thin grey hairs. Just such another
+"were we at Ravensburg." "<i>Carpe Diem</i>" was then our motto, as now it is
+yours; "no fear that dinner cool," for we fed then, as you feed now, on
+flowers and fruits of Eden. We lived then under the reign of the Seven
+Senses; Imagination was Prime Minister, and Reason, as Lord-Chancellor,
+had the keeping of the Royal Conscience; and they were kings, not
+tyrants&mdash;we subjects, not slaves. Supercilious as thou art, Puer, art
+thou as well read in Greek as we were at thy flowering age? Come close
+that we may whisper in thine ear&mdash;while we lean our left shoulder on
+thine&mdash;our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, O
+Son of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he not
+once a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie,
+Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood&mdash;ye who so often heard our shouts mixed
+with the red-deer's belling&mdash;tossed back in exultation by Echo,
+Omnipresent Auditress on youth's golden hills.</p>
+
+<p>Know, all ye Neophytes, that three lovely Sisters often visit the old
+man's solitude&mdash;Memory, Imagination, Hope. It would be hard to say which
+is the most beautiful. Memory has deep, dark, quiet eyes, and when she
+closes their light, the long eyelashes lie like shadows on her pensive
+cheeks, that smile faintly as if the dreamer were half asleep&mdash;a
+visionary slumber, which sometimes the dewdrop melting on the leaf will
+break, sometimes not the thunder-peal with all its echoes. Imagination
+is a brighter and bolder Beauty, with large lamping eyes of uncertain
+colour, as if fluctuating with rainbow light, and with features fine as
+those which Grecian genius gave to the Muses in the Parian Marble, yet
+in their daring delicacy defined like the face of Apollo. As for
+Hope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>&mdash;divinest of the divine&mdash;Collins, in one long line of light, has
+painted the picture of the angel,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All our great prose-writers owe the glory of their power to our great
+poets. Even Hobbes translated Homer as well&mdash;that is as ill&mdash;as
+Thucidydes; the Epic in his prime after eighty; the History in his youth
+at forty; and it is fearful to dream what the brainful and heartless
+metaphysician would have been, had he never heard of the Iliad and the
+Odyssey. What is the greatest of prose-writers in comparison with a
+great poet? Nay&mdash;we shall not be deterred by the fear of
+self-contradiction (see our "Stroll to Grassmere") from asking who is a
+great prose-writer? We cannot name one; they all sink in Shakespeare.
+Campbell finely asks and answers&mdash;</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>
+
+<p>Suppose the world without poetry&mdash;how absurd would seem the Sun! Strip
+the word "phenomena" of its poetical meaning, and forthwith the whole
+human race, "moving about in worlds <i>realised</i>," would lose their powers
+of speech. But, thank Heaven! we are Makers all. Inhabiting, we verily
+believe, a real, and substantial, and palpable outer world, which
+nevertheless shall one day perish like a scroll, we build our bowers of
+joy in the Apparent, and lie down to rest in a drapery of Dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we often love to dream our silent way even through the noisy world.
+And dreamers are with dreamers spiritually, though in the body apart;
+nor wandering at will think they whence they come, or whither they are
+going, assured by delight that they will reach their journey's end&mdash;like
+a bee, that in many a musical gyration goes humming round men's heads
+and tree-tops, aimlessly curious in his joy, yet knowing instinctively
+the straight line that intersects all those airy circles, leading to and
+fro between his hive in the garden and the honey-dew on the heather
+hills.</p>
+
+<p>What can it be that now recalls to our remembrance a few lines of Esop,
+the delightful old Fabulist, the Merry and Wise, who set our souls
+a-thinking and our hearts a-feeling in boyhood, by moral lessons read to
+them in almost every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> incident befalling in life's common walks&mdash;solemn
+as Simonides in this his sole surviving elegiac strain?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What weary woe, what endless strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring'st thou to mortal men, O Life!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each hour they draw their breath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alas! the wretches all despair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To flee the ills they cannot bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But through the gates of Death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And yet how beautiful art Thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Earth and Sea&mdash;and on the brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of starry Heaven! The Night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sends forth the moon Thee to adorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thee to glorify the Morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Restores the Orb of Light.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet all is full of Pain and Dread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bedrench'd in tears for ever shed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The darkness render'd worse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By gleams of joy&mdash;and if by Heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Blessing seemeth to be given,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It changes to a curse."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Even in our paraphrase are not these lines very impressive? In the
+original they are much more solemn. They are not querulous, yet full of
+lamentation. We see in them not a weak spirit quarrelling with fate, but
+a strong spirit subdued by a sense of the conditions on which life has
+been given; conditions against which it is vain to contend, to which it
+is hard to submit, but which may yet be borne by a will deriving
+strength from necessity, and in itself noble by nature. Nor, dark as the
+doctrine is, can we say it is false. Intellect and Imagination may from
+doleful experiences have too much generalised their inductions, so as to
+seem to themselves to have established the Law of Misery as the Law of
+Life. But perhaps it is only thus that the Truth can be made available
+to man, as it regards the necessity of Endurance. All is not
+wretchedness; but the soul seeks to support itself by the belief that it
+is really so. Holding that creed, it has no excuse for itself, if at any
+time it is stung to madness by misery, or grovels in the dust in a
+passion of grief; none, if at any time it delivers itself wholly up,
+abandoning itself to joy, and acts as if it trusted to the permanence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>
+of any blessing under the law of Mutability. The Poet, in the hour of
+profound emotion, declares that every blessing sent from heaven is a
+Nemesis. That oracular response inspires awe. A salutary fear is kept
+alive in the foolish by such sayings of the wise. Even to us&mdash;now&mdash;they
+sound like a knell. Religion has instructed Philosophy; and for Fate we
+substitute God. But all men feel that the foundations of Faith are laid
+in the dark depths of their being, and that all human happiness is
+mysteriously allied with pain and sorrow. The most perfect bliss is ever
+awful, as if we enjoyed it under the shadow of some great and gracious
+wing that would not long be detained from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>It is not for ordinary minds to attempt giving utterance to such
+simplicities. On their tongues truths become truisms. Sentiments, that
+seem always fresh, falling from the lips of moral wisdom, are stale in
+the mouths of men uninitiated in the greater mysteries. Genius colours
+common words with an impressive light, that makes them moral to all
+eyes&mdash;breathes into them an affecting music, that steals into all hearts
+like a revelation and a religion. They become memorable. They pass, as
+maxims, from generation to generation; and all because the divinity that
+is in every man's bosom responds to the truthful strain it had of yore
+itself inspired. Just so with the men we meet on our life-journey. One
+man is impressive in all his looks and words, on all serious or solemn
+occasions; and we carry away with us moral impressions from his eyes or
+lips. Another man says the same things, or nearly so, and perhaps with
+more fervour, and his locks are silver. But we forget his person in an
+hour; nor does his voice ever haunt our solitude.
+Simonides&mdash;Solon&mdash;Esop!&mdash;why do such lines of theirs as those assure us
+they were Sages? The same sentiments are the staple of many a sermon
+that has soothed sinners into snoring sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Men take refuge even in ocular deception from despair. Over buried
+beauty, that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves,
+they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget much
+they ought to remember&mdash;all profounder thoughts&mdash;while gazing on the
+epitaph of letters or flowers. 'Tis a vision to their senses, with which
+Imagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that the
+deception prospers; for what if Love could bid the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> burial-ground give
+up or disclose its dead? Or if Love's eyes saw through dust as through
+air? What if this planet&mdash;which men call Earth&mdash;were at all times seen
+and felt to be a cemetery circling round the sun that feeds it with
+death, and not a globe of green animated with life&mdash;even as the dewdrop
+on the rose's leaf is animated with millions of invisible creatures,
+wantoning in bliss born of the sunshine and the vernal prime.</p>
+
+<p>Are we sermonising overmuch in this our <span class="smcap">L'Envoy</span> to these our misnamed
+<span class="smcap">Recreations</span>? Even a sermon is not always useless; the few concluding
+sentences are sometimes luminous, like stars rising on a dull twilight;
+the little flower that attracted Park's eyes when he was fainting in the
+desert, was to him beauteous as the rose of Sharon; there is solemnity
+in the shadow of quiet trees on a noisy road; a churchyard may be felt
+even in a village fair; a face of sorrow passes by us in our gaiety,
+neither unfelt nor unremembered in its uncomplaining calm; and sweet
+from some still house in the city stir is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We daresay you are a very modest person; but we are all given to
+self-glorification, private men and public, individuals and nations; and
+every one Era and Ego has been prouder than another of its respective
+achievements. To hear the Present Generation speak, such an elderly
+gentleman as the Past Generation begins to suspect that his personal
+origin lies hid in the darkness of antiquity; and worse&mdash;that he is of
+the Pechs. Now, we offer to back the Past Generation against the Present
+Generation, at any feat the Present Generation chooses, and give the
+long odds. Say Poetry. Well, we bring to the scratch a few
+champions&mdash;such as, Beattie, Cowper, Crabbe, Rogers, Bowles, Burns,
+Baillie, Campbell, Graham, Montgomery, Scott, Southey, Coleridge,
+Wordsworth, Hunt, Hogg, Shelley, Keates, Pollok, Cunningham, Bloomfield,
+Clare, and <i>risum teneatis amici</i>&mdash;Ourselves.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"All with waistcoats of red and breeches of blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mighty long tails that come swingeing through."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And at sight of the cavalcade&mdash;for each poet is on his Pegasus&mdash;the
+champions of the Present Generation, accoutred in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> corduroy kilts and
+top-boots, and on animals which, "well do we know, but dare not name,"
+wheel to the right-about with "one dismal universal bray," brandishing
+their wooden sabres, till, frenzied by their own trumpeters, they charge
+madly a palisade in their own rear, and as dismounted cavalry make good
+their retreat. This in their strategies is called a drawn battle.</p>
+
+<p>Heroes, alive or dead, of the Past Generation, we bid you hail!
+Exceeding happiness to have been born among such Births&mdash;to have lived
+among such Lives&mdash;to be buried among such Graves. O great glory to have
+seen such Stars rising one after another larger and more lustrous&mdash;at
+times, when dilated with delight, more like Moons than Stars&mdash;like
+Seraphs hovering over the earth they loved, though seeming so high up in
+heaven!</p>
+
+<p>To whom now may the young enthusiast turn as to Beings of the same kind
+with himself, but of a higher order, and therefore with a love that
+fears no sin in its idolatry? The young enthusiast may turn to some of
+the living, but he will think more of others who are gone. The dead know
+not of his love, and he can hold no communion with the grave. But Poets
+never die&mdash;immortal in their works, the Library is the world of spirits;
+there they dwell, the same as in the flesh, when by meditation most
+cleansed and purified&mdash;yet with some holy change it seems&mdash;a change not
+in them but in us, who are stilled by the stillness, and attribute
+something supernatural to the Living Dead.</p>
+
+<p>Since first this Golden Pen of ours&mdash;given us by One who meant it but
+for a memorial&mdash;began, many years ago, to let drop on paper a few
+careless words, what quires so distained&mdash;some pages, let us hope, with
+durable ink&mdash;have accumulated on our hands! Some haughty ones have
+chosen to say rather, how many leaves have been wafted away to wither?
+But not a few of the gifted&mdash;near and afar&mdash;have called on us with other
+voices&mdash;reminding us that long ago we were elected, on sight of our
+credentials&mdash;not indeed without a few black balls&mdash;into the Brotherhood.
+The shelf marked with our initials exhibits some half-dozen volumes
+only, and has room for scores. It may not be easily found in that vast
+Library; but, humble member as we are, we feel it now to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> a point of
+honour to make an occasional contribution to the Club. So here is the
+<span class="smcap">First Series</span> of what we have chosen to call our <span class="smcap">Recreations</span>. There have
+been much recasting and remoulding&mdash;many alterations, believed by us to
+have been wrought with no unskilful spirit of change&mdash;cruel, we confess,
+to our feelings, rejections of numerous lucubrations to their father
+dear&mdash;and if we may use such words, not a few new creations, in the same
+<i>genial</i> spirit in which we worked of old&mdash;not always unrewarded by
+sympathy, which is better than praise.</p>
+
+<p>For kindness shown when kindness was most needed&mdash;for sympathy and
+affection&mdash;yea, love itself&mdash;for grief and pity not misplaced, though
+bestowed in a mistaken belief of our condition, forlorn indeed, but not
+wholly forlorn&mdash;for solace and encouragement sent to us from afar, from
+cities and solitudes, and from beyond seas and oceans, from brethren who
+never saw our face, and never may see it, we owe a debt of everlasting
+gratitude; and life itself must leave our heart, that beats not now as
+it used to beat, but with dismal trepidation, before it forget, or cease
+to remember as clearly as now it hears them, every one of the many words
+that came sweetly and solemnly to us from the Great and Good. Joy and
+sorrow make up the lot of our mortal estate, and by sympathy with them,
+we acknowledge our brotherhood with all our kind. We do far more. The
+strength that is untasked, lends itself to divide the load under which
+another is bowed; and the calamity that lies on the heads of men is
+lightened, while those who at the time are not called to bear, are yet
+willing to involve themselves in the sorrow of a brother. So soothed by
+such sympathy may a poor mortal be, that the wretch almost upbraids
+himself for transient gleams of gladness, as if he were false to the
+sorrow which he sighs to think he ought to have cherished more sacredly
+within his miserable heart.</p>
+
+<p>One word embraces all these pages of ours&mdash;Memorials. Friends are lost
+to us by removal&mdash;for then even the dearest are often utterly forgotten.
+But let something that once was theirs suddenly meet our eyes, and in a
+moment, returning from the region of the rising or the setting sun, the
+friend of our youth seems at our side, unchanged his voice and his
+smile; or dearer to our eyes than ever, because of some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> affecting
+change wrought on face and figure by climate and by years. Let it be but
+his name written with his own hand on the title-page of a book; or a few
+syllables on the margin of a favourite passage which long ago we may
+have read together, "when life itself was new," and poetry overflowed
+the whole world; or a lock of <i>her</i> hair in whose eyes we first knew the
+meaning of the word "depth." And if death hath stretched out the absence
+into the dim arms of eternity&mdash;and removed the distance away into that
+bourne from which no traveller returns&mdash;the absence and the distance of
+her on whose forehead once hung the relic we adore&mdash;what heart may abide
+the beauty of the ghost that doth sometimes at midnight appear at our
+sleepless bed, and with pale uplifted arms waft over us at once a
+blessing and a farewell!</p>
+
+<p>Why so sad a word&mdash;<i>Farewell</i>? We should not weep in wishing welfare,
+nor sully felicity with tears. But we do weep because evil lies lurking
+in wait over all the earth for the innocent and the good, the happy and
+the beautiful; and, when guarded no more by our eyes, it seems as if the
+demon would leap out upon his prey. Or is it because we are so selfish
+that we cannot bear the thought of losing the sight of the happiness of
+a beloved object, and are troubled with a strange jealousy of beings
+unknown to us, and for ever to be unknown, about to be taken into the
+very heart, perhaps, of the friend from whom we are parting, and to whom
+in that fear we give almost a sullen farewell? Or does the shadow of
+death pass over us while we stand for the last time together on the
+sea-shore, and see the ship with all her sails about to voyage away to
+the uttermost parts of the earth? Or do we shudder at the thought of
+mutability in all created things&mdash;and know that ere a few suns shall
+have brightened the path of the swift vessel on the sea, we shall be
+dimly remembered&mdash;at last forgotten&mdash;and all those days, months, and
+years that once seemed eternal, swallowed up in everlasting oblivion?</p>
+
+<p>With us all ambitious desires some years ago expired. Far rather would
+we read than write nowadays&mdash;far rather than read, sit with shut eyes
+and no book in the room&mdash;far rather than so sit, walk about alone
+anywhere</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Beneath the umbrage deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That shades the silent world of memory."<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Shall we live? or "like beasts and common people die?" There is
+something harsh and grating in the collocation of these words of the
+"Melancholy Cowley;" yet he meant no harm, for he was a kind, good
+creature as ever was born, and a true genius. He there has expressed
+concisely, but too abruptly, the mere fact of their falling alike and
+together into oblivion. Far better Gray's exquisite words,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"On some fond breast the parting soul relies!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The reliance is firm and sure; the "fond breast" is faithful to its
+trust, and dying, transmits it to another; till after two or three
+transmissions&mdash;holy all, but fainter and dimmer&mdash;the pious tradition
+dies, and all memorial of the love and the delight, the pity and the
+sorrow, is swallowed up in vacant night.</p>
+
+<p>Posthumous Fame! Proud words&mdash;yet may they be uttered in a humble
+spirit. The common lot of man is, after death&mdash;oblivion. Yet genius,
+however small its sphere, if conversant with the conditions of the human
+heart, may vivify with indestructible life some happy delineations, that
+shall continue to be held dear by successive sorrowers in this vale of
+tears. If the <i>name</i> of the delineator continue to have something sacred
+in its sound&mdash;obscure to the many as it may be, or non-existent&mdash;the
+hope of such posthumous fame is sufficient to one who overrates not his
+own endowments. And as the hope has its root in love and sympathy, he
+who by his writings has inspired towards himself when in life, some of
+these feelings in the hearts of not a few who never saw his face, seems
+to be justified in believing that even after final obliteration of <i>Hic
+jacet</i> from his tombstone, his memory will be regarded with something of
+the same affection in his <span class="smcap">Remains</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>REMARKS</h2>
+
+<h4>ON THE</h4>
+
+<h2>SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p>
+<h2>REMARKS</h2>
+
+<h4>ON THE</h4>
+
+<h2>SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[Professor Wilson's "Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands" were
+first published as a Preface to <i>Swan's Select Views of the Lakes
+of Scotland</i>, 2d edition, 1836. They were not included originally
+in the "Recreations of Christopher North;" but the harmony of their
+tone and spirit seemed to recommend them as an appropriate sequel
+to that work; and accordingly they are now reprinted as such. The
+thanks of the Editor and Publishers of Professor Wilson's writings
+are due to the Messrs Fullarton, the proprietors of "Swan's Views,"
+for the liberal manner in which they have placed this valuable
+article at their disposal.]</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In no other country does nature exhibit herself in more various forms of
+beauty and sublimity, than in the North of England and the Highlands of
+Scotland. This is acknowledged by all who, having studied their
+character, and become familiar with the feelings it inspires, have
+compared the effects produced on their minds by our own mountainous
+regions, with what they have experienced among the scenery of the Alps.
+There, indeed, all objects are on so vast a scale, that we are for a
+while astonished as we gaze on the gigantic; and all other emotions are
+sunk in an overwhelming sense of awe that prostrates the imagination.
+But on recovering from its subjection to the prodigious, that faculty
+everywhere recognises in those mighty mountains of dark forests,
+glittering glaciers, and regions of eternal snow&mdash;infinite all&mdash;the
+power and dominion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> of the Sublime. True that all these are but
+materials for the mind to work on, and that to its creative energy
+nature owes much of that grandeur which seems to be inherent in her own
+forms; yet surely she in herself is great, and there is a regality
+belonging of divine right to such a monarch as Mont Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>Those are the very regions of sublimity, and if brought into immediate
+comparison with them in their immense magnitude, the most magnificent
+scenery of our own country would no doubt seem to lose its character of
+greatness. But such is not the process of the imagination in her
+intercourse with Nature. To her sufficient for the day is the good
+thereof; and on each new glorious sight being shown to her eyes, she
+employs her God-given power to magnify or irradiate what she beholds,
+without diminishing or obscuring what she remembers. Thus, to her all
+things in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their own
+due impressions, aggrandised and beautified by mutual reaction in those
+visionary worlds, which by a thought she can create, and which as they
+arise are all shadowy representations of realities&mdash;new compositions in
+which the image of the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greater
+than any realities, but not therefore less, but more true to the spirit
+of nature. It is thus that Poets and Painters at once obey and control
+their own inspirations. They visit all the regions of the earth, but to
+love, admire, and adore; and the greatest of them all, native to our
+soil, from their travel or sojourn in foreign lands, have always brought
+home a clearer insight into the character of the scenery of their own, a
+profounder affection for it all, and a higher power of imaging its
+attributes in colours or in words. In our poetry, more than in any
+other, nature sees herself reflected in a magic mirror; and though many
+a various show passes processionally along its lustre, displaying the
+scenery of "lands and seas, whatever clime the sun's bright circle
+warms," among them all there are none more delightful or elevating to
+behold, than those which genius, inspired by love, has framed of the
+imagery, which in all her pomp and prodigality heaven has been pleased
+to shower, through all seasons, on our own beautiful island. It is not
+for us to say whether our native Painters, or the "old masters," have
+shown the greatest genius in landscape; but if the palm must be yielded
+to them whose works have been consecrated by a reverence, as often,
+perhaps, superstitious as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> religious, we do not fear to say that their
+superiority is not to be attributed in any degree to the scenery on
+which they exercised the art its beauty had inspired. Whatever may be
+the associations connected with the subjects of their landscapes&mdash;and we
+know not why they should be higher or holier than those belonging to
+innumerable places in our own land&mdash;assuredly in themselves they are not
+more interesting or impressive; nay, though none who have shared with us
+the spirit of the few imperfect sentences we have now written, will, for
+a moment, suppose us capable of instituting an invidious comparison
+between our own scenery and that of any other country, why should we
+hesitate to assert that our own storm-loving Northern Isle is equally
+rich in all kinds of beauty as the sunny South, and richer far in all
+kinds of grandeur, whether we regard the forms or colouring of
+nature&mdash;earth, sea, or air,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or all the dread magnificence of heaven."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What other region in all the world like that of the Lakes in the North
+of England! And yet how the true lover of nature, while he carries along
+with him its delightful character in his heart, and can so revive any
+spot of especial beauty in his imagination, as that it shall seem in an
+instant to be again before his very eyes, can deliver himself up, after
+the lapse of a day, to the genius of some savage scene in the Highlands
+of Scotland, rent and riven by the fury of some wild sea-loch! Not that
+the regions do not resemble one another, but surely the prevailing
+spirit of the one&mdash;not so of the other&mdash;is a spirit of joy and of peace.
+Her mountains, invested, though they often be, in gloom&mdash;and we have
+been more than once benighted during day, as a thunder-cloud thickened
+the shadows that for ever sleep in the deepest dungeons of
+Helvellyn&mdash;are yet&mdash;so it seems to us&mdash;such mountains as in nature ought
+to belong to "merry England." They boldly meet the storms, and seen in
+storms, you might think they loved the trouble; but pitch your tent
+among them, and you will feel that theirs is a grandeur that is
+congenial with the sunshine, and that their spirit fully rejoices in the
+brightness of light. In clear weather, verdant from base to summit, how
+majestic their repose! And as mists slowly withdraw themselves in
+thickening folds up along their sides, the revelation made is still of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+more and more of the beautiful&mdash;arable fields below&mdash;then coppice woods
+studded with standard trees&mdash;enclosed pastures above and among the
+woods&mdash;broad breasts of close-nibbled herbage here and there adorned by
+rich dyed rocks, that do not break the expanse&mdash;till the whole veil has
+disappeared, and, lo! the long lofty range, with its wavy line, rising
+and sinking so softly in the blue serenity perhaps of an almost
+cloudless sky. Yet though we have thus characterised the mountains by
+what we have always felt to be the pervading spirit of the region,
+chasms and ravines, and cliffs and precipices, are there; in some places
+you see such assemblages as inspire the fear that quakes at the heart,
+when suddenly struck in the solitude with a sense of the sublime; and
+though we have called the mountains green&mdash;and during Spring and Summer,
+in spite of frost or drought, they are green as emerald&mdash;yet in Autumn
+they are many-coloured, and are girdled with a glow of variegated light,
+that at sunset sometimes seems like fire kindled in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>The larger Vales are all serene and cheerful, and among the sylvan
+knolls with which their wide levels highly cultivated are interspersed,
+cottages, single or in groups, are frequent, of an architecture always
+admirably suited to the scenery, because in a style suggested not by
+taste or fancy, which so often disfigure nature to produce the
+picturesque, but resorted to for sake of the uses and conveniences of
+in-door life, to weather-fend it in storms, and in calm to give it the
+enjoyment of sunshine. Many of these dwellings are not what are properly
+called cottages, but Statesmen's houses, of ample front, with their many
+roofs, overshadowed by a stately grove, and inhabited by the same race
+for many generations. All alike have their suitable gardens, and the
+porches of the poorest are often clustered with roses; for everywhere
+among these hills, even in minds the most rude and uncultivated, there
+is a natural love of flowers. The villages, though somewhat too much
+modernised in those days of improvement, and indeed not a few of them
+with hardly any remains now of their original architecture&mdash;nothing old
+about them but the church tower, perhaps the parsonage&mdash;are nevertheless
+generally of a pleasing character, and accordant, if not with the great
+features of nature, which are unchanged and unchangeable, with the
+increased cultivation of the country, and the many villas and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+ornamented cottages that have risen and are rising by every lake and
+river side. Rivers indeed, properly so called, there are none among
+these mountains; but every vale, great and small, has at all times its
+pure and undefiled stream or rivulet; every hill has its hundreds of
+evanescent rills, almost every one its own perennial torrent flowing
+from spring, marsh, or tarn; and the whole region is often alive with
+waterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness, the scenery
+is fit for fairy festivals&mdash;and of many, in its horrid gloom, for
+gatherings of gnomes revisiting the glimpses of the moon from their
+subterraneous prisons. One lake there is which has been called "wooded
+Winandermere, the river lake;" and there is another&mdash;Ulswater&mdash;which you
+might imagine to be a river too, and to have come flowing from afar: the
+one excelling in isles, and bays, and promontories, serene and gentle
+all, and perfectly beautiful; the other, matchless in its majesty of
+cliff and mountain, and in its old forests, among whose hoary gloom is
+for ever breaking out the green light of young generations, and
+perpetual renovation triumphing over perpetual decay. Of the other
+lakes&mdash;not river-like&mdash;the character may be imagined even from that we
+have faintly described of the mountains:&mdash;almost every vale has its
+lake, or a series of lakes&mdash;and though some of them have at times a
+stern aspect, and have scenes to show almost of desolation, descending
+sheer to the water's edge, or overhanging the depth that looks
+profounder in the gloom, yet even these, to eyes and hearts familiar
+with their spirit, wear a sweet smile which seldom passes away: witness
+Wastwater&mdash;with its huge single mountains, and hugest of all the
+mountains of England, Scawfell, with its terrific precipices&mdash;which, in
+the accidents of storm, gloom, or mist, has seemed, to the lonely
+passer-by, savage in the extreme&mdash;a howling or dreary wilderness&mdash;but in
+its enduring character, is surrounded with all quiet pastoral imagery,
+the deep glen in which it is imbedded being, in good truth, the abode of
+Sabbath peace. That hugest mountain is indeed the centre from which all
+the vales irregularly diverge; the whole circumjacent region may be
+traversed in a week; and though no other district of equal extent
+contains such variety of the sublime and beautiful, yet the beautiful is
+so prevalent, that we feel its presence, even in places where it is
+overpowered; and on leaving "The Lakes," our imagina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>tion is haunted and
+possessed with images, not of dread, but of delight.</p>
+
+<p>We have sometimes been asked, whether the North of England or the
+Highlands of Scotland should be visited first; but, simple as the
+question seems, it is really one which it is impossible to answer;
+though we suspect it would equally puzzle Scotchman or Englishman to
+give a sufficient reason for his wishing to see any part of any other
+country before he had seen what was best worth seeing in his own. His
+own country ought to be, and generally is, dearest to every man. There,
+if nothing forbid, he should not only begin his study of nature, but
+continue his education in her school, wherever it may happen to be
+situated, till he has taken his first degree. We believe that the love
+of nature is strong in the hearts of the inhabitants of our Island. And
+how wide and profound may that knowledge of nature be, which the loving
+heart has acquired, without having studied her anywhere but within the
+Four Seas! The impulses that make us desire to widen the circle of our
+observation, are all impulses of delight and love; and it would be
+strange indeed, did they not move us, first of all, towards whatever is
+most beautiful belonging to our own land. Were it otherwise, it would
+seem as if the heart were faithless to the home-affections, out of
+which, in their strength, spring all others that are good; and it is
+essential, we do not doubt, to the full growth of the Love of Country,
+that we should all have our earliest imaginative delights associated
+with our native soil. Such associations will for ever keep it loveliest
+to our eyes; nor is it possible that we can ever as perfectly understand
+the character of any other; but we can afterwards transfer and transfuse
+our feelings in imagination kindled by our own will; and the beauty,
+born before our eyes, among the banks and braes of our childhood, and
+then believed to be but there, and nothing like it anywhere else in all
+the world, becomes a golden light, "whose home is everywhere," which if
+we do not darken it, will shine unshadowed in the dreariest places, till
+"the desert blossom like the rose."</p>
+
+<p>For our own parts, before we beheld one of "the beautiful fields of
+England," we had walked all Scotland thorough, and had seen many a
+secret place, which now, in the confusion of our crowded memory, seem
+often to shift their uncertain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> ground; but still, wherever they
+glimmeringly reappear, invested with the same heavenly light in which,
+long ago, they took possession of our soul. And now, that we are almost
+as familiar with the fair sister-land, and love her almost as well as
+Scotland's self, not all the charms in which she is arrayed, and they
+are at once graceful and glorious, have ever for a day withdrawn our
+deeper dreams from the regions where,</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>unaccompanied but by our own shadow in the wilderness, we first heard
+the belling of the red-deer and the eagle's cry.</p>
+
+<p>In those days there was some difficulty, if not a little danger, in
+getting in among some of the noblest regions of our Alps. They could not
+be traversed without strong personal exertion; and a solitary pedestrian
+excursion through the Grampians was seldom achieved without a few
+incidents that might almost have been called adventures. It is very
+different now; yet the <i>Genius Loci</i>, though tamed, is not subdued; and
+they who would become acquainted with the heart of the Highlands, will
+have need of some endurance still, and must care nothing about the
+condition of earth or sky. Formerly, it was not possible to survey more
+than a district or division in a single season, except to those
+unenviable persons who had no other pursuit but that of amusement, and
+waged a weary war with time. The industrious dwellers in cities, who
+sought those solitudes, for a while to relieve their hearts from worldly
+anxieties, and gratify that love of nature which is inextinguishable in
+every bosom that in youth has beat with its noble inspirations, were
+contented with a week or two of such intercommunion with the spirit of
+the mountains, and thus continued to extend their acquaintance with the
+glorious wildernesses, visit after visit, for years. Now the whole
+Highlands, western and northern, may be commanded in a month. Not that
+any one who knows what they are, will imagine that they can be exhausted
+in a lifetime. The man does not live who knows all worth knowing there;
+and were they who made the Trigonometrical Survey to be questioned on
+their experiences, they would be found ignorant of thousands of sights,
+any one of which would be worth a journey for its own sake. But now
+steam has bridged the Great Glen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> and connected the two seas.
+Salt-water lochs the most remote and inaccessible, it has brought within
+reach of a summer-day's voyage. In a week a joyous company can gather
+all the mainland shores, leaving not one magnificent bay uncircled; and,
+having rounded St Kilda and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"the Hebride Isles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Placed far amid the melancholy main,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and heard the pealing anthem of waves in the cave-cathedral of Staffa,
+may bless the bells of St Mungo's tolling on the first Sabbath.
+Thousands and tens of thousands, who, but for those smoking sea-horses,
+had never been beyond view of the city spires, have seen sights which,
+though passing by almost like dreams, are not like dreams forgotten, but
+revive of themselves in memory and imagination; and, when the heart is
+weary with the work of the hand, quicken its pulses with a sudden
+pleasure that is felt like a renovation of youth.</p>
+
+<p>All through the interior, too, how many hundreds of miles of roads now
+intersect regions not long ago deemed impracticable!&mdash;firm on the fen,
+in safety flung across the chasm&mdash;and winding smoothly amidst
+shatterings of rocks, round the huge mountain bases, and down the glens
+once felt as if interminable, now travelled almost with the speed of the
+raven's wing!</p>
+
+<p>In the Highlands now, there is no <i>Terra Incognita</i>. But there are many
+places yet well worth seeing, which it is not easy for all men to find,
+and to which every man must be his own guide. It is somewhat of a
+selfish feeling, indeed, but the pride is not a mean one, with which the
+solitary pedestrian sits down to contemplate some strange, or wild, or
+savage scene, or some view of surpassing sweetness and serenity, so far
+removed from the track of men that he can well believe for a time that
+his eyes have been the first to behold it, and that for them alone it
+has now become a visible revelation. The memory of such places is
+sometimes kept as a secret which we would not communicate but to a
+congenial friend. They are hallowed by those mysterious "thoughts that,
+like phantoms, trackless come and go;" no words can tell another how to
+find his way thither; and were we ourselves to seek to return, we should
+have to trust to some consciousness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> mysterious as the instinct of a
+bird that carries it through the blind night to the place of its desire.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route: but without
+being utterly departed from&mdash;nay, without ceasing to control us within
+certain bounds&mdash;it admits of almost any degrees of deviation. We have
+known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to
+turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting
+themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of
+purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn
+a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless
+dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it
+listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought to
+shackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, that
+for a while they may walk on air, and feel that they too have wings.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it must be obeyed."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The voice was our own&mdash;and yet though but a whisper from the heart, it
+seemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice&mdash;sweet and wild
+as an echo.</p>
+
+<p>On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine, where
+at night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Among the hills a hundred homes have I;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My table in the wilderness is spread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In these lone spots one honest smile can buy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the powers
+of Nature&mdash;the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun moon, and stars. We
+must keep a look-out&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To see the deep fermenting tempest brew'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the grim evening sky;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords; and
+if they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the mountain,
+and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet with the
+heather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not visited but
+for that storm,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> with its dark blue river streaked with golden
+light,&mdash;for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range; and there,
+during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward rejoiced in
+the trembling dews.</p>
+
+<p>There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur, as the
+climate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old shepherd
+or herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in spite of many a
+night's unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he can presage its
+changes from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when the
+long-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise have
+often perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain symptoms,
+there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well to study, and he
+will often exult on the mountain to feel that "knowledge is power." Many
+a glorious hour has been won from the tempest by him before whose
+instructed eye&mdash;beyond the gloom that wide around blackened all the
+purple heather&mdash;"far off its coming shone." Leagues of continuous
+magnificence have gradually unveiled themselves on either side to him,
+as he has slowly paced, midway between, along the banks of the River of
+Waterfalls; having been assured by the light struggling through the
+mist, that it would not be long till there was a break-up of all that
+ghastly dreariment, and that the sun would call on him to come forth
+from his cave of shelter, and behold in all its pride the Glen
+affronting the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Some Tourists&mdash;as they call themselves&mdash;are provided with map and
+compass; and we hope they find them of avail in extremities, though we
+fear few such understand their use. No map can tell&mdash;except very
+vaguely&mdash;how the aspect of the localities, looked at on its lines, is
+likely to be affected by sun-rise, meridian, or sun-set. Yet, true it
+is, that every region has its own happy hours, which the fortunate often
+find unawares, and know them at once to be so the moment they lift up
+their eyes. At such times, while "our hearts rejoice in Nature's joy,"
+we feel the presence of a spirit that brings out the essential character
+of the place, be it of beauty or of grandeur. Harmonious as music is
+then the composition of colours and of forms. It becomes a perfect
+picture in memory, more and more idealised by imagination, every moment
+the veil is withdrawn before it; its aerial lineaments never fade; yet
+they too, though their being be but in the soul, are mel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>lowed by the
+touch, of time&mdash;and every glimpse of such a vision, the longer we live,
+and the more we suffer, seems suffused with a mournful light, as if seen
+through tears.</p>
+
+<p>It would serve no good purpose, supposing we had the power, to analyse
+the composition of that scenery, which in the aggregate so moves even
+the most sluggish faculties, as to make "the dullest wight a poet." It
+rises before the mind in imagination, as it does before the eyes in
+nature; and we can no more speak of it than look at it, but&mdash;as a whole.
+We can indeed fix our mental or our visual gaze on scene after scene to
+the exclusion of all beside, and picture it even in words that shall be
+more than shadows. But how shall any succession of such pictures,
+however clear and complete, give an idea of that picture which
+comprehends them all, and infinite as are its manifestations,
+nevertheless is imbued with one spirit?</p>
+
+<p>Try to forget that in the Highlands there are any Lochs. Then the sole
+power is that of the Mountains. We speak of a sea of mountains; but that
+image has never more than momentary possession of us, because, but for a
+moment, in nature it has no truth. Tumultuary movements envelope them;
+but they themselves are for ever steadfast and for ever still. Their
+power is that of an enduring calm no storms can disturb&mdash;and is often
+felt to be more majestical, the more furious are the storms. As the
+tempest-driven clouds are franticly hurrying to and fro, how serene the
+summits in the sky! Or if they be hidden, how peaceful the glimpses of
+some great mountain's breast! They disregard the hurricane that goes
+crashing through their old woods; the cloud-thunder disturbs not them
+any more than that of their own cataracts, and the lightnings play for
+their pastime. All minds under any excitation, more or less personify
+mountains. When much moved, that natural process affects all our
+feelings, as the language of passion awakened by such objects vividly
+declares; and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as endued with
+life&mdash;however dim and vague the conception may be&mdash;and feel their
+character in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of all
+that is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone. But
+while we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, will those
+monarchs remain invested with the purple and seated on thrones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In such imaginative moods as these must every one be, far more
+frequently than he is conscious of, and in far higher degrees, who, with
+a cultivated mind and a heart open to the influences of nature, finds
+himself, it matters not whether for the first or the hundredth time, in
+the Highlands. We fancy the Neophyte wandering, all by himself, on the
+"Longest Day;" rejoicing to think that the light will not fail him, when
+at last the sun must go down, for that a starry gloaming will continue
+its gentle reign till morn. He thinks but of what he sees, and that
+is&mdash;the mountains. All memories of any other world but that which
+encloses him with its still sublimities, are not excluded merely, but
+obliterated: his whole being is there! And now he stands on table-land,
+and with his eyes sweeps the horizon, bewildered for a while, for it
+seems chaos all. But soon the mighty masses begin arranging themselves
+into order; the confusion insensibly subsides as he comprehends more and
+more of their magnificent combinations; he discovers centres round which
+are associated altitudes towering afar off; and finally, he feels, and
+blesses himself on his felicity, that his good genius has placed him on
+the very centre of those wondrous assemblages altogether, from which
+alone he could command an empire of realities, more glorious far than
+was ever empire of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>It is a cloudy, but not a stormy day; the clouds occupy but portions of
+the sky,&mdash;and are they all in slow motion together, or are they all at
+rest? Huge shadows stalking along the earth, tell that there are changes
+going on in heaven; but to the upward gaze, all seems hanging there in
+the same repose; and with the same soft illumination the sun to continue
+shining, a concentration rather than an orb of light. All above is
+beautiful, and the clouds themselves are like celestial mountains; but
+the eye forsakes them, though it sees them still, and more quietly now
+it moves along the pageantry below that endures for ever&mdash;till chained
+on a sudden by that range of cliffs. 'Tis along them that the giant
+shadows are stalking&mdash;but now they have passed by&mdash;and the long line of
+precipice seems to come forward in the light. To look down from the
+brink might be terrible&mdash;to look up from the base would be sublime&mdash;but
+fronting the eye thus, horrid though it be, the sight is most beautiful;
+for weather-stains, and mosses, and lichens, and flowering
+plants&mdash;conspicuous most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> the broom and the heather&mdash;and shrubs that,
+among their leaves of light, have no need of flowers&mdash;and hollies, and
+birks, and hazels, and many a slender tree beside with pensile tresses,
+besprinkle all the cliffs, that in no gloom could ever lose their
+lustre; but now the day though not bright is fair, and brings out the
+whole beauty of the precipice&mdash;call it the hanging garden of the
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The Highlands have been said to be a gloomy region, and worse gloom than
+theirs might well be borne, if not unfrequently illumined with such
+sights as these; but that is not the character of the mountains, though
+the purple light in which, for usual, they are so richly steeped, is
+often for a season tamed, or for a short while extinguished, while a
+strange night-like day lets fall over them all a something like a
+shroud. Such days we have seen&mdash;but now in fancy we are with the
+pilgrim, and see preparation making for a sun-set. It is drawing towards
+evening, and the clouds that have all this time been moving, though we
+knew it not, have assuredly settled now, and taken up their rest. The
+sun has gone down, and all that unspeakable glory has left the sky.
+Evening has come and gone without our knowing that she had been here;
+but there is no gloom on any place in the whole of this vast wilderness,
+and the mountains, as they wax dimmer and dimmer, look as if they were
+surrendering themselves to a repose like sleep. Day had no voice here
+audible to human ear&mdash;but night is murmuring&mdash;and gentle though the
+murmur be, it filleth the great void, and we imagine that ever and anon
+it awakens echoes. And now it is darker than we thought, for lo! one
+soft-burning star! And we see that there are many stars; but not theirs
+the light that begins again to reveal object after object as gradually
+as they had disappeared; the moon is about to rise&mdash;is rising&mdash;has
+arisen&mdash;has taken her place high in heaven; and as the glorious world
+again expands around us, faintly tinged, clearly illumined, softly
+shadowed, and deeply begloomed, we say within our hearts,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"How beautiful is night!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are many such table-lands as the one we have now been imagining,
+and it requires but a slight acquaintance with the country to conjecture
+rightly where they lie. Inde<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>pendently of the panoramas they display,
+they are in themselves always impressive; perhaps a bare level that
+shows but bleached bent, and scatterings of stones, with here and there
+an unaccountable rock; or hundreds of fairy greensward knolls, fringed
+with tiny forests of fern that have almost displaced the heather; or a
+wild withered moor or moss intersected with pits dug not by men's hands;
+and, strange to see! a huge log lying half exposed, and as if blackened
+by fire. High as such places are, on one of them a young gorcock was
+stricken down by a hawk close to our feet. Indeed, hawks seem to haunt
+such places, and we have rarely crossed one of them, without either
+seeing the creature's stealthy flight, or hearing, whether he be alarmed
+or preying, his ever-angry cry.</p>
+
+<p>From a few such stations, you get an insight into the configuration of
+the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover
+at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other
+regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and if
+the blue aerial haze that hangs over a pass winding eastward, tempt you
+from your line of march due north, forthwith descend in that direction,
+and haply an omen will confirm you&mdash;an eagle rising on the left, and
+sailing away before you into that very spot of sky.</p>
+
+<p>No man, however well read, should travel by book. In books you find
+descriptions, and often good ones, of the most celebrated scenes, but
+seldom a word about the vast tracts between; and it would seem as if
+many Tourists had used their eyes only in those places where they had
+been told by common fame there was something greatly to admire. Travel
+in the faith, that go where you will, the cravings of your heart will be
+satisfied, and you will find it so, if you be a true lover of nature.
+You hope to be inspired by her spirit, that you may may read aright her
+works. But such inspiration comes not from one object or another,
+however great or fair, but from the whole "mighty world of eye and ear,"
+and it must be supported continuously, or it perishes. You may see a
+thousand sights never before seen by human eye, at every step you take,
+wherever be your path; for no steps but yours have ever walked along
+that same level; and moreover, never on the same spot twice rested the
+same lights or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> shadows. Then there may be something in the air, and
+more in your own heart, that invests every ordinary object with
+extraordinary beauty; old images affect you with a new delight; a
+grandeur grows upon your eyes in the undulations of the simplest hills;
+and you feel there is sublimity in the common skies. It is thus that all
+the stores of imagery are insensibly gathered, with which the minds of
+men are filled, who from youth have communed with nature. And it is thus
+that all those feelings have flowed into their hearts by which that
+imagery is sanctified; and these are the Poets.</p>
+
+<p>It is in this way that we become familiar with the mountains. Far more
+than we were aware of have we trusted to the strong spirit of delight
+within us, to prompt and to guide. And in such a country as the
+Highlands, thus led, we cannot err. Therefore, if your desire be for the
+summits, set your face thitherwards, and wind a way of your own, still
+ascending and ascending, along some vast brow, that seems almost a whole
+day's journey, and where it is lost from your sight, not to end, but to
+go sweeping round, with undiminished grandeur into another region. You
+are not yet half-way up the mountain, but you care not for the summit
+now; for you find yourself among a number of green knolls&mdash;all of them
+sprinkled, and some of them crowned with trees&mdash;as large almost as our
+lowland hills&mdash;surrounded close to the brink with the purple
+heather&mdash;and without impairing the majesty of the immense expanse,
+imbuing it with pastoral and sylvan beauty;&mdash;and there, lying in a small
+forest glade of the lady-fern, ambitious no longer of a throne on
+Benlomond or Ben-nevis, you dream away the still hours till sunset, yet
+then have no reason to weep that you have lost a day.</p>
+
+<p>But the best way to view the mountains is to trace the Glens. To find
+out the glens you must often scale the shoulders of mountains, and in
+such journeys of discovery, you have for ever going on before your eyes
+glorious transfigurations. Sometimes for a whole day one mighty mass
+lowers before you unchanged; look at it after the interval of hours, and
+still the giant is one and the same. It rules the region, subjecting all
+other altitudes to its sway, though many of them range away to a great
+distance; and at sunset retains it supremacy, blazing almost like a
+volcano with fiery clouds. Your line of journey lies, perhaps, some two
+thousand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> feet above the level of the sea, and seldom dips down to one
+thousand; and these are the heights from which all above and all below
+you looks most magnificent, for both regions have their full power over
+you&mdash;the unscaleable cliffs, the unfathomable abysses&mdash;and you know not
+which is the more sublime. The sublimity indeed is one. It is then that
+you may do well to ascend to the very mountain-top. For it may happen to
+be one of those heavenly days indeed, when the whole Highlands seem to
+be reposing in the cloudless sky.</p>
+
+<p>But we were about to speak of the Glens. And some of them are best
+entered by such descents as these&mdash;perhaps at their very head&mdash;where all
+at once you are in another world, how still, how gloomy, how profound!
+An hour ago and the eye of the eagle had not wider command of earth,
+sea, and sky, than yours&mdash;almost blinded now by the superincumbent
+precipices that imprison you, and seem to shut you out from life.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Such the grim desolation, where Ben-Hun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Craig-na-Torr, by earthquake shatterings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disjoined with horrid chasms prerupt, enclose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What superstition calls the Glen of Ghosts."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Or you may enter some great glen from the foot, where it widens into
+vale or strath&mdash;and there are many such&mdash;and some into which you can
+sail up an arm of the sea. For a while it partakes of the cultivated
+beauty of the lowlands, and glen and vale seem almost one and the same;
+but gradually it undergoes a strange wild change of character, and in a
+few miles that similitude is lost. There is little or no arable ground
+here; but the pasture is rich on the unenclosed plain&mdash;and here and
+there are enclosures, near the few houses or huts standing, some of them
+in the middle of the glen, quite exposed, on eminences above reach of
+the floods&mdash;some more happily placed on the edge of the coppices, that
+sprinkle the steep sides of the hills, yet barely mountains. But
+mountains they soon become; and leaving behind you those few barren
+habitations, you see before you a wide black moor. Beautiful hitherto
+had been the river, for a river you had inclined to think it, long after
+it had narrowed into a stream, with many a waterfall, and in one chasm a
+cataract. But the torrent now has a wild mountain cry, and though there
+is still beauty on its banks, they are bare of all trees, now swelling
+into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> multitudes of low green knolls among the heather, now composed but
+of heather and rocks. Through the very middle of the black moor it
+flows, yet are its waters clear, for all is not moss, and it seems to
+wind its way where there is nothing to pollute its purity, or tame its
+lustre. 'Tis a solitary scene, but still sweet; the mountains are of
+great magnitude, but they are not precipitous; vast herds of cattle are
+browsing there, on heights from which fire has cleared the heather, and
+wide ranges of greensward upon the lofty gloom seem to lie in perpetual
+light.</p>
+
+<p>The moor is crossed, and you prepare to scale the mountain in front, for
+you imagine the torrent by your side flows from a tarn in yonder cove,
+and forms that series of waterfalls. You have been all along well
+pleased with the glen, and here at the head, though there is a want of
+cliffs of the highest class, you feel nevertheless that it has a
+character of grandeur. Looking westward, you are astounded to see them
+ranging away on either side of another reach of the glen, terrific in
+their height, but in their formation beautiful, for like the walls of
+some vast temple they stand, roofed with sky. Yet are they but as a
+portal or gateway of the glen. For entering in with awe, that deepens,
+as you advance, almost into dread, you behold, beyond, mountains that
+carry their cliffs up into the clouds, seamed with chasms, and hollowed
+out into coves, where night dwells visibly by the side of day; and still
+the glen seems winding on beneath a purple light, that almost looks like
+gloom; such vast forms and such prodigious colours, and such utter
+stillness, become oppressive to your very life, and you wish that some
+human being were by, to relieve, by his mere presence, the insupportable
+weight of such a solitude.</p>
+
+<p>But we should never have done were we to attempt to sketch, however
+slightly, the character of all the different kinds of glens. Some are
+sublime in their prodigious depth and vast extent, and would be felt to
+be so, even were the mountains that enclose them of no great majesty;
+but these are all of the highest order, and sometimes are seen from
+below to the very cairns on their summits. Now we walk along a reach,
+between astonishing ranges of cliffs, among large heaps of rocks&mdash;not a
+tree&mdash;scarcely a shrub&mdash;no herbage&mdash;the very heather blasted&mdash;all
+lifelessness and desolation. The glen gradually grows less and less
+horrid, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> though its sides are seamed with clefts and chasms, in the
+gloom there are places for the sunshine, and there is felt to be even
+beauty in the repose. Descends suddenly on either side a steep slope of
+hanging wood, and we find ourselves among verdant mounds, and knolls,
+and waterfalls. We come then into what seems of old to have been a
+forest. Here and there a stately pine survives, but the rest are all
+skeletons; and now the glen widens, and widens, yet ceases not to be
+profound, for several high mountains enclose a plain on which armies
+might encamp, and castellated clouds hang round the heights of the
+glorious amphitheatre, while the sky-roof is clear, and as if in its
+centre, the refulgent sun. 'Tis the plain called "The Meeting of the
+Glens." From the east and the west, the north and the south, they come
+like rivers into the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Other glens there are, as long, but not so profound, nor so grandly
+composed; yet they too conduct us nobly in among the mountains, and up
+their sides, and on even to their very summits. Such are the glens of
+Atholl, in the neighbourhood of Ben-y-gloe. From them the heather is not
+wholly banished, and the fire has left a green light without quenching
+the purple colour native to the hills. We think that we almost remember
+the time when those glens were in many places sprinkled with huts, and
+all animated with human life. Now they are solitary; and you may walk
+from sunrise till sunset without seeing a single soul. For a hundred
+thousand acres have there been changed into a forest, for sake of the
+pastime, indeed, which was dear of old to chieftains and kings. Vast
+herds of red-deer are there, for they herd in thousands&mdash;yet may you
+wander for days over the boundless waste, nor once be startled by one
+stag bounding by. Yet may a herd, a thousand strong, be drawn up, as in
+battle array, on the cliffs above your head. For they will long stand
+motionless, at gaze, when danger is in the wind&mdash;and then their antlers
+to unpractised eyes seem but boughs grotesque, or are invisible; and
+when all at once, with one accord, at signal from the stag, whom they
+obey, they wheel off towards the Corries, you think it but thunder, and
+look up to the clouds. Fortunate if you see such a sight once in your
+life. Once only have we seen it; and it was, of a sudden, all by
+ourselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ere yet the hunter's startling horn was heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the golden hills."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Almost within rifle-shot, the herd occupied a position, high up indeed,
+but below several ridges of rocks, running parallel for a long distance,
+with slopes between of sward and heather. Standing still, they seemed to
+extend about a quarter of a mile, and as with a loud clattering of hoofs
+and antlers, they took more open order, the line at least doubled its
+length, and the whole mountain-side seemed alive. They might not be
+going at full speed, but the pace was equal to that of any charge of
+cavalry; and once and again the flight passed before us, till it
+overcame the ridges, and then deploying round the shoulder of the
+mountain, disappeared, without dust or noise, into the blue light of
+another glen.</p>
+
+<p>We question, if there be in the Highlands any one glen comparable with
+Borrowdale in Cumberland. But there are several that approach it, in
+that combination of beauty and grandeur, which perhaps no other scene
+equals in all the world. The "Gorge" of that Dale exhibits the finest
+imaginable assemblage of rocks and rocky hills, all wildly wooded;
+beyond them, yet before we have entered into the Dale, the Pass widens,
+with noble cliffs on one side, and on the other a sylvan stream, not
+without its abysses; and we see before us some lovely hills, on which&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The smiling power of cultivation lies,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the ploughshare,
+copses and groves; and thus we are brought into the Dale itself, and
+soon have a vision of the whole&mdash;green and golden fields&mdash;for though
+most are in pasture, almost all seem arable&mdash;sprinkled with fine single
+trees&mdash;and lying in flats and levels, or swelling into mounds and
+knolls, and all diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages,
+with their out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand, and
+coloured like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to be
+distinguished&mdash;strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them very
+old; villages, apart from one another a mile&mdash;and there are three&mdash;yet
+on their sites, distant and different in much though they be, all
+associated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> the
+Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and even
+mountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensive
+aliens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains are
+not so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and the
+Passes over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are
+magnificent, and show precipices in which the Golden Eagle himself might
+rejoice.</p>
+
+<p>No&mdash;there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale.
+Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their beauty
+though less, almost as much affects us, because though contending, as it
+were, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it is not overcome, but
+prevails; and their beauty will increase with years. For while the rocks
+continue to frown aloft for ever, and the cliffs to range along the
+corries, unbroken by trees, which there the tempest will not suffer to
+rise, the woods and groves below, preserved from the axe, for sake of
+their needful shelter, shall become statelier, till the birch equal the
+pine; reclaimed from the waste, shall many a fresh field recline among
+the heather, tempering the gloom; and houses arise where now there are
+but huts, and every house have its garden:&mdash;such changes are now going
+on, and we have been glad to observe their progress, even though
+sometimes they had removed, or were removing, objects dear from old
+associations, and which, had it been possible, but it was not, we should
+have loved to see preserved.</p>
+
+<p>And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one often
+drops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds a night's
+lodging in the only hut. Yet they lie, sometimes, embosomed in their own
+green hills, among the most rugged mountains, and even among the wildest
+moors. They have no features by which you can describe them; it is their
+serenity that charms you, and their cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrong
+to call them glens, and they are but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell as
+deep, however small it may be; but these are not deep, for the hills
+slope down gently upon them, and leave room perhaps between for a little
+shallow loch. Often they have not any visible water at all, only a few
+springs and rivulets, and you wonder to see them so very green; there is
+no herbage like theirs; and to such spots of old, and sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> yet,
+the kine are led in summer, and there the lonely family live in their
+shieling till the harvest moon.</p>
+
+<p>We have all along used the same word, and called the places we have
+spoken of&mdash;glens. A fine observer&mdash;the Editor of Gilpin's Forest
+Scenery&mdash;has said: "The gradation from extreme width downwards should be
+thus arranged,&mdash;strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell, ravine, chasm.
+In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to find the large,
+majestic, gently flowing river, or even the deeper or smaller lake. In
+the glen, if the river be large, it flows more rapidly, and with greater
+variety. In the dell the stream is smaller. In the ravine, we find the
+mountain torrent and the waterfall. In the chasm, we find the roaring
+cataract, or the rill, bursting from its haunted fountain. The chasm
+discharges its small tribute into the ravine, while the ravine is
+tributary to the dell, and thence to the glen; and the glen to the
+dale."</p>
+
+<p>These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true to
+nature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them in
+describing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed confused
+by common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing about
+Straths&mdash;nor shall we try to describe one&mdash;but suggest to your own
+imagination&mdash;as specimens&mdash;Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn. The
+dominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain ranges
+that environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble straths they
+are, from source to sea.</p>
+
+<p>And now we are brought to speak of the Highland Rivers, Streams, and
+Torrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or thunder in your
+own ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what the waters must be in a
+land of such glens and such mountains. The chief rivers possess all the
+attributes essential to greatness&mdash;width&mdash;depth&mdash;clearness&mdash;rapidity&mdash;in
+one word power. And some of them have long courses&mdash;rising in the
+central heights, and winding round many a huge projection, against which
+in flood we have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts are
+not of long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by all
+the tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calm
+into a commotion&mdash;the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood they
+are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> a place of torment.
+Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is something
+to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them be
+united&mdash;and add thunder from the clouds&mdash;and we have heard in the
+Highlands all three in one&mdash;and the auditor need not care that he has
+never stood by Niagara. But when "though not o'erflowing full," a
+Highland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hear
+him rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calm
+and majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without any
+disturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace.</p>
+
+<p>Of rivers&mdash;comparatively speaking&mdash;of the second and third order&mdash;the
+Highlands are full&mdash;and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond
+compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of
+them&mdash;some tiny indeed, but others tall&mdash;are for ever dinning in the
+woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is the
+sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat's voice; clear
+amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and all
+other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the bark of the
+eagle&mdash;rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the
+"glimmer or the gloom" of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or the
+Tummel&mdash;for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he has
+shifted his eyrie, a few minutes' waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams, and
+some of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets; while in
+the greatest, the waters often flow on without a single tree, shadowed
+but by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they are larger than
+they seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of those profound
+hollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light in the sunshine, and
+in the gloom you see them not at all. We do not remember any very
+impressive glen, without a stream, that would not suffer some diminution
+of its power by our fancying it to have one; we may not be aware, at the
+time, that the conformation of the glen prevents its having any
+water-flow, but if we feel its character aright, that want is among the
+causes of our feeling; just as there are some scenes of which the beauty
+would not be so touching were there a single tree.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennial
+torrents, and "in number without number numberless" those that seldom
+live a week&mdash;perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you hear
+nothing, even when they are all allow; yet, there is music in the sight,
+and the thought of the "general dance and minstrelsy" enlivens the air,
+where no insect hums. As on your descent you come within hearing of the
+"liquid lapses," your heart leaps within you, so merrily do they sing;
+the first torrent-rill you meet with you take for your guide, and it
+leads you perhaps into some fairy dell, where it wantons awhile in
+waterfalls, and then gliding along a little dale of its own with "banks
+o' green bracken," finishes its short course in a stream&mdash;one of many
+that meet and mingle before the current takes the name of river, which
+in a mile or less becomes a small woodland lake. There are many such of
+rememberable beauty; living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings of
+expanded rivers, which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilies
+have ever a gentle motion there as if touched by a tide.</p>
+
+<p>It used, not very long ago, to be pretty generally believed by our
+southern brethren, that there were few trees in the Lowlands of
+Scotland, and none at all in the Highlands. They had an obscure notion
+that trees either could not or would not grow in such a soil and
+climate&mdash;cold and bleak enough at times and places, heaven knows&mdash;yet
+not altogether unproductive of diverse stately plants. They know better
+now; nor were we ever angry with their ignorance, which was nothing more
+than what was to be expected in persons living perpetually at home so
+far remote. They rejoice now to visit, and sojourn, and travel here
+among us, foreigners and a foreign land no more; and we rejoice to see
+and receive them not as strangers, but friends, and are proud to know
+they are well pleased to behold our habitation. They do us and our
+country justice now, and we have sometimes thought even more than
+justice; for they are lost in admiration of our cities&mdash;above all, of
+Edinburgh&mdash;and speak with such raptures of our scenery, that they would
+appear to prefer it even to their own. They are charmed with our bare
+green hills, with our shaggy brown mountains they are astonished, our
+lochs are their delight, our woods their wonder, and they hold up their
+hands and clap them at our cliffs. This is generous, for we are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>
+blind to the fact of England being the most beautiful land on all the
+earth. What are our woods to hers! To hers, what are our single trees!
+We have no such glorious standards to show as her indomitable and
+everlasting oaks. She is all over sylvan&mdash;Scotland but here and there;
+look on England from any point in any place, and you see she is rich,
+from almost any point in any place in Scotland, and you feel that
+comparatively she is poor. Yet our Lowlands have long been beautifying
+themselves into a resemblance of hers; as for our Highlands, though many
+changes have been going on there too, and most we believe for good, they
+are in their great features, and in their spirit unalterable by art,
+stamped and inspired by enduring Nature.</p>
+
+<p>We have spoken, slightly, of the sylvan scenery of the Highlands. In
+Perthshire, especially, it is of rare and extraordinary beauty, and we
+are always glad to hear of Englishmen travelling up the Tay and the
+Earn. We desire that eyes familiar with all that is umbrageous should
+receive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at Duneira and
+Dunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they proceed towards
+Blair Atholl. In that famous Pass, they will feel the power possessed by
+the sweet wild monotony of the universal birch woods&mdash;broken but by grey
+crags in every shape&mdash;grotesque, fantastical, majestic, magnificent, and
+sublime&mdash;on the many-ridged mountains, that are loth to lose the green
+light of their beloved forests, retain it as long as they can, and on
+the masses of living lustre seem to look down with pride from their
+skies.</p>
+
+<p>An English forest, meaning thereby any one wide continuous scene of all
+kinds of old English trees, with glades of pasture, and it may be of
+heath between, with dells dipping down into the gloom, and hillocks
+undulating in the light&mdash;ravines and chasms too, rills, and rivulets,
+and a haunted stream, and not without some melancholy old ruins, and
+here and there a cheerful cottage that feels not the touch of time&mdash;such
+a forest there is not, and hardly can be imagined to be in Scotland. But
+in the Highlands, there once were, and are still other forests of quite
+a different character, and of equal grandeur. In his "Forest Scenery,"
+Gilpin shows that he understood it well; all the knowledge, which as a
+stranger, almost of necessity he wanted, Lauder has supplied in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>
+annotations; and the book should now be in the hands of every one who
+cares about the woods. "The English Forest," says Gilpin, "is commonly
+composed of woodland views, interspersed with extensive heaths and
+lawns. Its trees are oak and beech, whose lively green corresponds
+better than the gloomy pine with the nature of the scene, which seldom
+assumes the dignity of a mountain one, but generally exhibits a cheerful
+landscape. It aspires, indeed, to grandeur; but its grandeur does not
+depend, like that of the Scottish forest, on the sublimity of the
+objects, but on the vastness of the whole&mdash;the extent of its woods and
+the wideness of its plains. In its inhabitants also the English forest
+differs from the Scottish; instead of the stag and the roebuck, it is
+frequented by cattle and fallow-deer, and exchanges the scream of the
+eagle and the falcon for the crowing of pheasants, and the melody of the
+nightingale. The Scottish forest, no doubt, is the sublimer scene, and
+speaks to the imagination in a loftier language than the English forest
+can reach. The latter, indeed, often rouses the imagination, but seldom
+in so great a degree, being generally content with captivating the eye.
+The scenery, too, of the Scottish forest is better calculated to last
+through ages than that of the English. The woods of both are almost
+destroyed. But while the English forest hath lost all its beauty with
+its oaks, and becomes only a desolate waste, the rocks and the
+mountains, the lakes and the torrents of the Scottish forest make it
+still an interesting scene."</p>
+
+<p>The Tree of the Highlands is the Pine. There are Scotch firs, indeed,
+well worth looking at, in the Lowlands, and in England, but to learn
+their true character you must see them in the glen, among rooks, by the
+river-side and on the mountain. "We for our parts," says Lauder very
+finely, "confess that when we have seen it towering in full majesty in
+the midst of some appropriate Highland scene, and sending its limbs
+abroad with all the unrestrained freedom of a hardy mountaineer, as if
+it claimed dominion over the savage region round it, we have looked upon
+it as a very sublime object. People who have not seen it in its native
+climate and soil, and who judge of it from the wretched abortions which
+are swaddled and suffocated in English plantations, among dark, heavy,
+and eternally wet clays, may well call it a wretched tree; but when its
+foot is among its own Highland heather, and when it stands freely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> in
+its native knoll of dry gravel, or thinly covered rock, over which its
+roots wander afar in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall,
+furrowed, and often gracefully sweeping red and grey trunk, of enormous
+circumference, rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy, then would the
+greatest sceptic on this point be compelled to prostrate his mind before
+it with a veneration which perhaps was never before excited in him by
+any other tree." The colour of the pine has been objected to as
+murky&mdash;and murky it often is, or seems to be; and so then is the colour
+of the heather, and of the river, and of the loch, and of the sky itself
+thunder-laden, and murkiest of all are the clouds. But a stream of
+sunshine is let loose, and the gloom is confounded with glory; over all
+that night-like reign the jocund day goes dancing, and the forest revels
+in green or in golden light. Thousands and tens of thousands of pines
+are there, and as you gaze upon the whole mighty array, you fear, lest
+it might break the spell, to fix your gaze on any one single tree. But
+there are trees there that will force you to look on themselves alone,
+and they grow before your eyes into the kings of the forest. Straight
+stand their stems in the sunshine, and you feel that as straight have
+they stood in the storm. As yet you look not up, for your heart is awed,
+and you see but the stately columns reddening away into the gloom. But
+all the while you feel the power of the umbrage aloft, and when
+thitherwards you lift your eyes, what a roof to such a cathedral! A cone
+drops at your feet&mdash;nor other sound nor other stir&mdash;but afar off you
+think you hear a cataract. Inaudible your footsteps on the soft yellow
+floor, composed of the autumnal sheddings of countless years. Then it is
+true that you can indeed hear the beating of your own heart; you fear,
+but know not what you fear; and being the only living creature there,
+you are impressed with a thought of death. But soon to that severe
+silence you are more than reconciled; the solitude, without ceasing to
+be sublime, is felt to be solemn and not awful, and ere long, utter as
+it is, serene. Seen from afar, the forest was one black mass; but as you
+advance, it opens up into spacious glades, beautiful as gardens, with
+appropriate trees of gentler tribes, and ground-flowering in the sun.
+But there is no murmur of bee&mdash;no song of bird. In the air a thin
+whisper of insects&mdash;intermittent&mdash;and wafted quite away by a breath. For
+we are now in the very centre of the forest, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> even the cushat haunts
+not here. Hither the red-deer may come&mdash;but not now&mdash;for at this season
+they love the hill. To such places the stricken stag might steal to lie
+down and die.</p>
+
+<p>And thus for hours may you be lost in the forest, nor all the while have
+wasted one thought on the outer-world, till with no other warning but an
+uncertain glimmer and a strange noise, you all at once issue forth into
+the open day, and are standing on the brink of a precipice above a
+flood. It comes tumbling down with a succession of falls, in a mile-long
+course, right opposite your stance&mdash;rocks, cliffs, and trees, all the
+way up on either side, majestically retiring back to afford ample
+channel, and showing an unobstructed vista, closed up by the purple
+mountain, that seems to send forth the river from a cavern in its
+breast. 'Tis the Glen of Pines. Nor ash nor oak is suffered to intrude
+on their dominion. Since the earthquake first shattered it out, this
+great chasm, with all its chasms, has been held by one race of trees. No
+other seed could there spring to life; for from the rocks has all soil,
+ages ago, been washed and swept by the tempests. But there they stand
+with glossy boles, spreading arms, and glittering crest; and those two
+by themselves on the summit, known all over Badenoch as "the
+Giants"&mdash;their "statures reach the sky."</p>
+
+<p>We have been indulging in a dream of old. Before our day the immemorial
+gloom of Glenmore had perished, and it ceased to be a forest. But there
+bordered on it another region of night or twilight, and in its vast
+depths we first felt the sublimity of lonesome fear. Rothiemurchus! The
+very word blackens before our eyes with necromantic characters&mdash;again we
+plunge into its gulfs desirous of what we dread&mdash;again, "in pleasure
+high and turbulent," we climb the cliffs of Cairngorm.</p>
+
+<p>Would you wish to know what is now the look of Glenmore? One now dead
+and gone&mdash;a man of wayward temper, but of genius&mdash;shall tell you&mdash;and
+think not the picture exaggerated&mdash;for you would not, if you were
+<i>there</i>. "It is the wreck of the ancient forest which arrests all the
+attention, and which renders Glenmore a melancholy, more than a
+melancholy, a terrific spectacle. Trees of enormous height, which have
+escaped alike the axe and the tempest, are still standing, stripped by
+the winds, even of the bark, and, like gigantic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> skeletons, throwing far
+and wide their white and bleached bones to the storms and rains of
+heaven; while others, broken by the violence of the gales, lift up their
+split and fractured trunks in a thousand shapes of resistance and of
+destruction, or still display some knotted and tortuous branches,
+stretched out, in sturdy and fantastic forms of defiance, to the
+whirlwind and the winter. Noble trunks also, which had long resisted,
+but resisted in vain, strew the ground; some lying on the declivity
+where they have fallen, others still adhering to the precipice where
+they were rooted, many upturned, with their twisted and entangled roots
+high in air; while not a few astonish us by the space which they cover,
+and by dimensions which we could not otherwise have estimated. It is one
+wide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over the
+valley. The sight even of a felled tree is painful; still more is that
+of the fallen forest, with all its green branches on the ground,
+withering, silent, and at rest, where once they glittered in the dew and
+the sun, and trembled in the breeze. Yet this is but an image of
+vegetable death. It is familiar, and the impression passes away. It is
+the naked skeleton bleaching in the winds, the gigantic bones of the
+forest still erect, the speaking records of former life, and of strength
+still unsubdued, vigorous even in death, which renders Glenmore one
+enormous charnel-house."</p>
+
+<p>What happened of old to the aboriginal Forests of Scotland, that long
+before these later destructions they had almost all perished, leaving,
+to bear witness what they were, such survivors? They were chiefly
+destroyed by fire. What power could extinguish chance-kindled
+conflagrations, when sailing before the wind? And no doubt fire was set
+to clear the country at once of Scotch firs, wolves, wild-boars, and
+outlaws. Tradition yet tells of such burnings; and, if we mistake not,
+the pines found in the Scottish mosses, the logs and the stocks, all
+show that they were destroyed by Vulcan, though Neptune buried them in
+the quagmires. Storms no doubt often levelled them by thousands; but had
+millions so fallen they had never been missed, and one Element
+only&mdash;which has been often fearfully commissioned&mdash;could achieve the
+work. In our own day the axe has indeed done wonders&mdash;and sixteen square
+miles of the Forest of Rothiemurchus "went to the ground." John of
+Ghent, Gilpin tells us, to avenge an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> inroad, set twenty-four thousand
+axes at work in the Caledonian Forest.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Scotland has perhaps sufficient forests at this day. For more has
+been planted than cut down; Glenmore will soon be populous as ever with
+self-sown pines, and Rothiemurchus may revive; the shades are yet deep
+of Loch Arkaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, Strathglass, Glen-Strathfarrar,
+and Loch-Shiel; deeper still on the Findhorn&mdash;and deepest of all on the
+Dee, rejoicing in the magnificent pine-woods of Invercauld and Braemar.</p>
+
+<p>We feel that we have spoken feebly of our Highland forests. Some,
+perhaps, who have never been off the high-roads, may accuse us of
+exaggeration too; but they contain wondrous beauties of which we have
+said not a word; and no imagination can conceive what they may be in
+another hundred years. But, apparently far apart from the forests,
+though still belonging to them, for they hold in fancy by the tenure of
+the olden time, how many woods, and groves, and sprinklings of fair
+trees, rise up during a day's journey, in almost every region of the
+North! And among them all, it may be, scarcely a pine. For the oak, and
+the ash, and the elm, are also all native trees; nowhere else does the
+rowan flush with more dazzling lustre; in spring, the alder with its
+vivid green stands well beside the birk&mdash;the yew was not neglected of
+yore, though the bow of the Celt was weak to that of the Saxon; and the
+holly, in winter emulating the brightness of the pine, flourished, and
+still flourishes on many a mountain-side. There is sufficient sylvan
+scenery for beauty in a land of mountains. More may be needed for
+shelter&mdash;but let the young plants and seedlings have time to grow&mdash;and
+as for the old trees, may they live for ever! Too many millions of
+larches are perhaps growing now behind the Tay and the Tilt; yet why
+should the hills of Perthshire be thought to be disfigured by what
+ennobles the Alps and the Apennines?</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto we have hardly said a word about Lochs, and have been doing our
+best to forget them, while imagining scenes that were chiefly
+characterised by other great features of Highland Landscape. A country
+thus constituted, and with such an aspect, even if we could suppose it
+without lochs, would still be a glorious region; but its lochs are
+indeed its greatest glory: by them its glens, its mountains, and its
+woods,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> are all illumined, and its rivers made to sing aloud for joy. In
+the pure element, overflowing so many spacious vales and glens profound,
+the great and stern objects of nature look even more sublime or more
+beautiful in their reflected shadows, which appear in that stillness to
+belong rather to heaven than earth. Or the evanescence of all that
+imagery at a breath may touch 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 they are
+sometimes seen to assume on a still summer day, always inspire some such
+faint feeling as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all
+things, when the setting sun is seen to sink beneath the mountain, and
+all its golden pomp at the same instant to evanish from the lake.</p>
+
+<p>The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of the
+Highlands as the region of Lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch Lomond.
+A great poet has said that, "in Scotland, the proportion of diffused
+water is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for instance, and in
+most of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds magnificent, and flatters
+the imagination, to hear at a distance of masses of water, so many
+leagues in length and miles in width; and such ample room may be
+delightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding with a lively breeze amid
+the rapidly-shifting scenery. But who ever travelled along the banks of
+Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling
+that a speedier termination of the long vista of blank water would be
+acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows,
+trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side? In fact,
+a notion of grandeur, as connected with magnitude, has seduced persons
+of taste into a general mistake upon this subject. It is much more
+desirable, for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerous
+and small or middle-sized, than large, not only for communication by
+walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar
+appearances. To illustrate this by one instance: how pleasing is it to
+have a ready and frequent opportunity of watching, at the outlet of a
+lake, the stream, pushing its way among the rocks, in lively contrast
+with the stillness from which it has escaped! and how amusing to compare
+its noisy and turbulent motions with the gentle playfulness of the
+breezes that may be starting up, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> wandering here and there, over the
+faintly-rippled surface of the broad water! I may add, as a general
+remark, that in lakes of great width the shores cannot be distinctly
+seen at the same time, and therefore contribute little to mutual
+illustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of sight
+of each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes, then
+unfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object&mdash;he has the
+blankness of a sea-prospect without the grandeur and accompanying sense
+of power."</p>
+
+<p>We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on light
+grounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt and
+expressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is not
+applicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise this passage
+sentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a captious, but a
+reverent spirit, as we have ever done with the works of this illustrious
+man. He has studied nature more widely and profoundly than we have; but
+it is out of our power to look on Loch Lomond without a feeling of
+perfection. The "diffusion of water" is indeed great; but in what a
+world it floats! At first sight of it, how our soul expands! The sudden
+revelation of such majestic beauty, wide as it is and extending afar,
+inspires us with a power of comprehending it all. Sea-like indeed it
+is&mdash;a Mediterranean Sea&mdash;enclosed with lofty hills and as lofty
+mountains&mdash;and these indeed are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwell
+on the feeling which all must have experienced on the first sight of
+such a vision&mdash;the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifest
+that the spacious "diffusion of water" more than conspires with the
+other components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to it
+belongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright, as
+its own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and so
+deeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scene
+before us depend less on the expanse of the "diffusion of water." The
+islands, that before had lain we knew not how&mdash;or we had only felt that
+they were all most lovely&mdash;begin to show themselves in the order of
+their relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on the
+largest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or two of
+the least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted rock; and
+many as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid plain, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
+it is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude, as masses and
+sprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of the
+cerulean vault. And then the long promontories&mdash;stretching out from
+opposite mainlands, and enclosing bays that in themselves are
+lakes&mdash;they too magnify the empire of water; for long as they are, they
+seem so only as our eye attends them with their cliffs and woods from
+the retiring shores, and far distant are their shadows from the central
+light. Then what shores! On one side, where the lake is widest,
+low-lying they seem, and therefore lovelier&mdash;undulating with fields and
+groves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered, into lines of hills
+that gradually soften away into another land. On the other side, sloping
+back, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in their bareness, for they are
+green as emerald; others, scarcely more beautiful, studded with fair
+trees&mdash;some altogether woods. They soon form into mountains&mdash;and the
+mountains become more and more majestical, yet beauty never deserts
+them, and her spirit continues to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Far
+off as they are, Benlomond and Benvorlich are seen to be giants;
+magnificent is their retinue, but they two are supreme, each in his own
+dominion; and clear as the day is here, they are diadem'd with clouds.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be that the "proportion of diffused water is here too great;"
+and is it then true that no one "ever travelled along the banks of Loch
+Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling that
+a speedier termination to the long vista of blank water would be
+acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows,
+trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side?" We have
+travelled along them in all weathers and never felt such a wish. For
+there they all are&mdash;all but the "sparkling stream to run by our side,"
+and we see not how that well could be in nature. "Streams that sparkle
+as they run," cross our path on their own; and brighter never issued
+from the woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss&mdash;ay, and
+much farther&mdash;the variations of the foreground are incessant; "had it no
+other beauties," it has been truly said, "but those of its shores, it
+would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the
+bright-green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that sometimes
+skirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its gentle
+billows murmur,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky promontories
+rising from the dark water, rich in wildflowers and ferns, and tangled
+with wild roses and honeysuckles, or its retired bays where the waves
+dash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them, an
+inverted landscape." The islands are for ever arranging themselves into
+new forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem to
+be, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is a
+pleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances the
+delight of admiration. And alongside, or behind us, all the while, are
+the sylvan mountains, "laden with beauty;" and ever and anon open glens
+widen down upon us from chasms; or forest-glades lead our hearts away
+into the inner gloom&mdash;perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looks
+not as if it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear by
+nature, a woodsman's hut.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way between Luss and Tarbet the water narrows, but it is still
+wide; the new road, we believe, winds round the point of Firkin, the old
+road boldly scaled the height, as all old roads loved to do; ascend it,
+and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell.
+Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to
+belong to them&mdash;to be subjected to their will&mdash;and that is capricious;
+for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and
+sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their
+biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences"
+which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigious
+mountains; for we cannot look on them without feeling that they reign
+over the solitude they compose; the lights and shadows flung by the sun
+and the clouds imagination assuredly regards as put forth by the vast
+objects which they colour; and we are inclined to think some such belief
+is essential in the profound awe, often amounting to dread, with which
+we are inspired by the presences of mere material forms. But be this as
+it may, the upper portion of Loch Lomond is felt by all to be most
+sublime. Near the head, all the manifold impressions of the beautiful
+which for hours our mind had been receiving, begin to fade; if some
+gloomy change has taken place in the air, there is a total obliteration,
+and the mighty scene before us is felt to possess not the hour merely,
+but the day. Yet should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> sunshine come, and abide a while, beauty will
+glimpse upon us even here, for green pastures will smile vividly high up
+among the rocks; the sylvan spirit is serene the moment it is touched
+with light, and here there is not only many a fair tree by the
+water-side, but yon old oak-wood will look joyful on the mountain, and
+the gloom become glimmer in the profound abyss.</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth says that "it must be more desirable, for the purposes of
+pleasure, that lakes should be numerous, and small or middle-sized, than
+large, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for variety,
+and for recurrence of similar appearances." The Highlands have them of
+all sizes&mdash;and that surely is best. But here is one which, it has been
+truly said, is not only "incomparable in its beauty as in its
+dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent and
+splendour, but unites in itself every style of scenery which is found in
+the other lakes of the Highlands." He who has studied, and understood,
+and felt all Loch Lomond, will be prepared at once to enjoy any other
+fine lake he looks on; nor will he admire nor love it the less, though
+its chief character should consist in what forms but one part of that of
+the Wonder in which all kinds of beauty and sublimity are combined.</p>
+
+<p>We feel that it would be idle, and worse than idle, to describe any
+number of the Highland lochs, for so many of the finest have been seen
+by so many eyes that few persons probably will ever read these pages to
+whom such descriptions would be, at the best, more than shadowings of
+scenery that their own imaginations can more vividly re-create. There
+are other reasons for not saying a single word about some of the most
+beautiful; for genius has pictured and peopled them and the surrounding
+regions in colours that will never fade. Besides, in the volumes to
+which these "Remarks" are a preface&mdash;contributed with pleasure, somewhat
+impaired indeed by the consciousness of their many defects and
+imperfections&mdash;views of them all are submitted to the eye; and it is not
+to be thought that we could by words add to the effect of the works of
+such artists. These objections do not apply to what we have written
+respecting the character of the Scenery of the Highlands, apart, as far
+as that may be, from their lochs; and it may have in some measure
+illustrated them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> also, if it has at all truly characterised the
+mountains, the glens, the rivers, the forests, and the woods.</p>
+
+<p>We may be allowed, however, to say, that there cannot be a greater
+mistake than to think, as many, we believe, do who have only heard of
+the Highland Lochs, that, with the exception of those famous for their
+beauty as well as their grandeur, beauty is not only not the quality by
+which they are distinguished, but that it is rarely found in them at
+all. There are few, possessing any very marked character, in which
+beauty is not either an ingredient or an accompaniment; and there are
+many "beautiful exceedingly," which, lying out of the way even of
+somewhat adventurous travellers, or very remote, are known, if even by
+that, only by name. It does not, indeed, require much, in some
+situations, to give a very touching beauty to water. A few trees, a few
+knolls, a few tufted rocks, will do it, where all around and above is
+stern or sterile; and how strong may be the gentle charm, if the torrent
+that feeds the little loch chance to flow into it from a lucid pool
+formed by a waterfall, and to flow out of it in a rivulet that enlivens
+the dark heather with a vale of verdure over which a stag might
+bound&mdash;and more especially if there be two or three huts in which it is
+perceived there is human life! We believe we slightly touched before on
+such scenes; but any little repetition will be excused for the sake of a
+very picturesque passage, which we have much pleasure in quoting from
+the very valuable "Guide to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland," by
+the brothers Anderson. We well remember walking into the scene here so
+well painted, many long years ago, and have indeed, somewhere or other,
+described it. The Fall of Foyers is the most magnificent cataract, out
+of all sight and hearing, in Britain. The din is quite loud enough in
+ordinary weather&mdash;and it is only in ordinary weather that you can
+approach the place from which you have a full view of all its grandeur.
+When the Fall is in flood&mdash;to say nothing of being drenched to the
+skin&mdash;you are so blinded by the sharp spray-smoke, and so deafened by
+the dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that your
+condition is far from enviable, as you cling, "lonely lover of nature,"
+to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid gulf. Nor in
+former times was there any likelihood of your being comforted by the
+accommoda<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>tions of the General's Hut. In ordinary Highland
+weather&mdash;meaning thereby weather neither very wet nor very dry&mdash;it is
+worth walking a thousand miles for one hour to behold the Fall of
+Foyers. The spacious cavity is enclosed by "complicated cliffs and
+perpendicular precipices" of immense height, and though for a while it
+wears to the eye a savage aspect, yet beauty fears not to dwell even
+there, and the horror is softened by what appears to be masses of tall
+shrubs, or single shrubs almost like trees. And they are trees, which on
+the level plain would look even stately; but as they ascend ledge above
+ledge the walls of that awful chasm, it takes the eye time to see them
+as they really are, while on our first discernment of their character,
+serenely standing among the tumult, they are felt on such sites to be
+sublime.</p>
+
+<p>"Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik," says the Book we were
+about to quote, "a space of three or four miles, the river Foyers flows
+through a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch. They present
+various quiet glades and open spaces, where little patches of cultivated
+ground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose surface is pleasingly
+diversified by nodding trees, bare rocks, empurpled heath, and bracken
+bearing herbage." It was the excessive loveliness of some of the scenery
+there that suggested to us the thought of going to look what kind of a
+stream the Foyers was above the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of a
+summer evening, found it</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Was even the gentlest of all gentle things."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But here is the promised description of it. "Before pursuing our way
+westward, we would wish to direct the traveller's attention to a
+sequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This is a
+secluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its natural
+attractions&mdash;and these are many&mdash;is distinguished as one of the few
+places where the old practice of resorting to the 'shieling' for summer
+grazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on all sides by
+steep mountains; but at the north end there is a small lake, about a
+mile and a half in length, and from one-third to half a mile in breadth.
+The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a perfectly level tract, of
+the same width with the lake, and about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> two miles and a half in length,
+covered with the richest herbage, and traversed by a small meandering
+river flowing through it into the lake. The surface of this flat is
+bedecked with the little huts or bothies which afford temporary
+accommodation to the herdsmen and others in charge of the cattle. This
+portion of the glen is bordered on the west by continuous hills rising
+abruptly in a uniformly steep acclivity, and passing above into a
+perpendicular range of precipices, the whole covered with a scanty
+verdure sprouted with heath. At a bend of the lake near its middle,
+where it inclines from a northernly course towards the west, a
+magnificent rounded precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may be
+about 1200 feet in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a few
+narrow and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting a
+perfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the rest
+of the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side, clothed
+with birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded over with the
+deeper-tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain, and the adjoining
+portion of the lake, are lined by mountains corresponding in height with
+those opposed to them; but their lower extremities are, to a
+considerable extent, strewed with broken fragments of rock, to which
+succeeds an uninterrupted zone of birch and alder, which is again
+overtopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An elevated terrace occupies the
+remainder of this side of the lake; above the wooded face of which is
+seen a sloping expanse of mingled heath and herbage. About half a mile
+from the south end, Mr Fraser of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected a
+shooting-lodge; viewed from which, or from either end, or from the top
+of the platform on the north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcely
+picture a more attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by this
+sequestered vale, to which Dr Johnson's description of the 'Happy
+Valley' not inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of several
+hundreds, are generally kept here from the beginning of June to the
+middle of August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The river
+sweeps to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-clad
+hills, which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn which
+immediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a rustic
+bridge, from which a single footpath con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>ducts across the brow of the
+hill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles distant."</p>
+
+<p>There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost as
+little known (one view of it is given in the book), equal to anything in
+the Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in the Great
+Glen&mdash;Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since, having been
+induced to do so by a passage in John Stoddart's "Remarks on the Local
+Scenery and Manners of Scotland;" and it was then a very noble oak and
+pine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept steadily at it; and a
+great change was wrought; but it is still a grand scene, with a larger
+infusion of beauty than it possessed of old. The scenery of the valley
+separating it from Loch Lochy is very similar to that of the Trossachs;
+through it there are two approaches to the loch, and the <i>Mile-Dubh</i>, or
+the Dark Mile, according to our feeling, is more impressive than any
+part of the approach to Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are very
+solemn, and yet very sweet; for though many old pines and oaks and ashes
+are there, and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now on
+many places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocks
+below, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the young
+are intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their protection,
+without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch, more or less
+sylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some magnificent
+remains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep like some great
+river. There may be more, but we remember but one island&mdash;not large, but
+wooded as it should be&mdash;the burying-place of the family of Lochiel. What
+rest! It is a long journey from Loch Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig&mdash;and by the
+silent waters we walked or sat all a summer's day. There was nothing
+like a road that we observed, but the shores are easily travelled, and
+there it is you may be almost sure of seeing some red-deer. They are no
+better worth looking at from a window than Fallow&mdash;no offence to Fallow,
+who are fine creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all;
+but on the shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a human
+habitation within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seen
+to be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here and
+there some spot that seems culti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>vatable, but probably is found not to
+be so after some laborious years&mdash;there they are at home; and you, if
+young, looking on them, feel at home too, and go bounding, like one of
+themselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable steep. Roe, too,
+frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be started; grouse spring
+up before you oftener than you might expect in a deer forest; but, to be
+sure, it is a rough and shaggy one, though lovelier lines of verdure
+never lay in the sunshine than we think we see now lying for miles along
+the margin of that loch. The numerous mountains towards the head of the
+loch are very lofty, and glens diverge in grand style into opposite and
+distant regions. Glen Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on the
+loch, and leads to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart&mdash;Glen P&aelig;an to
+Oben-a-Cave on Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and Loch
+Shiel; and Glen Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice!
+We chose Glen Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that took
+us down to Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and in
+grandeur not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day's
+journey, the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the great
+objects of nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, the
+spirit of the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest.
+It is surpassing fair&mdash;and having lain all night long on its gentle
+banks, sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it since
+but as the Land of Dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Which is the dreariest, most desolate, and dismal of the Highland Lochs?
+We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness, with
+which perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may travel
+for days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We speak of the
+regions comprehended between the Forest of Atholl and Ben-nevis, the
+Moor of Rannoch and Glen Spean. There are many lochs&mdash;and Loch Ericht is
+their griesly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds, hunters, fowlers, anglers,
+traverse its borders, but few have been far in the interior, and we
+never knew anybody who had crossed it from south to north, from east to
+west. We have ourselves seen more of it, perhaps, than any other
+Lowlander; and had traversed many of its vast glens and moors, before we
+found our way to the southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into the
+western gloom of Ben Auler<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hours
+dismal but not dangerous precipices that opened out into what might
+almost be called passes&mdash;but we had frequently to go back, for they were
+blind&mdash;contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains that
+rose from the water a few miles down the loch. All was vast, shapeless,
+savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of those days that
+keep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder; such as one conceives
+of on the eve of an earthquake. At first the sight was dreadful, but
+there was no reason for dread; imagination remains not longer than she
+chooses the slave of her own eyes, and we soon began to enjoy the gloom,
+and to feel how congenial it was in nature with the character of all
+those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in
+solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And
+they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great
+distance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, covering their
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>Loch Ericht is many miles long&mdash;nearly twenty; but there is a loch among
+the Grampians not more than two miles round, if so much, which is
+sublimer far&mdash;Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once, a short
+way down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some two thousand
+feet below you, itself being as many above the level of the sea. But to
+come upon it so as to feel best its transcendent grandeur, you should
+approach it up Glenaven&mdash;and from as far down as Inch-Rouran, which is
+about half-way between Loch Aven and Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran and
+Tomantoul the glen is wild, but it is inhabited; above that house there
+is but one other; and for about a dozen miles&mdash;we have heard it called
+far more&mdash;there is utter solitude. But never was there a solitude at
+once so wild, so solemn, so serene, so sweet! The glen is narrow; but on
+one side there are openings into several wider glens, that show you
+mighty coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are without
+a break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy, from
+dark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of pastoral or of
+forest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong to the bases of
+Ben-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants are not seen&mdash;but it
+sublimes the long glen to know that it belongs to their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> dominion, and
+that it is leading us on to an elevation that ere long will be on a
+level with the roots of their topmost cliffs. The Aven is so clear&mdash;on
+account of the nature of its channel&mdash;that you see the fishes hanging in
+every pool; and 'tis not possible to imagine how beautiful in such
+transparencies are the reflections of its green ferny banks. For miles
+they are composed of knolls, seldom interspersed with rocks, and there
+cease to be any trees. But ever and anon we walk for a while on a level
+floor, and the voice of the stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have been
+noticed on the hill, but not many, and red and black cattle grazing on
+the lower pastures; but they disappear, and we find ourselves all at
+once in a desert. So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its black
+heather on that greenest grass; but 'tis such a desert as the red-deer
+love. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to
+be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till we
+again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in the
+glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains,
+for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, forming
+themselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; and
+now we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we know
+not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel that
+sublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur we
+feel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker.</p>
+
+<p>This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from that
+enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholy
+moors&mdash;huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps them
+herbless&mdash;disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any
+sign of life&mdash;cliffs that frown back the sunshine&mdash;and mountains, as if
+they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere
+imagination&mdash;or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a
+desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances of
+outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith,
+the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to make
+them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region as
+happy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as the
+soul has chosen to make sublime&mdash;the colouring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> of the mountains all
+such, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region,
+thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to be
+indeed one of the very noblest in nature.</p>
+
+<p>We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on the
+Character of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that the
+sketches we have drawn of its component qualities&mdash;occasionally filled
+up with some details&mdash;must be very imperfect indeed without
+comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that
+stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do not
+think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we have
+sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds,
+and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet they
+contain such an endless variety of all the fairest and greatest objects
+of nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our powers to give
+anything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the grandeur that for
+ever kept unfolding themselves around our summer voyagings in calm or
+storm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth part of the wonders of
+"the marine" between the Mull of Cantire and Cape Wrath? He may have
+gathered many an extensive shore&mdash;threaded many a mazy multitude of
+isles&mdash;sailed up many a spacious bay&mdash;and cast anchor at the head of
+many a haven land-locked so as no more to seem to belong to the sea&mdash;yet
+other voyagers shall speak to him of innumerable sights which he has
+never witnessed; and they who are most conversant with those coasts,
+best know how much they have left and must leave for ever unexplored.</p>
+
+<p>Look now only at the Linnhe Loch&mdash;how it gladdens Argyll! Without it and
+the Sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morvern! Eclipsed the
+splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the waves
+roll in light, you will see how the mountains are beautified by the sea.
+There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to no
+land-loch&mdash;only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image of
+ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all now
+it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich and
+adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the Amethyst bound away "at
+her own sweet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> will," accordant with yours, till she reach the distant
+and long-desired loch.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes in among these mountains from the main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan's rocky cape<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Ardmore's shingly beach of hissing spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while his thunders bid the sound of Mull<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hill-shelter'd from the wrath that foams along<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mad mid-channel,&mdash;All as quiet they<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As little separate worlds of summer dreams,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by storm-loving birds attended up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mountain-hollow, white in their career<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of craggy Carnich, and green Oronsay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drench'd in that sea-horn shower o'er tree-tops driven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ivied stones of what was once a tower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now hardly known from rocks&mdash;and gathering might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the long reach between Dungallan caves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And point of Arderinis ever fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into another ampler inland sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And potent is she, though so meek the Eve,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Insensibly into a solemn calm,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all along that ancient burial-ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its own eternal quiet to the waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Restless no more, into a perfect peace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lulling and lull'd at last, while drop the airs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away as they were dead, the first-risen star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beholds that lovely Archipelago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All shadow'd there as in a spiritual world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where time's mutations shall come never more!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe their
+greatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which nature has
+lavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but Loch Leven is
+scarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is matchless
+magnificence above Loch Etive. All round about Ballahulish and Inverco
+the scenery of Loch Leven is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> the sweetest ever seen overshadowed by
+such mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter its lustre; in all
+weathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often while tip among the rocks
+the tall trees are tossing in the storm, the heart of the woods beneath
+is calm, and the vivid fields they shelter look as if they still enjoyed
+the sun. Nor closes the beauty there, but even animates the entrance
+into that dreadful glen&mdash;Glencoe. All the way up its river, Loch Leven
+would be fair, were it only for her hanging woods. But though the glen
+narrows, it still continues broad, and there are green plains between
+her waters and the mountains, on which stately trees stand single, and
+there is ample room for groves. The returning tide tells us, should we
+forget it, that this is no inland loch, for it hurries away back to the
+sea, not turbulent, but fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is one
+of the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series of
+waterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immense
+vista; and all the way up to the furthest there are noble assemblages of
+rocks&mdash;nowhere any want of wood&mdash;and in places, trees that seem to have
+belonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to
+lead into another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way,
+past some small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on all
+sides, and descended on Loch Treag,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A loch whom there are none to praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And very few to love,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoral
+contentment and peace.</p>
+
+<p>Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen by
+almost all who have visited the Highlands&mdash;but very imperfectly; to know
+what it is, you must row or sail up it, for the banks on both sides are
+often richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are frequently well
+embayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently wide to allow you
+from its centre to command a view of many of the distant heights. But
+above Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For a couple of miles it is
+not wide, and it is so darkened by enormous shadows that it looks even
+less like a strait than a gulf&mdash;huge overhanging rocks on both sides
+ascending high, and yet felt to belong but to the bases of mountains
+that sloping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> far back have their summits among clouds of their own in
+another region of the sky. Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere else
+is there such lofty heather&mdash;it seems a wild sort of brushwood; tall
+trees flourish, single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and then
+an oak&mdash;and they are in their youth or their prime&mdash;and even the
+prodigious trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are not
+all dead, but shoot from their knotted rind symptoms of life
+inextinguishable by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge into
+the Upper Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains,
+all of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests.
+Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all&mdash;king at once of Loch
+Etive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off, is still a
+giant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with him the Black
+Mount and its dependents, so that they all seem to belong to this most
+magnificent of all Highland lochs. "I know not," says Macculloch, "that
+Loch Etive could bear an ornament without an infringement on that aspect
+of solitary vastness which it presents throughout. Nor is there one. The
+rocks and bays on the shore, which might elsewhere attract attention,
+are here swallowed up in the enormous dimensions of the surrounding
+mountains, and the wide and ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house,
+here fearfully solitary, situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visible
+when at the upper extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in a
+few places on the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were a
+humble mountain flower, by the universal magnitude around." This is
+finely felt and expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there is
+much of the beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, and
+bay, and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granite
+masses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; several
+houses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though that
+long hollow&mdash;half a day's journey&mdash;till you reach the wild road between
+Inveruran and King's House&mdash;lies in gloom, yet the hillsides are
+cheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and rock-broken,
+should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. But
+to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceases
+to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+solitary dwelling indeed&mdash;perhaps the loneliest house in all the
+Highlands&mdash;and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by the
+voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or three
+stems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture&mdash;but we
+have seen them and the deer-hounds glide over it, followed by other
+fearless feet, when far and wide the Forest of Dalness was echoing to
+the hunter's horn.</p>
+
+<p>We have now brought our Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands to a
+close, and would fain have said a few words on the character and life of
+the people; but are precluded from even touching on that most
+interesting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellers
+through those wonderful regions, can be so occupied with the
+contemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought to
+their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without such
+thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses,
+in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; but
+they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensive
+tracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods that
+for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life,
+yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable to the instructed
+eye almost everywhere, and in them often lies the spell that charms us,
+even while we think that we are wholly delivered up to the influence of
+"dead insensate things." None will visit the Highlands without having
+some knowledge of their history; and the changes that have long been
+taking place in the condition of the people will be affectingly
+recognised wherever they go, in spite even of what might have appeared
+the insuperable barriers of nature.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Time and Tide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have washed away, like weeds upon the sands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowds of the olden life's memorials;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And 'mid the mountains you as well might seek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the lone site of fancy's filmy dreams.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towers have decay'd and moulder'd from the cliffs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or their green age, or grey, has help'd to build<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New dwellings sending up their household smoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From treeless places once inhabited<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But by the secret sylvans. On the moors<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The pillar-stone, reared to perpetuate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fame of some great battle, or the power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of storied necromancer in the wild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the wide change on the heather-bloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By power more wondrous wrought than his, its name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has lost, or fallen itself has disappear'd;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No broken fragment suffer'd to impede<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The glancing ploughshare. All the ancient woods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are thinn'd and let in floods of daylight now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then dark and dern as when the Druids lived.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Narrow'd is now the red-deer's forest reign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The royal race of eagles is extinct.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But other changes than on moor and cliff<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have tamed the aspect of the wilderness;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The simple system of primeval life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Simple but stately, hath been broken down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clans are scatter'd, and the chieftain's power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is dead, or dying&mdash;but a name&mdash;though yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It sometimes stirs the desert; to the winds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tall plumes wave no more&mdash;the tartan green<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With fiery streaks among the heather-bells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now glows unfrequent; and the echoes mourn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The silence of the music that of old<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kept war-thoughts stern amid the calm of peace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet to far battle plains still Morven sends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her heroes, and still glittering in the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or blood-dimm'd, her dread line of bayonets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marches with loud shouts straight to victory.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A soften'd radiance now floats o'er her glens;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No rare sight now upon her sea-arm lochs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sail oft-veering up the solitude;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from afar the noise of life is brought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within the thunders of her cataracts.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These will flow on for ever; and the crests,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gold-tipt by rising and by setting suns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her old mountains inaccessible<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glance down their scorn for ever on the toils<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That load with harvests now the humbler hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now shorn of all their heather bloom, and green<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or yellow as the gleam of lowland fields.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bold hearts in broad bosoms still are there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Living and dying peacefully; the huts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abodes are still of high-soul'd poverty;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And underneath their lintels beauty stoops<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her silken-snooded head, when singing goes<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The maiden to her father at his work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the woods, or joins the scanty line<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of barley-reapers on their narrow ridge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In some small field among the pastoral braes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still fragments dim of ancient poetry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In melancholy music down the glens<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go floating; and from shieling roof'd with boughs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turf-wall'd, high up in some lonely place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where flocks of sheep are nibbling the sweet grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mid-summer, and browsing on the plants<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the cliff mosses a few goats are seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among their kids, you hear sweet melodies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attuned to some traditionary tale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By young wife sitting all alone, aware<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From shadow on the mountain horologe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the glad hour that brings her husband home<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the gloaming, from the far-off moor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the black cattle feed; there all alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She sits and sings, except that on her knees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleeps the sweet offspring of their faithful loves."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We love the people too well to praise them&mdash;we have had too heartfelt
+experience of their virtues. In castle, hall, house, manse, hut, hovel,
+shieling&mdash;on mountain and moor, we have known, without having to study
+their character. It manifests itself in their manners, and in their
+whole frame of life. They are now, as they ever were, affectionate,
+faithful, and fearless; and far more delightful surely it is to see such
+qualities in all their pristine strength&mdash;for civilisation has not
+weakened, nor ever will weaken them&mdash;without that alloy of fierceness
+and ferocity which was inseparable from them in the turbulence of feudal
+times. They are now indeed a peaceful people; severe as are the
+hardships of their condition, they are, in the main, contented with it;
+and nothing short of necessity can dissever them from their dear
+mountains. We devoutly trust that there need be no more forced
+emigration&mdash;that henceforth it will be free&mdash;at the option of the
+adventurous&mdash;and that all who will, when the day cometh, may be gathered
+to their fathers in the land that gave them birth. Much remains to be
+done not only to relieve but enlighten; yet Christian benevolence has
+not been forgetful of their wants; schools and churches are arising in
+remote places; and that they are in good truth a religious as well as a
+moral people is proved by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> the passionate earnestness with which, in
+their worst destitution, they embrace every offer of instruction in the
+knowledge that leads to everlasting life. The blessing of Heaven will
+lie on all such missions as these; and the time will come when we shall
+be able to contemplate, without any pain, the condition of a race who,
+to use the noble language of one, though often scornful and sarcastic
+overmuch, yet at heart their friend, "almost in an hour subsided into
+peace and virtue, retaining their places, their possessions, their
+chiefs, their songs, their traditions, their superstitions and peculiar
+usages&mdash;even that language and those recollections which still separate
+them from the rest of the nation. They retained even their pride, and
+they retained their contempt of those who imposed that order on them,
+and still they settled into a state of obedience to that government, of
+which the world produces no other instance! It is a splendid moral
+phenomenon, and reflects a lustre on the Highland character, whether of
+the chiefs or the people, which extinguishes all past faults, and which
+atones for what little remains to be amended. A peculiar political
+situation was the cause of their faults; and that which swept away the
+cause, has rendered the effects a tale of other times."</p>
+
+
+<h4>END OF VOL. II.</h4>
+
+<h5>PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.</h5>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Recreations of Christopher North,
+Volume 2, by John Wilson
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 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 2
+
+Author: John Wilson
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER NORTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RECREATIONS
+
+OF
+
+CHRISTOPHER NORTH
+
+
+_A NEW EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES_
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
+EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+MDCCCLXVIII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
+
+
+                                             PAGE
+MAY-DAY                                         1
+
+SACRED POETRY:--
+
+    CHAPTER I.,                                38
+
+    CHAPTER II.,                               53
+
+    CHAPTER III.,                              75
+
+    CHAPTER IV.,                               88
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY:--
+
+    FIRST CANTICLE,                            98
+
+    SECOND CANTICLE,                          125
+
+    THIRD CANTICLE,                           149
+
+    FOURTH CANTICLE,                          165
+
+DR KITCHINER:--
+
+    FIRST COURSE,                             182
+
+    SECOND COURSE,                            194
+
+    THIRD COURSE,                             203
+
+    FOURTH COURSE,                            212
+
+SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS:--
+
+    FIRST RHAPSODY,                           224
+
+    SECOND RHAPSODY,                          239
+
+A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON,                       253
+
+THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT,              274
+
+CHRISTMAS DREAMS,                             285
+
+OUR WINTER QUARTERS,                          304
+
+STROLL TO GRASSMERE:--
+
+    FIRST SAUNTER,                            327
+
+    SECOND SAUNTER,                           355
+
+L'ENVOY                                       369
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REMARKS ON THE SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS,      385
+
+
+
+
+RECREATIONS
+
+OF
+
+CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
+
+
+
+
+MAY-DAY.
+
+
+Art thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moorland, sylvan, and pastoral
+Parish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious
+dawning of life--can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art
+indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in
+half an hour could fly the flapping dove--though the martens, wheeling
+to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, central in its
+own domain, seem in their more distant flight to glance their crescent
+wings over a vale rejoicing apart in another kirk-spire, yet how rich in
+streams, and rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar murmur--art
+Thou with thy bold bleak exposure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous
+undulations to the portals of the East! How endless the interchange of
+woods and meadows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without number, among
+thy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings--how rises the smoke,
+ever and anon, into the sky, all neighbouring on each other, so that the
+cock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead; while as you wander
+onwards, each roof still rises unexpectedly--and as solitary, as if it
+had been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thousand parishes--neither
+Highland, nor Lowland--but undulating--let us again use the descriptive
+word--like the sea in sunset after a day of storms--yes, Heaven's
+blessing be upon thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old!
+
+The same heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers of
+earth--like the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The stillness of those
+lofty clouds makes them seem whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to
+thy grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded corn, for thy
+brooding mate can no longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there
+is little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full budding
+branches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hook
+levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briery
+knolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the
+rustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter
+benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that now
+are gone--tall, far-spreading single trees, in whose shade used to lie
+the ruminating cattle, with the small herd-girl asleep. Gone are they,
+and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not more
+forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held
+converse--whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead--hands so often
+grasped--arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes--have long
+ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so
+much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the
+holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of
+time.
+
+It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some
+sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at
+nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and
+then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush,
+took possession of field or forest. We are all alone--a solitary
+pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are
+changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly
+along to the merry music of streams--or linger by the silent shores of
+lochs--or upon the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a
+panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight--or plunge into the old
+wood's magnificent exclusion from sky--where, at midsummer, day is as
+night--though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;
+and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the
+sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will
+be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the
+dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.
+
+What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, wherein
+and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away,
+like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint
+or pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it is
+built, and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equally
+against all the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to direct
+our footsteps--for that venerable Man has long been dead--not one of his
+ancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it was
+gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has
+been entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of, but
+never more shall see--and the voices that are now heard within those
+walls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the
+silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is an
+appalling trial to approach a place where once we have been
+happier--happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and a
+worse evil doth it seem to our imagination to return to Paradise, with a
+changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the
+outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that
+spirit that had glorified our prime.
+
+But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the
+hill--the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for
+stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled
+roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which
+the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore,
+and almost as early as the alder or the birch--the GLORY OF MOUNT
+PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner.
+You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling--for eaves,
+roof, and chimneys all disappeared--and then, when you stood beneath,
+was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself,
+continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide
+of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!
+
+MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou deserve the name, bestowed on
+thee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble proprietors, but by
+the general voice of praise, all eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty.
+For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields and
+meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of a river, the
+smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spire
+of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting with
+his solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the pulpit, with his
+expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged him
+to be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen him
+at labour on the working days, you might almost have thought him the
+serf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried
+the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength
+and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house,
+beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly
+esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverently
+beloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman of
+active habits and a strong mind, but tempering the natural sternness of
+her husband's character with that genial and jocund cheerfulness, that
+of all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of a
+household. One daughter only had they, and we could charm our heart even
+now, by evoking the vanished from oblivion, and imaging her over and
+over again in the light of words; but although all objects, animate and
+inanimate, seem always tinged with an air of sadness when they are
+past--and as at present we are resolved to be cheerful--obstinately to
+resist all access of melancholy--an enemy to the pathetic--and a scorner
+of shedders of tears--therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, and
+let us paint a pleasant picture of a May-Day afternoon, and enjoy it as
+it was enjoyed of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the
+grandisonant name of THE GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT.
+
+There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, used
+on MAY-DAY to be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayed
+in home-spun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on the
+distant mountain-head; and on various seats--stumps, stones, stools,
+creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and
+elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and
+allegorical--took their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping
+and bowing, blushing and curtsying, old, young, and middle-aged, of high
+and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister
+shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well
+worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread
+beneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. But the Minister
+uttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curds
+and cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on those
+horn-spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk--to the mouth how apt the
+bowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate of
+delft, rather more than full of curds, many million times more
+deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, and then filled to
+overflowing with a blessed outpouring of creamy richness that
+tenaciously descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar expression of
+whose physiognomy, particularly the nose, we will carry with us to the
+grave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT consisted of twenty cows--almost all
+spring calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed--so you may guess what cream!
+The spoon could not stand in it,--it was not so thick as that--for that
+was too thick,--but the spoon, when placed upright in it, retained its
+perpendicularity for a while, and then, when uncertain on which side to
+fall, was grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with its
+fresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Never
+beneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal cakes, pease-scones,
+and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. You could have eaten away at
+them with pleasure, even although not hungry--and yet it was impossible
+of them to eat too much--Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter
+yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount
+Pleasant--such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture--was coloured like
+the crocus, before the young thrushes had left the nest in the
+honey-suckled corner of the gavel-end. Not a single hair in the churn.
+Then what honey and what jam! The first, not heather, for that is too
+luscious, especially after such cream, but the pure white virgin honey,
+like dew shaken from clover, but now _querny_ after winter keep; and oh!
+over a layer of such butter on such barley bannocks was such honey, on
+such a day, in such company, and to such palates, too divine to be
+described by such a pen as that now wielded by such a writer! The Jam!
+It was of gooseberries--the small black hairy ones--gathered to a very
+minute from the bush, and boiled to a very moment in the pan! A bannock
+studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a
+corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The
+question, with the gaucy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was
+not--"My dear laddie, which will ye hae--hinny or jam?" but, "Which will
+ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs,
+or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half-a-dozen white cans of more moderate
+dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was
+withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity
+fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming
+Sycamore. There the bees were all at work for next May-day, happy as
+ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold,
+happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song;
+for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave
+forth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of
+Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that
+ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire
+in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies.
+
+Never had Mary Morrison heard the old ballad-airs sung, except during
+the mid-day hour of rest, in the corn or hay field--and rude singers are
+they all--whether male or female voices--although sometimes with a touch
+of natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. But as the
+nightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it never
+were to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among the
+shrub-roots, and the lark, though alone on earth, would sing the hymn
+well known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nature
+within her, and inspired by her own delightful genius alone, did Mary
+Morrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give them
+all an expression at once simple and profound. People who said they did
+not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous
+and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of
+the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly
+blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little
+hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground,
+or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would
+most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl--but her musical turn
+is really very singular indeed;"--but her happy father and mother knew,
+that in all common things--that is, in all the duties of an humble and
+innocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies and
+harmonies of song--and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was as
+angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearly
+inexperienced of sin.
+
+Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her--and to
+listen to her--as their Mary sat beside the young English boy--admired
+of all observers--and happier than she had ever been in this world
+before, in the charm of their blended music, and the unconscious
+affection--sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she had
+none--that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart.
+
+Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side-by-side in their music,
+insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both admired
+and beloved. It was thought that they loved one another too, too well;
+for Harry Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, and Mary Morrison
+a peasant's child; but they could not love too well--she in her
+tenderness--he in his passion--for, with them, life and love was a
+delightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as by
+some secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day--of the same
+fever--and died at the same hour;--and not from any dim intention of
+those who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-ground
+of the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in the
+same grave--for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them--a curtain
+between the beds on which brother and sister slept.
+
+In their delirium they both talked about each other--Mary Morrison and
+Harry Wilton--yet their words were not words of love, only of common
+kindness; for although on their death-beds they did not talk about
+death, but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasant
+meetings in neighbours' houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up
+in bed, and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute which
+to his lips was to breathe no more; and even at the very self-same
+moment--so it wonderfully was--did he tell all to be hushed, for that
+Mary Morrison was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest.
+
+Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they may
+sleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterly
+obliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour or
+other however distant, legible as at the very moment they were first
+engraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the long-ago
+vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delight
+or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesired
+indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating up
+into some inland vale, because, unknown to us who wonder at them, the
+tide is flowing and the breezes blow from the main. Bright as the living
+image stands now before us the ghost--for what else is it than the
+ghost--of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particular
+day--in one particular place, innumerable years ago! It was at the close
+of one of those midsummer days which melt away into twilight, rather
+than into night, although the stars are visible, and bird and beast
+asleep. All by herself, as she walked along between the braes, was she
+singing a hymn,--
+
+    "And must this body die?
+      This mortal frame decay?
+    And must these feeble limbs of mine
+      Lie mouldering in the clay?"
+
+Not that the child had any thought of death, for she was as full of life
+as the star above her was of lustre--tamed though they both were by the
+holy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as we
+met, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away in
+the distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we that
+voice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguished
+no more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer.
+
+Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter was
+taken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No--such is not
+the natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure and
+pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once
+been--nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in
+resignation that often wept when it did not repine--in faith that now
+held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of
+being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's--they had
+been as sisters--took her place, and filled it too, as far as the living
+can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while
+to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom their
+substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have
+discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others
+saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a
+delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired
+to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let
+him be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working man
+before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He broke
+down fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that
+partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those who
+have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other's
+arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there is
+one on which this inscription may be read--"HERE LIE THE BODIES OF ADAM
+MORRISON AND OF HELEN ARMOUR HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY
+17--. HERE ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORRISON, WHO DIED
+JUNE 2, 17--." The headstone is a granite slab--as they almost all are
+in that kirkyard--and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material.
+But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the very
+snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with the
+armorial bearings belonging to a family of the high-born.
+
+Sworn Brother of our soul! during the bright ardours of boyhood, when
+the present was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon
+forgotten, and the future unfeared, what might have been thy lot,
+beloved Harry Wilton, had thy span of life been prolonged to this very
+day? Better--oh! far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst so
+early die; for it seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; and
+that, with all their genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonour
+comes and goes, a familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house.
+Shame never veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor tamed the
+eloquence of those sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed down
+that young princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed each
+successive morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood.
+But the time was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergone
+a rueful transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of a
+sorceress, and forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice,
+worthlessness, profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a broken
+heart! And that lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelled
+hair--But all these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hour
+when we and the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and
+the burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem or
+organ-peal, among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all those
+floods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we who
+loved thee to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy image
+now survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away from
+eyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is not
+bedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet thou,
+Nature, on this glorious May-day, rejoicing in all the plenitude of thy
+bliss--we call upon thee to bear witness to the intensity of our
+never-dying grief! Ye fields, that long ago we so often trode together,
+with the wind-swept shadows hovering about our path--Ye streams, whose
+murmur awoke our imaginations, as we lay reading, or musing together in
+day-dreams, among the broomy braes--Ye woods, where we started at the
+startled cushat, or paused, without a word, to hear the creature's
+solitary moans and murmurs deepening the far-off hush, already so
+profound--Ye moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with your
+peat-trenches overshadowed by the heather-blossoms that scented the
+wilderness afar--where the little maiden, sent from the shieling on
+errands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met her
+in the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy from
+the desert bloom--Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and with
+nought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoral
+hills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven--no
+creature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in the
+breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, with some book of old
+ballads, or strain of some Immortal yet alive on earth--one and all bear
+witness to our undying affection, that silently now feeds on grief! And,
+oh! what overflowing thoughts did that shout of ours now awaken from the
+hanging tower of the Old Castle--"Wilton, Wilton!" The name of the
+long-ago buried faintly and afar-off repeated by an echo!
+
+A pensive shade has fallen across MAY-DAY; and while the sun is behind
+those castellated clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into the
+saddest places of memory, and gather together stories and tales of
+tears. And many such there are, annually sprinkled all round the humble
+huts of our imaginative and religious land, even like the wildflowers
+that, in endless succession, disappearing and reappearing in their
+beauty, Spring drops down upon every brae. And as ofttimes some one
+particular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect and fragmentary part of
+an old melody, will nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to the
+finest and most finished strain; so now a faint and dim tradition comes
+upon us, giving birth to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an old
+Tradition. They were called the BLESSED FAMILY! Far up at the head of
+yonder glen of old was their dwelling, and in their garden sparkled the
+translucent well that is the source of the stream that animates the
+parish with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, and daughter--it was
+hard to say which of the three was the most beloved! Yet they were not
+native here, but brought with them, from some distant place, the soft
+and silvery accents of the pure English tongue, and manners most
+gracious in their serene simplicity; while over a life composed of acts
+of charity was spread a stillness that nothing ever disturbed--the
+stillness of a thoughtful pity for human sins and sorrows, yet not
+unwilling to be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In those days the
+very heart of Scotland was distracted--persecution scattered her
+prayers--and during the summer months, families remained shut up in fear
+within their huts, as if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up and
+buried their doors. It was as if the shadow of a thunder-cloud hung over
+all the land, so that men's hearts quaked as they looked up to
+heaven--when, lo! all at once, Three gracious Visitants appeared!
+Imagination invested their foreheads with a halo; and as they walked on
+their missions of mercy, exclaimed--How beautiful are their feet! Few
+words was the Child ever heard to speak, except some words of prayer;
+but her image-like stillness breathed a blessing wherever it smiled, and
+all the little maidens loved her, when hushed almost into awe by her
+spiritual beauty, as she knelt with them in their morning and evening
+orisons. The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as a face of
+grief, while her eyes seemed always happy, and a tone of thanksgiving
+was in her voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his way to the
+grave--for his eye's excessive brightness glittered with death--and
+often, as he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek became like ashes,
+for his heart in a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burst
+in agony, sounded audibly in the silence. Journeying on did they all
+seem to heaven; yet as they were passing by, how loving and how full of
+mercy! To them belonged some blessed power to wave away the sword that
+would fain have smitten the Saints. The dewdrops on the greensward
+before the cottage door, they suffered not to be polluted with blood.
+Guardian Angels were they thought to be, and such indeed they were, for
+what else are the holy powers of innocence?--Guardian Angels sent to
+save some of God's servants on earth from the choking tide and the
+scorching fire. Often, in the clear and starry nights, did the dwellers
+among all these little dells, and up along all these low hill-sides,
+hear music flowing down from heaven, responsive to the hymns of the
+Blessed Family. Music without the syllabling of words--yet breathing
+worship, and with the spirit of piety filling all the Night-Heavens. One
+whole day and night passed by, and not a hut had been enlightened by
+their presence. Perhaps they had gone away without warning as they had
+come--having been sent on another mission. With soft steps one maiden,
+and then another, entered the door, and then was heard the voice of
+weeping and of loud lament. The three lay, side by side, with their pale
+faces up to heaven. Dora, for that is the name tradition has handed
+down--Dorothea, the gift of God, lay between her Father and her Mother,
+and all their hands were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No agonies
+had been there--unknown what hand, human or divine, had closed their
+eyelids and composed their limbs; but there they lay as if asleep, not
+to be awakened by the burst of sunshine that dazzled upon their smiling
+countenances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of united death.
+
+The deep religion of that troubled time had sanctified the Strangers
+almost into an angelic character; and when the little kirk-bells were
+again heard tinkling through the air of peace (the number of the martyrs
+being complete), the beauty with which their living foreheads had been
+invested, reappeared to the eyes of imagination, as the Poets whom
+Nature kept to herself walked along the moonlight hills. "The Blessed
+Family," which had been as a household word, appertaining to them while
+they lived, now when centuries have gone by, is still full of a dim but
+divine meaning; the spirit of the tradition having remained, while its
+framework has almost fallen into decay.
+
+How beautifully emerges that sun-stricken Cottage from the rocks, that
+all around it are floating in a blue vapoury light! Were we so disposed,
+methinks we could easily write a little book entirely about the obscure
+people that have lived and died about that farm, by name LOGAN BRAES.
+Neither is it without its old traditions. One May-day long ago--some two
+centuries since--that rural festival was there interrupted by a
+thunderstorm, and the party of youths and maidens, driven from the
+budding arbours, were all assembled in the ample kitchen. The house
+seemed to be in the very heart of the thunder; and the master began to
+read, without declaring it to be a religious service, a chapter of the
+Bible; but the frequent flashes of lightning so blinded him, that he was
+forced to lay down the Book, and all then sat still without speaking a
+word; many with pale faces, and none without a mingled sense of awe and
+fear. The maiden forgot her bashfulness as the rattling peals shook the
+roof-tree, and hid her face in her lover's bosom; the children crept
+closer and closer, each to some protecting knee, and the dogs came all
+into the house, and lay down in dark places. Now and then there was a
+convulsive, irrepressible, but half-stifled shriek--some sobbed--and a
+loud hysterical laugh from one overcome with terror sounded ghastly
+between the deepest of all dread repose--that which separates one peal
+from another, when the flash and the roar are as one, and the thick air
+smells of sulphur. The body feels its mortal nature, and shrinks as if
+about to be withered into nothing. Now the muttering thunder seems to
+have changed its place to some distant cloud--now, as if returning to
+blast those whom it had spared, waxes louder and fiercer than
+before--till the Great Tree that shelters the house is shivered with a
+noise like the masts of a ship carried away by the board. "Look, father,
+look--see yonder is an Angel all in white, descending from heaven!" said
+little Alice, who had already been almost in the attitude of prayer, and
+now clasped her hands together, and steadfastly, and without fear of the
+lightning, eyed the sky. "One of God's Holy Angels--one of those who
+sing before the Lamb!" And with an inspired rapture the fair child
+sprung to her feet. "See ye her not--see ye her not--father--mother! Lo!
+she beckons to me with a palm in her hand, like one of the palms in that
+picture in our Bible, when our Saviour is entering into Jerusalem! There
+she comes, nearer and nearer the earth--Oh! pity, forgive, and have
+mercy on me, thou most beautiful of all the Angels--even for His name's
+sake." All eyes were turned towards the black heavens, and then to the
+raving child. Her mother clasped her to her bosom, afraid that terror
+had turned her brain--and her father going to the door, surveyed an
+ampler space of the sky. She flew to his side, and clinging to him
+again, exclaimed in a wild outcry, "On her forehead a star! on her
+forehead a star! And oh! on what lovely wings she is floating away, away
+into eternity! The Angel, father, is calling me by my Christian name,
+and I must no more abide on earth; but, touching the hem of her garment,
+be wafted away to heaven!" Sudden as a bird let loose from the hand,
+darted the maiden from her father's bosom, and with her face upward to
+the skies, pursued her flight. Young and old left the house, and at that
+moment the forked lightning came from the crashing cloud, and struck the
+whole tenement into ruins. Not a hair on any head was singed; and with
+one accord the people fell down upon their knees. From the eyes of the
+child, the Angel, or Vision of the Angel, had disappeared; but on her
+return to heaven, the Celestial heard the hymn that rose from those that
+were saved, and above all the voices, the small sweet silvery voice of
+her whose eyes alone were worthy of beholding a Saint Transfigured.
+
+For several hundred years has that farm belonged to the family of the
+Logans, nor has son or daughter ever stained the name--while some have
+imparted to it, in its humble annals, what well may be called lustre.
+Many a time have we stood when a boy, all alone, beginning to be
+disturbed by the record of heroic or holy lives, in the kirkyard, beside
+the GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS--the grave in which Christian and Hannah Logan,
+mother and daughter, were interred. Many a time have we listened to the
+story of their deaths, from the lips of one who well knew how to stir
+the hearts of the young, till "from their eyes they wiped the tears that
+sacred pity had engendered." Nearly a hundred years old was she that
+eloquent narrator--the Minister's mother--yet she could hear a whisper,
+and read the Bible without spectacles--although we sometimes used to
+suspect her of pretending to be reading off the Book, when, in fact, she
+was reciting from memory. The old lady often took a walk in the
+kirkyard--and being of a pleasant and cheerful nature, though in
+religious principle inflexibly austere, many were the most amusing
+anecdotes that she related to us and our compeers, all huddled round
+her, "where heaved the turf in many a mouldering heap." But the evening
+converse was always sure to have a serious termination--and the
+venerable matron could not be more willing to tell, than we to hear
+again and again, were it for the twentieth repetition, some old tragic
+event that gathered a deeper interest from every recital, as if on each
+we became better acquainted with the characters of those to whom it had
+befallen, till the chasm that time had dug between them and us
+disappeared, and we felt for the while that their happiness or misery
+and ours were essentially interdependent. At first she used, we well
+remember, to fix her solemn spirit-like eyes on our faces, to mark the
+different effects her story produced on her hearers; but ere long she
+became possessed wholly by the pathos of her own narrative, and with
+fluctuating features and earnest action of head and hands poured forth
+her eloquence, as if soliloquising among the tombs.
+
+"Ay, ay, my dear boys, that is the grave o' the Martyrs. My father saw
+them die. The tide o' the far-ebbed sea was again beginning to flow, but
+the sands o' the bay o' death lay sae dry, that there were but few spots
+where a bairn could hae wat its feet. Thousands and tens o' thousands
+were standing a' roun' the edge of the bay--that was in shape just like
+that moon--and then twa stakes were driven deep into the sand, that the
+waves o' the returning sea michtna loosen them--and my father, who was
+but a boy like ane o' yourselves noo, waes me, didna he see wi' his ain
+een Christian Logan, and her wee dochter Hannah, for she was but eleven
+years auld--hurried alang by the enemies o' the Lord, and tied to their
+accursed stakes within the power o' the sea. He who holds the waters in
+the hollow o' his hand, thocht my father, will not suffer them to choke
+the prayer within those holy lips--but what kent he o' the dreadfu'
+judgments o' the Almighty? Dreadfu' as those judgments seemed to be, o'
+a' that crowd o' mortal creatures there were but only twa that drew
+their breath without a shudder--and these twa were Christian Logan and
+her beautifu' wee dochter Hannah, wi' her rosy cheeks, for they blanched
+not in that last extremity, her blue een, and her gowden hair, that
+glittered like a star in the darkness o' that dismal day. 'Mother, be
+not afraid,' she was heard to say, when the foam o' the first wave broke
+about their feet--and just as these words were uttered, all the great
+black clouds melted away from the sky, and the sun shone forth in the
+firmament like the all-seeing eye of God. The martyrs turned their faces
+a little towards one another, for the cords could not wholly hinder
+them, and wi' voices as steady and as clear as ever they sang the psalm
+within the walls o' that kirk, did they, while the sea was mounting
+up--up from knee--waist--breast--neck--chin--lip--sing praises and
+thanksgivings unto God. As soon as Hannah's voice was drowned, it seemed
+as if her mother, before the water reached her own lips, bowed and gave
+up the ghost. While the people were all gazing the heads of both martyrs
+disappeared, and nothing then was to be seen on the face o' the waters,
+but here and there a bit white breaking wave or silly sea-bird floating
+on the flow o' the tide into the bay. Back and back had aye fallen the
+people, as the tide was roarin' on wi' a hollow soun'--and now that the
+water was high aboon the heads o' the martyrs, what chained that dismal
+congregation to the sea-shore? It was the countenance o' a man that had
+suddenly come down frae his hiding-place amang the moors--and who now
+knew that his wife and daughter were bound to stakes deep down in the
+waters o' the very bay that his eyes beheld rolling, and his ears heard
+roaring--all the while that there was a God in heaven! Naebody could
+speak to him--although they all beseeched their Maker to have
+compassion upon him, and not to let his heart break and his reason fail.
+'The stakes! the stakes! O Jesus! point out to me, with thy own scarred
+hand, the place where my wife and daughter are bound to the stakes--and
+I may yet bear them up out of the sand, and bring the bodies ashore--to
+be restored to life! O brethren, brethren!--said ye that my Christian
+and my Hannah have been for an hour below the sea? And was it from fear
+of fifty armed men, that so many thousand fathers and mothers, and sons
+and daughters, and brothers and sisters, rescued them not from such
+cruel, cruel death?' After uttering mony mair siclike raving words, he
+suddenly plunged into the sea, and, being a strong swimmer, was soon far
+out into the bay--and led by some desperate instinct to the very place
+where the stakes were fixed in the sand. Perfectly resigned had the
+martyrs been to their doom--but in the agonies o' that horrible death,
+there had been some struggles o' the mortal body, and the weight o' the
+waters had borne down the stakes, so that, just as if they had been
+lashed to a spar to enable them to escape from shipwreck, baith the
+bodies came floatin' to the surface, and his hand grasped, without
+knowing it, his ain Hannah's gowden hair--sairly defiled, ye may weel
+think, wi' the sand--baith their faces changed frae what they ance were
+by the wrench o' death. Father, mother, and daughter came a'thegither to
+the shore--and there was a cry went far and wide, up even to the
+hiding-places o' the faithfu' among the hags and cleuchs i' the moors,
+that the sea had given up the living, and that the martyrs were
+triumphant, even in this world, over the powers o' Sin and o' Death.
+Yea, they were indeed triumphant;--and well might the faithfu' sing
+aloud in the desert, 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
+victory?' for these three bodies were but as the weeds on which they lay
+stretched out to the pitying gaze of the multitude, but their spirits
+had gane to heaven to receive the eternal rewards o' sanctity and
+truth."
+
+Not a house in all the parish--scarcely excepting Mount Pleasant
+itself--all round and about which our heart could in some dreamy hour
+raise to life a greater multitude of dear old remembrances, all touching
+ourselves, than LOGAN BRAES. The old people, when we first knew them, we
+used to think somewhat apt to be surly--for they were Seceders--and
+owing to some unavoidable prejudices, which we were at no great pains to
+vanquish, we Manse-boys recognised something repulsive in that most
+respectable word. Yet for the sake of that sad story of the Martyrs,
+there was always something affecting to us in the name of Logan Braes;
+and though Beltane was of old a Pagan Festival, celebrated with grave
+idolatries round fires ablaze on a thousand hills, yet old Laurence
+Logan would sweeten his vinegar aspect on May-day, would wipe out a
+score of wrinkles, and calm, as far as that might be, the terrors of his
+shaggy eyebrows. A little gentleness of manner goes a long way with such
+young folk as we were all then, when it is seen naturally and easily
+worn for our sakes, and in sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one who
+in his ordinary deportment may have added the austerity of religion to
+the venerableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence Logan, the
+Seceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom--and made the hush of
+his house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the restraint
+laid on reverent youth by feeling akin to fear, the heart ever and anon
+bounded with freedom in the smile of the old man's eyes. Plain was his
+own apparel--a suit of the hodden-grey. His wife, when in full dress,
+did not remind us of a Quakeress, for a Quakeress then had we never
+seen--but we often think now, when in company with a still, sensible,
+cheerful, and comely-visaged matron of that sect, of her of Logan Braes.
+No waster was she of her tears, or her smiles, or her words, or her
+money, or her meal--either among those of her own blood, or the stranger
+or the beggar that was within her gates. You heard not her foot on the
+floor--yet never was she idle--moving about in doors and out, from
+morning till night, so placid and so composed, and always at small cost
+dressed so decently, so becomingly to one who was not yet old, and had
+not forgotten--why should she not remember it?--that she was esteemed in
+youth a beauty, and that it was not for want of a richer and younger
+lover that she agreed at last to become the wife of the Laird of Logan
+Braes.
+
+Their family consisted of two sons and a niece;--and be thou who thou
+mayest that hast so far read our May-day, we doubt not that thine eyes
+will glance--however rapidly--over another page, nor fling it
+contemptuously aside, because amidst all the chance and change of
+administrations, ministries, and ministers in high places, there murmur
+along the channels of our memory "the simple annals of the poor," like
+unpolluted streams that sweep not by city walls.
+
+Never were two brothers more unlike in all things--in mind, body,
+habits, and disposition--than Lawrie and Willie Logan--and we see, as in
+a glass, at this very moment, both their images. "Wee Wise Willie"--for
+by that name he was known over several parishes--was one of those
+extraordinary creatures that one may liken to a rarest plant, which
+nature sows here and there--sometimes for ever unregarded--among the
+common families of Flowers. Early sickness had been his lot--continued
+with scarcely any interruption from his cradle to school-years--so that
+not only was his stature stunted, but his whole frame was delicate in
+the extreme; and his pale small-featured face, remarkable for large,
+soft, down-looking, hazel eyes, dark-lashed in their lustre, had a sweet
+feminine character, that corresponded well with his voice, his motions,
+and his in-door pursuits--all serene and composed, and interfering with
+the outgoings of no other living thing. All sorts of scholarship, such
+as the parish schoolmaster knew, he mastered as if by intuition. His
+slate was quickly covered with long calculations, by which the most
+puzzling questions were solved; and ere he was nine years old, he had
+made many pretty mechanical contrivances with wheels and pulleys, that
+showed in what direction lay the natural bent of his genius. Languages,
+too, the creature seemed to see into with quickest eyes, and with
+quickest ears to catch their sounds--so that, at the same tender age, he
+might have been called a linguist, sitting with his Greek and Latin
+books on a stool beside him by the fireside during the long winter
+nights. All the neighbours who had any books, cheerfully lent them to
+"Wee Wise Willie," and the Manse-boys gave him many a supply. At the
+head of every class he, of course, was found--but no ambition had he to
+be there; and like a bee that works among many thousand others on the
+clover-lea, heedless of their murmurs, and intent wholly on its own
+fragrant toil, did he go from task to task--although that was no fitting
+name for the studious creature's meditations on all he read or
+wrought--no more a task for him to grow in knowledge and in thought,
+than for a lily of the field to lift up its head towards the sun. That
+child's religion was like all the other parts of his character--as prone
+to tears as that of other children, when they read of the Divine Friend
+dying for them on the cross; but it was profounder far than theirs, when
+it shed no tears, and only made the paleness of his countenance more
+like that which we imagine to be the paleness of a phantom. No one ever
+saw him angry, complaining, or displeased; for angelical indeed was his
+temper, purified, like gold in fire, by suffering. He shunned not the
+company of other children, but loved all, as by them all he was more
+than beloved. In few of their plays could he take an active share; but
+sitting a little way off, still attached to the merry brotherhood,
+though in their society he had no part to enact, he read his book on the
+knoll, or, happy dreamer, sunk away among the visions of his own
+thoughts. There was poetry in that child's spirit, but it was too
+essentially blended with his whole happiness in life, often to be
+embodied in written words. A few compositions were found in his own
+small beautiful handwriting after his death--hymns and psalms. Prayers,
+too, had his heart indited--but they were not in measured
+language--framed, in his devout simplicity, on the model of our Lord's.
+How many hundred times have we formed a circle round him in the
+gloaming, all sitting or lying on the greensward, before the dews had
+begun to descend, listening to his tales and stories of holy or heroic
+men and women, who had been greatly good and glorious in the days of
+old! Not unendeared to his imagination were the patriots, who, living
+and dying, loved the liberties of the land--Tell--Bruce--or Wallace, he
+in whose immortal name a thousand rocks rejoice, while many a wood bears
+it on its summits as they are swinging to the storm. Weak as a reed that
+is shaken in the wind, or the stalk of a flower that tremblingly
+sustains its blossoms beneath the dews that feed their transitory
+lustre, was he whose lips were so eloquent to read the eulogies of
+mighty men of war riding mailed through bloody battles. What matters it
+that this frame of dust be frail, and of tiny size--still may it be the
+tenement of a lordly spirit. But high as such warfare was, it satisfied
+not that thoughtful child--for other warfare there was to read of, which
+was to him a far deeper and more divine delight--the warfare waged by
+good men against the legions of sin, and closed triumphantly in the eye
+of God--let this world deem as it will--on obscurest death-beds, or at
+the stake, or on the scaffold, where a profounder even than Sabbath
+silence glorifies the martyr far beyond any shout that from the immense
+multitude would have torn the concave of the heavens.
+
+What a contrast to that creature was his elder brother! Lawrie was
+eighteen years old when first we visited Logan Braes, and was a perfect
+hero in strength and stature--Bob Howie alone his equal--but Bob was
+then in the West Indies. In the afternoons, after his work was over in
+the fields or in the barn, he had pleasure in getting us Manse-boys to
+accompany him to the Moor-Lochs for an hour's angling or two in the
+evening, when the large trouts came to the gravelly shallows, and, as we
+waded mid-leg deep, would sometimes take the fly among our very feet. Or
+he would go with us into the heart of the great wood, to show us where
+the foxes had their earths--the party being sometimes so fortunate as to
+see the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery aperture in the
+strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it
+safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and
+wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw
+him take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft of
+wall-flowers. What was there of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan
+was not, in our belief, able to perform? We were all several years
+younger--boys from nine to fifteen--and he had shot up into sudden
+manhood--not only into its shape but its strength--yet still the boyish
+spirit was fresh within him, and he never wearied of us in such
+excursions. The minister had a good opinion of his principles, knowing
+how he had been brought up, and did not discountenance his visits to the
+Manse, nor ours to Logan Braes. Then what danger could we be in, go
+where we might, with one who had more than once shown how eager he was
+to risk his own life when that of another was in jeopardy? Generous and
+fearless youth! To thee we owed our own life--although seldom is that
+rescue now remembered--(for what will not in this turmoiling world be
+forgotten?) when in pride of the newly-acquired art of swimming, we had
+ventured--with our clothes on too--some ten yards into the Brother-Loch,
+to disentangle our line from the water-lilies. It seemed that a hundred
+cords had got entangled round our legs, and our heart quaked too
+desperately to suffer us to shriek--but Lawrie Logan had his hand on us
+in a minute, and brought us to shore as easily as a Newfoundland dog
+lands a bit of floating wood.
+
+But that was a momentary danger, and Lawrie Logan ran but small risk,
+you will say, in saving us; so let us not extol that instance of his
+intrepidity. But fancy to yourself, gentle reader, the hideous mouth of
+an old coal-pit, that had not been worked for time immemorial, overgrown
+with thorns, and briers, and brackens, but still visible from a small
+mount above it, for some yards down its throat--the very throat of death
+and perdition. But can you fancy also the childish and superstitious
+terror with which we all regarded that coal-pit, for it was said to be a
+hundred fathom deep--with water at the bottom--so that you had to wait
+for many moments--almost a minute--before you heard a stone, first
+beating against its sides--from one to the other--plunge at last into
+the pool profound. In that very field, too, a murder had been
+perpetrated, and the woman's corpse flung by her sweetheart into that
+coal-pit. One day some unaccountable impulse had led a band of us into
+that interdicted field--which we remember was not arable--but said to be
+a place where a hare was always sure to be found sitting among the
+binweeds and thistles. A sort of thrilling horror urged us on closer and
+closer to the mouth of the pit--when Wee Wise Willie's foot slipping on
+the brae, he bounded with inexplicable force along--in among the thorns,
+briers, and brackens--through the whole hanging mat, and without a
+shriek, down--down--down into destruction. We all saw it happen--every
+one of us--and it is scarcely too much to say, that we were for a while
+all mad with horror. Yet we felt ourselves borne back instinctively from
+the horrible pit--and as aid we could give none, we listened if we could
+hear any cry--but there was none--and we all flew together out of the
+dreadful field, and again collecting ourselves together, feared to
+separate on the different roads to our homes. "Oh! can it be that our
+Wee Wise Willie has this moment died sic a death--and no a single ane
+amang us a' greetin for his sake?" said one of us aloud; and then indeed
+did we burst out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another who could
+carry such tidings to Logan Braes? All at once we heard a clear, rich,
+mellow whistle as of a blackbird--and there with his favourite collie,
+searching for a stray lamb among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, who
+hailed us with a laughing voice, and then asked us, "Where is Wee
+Willie?--hae ye flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" The
+consternation of our faces could not be misunderstood--whether we told
+him or not what had happened we do not know--but he staggered, as if he
+would have fallen down--and then ran off with amazing speed--not towards
+Logan Braes--but the village. We continued helplessly to wander about
+back and forwards along the near edge of a wood, when we beheld a
+multitude of people rapidly advancing, and in a few minutes they
+surrounded the mouth of the pit. It was about the very end of the
+hay-harvest--and many ropes that had been employed that very day in the
+leading of the hay of the Landlord of the Inn, who was also an extensive
+farmer, were tied together to the length of at least twenty fathom. Hope
+was quite dead--but her work is often done by Despair. For a while there
+was confusion all round the pit-mouth, but with a white fixed face and
+glaring eyes, Lawrie Logan advanced to the very brink, with the rope
+bound in many firm folds around him, and immediately behind him stood
+his grey-headed father, unbonneted, just as he had risen from a prayer.
+"Is't my ain father that's gaun to help me to gang doun to bring up
+Willie's body? O! merciful God, what a judgment is this!
+Father--father--Oh! lie doun at some distance awa frae the sicht o' this
+place. Robin Alison, and Gabriel Strang, and John Borland 'ill haud the
+ropes firm and safe. O, father--father--lie doun, a bit apart frae the
+crowd; and have mercy upon him--O thou, great God, have mercy upon him!"
+But the old man kept his place; and the only one son who now survived to
+him disappeared within the jaws of the same murderous pit, and was
+lowered slowly down, nearer and nearer to his little brother's corpse.
+They had spoken to him of foul air, of which to breathe is death, but he
+had taken his resolution, and not another word had been said to shake
+it. And now, for a short time, there was no weight at the line, except
+that of its own length. It was plain that he had reached the bottom of
+the pit. Silent was all that congregation, as if assembled in divine
+worship. Again, there was a weight at the rope, and in a minute or two,
+a voice was heard far down the pit that spread a sort of wild
+hope--else, why should it have spoken at all--and lo! the child--not
+like one of the dead--clasped in the arms of his brother, who was all
+covered with dust and blood. "Fall down on your knees--in the face o'
+heaven, and sing praises to God, for my brother is yet alive!"
+
+During that Psalm, father, mother, and both their sons--the rescuer and
+the rescued--and their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, were
+lying embraced in speechless--almost senseless trances; for the agony of
+such a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures be
+endured.
+
+The child himself was the first to tell how his life had been
+miraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out of
+the inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, and
+among them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. For
+days, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visited
+Logan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received a
+shock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried him
+subsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and its
+hospitable door open to all the neighbours.
+
+Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth--but too
+apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life of
+poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or
+carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its
+ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and
+distress. He did not keep evil society--but neither did he shun it: and
+having a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to a
+stripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequented
+all meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, and
+in such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character for
+recklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticated
+evil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quiet
+retreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did all
+the Manse-boys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! It
+was he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey the
+Egyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a waggon of
+Staffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel," as he called Lawrie,
+in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annual
+Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the
+dust--nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whose
+provincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-Ready
+School. Even now--as in an ugly dream--we see the combatants alternately
+prostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood.
+All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at such
+unchristian work; but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the shepherds
+and the ploughmen, to see fair play against all the attempts of the
+Showmen and the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their money thick on
+the King; till a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, which had
+nearly been the gypsy's everlasting quietus, gave the victory to Lawrie,
+amid acclamations that would have fitlier graced a triumph in a better
+cause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruiting
+sergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the colours of the
+42d Regiment, and in the intoxication of victory, whisky, and the
+bagpipe, the young champion was as fairly enlisted into his Majesty's
+service, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married at
+Gretna Green; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, gold
+could not have bought off such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board a
+transport.
+
+Logan Braes was not the same place--indeed, the whole parish seemed
+altered--after Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thenceforth anything
+but cheerful ones, going by turns to inquire for Willie, who seemed to
+be pining away--not in any deadly disease, but just as if he himself
+knew, that without ailing much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearly
+two years passed on, and all that time the principle of life had seemed
+like a flickering flame within him, that when you think it expiring or
+expired, streams up again with surprising brightness, and continues to
+glimmer even steadily with a protracted light. Every week--nay, almost
+every day, they feared to lose him--yet there he still was at morning
+and evening prayers. The third spring after the loss of his brother was
+remarkably mild, and breathing with west-winds that came softened over
+many woody miles from the sea. He seemed stronger, and more cheerful,
+and expressed a wish that the Manse-boys, and some others of his
+companions, would come to Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May-day.
+There we all sat at the long table, and both parents did their best to
+look cheerful during the feast. Indeed, all that had once been harsh and
+forbidding in the old man's looks and manners, was now softened down by
+the perpetual yearnings at his heart towards "the distant far and absent
+long," nor less towards him that peaceful and pious child, whom every
+hour he saw, or thought he saw, awaiting a call from the eternal voice.
+Although sometimes sadness fell across us like a shadow, yet the hours
+passed on as May-day hours should do; and what with our many-toned talk
+and laughter, the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the twittering
+of the swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs ringing like
+silver bells over all the heavens, it seemed a day that ought to bring
+good tidings--or, the Soldier himself returning from the wars to bless
+the eyes of his parents once more, so that they might die in peace.
+"Heaven hold us in its keeping, for there's his wraith!" ejaculated
+Annie Raeburn. "It passed before the window, and my Lawrie, I now know,
+is with the dead!"--Bending his stately head beneath the lintel of the
+door, in the dress, and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Logan
+stepped again across his father's threshold, and, ere he well uttered
+"God be with you all!" Willie was within his arms, and on his bosom. His
+father and his mother rose not from their chairs, but sat still, with
+faces like ashes. But we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted his
+name aloud--while Luath, from his sleep in the corner, leapt on his
+master breast-high, and whining his dumb delight, frisked round him as
+of yore, when impatient to snuff the dawn on the hill-side. "Let us go
+out and play," said a boy's voice, and issuing somewhat seriously into
+the sunshine, we left the family within to themselves, and then walked
+away, without speaking, down to the Bridge.
+
+After the lapse of an hour or more, and while we were all considering
+whether or no we should return to the house, the figure of Annie Raeburn
+was seen coming down the brae towards the party, in a way very unlike
+her usual staid and quiet demeanour, and stopping at some distance, to
+beckon with her hand more particularly, it was thought, on ourselves, as
+we stood a few yards apart from the rest. "Willie is worse," were the
+only words she said, as we hastened back together; and on entering the
+room, we found the old man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, but
+with a composed countenance. "He expressed a wish to see you--but he is
+gone!" We followed into Willie's small bedroom and study, and beheld him
+already _laid out_, and his mother sitting as calmly beside him as if
+she were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, Lawrie--God was gracious
+to let him live to this day, that he micht dee in his brither's arms."
+
+The sun has mounted high in heaven, while thus we have been dreaming
+away the hours--a dozen miles at least have we slowly wandered over,
+since morning, along pleasant by-paths, where never dust lay, or from
+gate to gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fearless of those
+threatening nonentities, spring-guns. There is the turnpike road--the
+great north and south road--for it is either the one or the other,
+according to the airt towards which you, choose to turn your face.
+Behold a little WAYSIDE INN, neatly thatched, and with white-washed
+front, and sign-board hanging from a tree, on which are painted the
+figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches,
+shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals
+is a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of these
+strapping hens is good augury;--hark, a cackle from the barn--another
+egg is laid--and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, and
+clapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultana
+till the welkin rings. "Turn to the left, sir, if you please," quoth a
+comely matron; and we find ourselves snugly seated in an arm-chair, not
+wearied, but to rest willing, while the clock ticks pleasantly, and we
+take no note of time but by its gain; for here is our journal, in which
+we shall put down a few jottings for MAY-DAY. Three boiled eggs--one to
+each penny-roll--are sufficient, under any circumstances, along with the
+same number fried with mutton ham, for the breakfast of a Gentleman and
+a Tory. Nor do we remember--when tea-cups have been on a proper scale,
+ever to have wished to go beyond the Golden Rule of Three. In politics,
+we confess that we are rather ultra; but in all things else we love
+moderation. "Come in, my bonny little lassie--ye needna keep keekin in
+that gate fra ahint the door"--and in a few minutes the curly-pated
+prattler is murmuring on our knee. The sonsy wife, well-pleased with
+the sight, and knowing from our kindness to children, that we are on the
+same side of politics with her gudeman--Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch,
+and once Orderly to Garth himself--brings out her ain bottle from the
+spence--a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its
+honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously
+letting fall a not inelegant curtsy--for she had, we now learned, been a
+lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her
+lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies,
+and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she
+said, Corfu. One of the children has been sent to the field, where her
+husband is sowing barley, to tell him that there is fear lest dinner
+cool; and the mistress now draws herself up in pride of his noble
+appearance, as the stately Highlander salutes us with the respectful but
+bold air of one who has seen some service at home and abroad. Never knew
+we a man make other than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a charge
+of bayonets.
+
+Shenstone's lines about always meeting the warmest welcome in an inn,
+are very natural and tender--as most of his compositions are, when he
+was at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of ever
+meeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we are
+not obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed,
+or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers),
+we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn,
+the only kind of welcome that is indispensable, is a civil one. When
+that is not forthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, off our feet,
+and pursue our journey, well assured that a few milestones will bring us
+to a humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have occasionally given us
+opportunities of beholding rare celestial phenomena--meteors--falling
+and shooting stars--the Aurora Borealis, in her shifting
+splendours--haloes round the moon, variously bright as the
+rainbow--electrical arches forming themselves on the sky in a manner so
+wondrously beautiful, that we should be sorry to hear them accounted for
+by philosophers--one-half of the horizon blue, and without a cloud, and
+the other driving tempestuously like the sea-foam, with waves
+mountain-high--and divinest show of all for a solitary night-wandering
+man, who has anything of a soul at all, far and wide, and high up into
+the gracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burning as if their urns
+were newly fed with light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or a
+vapoury night, although then, too, are the softened or veiled luminaries
+beautiful--but large, full, and free over the whole firmament--a galaxy
+of shining and unanswerable arguments in proof of the Immortality of the
+Soul.
+
+The whole world is improving; nor can there be a pleasanter proof of
+that than this very wayside inn--ycleped the SALUTATION. What a
+miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, that
+would neither open nor shut--neither let you out nor in--immovable and
+intractable to foot or hand--or all at once, when you least expected it
+to yield, slamming to with a bang; a constant puddle in front during
+rainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry--roof partly thatched, partly
+slated, partly tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its naked
+rafters. Broken windows repaired with an old petticoat, or a still older
+pair of breeches, and walls that had always been plastered and better
+plastered and worse plastered, in frosty weather--all labour in vain, as
+crumbling patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains of dismal
+ochre, meanest of all colours, and still symptomatic of want,
+mismanagement, bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenement that
+was never known to have paid any rent. Then what a pair of drunkards
+were old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once were they seen drunk on
+a Sabbath or a fast-day--regular kirk-goers, and attentive observers of
+ordinances. They had not very many children, yet, pass the door when you
+might, you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or the ban of the
+mother, or the smacking of the palm of the hand on the part of the enemy
+easiest of access; or you saw one of the ragged fiends pursued by a
+parent round the corner, and brought back by the hair of the head till
+its eyes were like those of a Chinese. Now, what decency--what
+neatness--what order--in this household--this private public! into which
+customers step like neighbours on a visit, and are served with a
+heartiness and goodwill that deserve the name of hospitality, for they
+are gratuitous, and can only be repaid in kind. A limited prospect does
+that latticed window command--and the small panes cut objects into too
+many parts--little more than the breadth of the turnpike road, and a
+hundred yards of the same, to the north and to the south, with a few
+budding hedgerows, half-a-dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could
+we sit and moralise, and intellectualise, for hours at this window, nor
+hear the striking clock.
+
+There trips by a blooming maiden of middle degree, all alone--the more's
+the pity--yet perfectly happy in her own society, and one we venture to
+say who never received a love-letter, valentines excepted, in all her
+innocent days.--A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! somewhat red in
+the face, as if he had dined early, and not so sure of the road as his
+horse, who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of water, and is
+anxious to get to town that he may be rubbed down, and see oats once
+more.--Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for your sake, may that
+cloud breathe forth rain and breeze, before you reach the burn, which
+you seem to fear may run dry before you can see the Pool where the
+two-pounders lie.--Methinks we know that old woman, and of the first
+novel we write she shall be the heroine.--Ha! a brilliant bevy of
+mounted maidens, in riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swaling
+feathers"--sisters, it is easy to see, and daughters of one whom we
+either loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat and
+vulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husband
+lead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time it
+was _tout une autre chose_; for a smaller foot, a slimmer ankle, a more
+delicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneath
+her bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn--such starlike
+eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul--But phoo! phoo! phoo!
+she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in
+self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.--There is a Head for a
+painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's
+countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms--those
+sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as,
+staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells
+his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his long
+silvery hair, journeying contentedly in darkness towards the eternal
+light.--A gang of gypsies! with their numerous assery laden with
+horn-spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not be
+surprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leads
+the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the
+misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred
+cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing
+about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made
+for the wearer--long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in
+huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails--a shambling gait,
+notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night
+prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to
+awaken--so noiseless his stealthy advances--the unchained mastiff in his
+kennel.
+
+But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regiment
+of soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment of
+soldiers--and that is as much as we can be expected to know about their
+movements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has been
+gorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation,
+blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bole of her pipe, have all burst as
+they have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, and
+with feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what is
+called the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all these
+fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for some
+unlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to die
+in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the composition
+of a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shall
+suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuine
+clodhoppers, chaw-bacons _sans peur et sans reproche_, except that the
+overseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; add
+one shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of the
+spring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certain
+fleeces, for which no ingenuity could account; a laird's son, long known
+by the name of the Neerdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the
+bounty-money during a protracted strike--not dungs they, but flints all
+the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and
+who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at
+last; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the
+Seven Young Men--all that now survive--impatient of the drudgery of the
+compting-house, and the injustice of the age--but they, we believe, are
+in the band--the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the
+least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers from the bowels of
+the earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble--flunkies long out of
+place, and unable to live on their liveries--felons acquitted, or that
+have dreed their punishment--picked men from the shilling galleries of
+playhouses--and the elite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look
+how all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it of
+such materials that our conquering army was made?--were such the heroes
+of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo?
+
+Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go,
+are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three years
+ripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined into
+courage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets become
+patriots--members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and step
+out from the ranks to head the storm. Lord bless you! have you not
+studied sympathy and _l'esprit de corps_? An army fifty thousand strong
+consists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; and
+saints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then,
+that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory to
+victory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at work
+with all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing _Te Deum?_
+You must not be permitted too curiously to analyse the composition of
+the British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them as
+Wholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God to
+bless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar.
+
+The baggage-waggons halt, and some refreshment is sent for to the women
+and children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there--a
+year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now
+mothers, with babies at their breasts--happy still perhaps; but that
+pretty face is woefully wan--that hair did not use to be so
+dishevelled--and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay
+so white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp of the seducer.
+
+Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her
+marriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and no
+more, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots not
+fall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell.
+
+The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and twelve outsides--driver and
+guard excluded--rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stoppages.
+Why, in the name of Heaven, are all people nowadays in such haste and
+hurry? Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of this dozen and a
+half Protestants and Catholics--alike anxious for emancipation--should
+be at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of the
+twenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are we
+that that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman--whose ample
+rotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, a
+spenser--needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to his
+comfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honest
+man's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge,
+or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades.
+But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats with
+as many necks as Hydra--the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud of
+dust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeled
+onwards a mile on its destination.
+
+But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us--a hearse
+and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that
+the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got
+higher than a single-horse Chay--yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneys
+must be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides a
+race, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, and
+another--all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, on
+cart-horses in the Brooze--the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort of
+notice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps its
+snorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water--for well
+may they be thirsty--the kirkyard being far among the hills, and the
+roads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend," addressing ourself to the
+hearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir--if you
+are going my way, you may have a lift for a dram!" We had always
+thought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in the
+month of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in that
+month too--some in warm sheets--and some in cold--cold--cold--dripping
+damp as the grave.
+
+But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish--that
+is to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabited
+by persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know to
+the contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather too
+great an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, of
+sufficient antiquity to please a lover of the olden time; and of those
+four, the one which we used to love best to look at was--THE MAINS. No
+need to describe it in many words. A Hall on a river-side, embosomed in
+woods--holms and meadows winding away in front, with their low thick
+hedgerows and stately single trees--on--on--on--as far as the eye can
+reach, a crowd of grove-tops--elms chiefly, or beeches--and a beautiful
+boundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell,
+Ma'am--farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-house
+at the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed grey
+walls of the MAINS, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by the
+weather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house," quod Sergeant
+Stewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune--so
+the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had
+been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could
+do--and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand,
+undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own
+decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own
+hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with
+shells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor--and that
+bright scintillating piece of spar, the centre of the circle, came all
+the way from Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, who died a
+Professor. It is strange the roof has not fallen in long ago; but what a
+slight ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins from tumbling
+into nothing! The old moss-house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive;
+and, if these swallows don't take care, they will be stunning themselves
+against our face, jerking out and in, through door and window, twenty
+times in a minute. Yet with all that twittering of swallows--and with
+all that frequent crowing of a cock--and all that cawing of rooks--and
+cooing of doves--and lowing of cattle along the holms--and bleating of
+lambs along the braes--it is nevertheless a pensive place; and here sit
+we like a hermit, world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkening in
+the solitude to the voices of other years.
+
+What more mournful thought than that of a Decayed Family--a high-born
+race gradually worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The remote ancestors
+of this House were famous men of war--then some no less famous
+statesmen--then poets and historians--then minds still of fine, but of
+less energetic mould--and last of all, the mystery of madness breaking
+suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formed
+for profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters,
+undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race--the oldest on his
+approach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious of
+being destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. The
+twin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no
+maiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet's
+dream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walked
+along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at all
+describe--and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended all
+that imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As the
+sisters were, so were the brothers--distinguished above all their mates
+conspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangers
+could single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according to
+veritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable gift
+from nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the last
+three generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridian
+of life--and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans.
+Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from this
+cell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united together
+with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!--One
+morning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in her
+mind, and perfectly astray--with no symptom of having been suddenly
+alarmed or terrified--but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcely
+changed in their expression, although they knew not--but rarely--on whom
+they looked. It was but a few months till she died--and Adelaide was
+laughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day--and asked why mourning
+should be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away the
+bride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive?
+Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees--not walking in the free realms
+of earth and heaven with thy husband--the noble youth, who loved thee
+from thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can be
+beneath the sun--shut up in some narrow cell perhaps--no one knows
+where--whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land--with
+those hands manacled--a demon-light in eyes once most angelical--and
+ringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekings
+and yellings in thy poor distracted brain!--Down went the ship with all
+her crew in which Percy sailed;--the sabre must have been in the hand of
+a skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto
+down; and the gentle Richard, whose soul--while he possessed it
+clearly--was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he was
+as a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short time
+starlike reappear--and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal
+creatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to save
+sinners.
+
+Let us away--let us away from this overpowering place--and make our
+escape from such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebration of merry
+May-day? Is this the spirit in which we ought to look over the bosom of
+the earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just as man's heart should
+be teeming--and why not ours--with hopes and joys? Yet beautiful as this
+May-day is--and all the country round which it so tenderly illumines, we
+came not hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant home, to indulge
+ourself in a joyful happiness. No, hither came we purposely to mourn
+among the scenes which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And
+therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life
+is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the
+cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after a
+life of wandering--and maybe not without sorrow--comes back to gaze on
+the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of
+Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still--for, praise be to Heaven!
+the sense of beauty is still strong within us--and methinks we could
+feel the beauty of this scene though our heart were broken.
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, so
+pertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limited
+understandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius,
+and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do not
+know that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formally
+stated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect,
+nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine his
+statement, which, though, as we think, altogether unsatisfactory and
+sophistical, is yet a splendid specimen of false reasoning, and
+therefore worthy of being exposed and overthrown. Dr Johnson was not
+often utterly wrong in his mature and considerate judgments respecting
+any subject of paramount importance to the virtue and happiness of
+mankind. He was a good and wise being; but sometimes he did grievously
+err; and never more so than in his vain endeavour to exclude from the
+province of poetry its noblest, highest, and holiest domain. Shut the
+gates of Heaven against Poetry, and her flights along this earth will be
+feebler and lower,--her wings clogged and heavy by the attraction of
+matter,--and her voice--like that of the caged lark, so different from
+its hymning when lost to sight in the sky--will fail to call forth the
+deepest responses from the sanctuary of our spirit.
+
+"Let no pious ear be offended," says Johnson, "if I advance, in
+opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often
+please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic
+poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose
+it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the
+grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn,
+the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise
+his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the
+disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the
+description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or
+the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man
+admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of
+his Reedemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.
+
+"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing
+something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are
+few, and being few are universally known: but few as they are, they can
+be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment,
+and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting
+an idea more grateful in the mind than things themselves afford. This
+effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract,
+and the concealment of those that repel, the imagination; but religion
+must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and
+such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly
+expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his
+comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be
+hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great,
+desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being.
+Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection
+cannot be improved.
+
+"The employments of pious meditation are _faith_, _thanksgiving_,
+_repentance_, and _supplication_. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be
+invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful
+of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is
+confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed.
+Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure
+for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself
+through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry
+for mercy.
+
+"Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple
+expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,
+because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than
+itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight
+the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies
+nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere."
+
+Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit--that they
+are fit--for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wide
+and comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and just
+admission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once as
+destructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. The
+doctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didactic
+poem--and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are also
+expounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as it
+were, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as can
+possibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit of
+religion--and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also be
+frequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, in
+particular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense,
+a Sacred poem?
+
+"But," says Dr Johnson, "the subject of the disputation is not piety,
+but the motives to piety." Why introduce the word "disputation," as if
+it characterised justly and entirely all didactic poetry? And who ever
+heard of an essential distinction between piety, and motives to piety?
+Mr James Montgomery, in a very excellent Essay prefixed to that most
+interesting collection, "The Christian Poet," well observes, that
+"motives to piety must be of the _nature_ of piety, otherwise they could
+never incite to it--the precepts and sanctions of the Gospel might as
+well be denied to be any part of the Gospel." And, for our own parts, we
+scarcely know what piety is, separated from its motives--or how, so
+separated, it could be expressed in words at all.
+
+With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, the argument, if argument it
+may be called, is still more lame and impotent. "A poet," it is said,
+"may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the
+spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the
+revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader
+shall lay aside." Most true he may; but then we are told, "the subject
+of the description is not God, but the works of God!" Alas! what
+trifling--what miserable trifling is this! In the works of God, God is
+felt to be by us His creatures, whom He has spiritually endowed. We
+cannot look on them, even in our least elevated moods, without some
+shadow of love or awe; in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them with
+religion. By the very constitution of our intelligence, the effects
+speak of the cause. We are led by nature up to nature's God. The Bible
+is not the only revelation--there is another--dimmer but not less
+divine--for surely the works are as the words of God. No great poet, in
+describing the glories and beauties of the external world, is forgetful
+of the existence and attributes of the Most High. That thought, and that
+feeling, animate all his strains; and though he dare not to describe Him
+the Ineffable, he cannot prevent his poetry from being beautifully
+coloured by devotion, tinged by piety--in its essence it is religious.
+
+It appears, then, that the qualifications or restrictions with which Dr
+Johnson is willing to allow that there may be didactic and descriptive
+sacred poetry, are wholly unmeaning, and made to depend on distinctions
+which have no existence.
+
+Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr Montgomery well remarks,
+Johnson makes no mention, except it be implicated with the statement,
+that "the ideas of Christian Theology are too sacred for fiction--a
+sentiment more just than the admirers of Milton and Klopstock are
+willing to admit, without almost plenary indulgence in favour of these
+great, but not infallible authorities." Here Mr Montgomery expresses
+himself very cautiously--perhaps rather too much so--for he leaves us in
+the dark about his own belief. But this we do not hesitate to say, that
+though there is great danger of wrong being done to the ideas of
+Christian theology by poetry--a wrong which must be most painful to the
+whole inner being of a Christian; yet that there seems no necessity of
+such a wrong, and that a great poet, guarded by awe, and fear, and love,
+may move his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, even among the
+most awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awful
+for "fiction"--but fiction is not the word here, any more than
+disputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; and
+then, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with the
+Holy of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities,
+if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards were
+inspired--with them
+
+              ----"the name
+    Of prophet and of poet was the same;"
+
+but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, not in that highest of
+senses inspired, is, we may say it, of the same kind--inferior but in
+degree; for religion itself is always an inspiration. It is felt to be
+so in the prose of holy men--Why not in their poetry?
+
+If these views be just, and we have expressed them "boldly, yet
+humbly"--all that remains to be set aside of Dr Johnson's argument is,
+"that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and man,
+cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator,
+and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than
+poetry can confer."
+
+There is something very fine and true in the sentiment here; but the
+sentiment is only true in some cases, not in all. There are different
+degrees in the pious moods of the most pious spirit that ever sought
+communion with its God and its Saviour. Some of these are awe-struck and
+speechless. That line,
+
+    "Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!"
+
+denies the power of poetry to be adequate to adoration, while the line
+itself is most glorious poetry. The temper even of our fallen spirits
+may be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute before
+his Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feel
+ourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessness
+laid upon us--but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, and
+the heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song--in
+the inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms--poetry
+indeed--if there be poetry on this earth? Why may we not say that the
+spirits of just men made perfect--almost perfect, by such visitations
+from heaven--will break forth--"rapt, inspired," into poetry which may
+be called holy, sacred, divine?
+
+We feel as if treading on forbidden ground--and therefore speak
+reverently; but still we do not fear to say, that between that highest
+state of contemplative piety which must be mute, down to that lowest
+state of the same feeling which evanishes and blends into mere human
+emotion as between creature and creature, there are infinite degrees of
+emotion which may be all embodied, without offence, in words--and if so
+embodied, with sincerity and humility, will be poetry, and poetry too of
+the most beautiful and affecting kind.
+
+"Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits
+of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer."
+Most true, indeed. But, though poetry did not confer that higher state,
+poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe
+audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry
+may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because
+poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself
+out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there
+may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and
+strong in the spirit of that word--unexistent but for the Old and the
+New Testament.
+
+We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argument
+amounts to this--that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between
+God and the human soul, _cannot be poetical_. But here we at once ask
+ourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry," he
+says, "is invention--such invention as, by producing something
+unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, again, there is confusion and
+sophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, such
+invention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is
+of that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprising
+in a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelings
+as these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, without
+much--without any aid from the imagination--except in as far as the
+imagination will work under the power of every great emotion that does
+not absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even below
+the very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment," and
+"very little from novelty of expression"--to use Dr Johnson's words--for
+it is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet is
+seeking--"the strain we hear is of a higher mood;" and "few as the
+topics of devotion may be," (but are they few?) and "universally known,"
+they are all commensurate--nay, far more than commensurate, with the
+whole power of the soul--never can they become unaffecting while it is
+our lot to die;--even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow
+on such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, and
+sincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shall
+dare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt to
+be poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, and
+by their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels," than whom we were
+made but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be no
+more, be equalled in heaven?
+
+We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the _effect_ of
+poetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea
+more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is only
+because the things themselves are imperfect--more so than suits the
+aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a higher
+sphere--a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all awe
+and reverence, made the subject of song--then it is the office--the
+sacred office of poetry--not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soul
+that contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human nature
+glory in the "Paradise Lost?"
+
+"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name
+of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted--Infinity cannot be
+amplified--Perfection cannot be improved." Should not this go to
+prohibit all speech--all discourse--all sermons concerning the divine
+attributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the
+attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot,
+indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot be
+improved"--nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while the
+Creator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, too
+willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, may
+be raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel,"
+from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into the
+ether.
+
+Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural Theology? On
+the same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in his
+doctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all
+animate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, or
+improve perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divine
+contemplations--by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of an
+insect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and
+exclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" And
+while science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and the
+mercies of our God?
+
+The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as it
+proceeds--the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it is
+founded becomes more and more glaring--the paradoxes, dealt out as
+confidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsive
+alike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of pious
+meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith,
+invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations.
+Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet
+addressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is
+to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence
+of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication
+to men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but
+supplication to God can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt
+authoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is not
+invariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering--unquaking--to save it
+from lingering or from sudden death--is the most difficult service to
+which the frail spirit--frail even in its greatest strength--is called
+every day--every hour--of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and
+often most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will," says Jeremy Taylor,
+"is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of
+trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; it
+wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more.
+It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore,
+for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignity
+and excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrument
+and capacity of all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose faith is
+finally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of that faith, what
+hinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings,
+and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith has
+experienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many a
+melancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent of
+peace?
+
+Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holy
+effusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be
+"confined to a few modes." "Out of the fulness of the heart the tongue
+speaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech,
+yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude--yea, the
+very dumb do speak--nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that has
+been wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and high
+enthusiasm.
+
+That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not be
+at leisure for cadences and epithets," is in one respect true; but
+nobody supposes that during such moments--or hours--poetry is composed;
+and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mind
+is left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of the
+past, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmly
+contemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogether
+endurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry--that
+is, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted to
+clothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after a
+swell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or still
+bearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the whole
+being self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itself
+in an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance
+will not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets," but cadences
+and epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth,
+if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences and
+epithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, and
+ingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly and
+more easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressive
+mood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the full
+possession of powers that had for a short severe season been
+overwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on the
+feelings that during their height were nearly unendurable, and then
+unfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at the
+bar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receiving
+his doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to
+the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or
+reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly
+recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that
+hour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?
+
+"Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of
+persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." And in that
+cry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his
+creatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which they
+have learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of being
+forgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may follow
+supplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various and
+most affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many other
+words besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle with
+prayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak in
+poetry--else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacred
+passions.
+
+Dr Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that
+the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre
+and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more
+excellent than itself." Here he had in his mind the most false notions
+of poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despising
+simplicity--whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, he
+truly says, is in religion most sublime--and why should not poetry be
+simple in its expression? Is it not always so--when the mood of mind it
+expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great
+emotion? But he uses--as we see--the terms "lustre" and "decoration"--as
+if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and
+ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct
+and simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reason
+sublime.
+
+With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that Dr
+Johnson, enlightened man as he was, should have concluded his argument
+with this absurdity--"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for
+eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to
+recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror
+the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as they are--on them have been
+bestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence--and
+here we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone--one of the highest that
+ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been
+desecrated by the fictions--so to call them--of John Milton; majestic as
+are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments
+that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung
+around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of
+Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in
+the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent as
+are the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to our
+eyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a still
+lake or the slumbering ocean.
+
+This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr Johnson's splendid
+sophistry--splendid at first sight--but on closer inspection a mere
+haze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artificial lustre. How far more
+truly, and how far more sublimely, does Milton, "that mighty orb of
+song," speak of his own divine gift--the gift of Poetry! "These
+abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of
+power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and
+public civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the
+affections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the
+throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be
+wrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies
+of Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations,
+doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore
+the general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's true
+worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and in
+virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in all
+the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
+subtleties and reflections of men's thoughts from within; all these
+things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and
+describe--Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, through
+all instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of soft
+and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself
+unless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths of
+honesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear to
+all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult
+indeed."
+
+It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown on
+the mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets,
+moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel more
+profoundly than they--to see, as it were, into a new world. The things
+of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck
+moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the
+revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by
+Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity,
+which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain.
+The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates
+and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over
+many lands into "the huts where poor men lie"--and thoughts are familiar
+there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from
+the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his
+pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being,
+in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and
+he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even
+when he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that Religion
+was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime
+expression--The Brotherhood of Man.
+
+Yet it is just as true that there is as much misery and suffering in
+Christendom--nay, far more of them all--than troubled and tore men's
+hearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. But
+with what different feelings is it all thought of--spoken of--looked
+at--alleviated--repented--expiated--atoned for--now! In the olden time,
+such was the prostration of the "million," that it was only when seen in
+high places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling;--Remorse
+was the privilege of Kings and Princes--and the Furies shook their
+scourges but before the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had brought
+eclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line.
+
+But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow all
+disastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does
+"with the lofty equalise the low;" and the same deep-felt community of
+guilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in a
+lower degree something of the same character--has made it far more
+profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and
+thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charity
+more comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by those
+to whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed,
+darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life.
+
+We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified
+and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human
+nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken
+of that purity and that elevation--and that it may now be a far holier
+and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of
+Apollo and the Muses. We may not circumscribe its sphere. To what
+cerulean heights shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what
+dungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers and
+privileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion?
+
+If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then it
+would indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be worse than
+worthless. They must be, not imperfect merely, but false; and not false
+merely, but calumnious against human nature. The agonies of passion
+fling men down to the dust on their knees, or smite them motionless as
+stone statues, sitting alone in their darkened chambers of despair. But
+sooner or later, all eyes, all hearts, look for comfort to God. The
+coldest metaphysical analyst could not avoid _that_, in his sage
+enumeration of "each particular hair" that is twisted and untwisted by
+him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the impassioned and
+philosophical poet will not, dare not, for the spirit that is within
+him, exclude _that_ from his elegies, his hymns, and his songs, which,
+whether mournful or exulting, are inspired by the life-long, life-deep
+conviction, that all the greatness of the present is but for the
+future--that the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyre
+only because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens.
+
+But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a
+picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its
+very essence--how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this
+spirit--how shall we limit it--measure it--and accustom it to the curb
+of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few
+who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in
+allusion--hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half
+ashamed--and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians,
+without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose
+scorn, even in this enlightened age, has--the more is the pity--even by
+men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal than
+death?
+
+No: Let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion.
+Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great
+Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen,
+who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's
+discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened
+by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still more
+unpublishable--but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured that
+the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to your
+eyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish,
+but will have everlasting life. Your books--humble and unpretending
+though they be--yet here and there a page not uninspired by the spirit
+of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, and Charity--that is, by Religion--will
+be held up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of the pious
+patriarch, sitting with his children's children round his knees--nor
+will any one sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers the sacred
+links that bind together the brotherhood of man, escape the solemn
+search of a soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught wisdom, and
+happy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknown--even
+perhaps by name--who although dead yet speaketh--and, without
+superstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household.
+
+He who knows that he writes in the fear of God and in the love of man,
+will not arrest the thoughts that flow from his pen, because he knows
+that they may--will be--insulted and profaned by the name of cant, and
+he himself held up as a hypocrite. In some hands, ridicule is indeed a
+terrible weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius,
+branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule
+in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as
+a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her
+blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float
+in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the
+sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage
+during the Christmas holydays of a thousand years.
+
+We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metrical
+composition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and
+then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a pious
+pretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is, indeed, to see
+"fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express
+our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those
+awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings,
+but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns--would-be
+fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and
+rings on their fingers--afterwards extending their notes into Sacred
+Poems for the use of the public--penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments
+of Providence as they would the proceedings of a police court.
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The distinctive character of poetry, it has been said, and credited
+almost universally, is _to please_. That they who have studied the laws
+of thought and passion should have suffered themselves to be deluded by
+an unmeaning word is mortifying enough; but it is more than
+mortifying--it perplexes and confounds--to think that poets themselves,
+and poets too of the highest order, have declared the same degrading
+belief of what is the scope and tendency, the end and aim of their own
+divine art--forsooth, _to please_! Pleasure is no more the end of
+poetry, than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion,
+or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction,
+expansion, elevation, honour, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or it
+is nothing. Is the end of "Paradise Lost" to please? Is the end of
+Dante's Divine Comedy to please? Is the end of the Psalms of David to
+please? Or of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that poetry has
+often been injured or vitiated by having been written in the spirit of
+this creed. It relieved poets from the burden of their duty--from the
+responsibility of their endowments--from the conscience that is in
+genius. We suspect that this doctrine has borne especially hard on all
+sacred poetry, disinclined poets to devoting their genius to it--and
+consigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much of what is great in that
+magnificent walk. For if the masters of the Holy Harp are to strike it
+but to please--if their high inspirations are to be deadened and dragged
+down by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim--they will
+either be contented to awaken a few touching tones of "those strains
+that once did sweet in Zion glide"--unwilling to prolong and deepen them
+into the diapason of praise--or they will deposit their lyre within the
+gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "the soul of music sleeping
+on its strings."
+
+All arguments, or rather objections to, sacred poetry, dissolve as you
+internally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like
+imagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes ocular
+deceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry is mostly meant
+Scriptural; but there are, and always have been, conceited and callous
+critics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, and
+indeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had such
+criticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried in
+their great bards. Poetry, it is clear, embraces all we can experience;
+and every high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, and moral state
+of being becomes religious before it passes away, provided it be left
+free to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted to the glebe by some
+severe slavery of condition, which destroys the desire of ascent by the
+same inexorable laws that palsy the power, and reconcile the toilers to
+the doom of the dust. If all the states of being that poetry illustrates
+do thus tend, of their own accord, towards religious elevation, all high
+poetry must be religious; and so it is, for its whole language is
+breathing of a life "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men
+call earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations,
+obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or embodies,
+enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directly
+or indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of the
+immortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward and
+retribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, and
+he may hang up his harp.
+
+Among the great living poets, Wordsworth is the one whose poetry is to
+us the most inexplicable--with all our reverence for his transcendent
+genius, we do not fear to say the most open to the most serious
+charges--on the score of its religion. From the first line of the
+"Lyrical Ballads" to the last of "The Excursion"--it is avowedly one
+system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life,
+and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human
+heart--the human mind--the human soul--to use his own fine words--is
+"the haunt and main region of his song." There are few, perhaps none of
+our affections--using that term in its largest sense--which have not
+been either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In
+his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears
+to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentable
+defect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of the
+representation? We think there is--and that it lies in his Religion.
+
+In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion," is there
+any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to
+Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The
+hopes that lie beyond the grave--and the many holy and awful feelings in
+which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever
+part of the character of any of the persons--male or female--old or
+young--brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most
+interesting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitely
+delineated--and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, had
+the thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's
+heart during the hours of inspiration--and he often has written like a
+man inspired--they must have found expression in his strains; and the
+personages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, would
+have been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and their
+trials, Christians. But most assuredly this is not the case; the
+religion of this great Poet--in all his poetry published previous to
+"The Excursion"--is but the "Religion of the Woods."
+
+In "The Excursion," his religion is brought forward--prominently and
+conspicuously--in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet,
+and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is it
+Christianity? No--it is not. There are glimpses given of some of the
+Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions,
+in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect without some allusion to
+the Christian creed. The interlocutors--eloquent as they all are--say
+but little on that theme; nor do they show--if we except the
+Priest--much interest in it--any solicitude; they may all, for anything
+that appears to the contrary, be deists.
+
+Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from entering
+on such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance of
+this having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem.
+Nor could it have been the case with such a man--a man privileged, by
+the power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations of
+the earth, on all themes, however high and holy, which the children of
+men can feel and understand. Christianity, during almost all their
+disquisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as they kept
+journeying among the hills,
+
+    "On man, on nature, and on human life,
+    Musing in Solitude!"
+
+But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, or, perceiving it,
+looked upon it with a cold and indifferent regard, and passed by into
+the poetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering from the cloudy
+skies. Their talk is of "Palmyra central, in the desert," rather than of
+Jerusalem. On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful poetry is
+bestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian.
+
+Yet there is no subject too high for Wordsworth's muse. In the preface
+to "The Excursion," he says daringly--we fear too daringly,--
+
+                    "Urania, I shall need
+    Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such
+    Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven!
+    For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
+    Deep--and aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
+    To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
+    All strength--all terror--single or in bands,
+    That ever was put forth in personal form,
+    Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir
+    Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones;
+    I passed them unalarm'd!"
+
+Has the poet, who believes himself entitled to speak thus of the power
+and province given to him to put forth and to possess, spoken in
+consonance with such a strain, by avoiding, in part of the very work to
+which he so triumphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? Nothing
+could have reconciled us to a burst of such--audacity--we use the word
+considerately--but the exhibition of a spirit divinely imbued with the
+Christian faith. For what else, we ask, but the truths beheld by the
+Christian Faith, can be beyond those "personal forms," "beyond Jehovah,"
+"the choirs of shouting angels," and the "empyreal thrones?"
+
+This omission is felt the more deeply--the more sadly--from such
+introduction as there is of Christianity; for one of the books of "The
+Excursion" begins with a very long, and a very noble eulogy on the
+Church Establishment in England. How happened it that he who pronounced
+such eloquent panegyric--that they who so devoutly inclined their ear to
+imbibe it--should have been all contented with
+
+    "That basis laid, these principles of faith
+    Announced,"
+
+and yet throughout the whole course of their discussions, before and
+after, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity or a
+Christian Church in the world?
+
+We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtful and sincere student of
+this great poet's works, must regard such omission--such inconsistency
+or contradiction--with more than the pain of regret; for there is no
+relief afforded to our defrauded hearts from any quarter to which we can
+look. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of a
+Christian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof--for our
+delight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before the
+heavenly splendour; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after all
+this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation
+into the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on the
+Church of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we have
+much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most
+ingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion.
+
+Should the opinion boldly avowed be challenged, we shall enter into
+further exposition and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confine
+ourselves to some remarks on one of the most elaborate tales of domestic
+suffering in "The Excursion." In the story of Margaret, containing, we
+believe, more than four hundred lines--a tolerably long poem in
+itself--though the whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife and
+mother's heart, for year after year of "hope deferred, that maketh the
+heart sick," is described, or rather dissected, with an almost cruel
+anatomy--not one quivering fibre being left unexposed--all the
+fluctuating, and finally all the constant agitations laid bare and naked
+that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave--there is not--except
+one or two weak lines, that seem to have been afterwards purposely
+dropped in--one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret a
+Christian?--Let the answer be yes--as good a Christian as ever kneeled
+in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for
+the resurrection. If she was--then the picture painted of her and her
+agonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character of
+all other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as she
+was, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions--she surely
+must have turned sometimes--ay, often, and often, and often, else had
+she sooner left the clay--towards her Lord and Saviour. But of such
+"comfort let no man speak," seems to have been the principle of Mr
+Wordsworth; and the consequence is, that this, perhaps the most
+elaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one human
+heart, is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious
+mind--_that_ being wanting without which the entire representation is
+vitiated, and necessarily false to nature--to virtue--to resignation--to
+life--and to death. These may seem strong words--but we are ready to
+defend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth.
+
+This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have been
+all-in-all--for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we
+regard the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance--shocks far deeper
+feelings within us than those of taste, and throws over the whole poem
+to which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion of
+hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion, which at the best
+is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Above
+all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over
+the orthodox Church-of-Englandism--for once to quote a not inexpressive
+barbarism of Bentham--which every now and then breaks out either in
+passing compliment--amounting to but a bow--or in eloquent laudation,
+during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaks
+nobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning
+all the land; but in none--no, not one of the houses of the humble, the
+hovels of the poor into which he takes us--is the religion preached in
+those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealing
+organ, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree,
+lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tutelary spirit of the
+lowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find the
+Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever
+was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of
+the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he
+breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be
+one of the order of the High Priests of nature?
+
+Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very
+interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does
+not pretend to present a model of virtue?--that there are miseries which
+shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too
+severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their
+suffering, to look to that source for comfort?--that this is human
+nature, and the description only follows it?--that when "in peace and
+comfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven," and that
+her habit in that respect was only broken up by the stroke of her
+calamity, causing such a derangement of her mental power as should
+deeply interest the sympathies?--in short, that the poet is an artist,
+and that the privation of all comfort from religion completes the
+picture of her desolation?
+
+Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet so
+pathetically speak?
+
+                    "Of one whose stock
+    Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof.
+    She was a woman of a steady mind,
+    Tender and deep in her excess of love;
+    Not speaking much--pleased rather with the joy
+    Of her own thoughts. By some especial care
+    Her temper had been framed, as if to make
+    A Being who, by adding love to fear,
+    Might live on earth a life of happiness.
+    Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side
+    The humble worth that satisfied her heart--
+    Frugal, affectionate, sober, and withal
+    Keenly industrious. She with pride would tell
+    That he was often seated at his loom
+    In summer, ere the mower was abroad
+    Among the dewy grass--in early spring,
+    Ere the last star had vanish'd. They who pass'd
+    At evening, from behind the garden fence
+    Might hear his busy spade, which he would ply
+    After his daily work, until the light
+    Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost
+    In the dark hedges. So their days were spent
+    In peace and comfort; and a pretty boy
+    Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven."
+
+We are prepared by that character, so amply and beautifully drawn, to
+pity her to the utmost demand that may be made on our pity--to judge her
+leniently, even if in her desertion she finally give way to inordinate
+and incurable grief. But we are not prepared to see her sinking from
+depth to depth of despair, in wilful abandonment to her anguish, without
+oft-repeated and long-continued passionate prayers for support or
+deliverance from her trouble, to the throne of mercy. Alas! it is true
+that in our happiness our gratitude to God is too often more selfish
+than we think, and that in our misery it faints or dies. So is it even
+with the best of us--but surely not all life long--unless the heart has
+been utterly crushed--the brain itself distorted in its functions, by
+some calamity, under which nature's self gives way, and falls into ruins
+like a rent house when the last prop is withdrawn.
+
+                      "Nine tedious years
+    From their first separation--nine long years
+    She linger'd in unquiet widowhood--
+    A wife and widow. Needs must it have been
+    A sore heart-wasting."
+
+It must indeed, and it is depicted by a master's hand. But even were it
+granted that sufferings, such as hers, might, in the course of nature,
+have extinguished all heavenly comfort--all reliance on God and her
+Saviour--the process and progress of such fatal relinquishment should
+have been shown, with all its struggles and all its agonies; if the
+religion of one so good was so unavailing, its weakness should have
+been exhibited and explained, that we might have known assuredly why, in
+the multitude of the thoughts within her, there was no solace for her
+sorrow, and how unpitying Heaven let her die of grief.
+
+This tale, too, is the very first told by the Pedlar to the Poet, under
+circumstances of much solemnity, and with affecting note of preparation.
+It arises naturally from the sight of the ruined cottage near which
+they, by appointment, have met; the narrator puts his whole heart into
+it, and the listener is overcome by its pathos. No remark is made on
+Margaret's grief, except that
+
+    "I turn'd aside in weakness, nor had power
+    To thank him for the tale which he had told.
+    I stood, and leaning o'er the garden wall,
+    Review'd that woman's sufferings; and it seem'd
+    To comfort me, while, with a brother's love,
+    I bless'd her in the impotence of grief.
+    Then towards the cottage I return'd, and traced
+    Fondly, though with an interest more mild,
+    The sacred spirit of humanity,
+    Which, 'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies
+    Of nature--'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers,
+    And silent overgrowings, still survived."
+
+Such musings receive the Pedlar's approbation, and he says,--
+
+    "My friend! enough to sorrow you have given.
+    The purposes of wisdom ask no more.
+    Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read
+    The forms of things with an unworthy eye.
+    She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here."
+
+As the Poet, then, was entirely satisfied with the tale, so ought to be
+all readers. No hint is dropped that there was anything to blame in the
+poor woman's nine years' passion--no regret breathed that she had sought
+not, by means offered to all, for that peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding--no question asked, how it was that she had not communed
+with her own afflicted heart, over the pages of that Book where it is
+written, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
+will give you rest!" The narrator had indeed said, that on revisiting
+her during her affliction,--
+
+                    "Her humble lot of books,
+    Which in her cottage window, heretofore,
+    Had been piled up against the corner panes
+    In seemly order, now, with straggling leaves,
+    Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut,
+    As they had chanced to fall."
+
+But he does not mention the Bible.
+
+What follows has always seemed to us of a questionable character:--
+
+    "I well remember that those very plumes,
+    Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall,
+    By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er,
+    As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd
+    So still an image of tranquillity,
+    So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful
+    Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind,
+    _That what we feel of sorrow and despair
+    From ruin and from change, and all the griefs
+    The passing shows of Being leave behind_,
+    Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live
+    Where meditation was. I turn'd away,
+    And walk'd along my road in happiness."
+
+These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in face of them, to deny the
+power of the beauty and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow of us
+mortal beings, who live for awhile on her breast. Assuredly there is
+sorrow that may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here spoken of--for poor
+Margaret, many years dead--was of that kind. But does not the heart of a
+man beat painfully, as if violence were offered to its most sacred
+memories, to hear from the lips of wisdom, that "sorrow and despair from
+ruin and from change, and all the griefs" that we can suffer here below,
+appear an idle dream among plumes, and weeds, and spear-grass, and
+mists, and rain-drops? "Where meditation is!" What meditation? Turn
+thou, O child of a day! to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest
+find comfort. It matters not whether a spring-bank be thy seat by Rydal
+Mere, "while heaven and earth do make one imagery," or thou sittest in
+the shadow of death, beside a tomb.
+
+We said, that for the present we should confine our remarks on this
+subject to the story of Margaret; but they are, more or less,
+applicable to almost all the stories in "The Excursion." In many of the
+eloquent disquisitions and harangues of the Three Friends, they carry
+along with them the sympathies of all mankind; and the wisest may be
+enlightened by their wisdom. But what we complain of is, that neither in
+joy nor grief, happiness nor misery, is religion the dominant principle
+of thought and feeling in the character of any one human being with whom
+we are made acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single one, man or
+woman, are we made to feel the beauty of holiness--the power and the
+glory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought before us whom we pity,
+respect, admire, love. The great poet is high-souled and
+tender-hearted--his song is pure as the morning, bright as day, solemn
+as night. But his inspiration is not drawn from the Book of God, but
+from the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails to sustain his genius when
+venturing into the depths of tribulation and anguish. Therefore
+imperfect are his most truthful delineations of sins and sorrows; and
+not in his philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found alleviation or
+cure of the maladies that kill the soul. Therefore never will "The
+Excursion" become a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and conditions of
+a Christian People, like "The Task" or the "Night Thoughts." Their
+religion is that of revelation--it acknowledges no other source but the
+word of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay,
+these poets appeal; and though they may sometimes, or often,
+misinterpret its judgment, that is an evil incident to finite
+intelligence; and the very consciousness that it is so, inspires a
+perpetual humility that is itself a virtue found to accompany only a
+Christian's Faith.
+
+We have elsewhere vindicated the choice of a person of low degree as
+Chief of "The Excursion," and exult to think that a great poet should
+have delivered his highest doctrines through the lips of a Scottish
+Pedlar.
+
+                "Early had he learn'd
+    To reverence the volume that displays
+    The mystery of life that cannot die."
+
+Throughout the poem he shows that he does reverence it, and that his
+whole being has been purified and elevated by its spirit. But fond as he
+is of preaching, and excellent in the art or gift, a Christian Preacher
+he is not--at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by his parentage and
+nurture with all most hallowed round the poor man's hearth, and guarded
+by his noble nature from all offence to the sanctities there enshrined;
+yet the truth must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not the Word as
+the servant of the Lord, as the follower of Him Crucified. There is very
+much in his announcements to his equals wide of the mark set up in the
+New Testament. We seem to hear rather of a divine power and harmony in
+the universe than of the Living God. The spirit of Christianity as
+connected with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Human-God, the link
+between heaven and earth, between helplessness and omnipotence, ought to
+be everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a Christian
+Poet--wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love for
+his goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness.
+Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of that
+spirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, falling
+not from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming its
+conceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own power than humbled
+in the comparison of its personal inferiority; and in enunciating them
+in verse, more rejoices in the consciousness of the power of its own
+genius than in the contemplation of Him from whom cometh every good and
+perfect gift--it has not attained Piety, and its worship is not an
+acceptable service. For it is self-worship--worship of the creature's
+own conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness,
+in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command the
+praise and adoration of his fellow-mortals. Those lofty speculations,
+alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment of
+waterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude the
+hold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment and
+impatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escaping
+from the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a
+Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support to
+his steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him to
+everlasting life.
+
+Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little of
+the light of revelation, and they all speak of the theological
+doctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressions
+as these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem often
+to have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are which
+human reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it is
+impossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely to
+itself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or in
+express, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; and
+we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting
+its powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In these
+circumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions which
+regard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfy
+itself in such great inquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer of
+truth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is able
+to deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it in
+their belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, it
+has means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing one
+from the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would be
+impossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which has
+been poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertain
+what self-left reason could find out. Yet this much we are able to do in
+the speculations of our philosophy: We can inquire, in this light, what
+are the grounds of evidence which nature and reason themselves offer for
+belief in the same truths. A like remark must be extended to the
+morality which we seem now to inculcate from the authority of human
+reason. We no longer possess any such independent morality. The spirit
+of a higher, purer, moral law than man could discover, has been breathed
+over the world, and we have grown up in the air and the light of a
+system so congenial to the highest feelings of our human nature, that
+the wisest spirits amongst us have sometimes been tempted to forget that
+its origin is divine.
+
+Had "The Excursion" been written in the poet's later life, it had not
+been so liable to such objections as these; for much of his poetry
+composed since that era is imbued with a religious spirit, answering the
+soul's desire of the devoutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are
+sacred Poetry indeed. How comprehensive the sympathy of a truly pious
+heart! How religion reconciles different forms, and modes, and signs,
+and symbols of worship, provided only they are all imbued with the
+spirit of faith! This is the toleration Christianity sanctions--for it
+is inspired by its own universal love. No sectarian feeling here, that
+would exclude or debar from the holiest chamber in the poet's bosom one
+sincere worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. Christian brethren!
+By that mysterious bond our natures are brought into more endearing
+communion--now more than ever brethren, because of the blood that was
+shed for us all from His blessed side! Even of that most awful mystery
+in some prayer-like strains the Poet tremblingly speaks, in many a
+strain, at once so affecting and so elevating--breathing so divinely of
+Christian charity to all whose trust is in the Cross! Who shall say what
+form of worship is most acceptable to the Almighty? All are holy in
+which the soul seeks to approach him--holy
+
+          "The chapel lurking among trees,
+    Where a few villagers on bended knees
+    Find solace which a busy world disdains;"
+
+we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the image of some old
+abbey,--
+
+    "Once ye were holy, ye are holy still!"
+
+And what heart partakes not the awe of his
+
+              "Beneath that branching roof
+    Self-poised and scoop'd into ten thousand cells
+    Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
+    Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die"?
+
+Read the first of these sonnets with the last--and then once more the
+strains that come between--and you will be made to feel how various and
+how vast beneath the sky are the regions set apart by the soul for
+prayer and worship; and that all places become consecrated--the high and
+the humble--the mean and the magnificent--in which Faith and Piety have
+sought to hold communion with Heaven.
+
+But they who duly worship God in temples made with hands, meet every
+hour of their lives "Devotional Excitements" as they walk among His
+works; and in the later poetry of Wordsworth these abound--age having
+solemnised the whole frame of his being, that was always alive to
+religious emotions--but more than ever now, as around his paths in the
+evening of life longer fall the mysterious shadows. More fervid lines
+have seldom flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, than some
+awakened by the sounds and sights of a happy day in May--to him--though
+no church-bell was heard--a Sabbath. His occasional poems are often felt
+by us to be linked together by the finest affinities, which perhaps are
+but affinities between the feelings they inspire. Thus we turn from
+those lines to some on a subject seemingly very different, from a
+feeling of such fine affinities--which haply are but those subsisting
+between all things and thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in them
+how the Poet, as he gazes on a Family that holds not the Christian
+Faith, embraces them in the folds of Christian Love--and how religion as
+well as nature sanctifies the tenderness that is yearning at his heart
+towards them--"a Jewish Family"--who, though outcasts by Heaven's
+decree, are not by Heaven, still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth.
+
+How exquisite the stanzas composed in one of the Catholic Chapels in
+Switzerland,--
+
+    "Doom'd as we are our native dust
+    To wet with many a bitter shower,
+    It ill befits us to disdain
+    The Altar, to deride the Fane,
+    Where patient sufferers bend, in trust
+    To win a happier hour.
+
+    I love, where spreads the village lawn,
+    Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze;
+    Hail to the firm unmoving Cross,
+    Aloft, where pines their branches toss!
+    And to the Chapel far withdrawn,
+    That lurks by lonely ways!
+
+    Where'er we roam--along the brink
+    Of Rhine--or by the sweeping Po,
+    Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide,
+    _Whate'er we look on, at our side
+    Be Charity--to bid us think
+    And feel, if we would know._"
+
+How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, most
+touching in their simple pathos--such as a Hymn for the boatmen as they
+approach the Rapids--Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damsels
+floating homeward on the lake of Brientz--the Italian Itinerant and the
+Swiss Goat-herd--and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives of
+Italian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as if
+by magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace the
+peculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Such
+gentle visions disappear, and we sit by the side of the Poet as he gazes
+from his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the Church of San
+Salvador, which was almost destroyed by lightning a few years ago, while
+the altar and the image of the patron saint were untouched, and devoutly
+listen while he exclaims,--
+
+    "Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times,
+    Let all remind the soul of heaven;
+    Our slack devotion needs them all;
+    And faith, so oft of sense the thrall,
+    While she, by aid of Nature, climbs,
+    May hope to be forgiven."
+
+We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse of the Sun, 1820," one of the
+finest lyrical effusions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, and
+imagery, within the whole compass of poetry. If the beautiful be indeed
+essentially different from the sublime, we here feel that they may be
+made to coalesce so as to be in their united agencies one divine power.
+We called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transitions. Though not an
+ode, it is ode-like in its invocations; and it might be set and sung to
+music if Handel were yet alive, and St Cecilia to come down for an hour
+from heaven. How solemn the opening strain! and from the momentary
+vision of Science on her speculative Tower, how gently glides
+Imagination down, to take her place by the Poet's side, in his bark
+afloat beneath Italian skies--suddenly bedimmed, lake, land, and all,
+with a something between day and night. In a moment we are conscious of
+Eclipse. Our slight surprise is lost in the sense of a strange
+beauty--solemn not sad--settling on the face of nature and the abodes of
+men. In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, we
+have a vision of the Lake, with all its noblest banks, and bays, and
+bowers, and mountains--when in an instant we are wafted away from a
+scene that might well have satisfied our imagination and our heart--if
+high emotions were not uncontrollable and omnipotent--wafted away by
+Fancy with the speed of Fire--lakes, groves, cliffs, mountains, all
+forgotten--and alight amid an aerial host of figures, human and divine,
+on a spire that seeks the sky. How still those imaged sanctities and
+purities, all white as snows of Apennine, stand in the heavenly region,
+circle above circle, and crowned as with a zone of stars! They are
+imbued with life. In their animation the figures of angels and saints,
+insensate stones no more, seem to feel the Eclipse that shadows them,
+and look awful in the portentous light. In his inspiration he transcends
+the grandeur even of that moment's vision--and beholds in the visages of
+that aerial host those of the sons of heaven darkening with celestial
+sorrow at the Fall of Man--when
+
+        "Throngs of celestial visages,
+    Darkening like water in the breeze,
+    A holy sadness shared."
+
+Never since the day on which the wondrous edifice, in its consummate
+glory, first saluted the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneeling
+saint a thought so sad and so sublime--a thought beyond the reaches of
+the soul of him whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adornments so
+far from earth, that the silent company seem sometimes, as light and
+shadow moves among them, to be in ascension to heaven. But the Sun
+begins again to look like the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyful
+light from that awful trance, delights to behold
+
+              "Town and Tower,
+    The Vineyard and the Olive Bower,
+    Their lustre re-assume;"
+
+and "breathes there a man with soul so dead," that it burns not within
+him as he hears the heart of the husband and the father breathe forth
+its love and its fear, remembering on a sudden the far distant whom it
+has never forgotten--a love and a fear that saddens, but disturbs not,
+for the vision he saw had inspired him with a trust in the tender
+mercies of God? Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who may some time
+or other be a traveller over the wide world, the sacred stanzas that
+bring the Poem to a close--and it will not fail to comfort thee when
+sitting all alone by the well in the wilderness, or walking along the
+strange streets of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnight
+afloat on far-off seas.
+
+    "O ye, who guard and grace my Home
+    While in far-distant lands we roam,
+    Was such a vision given to you?
+    Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes,
+    Did sullen mist hide lake and skies
+    And mountains from your view?
+
+    "I ask in vain--and know far less,
+    If sickness, sorrow, or distress
+    Have spared my Dwelling to this hour;
+    Sad blindness! but ordained to prove
+    Our faith in Heaven's unfailing love,
+    And all-controlling power."
+
+Let us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James Montgomery is truly a
+religious poet. His popularity, which is great, has, by some scribes
+sitting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been attributed chiefly
+to the power of sectarianism. He is, we believe, a sectary; and, if all
+sects were animated by the spirit that breathes throughout his poetry,
+we should have no fears for the safety and stability of the Established
+Church; for in that self-same spirit was she built, and by that
+self-same spirit were her foundations dug in a rock. Many are the
+lights--solemn and awful all--in which the eyes of us mortal creatures
+may see the Christian dispensation. Friends, looking down from the top
+of a high mountain on a city-sprinkled plain, have each his own vision
+of imagination--each his own sinking or swelling of heart. They urge no
+inquisition into the peculiar affections of each other's secret
+breasts--all assured, from what each knows of his brother, that every
+eye there may see God--that every tongue that has the gift of lofty
+utterance may sing His praises aloud--that the lips that remain silent
+may be mute in adoration--and that all the distinctions of habits,
+customs, professions, modes of life, even natural constitution and form
+of character, if not lost, may be blended together in mild amalgamation
+under the common atmosphere of emotion, even as the towers, domes, and
+temples, are all softly or brightly interfused with the huts, cots, and
+homesteads--the whole scene below harmonious because inhabited by beings
+created by the same God--in his own image--and destined for the same
+immortality.
+
+It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, in an invidious sense,
+any of Montgomery's fame to any such cause. No doubt many persons read
+his poetry on account of its religion, who, but for that, would not have
+read it; and no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it.
+But so, too, do many persons read Wordsworth's poetry on account of its
+religion--the religion of the woods--who, but for that, would not have
+read it; and so, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. So is
+it with the common-manners-painting poetry of Crabbe--the
+dark-passion-painting poetry of Byron--the high-romance-painting poetry
+of Scott--and so on with Moore, Coleridge, Southey, and the rest. But it
+is to the _mens divinior_, however displayed, that they owe all their
+fame. Had Montgomery not been a true poet, all the Religious Magazines
+in the world could not have saved his name from forgetfulness and
+oblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholy
+Poppy--melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness; but as it is, he is
+like the Rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, planted
+on the banks of "that river whose streams make glad the city of the
+Lord."
+
+Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conceived in the spirit of a most
+exclusive sectarianism, may not be of a very high order, and powerfully
+impressive on minds whose religious tenets are most irreconcilable and
+hostile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being unduly concentrated,
+are not thereby necessarily enfeebled--on the contrary, often
+strengthened; and there is a grand austerity which the imagination more
+than admires--which the conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, the
+conviction from which that austerity grows, is in itself right; for it
+is a feeling--a conviction of the perfect righteousness of God--the
+utter worthlessness of self-left man--the awful sanctity of duty--and
+the dreadfulness of the judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe till
+the seals have been broken, and the Archangel has blown his trumpet. A
+religion planted in such convictions as these, may become dark and
+disordered in its future growth within the spirit; and the tree, though
+of good seed and in a strong soil, may come to be laden with bitter
+fruit, and the very droppings of its leaves may be pernicious to all who
+rest within its shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast than
+the trunk of a dead faith; and such food, unwholesome though it be, is
+not so miserable as famine to a hungry soul.
+
+Grant, then, that there may be in Mr Montgomery's poetry certain
+sentiments, which, in want of a better word, we call Sectarian. They are
+not necessarily false, although not perfectly reconcilable to our own
+creed, which, we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, we may be made
+much the better and the wiser men by meditating upon them; for while
+they may, perhaps (and we are merely making a supposition), be too
+strongly felt by him, they may be too feebly felt by us--they may,
+perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of his poetry than of his
+faith--and if, in some degree, offensive in the composition of a poem,
+far less so, or not at all, in that of a life.
+
+All his shorter poems are stamped with the character of the man. Most of
+them are breathings of his own devout spirit, either delighted or awed
+by a sense of the Divine goodness and mercy towards itself, or
+tremblingly alive--not in mere sensibility to human virtues and joys,
+crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs to the diseased and
+depraved--but in solemn, moral, and religious thought, to all of good or
+evil befalling his brethren of mankind. "A sparrow cannot fall to the
+ground"--a flower of the field cannot wither immediately before his
+eyes--without awakening in his heart such thoughts as we may believe God
+intended should be awakened even by such sights as these; for the fall
+of a sparrow is a Scriptural illustration of His providence, and His
+hand framed the lily, whose array is more royal than was that of Solomon
+in all his glory. Herein he resembles Wordsworth--less profound
+certainly--less lofty; for in its highest moods the genius of Wordsworth
+walks by itself--unapproachable--on the earth it beautifies. But
+Montgomery's poetical piety is far more prevalent over his whole
+character; it belongs more essentially and permanently to the man.
+Perhaps, although we shall not say so, it may be more simple, natural,
+and true. More accordant it certainly is, with the sympathies of
+ordinary minds. The piety of his poetry is far more Christian than that
+of Wordsworth. It is in all his feelings, all his thoughts, all his
+imagery; and at the close of most of his beautiful compositions, which
+are so often avowals, confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, we feel, not
+the moral, but the religion of his song. He "improves" all the
+"occasions" of this life, because he has an "eye that broods on its own
+heart;" and that heart is impressed by all lights and shadows, like a
+river or lake whose waters are pure--pure in their sources and in their
+course. He is, manifestly, a man of the kindliest home-affections; and
+these, though it is to be hoped the commonest of all, preserved to him
+in unabated glow and freshness by innocence and piety, often give vent
+to themselves in little hymns and ode-like strains, of which the rich
+and even novel imagery shows how close is the connection between a pure
+heart and a fine fancy, and that the flowers of poetry may be brought
+from afar, nor yet be felt to be exotics--to intertwine with the very
+simplest domestic feelings and thoughts--so simple, so perfectly human,
+that there is a touch of surprise on seeing them capable of such
+adornment, and more than a touch of pleasure on feeling how much that
+adornment becomes them--brightening without changing, and adding
+admiration to delight--wonder to love.
+
+Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an egotist as Wordsworth; and
+thence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances of
+external nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length,
+that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either in
+the garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce
+a strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease and
+freedom--they shall be cold and stiff--and both passion and imagination
+shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain or
+the man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves or
+admires--themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows--who is
+himself still the centre of the enchanted circle--who, in the delusion
+of a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die,
+all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with him--who not
+only sees
+
+    "Poetic visions swarm on every bough,"
+
+but the history of all his own most secret emotions written on the very
+rocks--who gathers up the many beautiful things that in the prodigality
+of nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and the
+more dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are now
+appropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymy
+so further brighten them that the thousands of eyes that formerly passed
+them by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their rare and
+transcendent beauty--he is the "prevailing Poet!" Montgomery neither
+seeks nor shuns those dark thoughts that will come and go, night and
+day, unbidden, forbidden, across the minds of all men--fortified
+although the main entrances may be; but when they do invade his secret,
+solitary hours, he turns even such visitants to a happy account, and
+questions them, ghost-like as they are, concerning both the future and
+the past. Melancholy as often his views are, we should not suppose him a
+man of other than a cheerful mind; for whenever the theme allows or
+demands it, he is not averse to a sober glee, a composed gaiety that,
+although we cannot say it ever so far sparkles out as to deserve to be
+called absolutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his lighter-toned
+compositions, which it is peculiarly pleasant now and then to feel in
+the writings of a man whose genius is naturally, and from the course of
+life, not gloomy indeed, but pensive, and less disposed to indulge
+itself in smiles than in tears.
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+People nowadays will write, because they see so many writing; the
+impulse comes upon them from without, not from within; loud voices from
+streets and squares of cities call on them to join the throng, but the
+still small voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute;
+and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, or
+linnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at the
+worst an oratorio of ganders and bubbleys?
+
+At this particular juncture or crisis, the disease would fain assume the
+symptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious--all
+smitten with sanctity--Christian all over--and crossing and jostling on
+the Course of Time--as they think, on the high road to Heaven and
+Immortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites.
+Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shops, and, crowned with
+foolscap, repeat to Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggrel to the
+Deity! They bandy about the Bible as if it were an Album. They forget
+that the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well as a set of
+verses to be damned; they look forward to the First of the Month with
+more fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and beseech a critic to be
+merciful upon them with far more earnestness than they ever beseeched
+their Maker. They pray through the press--vainly striving to give some
+publicity to what must be private for evermore; and are seen wiping
+away, at tea-parties, the tears of contrition and repentance for capital
+crimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily,
+that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it is
+felt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowls
+with their own unsaleable sheets. They are frequently so singed; yet
+singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed;
+and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still
+gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe with
+their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner,
+and are no more seen among bipeds.
+
+Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spirit
+of imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two--who for the
+present must be nameless--have shown feeling; and would they but obey
+their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own free
+feet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings,
+they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditable
+reputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands
+the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his
+Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household
+words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song.
+For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those
+pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with
+religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine.
+The study of THE BOOK must have been begun in the simplicity of
+childhood, when it was felt to be indeed divine--and carried on through
+all those silent intervals in which the soul of manhood is restored,
+during the din of life, to the purity and peace of its early being. The
+Bible must be to such a poet even as the sky--with its sun, moon, and
+stars--its boundless blue with all its cloud-mysteries--its peace deeper
+than the grave, because of realms beyond the grave--its tumult louder
+than that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He who
+begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himself
+to it--night and day--and with a humble and a contrite heart as well as
+an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what he
+understands, or to understand what he feels--thoughts and feelings
+breathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery,
+between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly venture
+on the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thought
+of doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem irreverent; it
+would convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, and
+the world.
+
+They alone, therefore, to whom God has given genius as well as faith,
+zeal, and benevolence--will, of their own accord, fix their Pindus
+either on Lebanon or Calvary--and of these but few. The genius must be
+high--the faith sure--and human love must coalesce with divine, that the
+strain may have power to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they are
+in matter, and with all their apprehensions and conceptions blended with
+material imagery, and the things of this moving earth and this restless
+life.
+
+So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen his
+subject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. His
+work, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependent
+on creeds, but out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestly
+moulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry will
+outlive every other; for the time will come when Christian Poetry will
+be deeper and higher far than any that has ever yet been known among
+men. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto have been either religious or
+superstitious; and as "the day-spring from on High that has visited us"
+spreads wider and wider over the earth, "the soul of the world, dreaming
+of things to come," shall assuredly see more glorified visions than have
+yet been submitted to her ken. That poetry has so seldom satisfied the
+utmost longings and aspirations of human nature, can only have been
+because Poetry has so seldom dealt in its power with the only mysteries
+worth knowing--the greater mysteries of religion, into which the
+Christian is initiated only through faith, an angel sent from heaven to
+spirits struggling by supplications and sacrifices to escape from sin
+and death.
+
+These, and many other thoughts and feelings concerning the "Vision and
+the Faculty divine," when employed on divine subjects, have arisen
+within us, on reading--which we have often done with delight--"The
+Christian Year," so full of Christian poetry of the purest character. Mr
+Keble is a poet whom Cowper himself would have loved--for in him piety
+inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialised by religion. We
+peruse his book in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that which is
+breathed upon us by some calm day in spring, when all imagery is serene
+and still--cheerful in the main--yet with a touch and a tinge of
+melancholy, which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once more
+endearing and more profound. We should no more think of criticising such
+poetry than of criticising the clear blue skies--the soft green
+earth--the "liquid lapse" of an unpolluted stream, that
+
+    "Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
+    Giving a gentle kiss to every flower
+    It overtaketh on its pilgrimage."
+
+All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, we partake of the
+universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it
+emanated. Indeed, we do not remember any poetry nearly so beautiful as
+this, which reminds one so seldom of the poet's art. We read it without
+ever thinking of the place which its author may hold among poets, just
+as we behold a "lily of the field" without comparing it with other
+flowers, but satisfied with its own pure and simple loveliness; or each
+separate poem may be likened, in its
+unostentatious--unambitious--unconscious beauty--to
+
+    "A violet by a mossy stone,
+    Half hidden to the eye."
+
+Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair earth, the violet is indeed
+the most delightful in itself--form, fragrance, and colour--nor less in
+the humility of its birthplace, and its haunts in the "sunshiny shade."
+Therefore, 'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that may be said to
+blossom on Mount Sion.
+
+The most imaginative poetry inspired by Nature, and dedicated to her
+praise, is never perfectly and consummately beautiful till it ascends
+into the religious; but then religion breathes from, and around, and
+about it, only at last when the poet has been brought, by the leading of
+his own aroused spirit, to the utmost pitch of his inspiration. He
+begins, and continues long, unblamed in mere emotions of beauty; and he
+often pauses unblamed, and brings his strain to a close, without having
+forsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feelings which belong alone to
+this earth. But poetry like that of the "Christian Year" springs at
+once, visibly and audibly, from religion as its fount. If it, indeed,
+issue from one of the many springs religion opens in the human heart, no
+fear of its ever being dried up. Small indeed may seem the silver line,
+when first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! But how soon it
+begins to sing with a clear loud voice in the solitude! Bank and
+brae--tree, shrub, and flower--grow greener at each successive
+waterfall--the rains no more disturb that limpid element than the
+dews--and never does it lose some reflection of the heavens.
+
+In a few modest words, Mr Keble states the aim and object of his volume.
+He says truly, that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of
+England to possess in her authorised formularies an ample and secure
+provision, both for a sound rule of faith and a sober standard of
+feeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publication
+will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his
+own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended
+and exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has been
+attained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in a
+thousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deaf
+yet to lovely sights and sounds--and a true poet is as certain of
+recognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we have
+no prayer-book printed on paper--perhaps it would be better if we had;
+but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr Keble, is compiled and
+composed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotland
+than in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is
+felt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said,
+no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, and
+which in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inward
+observances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling _here_; and
+therefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart,
+will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration--for the
+Christian creed is "wide and general as the casing air," and felt as
+profoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms is
+heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities of
+England, where so often
+
+    "Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
+    The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."
+
+Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about--to
+show off upon--as if the writing and the reading of it were to be
+reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets
+have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most
+unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy--for it implies
+much voluntary self-degradation--is mere popularity. Against all such
+low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the
+muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on
+the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry is
+praise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from some
+unseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer or
+wanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holier
+solemnity in the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed _got by
+heart_; and memory is then tenacious to the death, for her hold on what
+she loves is strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, when even
+hope itself is dead--if, indeed, hope ever dies--the trust is committed
+to despair. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless thoughts; they
+become very thoughts themselves, and _are_ what they represent. How are
+many of the simply, rudely, but fervently and beautifully rhymed Psalms
+of David, very part and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of the
+Scottish peasant's being!
+
+    "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want.
+      He makes me down to lie
+    In pastures green: he leadeth me
+      The quiet waters by."
+
+These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful shepherd on the braes every
+stream that glides through the solitary places--they have often given
+colours to the greensward beyond the brightness of all herbage and of
+all flowers. Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes us mortal
+creatures feel the union that subsists between the Book of Nature and
+the Book of Life!
+
+Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathers
+and mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring.
+Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest and
+wisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories;
+the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smoky
+day; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallow
+up the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as a
+separate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy,
+and forlorn! But he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees far
+into the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying--"Suffer
+little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the
+kingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that Poetry throws back upon the New
+Testament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortal
+brother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of Man. On a dead
+insensible flower--a lily--a rose--a violet--a daisy, poetry may pour
+out all its divinest power--just as the sun itself sometimes seems to
+look with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once made
+transparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all its
+leaves--and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves be
+dead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall change
+death into sleep--till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shall
+seem a bed of bright and celestial repose. From poetry, in words or
+marble--both alike still and serene as water upon grass--we turn to the
+New Testament, and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They were redeemed
+from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We
+look down into the depths of that text--and we then turn again to
+Keble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon the
+uninspired page! Yet not uninspired--if that name may be given to
+strains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise,
+"whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets." Revelation has shown us
+that "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy of
+that Being for whom Godhead died!
+
+They who read the lines on the "Holy Innocents" in a mood of mind worthy
+of them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "The
+Epiphany." They are separated in the volume by some kindred and
+congenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy the
+still region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seem
+to occupy the entire sky.
+
+How far better than skilfully--how inspiredly does this Christian poet
+touch upon each successive holy theme--winging his way through the
+stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving
+one place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding and
+unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attempted
+the theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on such
+a subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of
+Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he
+will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching
+their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the
+sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger.
+Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few
+words--"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them,
+till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the
+star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."
+
+The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to a
+strain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism." How soon the
+infant spirit is touched with love--another name for religion--none may
+dare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling and
+thought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration--so strong it
+often is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of natural
+processes going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often been
+seen in the simplicity of childhood--creatures but five or six years
+old--soon perhaps about to disappear--astonishing, and saddening, and
+subliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by a
+holy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into a
+mysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink of
+death and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine
+unfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influences should not be
+rare--nor are they rare--in truly Christian households. Almost as soon
+as the heart is moved by filial affection, that affection grows reverent
+even to earthly parents--and, ere long, becomes piety towards the name
+of God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must not
+be too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No--let
+religion--a myriad-meaning word--be whispered and breathed round about
+them, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens their
+ears, while enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yet
+multitudinous world.
+
+Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read with
+tears by many a grateful heart--on the "Churching of Women." What would
+become of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen the
+piety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holy
+and divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify the
+affections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before a
+father's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the father
+yearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving after
+childbirth!
+
+"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither
+do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
+was not arrayed like one of these." What is all the poetry that genius
+ever breathed over all the flowers of this earth to that one divine
+sentence! It has inspired our Christian poet--and here is his heartfelt
+homily.
+
+
+FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
+
+    "Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies,
+      Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew,
+    What more than magic in you lies
+      To fill the heart's fond view?
+    In childhood's sports companions gay,
+    In sorrow, on Life's downward way,
+    How soothing! in our last decay
+      Memorials prompt and true.
+
+    Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,
+      As pure, as fragrant, and as fair,
+    As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours
+      Of happy wanderers there.
+    Fall'n all beside--the world of life,
+    How is it stain'd with fear and strife!
+    In Reason's world what storms are rife,
+      What passions rage and glare!
+
+    But cheerful and unchanged the while
+      Your first and perfect form ye show,
+    The same that won Eve's matron smile
+      In the world's opening glow
+    The stars of Heaven a course are taught
+    Too high above our human thought;--
+    Ye may be found if ye are sought,
+      And as we gaze we know.
+
+    Ye dwell beside our paths and homes,
+      Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow,
+    And guilty man, where'er he roams,
+      Your innocent mirth may borrow.
+    The birds of air before us fleet,
+    They cannot brook our shame to meet--
+    But we may taste your solace sweet,
+      And come again to-morrow.
+
+    Ye fearless in your nests abide--
+      Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise,
+    Your silent lessons undescried
+      By all but lowly eyes;
+    For ye could draw th' admiring gaze
+    Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys:
+    Your order wild, your fragrant maze,
+      He taught us how to prize.
+
+    Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour,
+      As when he paused and own'd you good;
+    His blessing on earth's primal bower,
+      Yet felt it all renew'd.
+    What care ye now, if winter's storm
+    Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form?
+    Christ's blessing at your heart is warm,
+      Ye fear no vexing mood.
+
+    Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,
+      That daily court you and caress,
+    How few the happy secret find
+      Of your calm loveliness!
+    'Live for to-day! to-morrow's light
+    To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight.
+    Go, sleep like closing flowers at night,
+      And Heaven thy morn will bless.'"
+
+Such poetry as this must have a fine influence on all the best human
+affections. Sacred are such songs to sorrow--and sorrow is either a
+frequent visitor, or a domesticated inmate, in every household.
+Religion may thus be made to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours,
+into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not the mother unhappy who
+closes the eyes of her dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in the
+house, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed among other flowers, now
+all drooping for its sake--nor yet call the father unhappy who lays his
+sweet son below the earth, and returns to the home where his voice is to
+be heard never more. That affliction brings forth feelings unknown
+before in his heart; calming all turbulent thoughts by the settled peace
+of the grave. Then every page of the Bible is beautiful--and beautiful
+every verse of poetry that thence draws its inspiration. Thus in the
+pale and almost ghost-like countenance of decay, our hearts are not
+touched by the remembrance alone of beauty which is departed, and by the
+near extinction of loveliness which we behold fading before our
+eyes--but a beauty, fairer and deeper far, lies around the hollow eye
+and the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air of the untroubled
+spirit that has heard resigned the voice that calls it away from the dim
+shades of mortality. Well may that beauty be said to be religious; for
+in it speaks the soul, conscious, in the undreaded dissolution of its
+earthly frame, of a being destined to everlasting bliss. With every deep
+emotion arising from our contemplation of such beauty as this--religious
+beauty beaming in the human countenance, whether in joy or sadness,
+health or decay--there is profoundly interfused a sense of the soul's
+spirituality, which silently sheds over the emotion something celestial
+and divine, rendering it not only different in degree, but altogether
+distinct in kind, from all the feelings that things merely perishable
+can inspire--so that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feeling of
+beauty is but a vivid recognition of its own deathless being and
+ethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly
+known to the human heart in those ages of the world when all other
+feelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the
+most pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over the
+beauty intensely worshipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever over
+its now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the living
+lustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone a
+beauty in his latest smile, which spoke not alone of a brief scene
+closed, but of an endless scene unfolding; while its cessation, instead
+of leaving him in utter darkness, seemed to be accompanied with a burst
+of light.
+
+Much of our most fashionable Modern Poetry is at once ludicrously and
+lamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthful
+creatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins of
+shameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and by
+persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to that
+vulgar altitude--the gallows. The darker--the stronger passions,
+forsooth! And what hast thou to do--my dove-eyed Margaret, with the
+darker and stronger passions? Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still,
+serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and the
+weaker passions thine--brighter indeed--yet say not _weaker_, for they
+are strong as death;--Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, and
+Sorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears--be these all thy own--and
+sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imagination
+be spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescence--a Lunar
+Rainbow.
+
+There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christian Year"--such perfect
+sincerity, and consequently such simplicity--that though the production
+of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot doubt that it will some day or
+other find its way into many of the dwellings of humble life. Such
+descent, if descent it be, must be of all receptions the most delightful
+to the heart of a Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more widely
+over the land, why fear that it will deaden religion? Let us believe
+that it will rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time true poetry,
+such as this, of a character somewhat higher than probably can be yet
+felt, understood, and appreciated by the people, will come to be easy
+and familiar, and blended with all the other benign influences breathed
+over their common existence by books. Meanwhile the "Christian Year"
+will be finding its way into many houses where the inmates read from the
+love of reading--not for mere amusement only, but for instruction and a
+deeper delight; and we shall be happy if our recommendation causes its
+pages to be illumined by the gleams of a few more peaceful hearths, and
+to be rehearsed by a few more happy voices in the "parlour twilight."
+
+We cannot help expressing the pleasure it has given us to see so much,
+true poetry coming from Oxford. It is delightful to see that classical
+literature, which sometimes, we know not how, certainly has a chilling
+effect on poetical feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, and
+causing it to produce itself in song. Oxford has produced many true
+poets; Collins, Warton, Bowles, Heber, Milman, and now Keble--are all
+her own--her inspired sons. Their strains are not steeped in "port and
+prejudice;" but in the--Isis. Heaven bless Iffley and Godstow--and many
+another sweet old ruined place--secluded, but not far apart from her own
+inspiring Sanctities! And those who love her not, never may the Muses
+love!
+
+
+
+
+SACRED POETRY.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+In his Poem, entitled, "The Omnipresence of the Deity," Mr Robert
+Montgomery writes thus,--
+
+    "Lo! there, in yonder fancy-haunted room,
+    What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom,
+    When pale, and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear,
+    The dying sceptic felt his hour drew near!
+    From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell,
+    No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell;
+    As the last throes of death convulsed his cheek,
+    He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek,
+    Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare,
+    Lock'd his white lips--and all was mute despair!
+    Go, child of darkness, see a Christian die;
+    No horror pales his lip, or rolls his eye;
+    No dreadful doubts, or dreamy terrors, start
+    The hope Religion pillows on his heart,
+    When with a dying hand he waves adieu
+    To all who love so well, and weep so true:
+    Meek as an infant to the mother's breast
+    Turns fondly longing for its wonted rest,
+    He pants for where congenial spirits stray,
+    Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away."
+
+First, as to the execution of this passage. "Fancy-haunted" may do, but
+it is not a sufficiently strong expression for the occasion. In every
+such picture as this, we demand appropriate vigour in every word
+intended to be vigorous, and which is important to the effect of the
+whole.
+
+    "From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell,
+    No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell."
+
+How could they?--The line but one before is,
+
+    "What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom."
+
+This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot doubt that Mr Montgomery
+will confess that it is so; but independently of that, he is describing
+the deathbed of a person who, _ex hypothesi_, could have no bright
+hopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. He might as well, in a
+description of a negress, have told us that she had no long, smooth,
+shining, yellow locks--no light-blue eyes--no ruddy and rosy cheeks--nor
+yet a bosom white as snow. The execution of the picture of the Christian
+is not much better--it is too much to use, in the sense here given to
+them, no fewer than three verbs--"pales"--"rolls"--"starts," in four
+lines.
+
+    "The hope Religion pillows on his heart,"
+
+is not a good line, and it is a borrowed one.
+
+    "When with a dying hand he waves adieu,"
+
+conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do not act so. Not thus are taken
+eternal farewells. The motion in the sea-song was more natural--
+
+    "She waved adieu, and kiss'd her lily hand."
+
+"_Weeps so true_," means nothing, nor is it English. The grammar is not
+good of,
+
+    "He _pants for where_ congenial spirits"--
+
+Neither is the word _pants_ by any means the right one; and in such an
+awful crisis, admire who may the simile of the infant longing for its
+mother's breast, we never can in its present shape; while there is the
+line,
+
+    "Turns to his God, _and sighs his soul away_;"
+
+a prettiness we very much dislike--alter one word, and it would be
+voluptuous--nor do we hesitate to call the passage a puling one
+altogether, and such as ought to be expunged from all paper.
+
+But that is not all we have to say against it--it is radically and
+essentially bad, because it either proves nothing of what it is meant to
+prove--or what no human being on earth ever disputed. Be fair--be just
+in all that concerns religion. Take the best--the most moral, if the
+word can be used--the most enlightened Sceptic, and the true Christian,
+and compare their deathbeds. That of the Sceptic will be disturbed or
+disconsolate--that of the Christian confiding or blessed. But to
+contrast the deathbed of an absolute maniac, muttering curses, gnashing
+and scowling, and "raising a hideous shriek," and "rounding his eyes
+with a ghastly glare," and convulsed, too, with severe bodily
+throes--with that of a convinced, confiding, and conscientious
+Christian, a calm, meek, undoubting believer, happy in the "hope
+religion pillows on his heart," and enduring no fleshly agonies, can
+serve no purpose under the sun. Men who have the misery of being
+unbelievers, are at all times to be pitied--most of all in their last
+hours; but though theirs be then dim melancholy, or dark despair, they
+express neither the one state nor the other by mutterings, curses, and
+hideous shrieks. Such a wretch there may sometimes be--like him "who
+died and made no sign;" but there is no more sense in seeking to
+brighten the character of the Christian by its contrast with that of
+such an Atheist, than by contrast with a fiend to brighten the beauty of
+an angel.
+
+Finally, are the deathbeds of all good Christians so calm as this--and
+do they all thus meekly
+
+    "Pant for where congenial spirits stray,"
+
+a line, besides its other vice, most unscriptural? Congenial spirit is
+not the language of the New Testament. Alas! for poor weak human nature
+at the dying hour! Not even can the Christian always then retain
+unquaking trust in his Saviour! "This is the blood that was shed for
+thee," are words whose mystery quells not always nature's terror. The
+Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is renewed in vain--and he remembers, in
+doubt and dismay, words that, if misunderstood, would appal all the
+Christian world--"My God--my God--why hast thou forsaken me?" Perhaps,
+before the Faith, that has waxed dim and died in his brain distracted by
+pain, and disease, and long sleeplessness, and a weight of woe--for he
+is a father who strove in vain to burst those silken ties, that winding
+all round and about his very soul and his very body, bound him to those
+dear little ones, who are of the same spirit and the same flesh,--we
+say, before that Faith could, by the prayers of holy men, be restored
+and revivified, and the Christian once more comforted by thinking on
+Him, who for all human beings did take upon him the rueful burden and
+agonies of the Cross--Death may have come for his prey, and left the
+chamber, of late so hushed and silent, at full liberty to weep! Enough
+to know, that though Christianity be divine, we are human,--that the
+vessel is weak in which that glorious light may be enshrined--weak as
+the potter's clay--and that though Christ died to save sinners, sinners
+who believe in Him, and therefore shall not perish, may yet lose hold of
+the belief when their understandings are darkened by the shadow of
+death, and, like Peter losing faith and sinking in the sea, feel
+themselves descending into some fearful void, and cease here to be, ere
+they find voice to call on the name of the Lord--"Help, or I perish!"
+
+What may be the nature of the thoughts and feelings of an Atheist,
+either when in great joy or great sorrow, full of life and the spirit of
+life, or in mortal malady and environed with the toils of death, it
+passes the power of our imagination even dimly to conceive; nor are we
+convinced that there ever was an utter Atheist. The thought of a God
+will enter in, barred though the doors be both of the understanding and
+the heart, and all the windows supposed to be blocked up against the
+light. The soul, blind and deaf as it may often be, cannot always resist
+the intimations all life long, day and night, forced upon it from the
+outer world; its very necessities, nobler far than those of the body,
+even when most degraded, importunate when denied their manna, are to it
+oftentimes a silent or a loud revelation. Then, not to feel and think as
+other beings do with "discourse of reason," is most hard and difficult
+indeed, even for a short time, and on occasions of very inferior moment.
+Being men, we are carried away, willing or unwilling, and often
+unconsciously, by the great common instinct; we keep sailing with the
+tide of humanity, whether in flow or ebb--fierce as demons and the sons
+of perdition, if that be the temper of the congregating hour--mild and
+meek as Pity, or the new-born babe, when the afflatus of some divine
+sympathy has breathed through the multitude, nor one creature escaped
+its influence, like a spring day that steals through a murmuring forest,
+till not a single tree, even in the darkest nook, is without some touch
+of the season's sunshine. Think, then, of one who would fain be an
+Atheist, conversing with the "sound, healthy children of the God of
+heaven!" To his reason, which is his solitary pride, arguments might in
+vain be addressed, for he exults in being "an Intellectual All in All,"
+and is a bold-browed sophist to daunt even the eyes of Truth--eyes which
+can indeed "outstare the eagle" when their ken is directed to heaven,
+but which are turned away in aversion from the human countenance that
+would dare to deny God. Appeal not to the intellect of such a man, but
+to his heart; and let not even that appeal be conveyed in any fixed form
+of words--but let it be an appeal of the smiles and tears of
+affectionate and loving lips and eyes--of common joys and common griefs,
+whose contagion is often felt, beyond prevention or cure, where two or
+three are gathered together--among families thinly sprinkled over the
+wilderness, where, on God's own day, they repair to God's own house, a
+lowly building on the brae, which the Creator of suns and systems
+despiseth not, nor yet the beatings of the few contrite hearts therein
+assembled to worship Him--in the cathedral's "long-drawn aisles and
+fretted vaults"--in mighty multitudes all crowded in silence, as beneath
+the shadow of a thunder-cloud, to see some one single human being
+die--or swaying and swinging backwards and forwards, and to and fro, to
+hail a victorious armament returning from the war of Liberty, with him
+who hath "taken the start of this majestic world" conspicuous from afar
+in front, encircled with music, and with the standard of his unconquered
+country afloat above his head. Thus, and by many thousand other potent
+influences for ever at work, and from which the human heart can never
+make its safe escape, let it flee to the uttermost parts of the earth,
+to the loneliest of the multitude of the isles of the sea, are men, who
+vainly dream that they are Atheists, forced to feel God. Nor happens
+this but rarely--nor are such "angel-visits few and far between." As the
+most cruel have often, very often, thoughts tender as dew, so have the
+most dark often, very often, thoughts bright as day. The sun's golden
+finger writes the name of God on the clouds, rising or setting, and the
+Atheist, falsely so called, starts in wonder and in delight, which his
+soul, because it is immortal, cannot resist, to behold that Bible
+suddenly opened before his eyes on the sky. Or some old, decrepit,
+greyhaired crone, holds out her shrivelled hand, with dim eyes patiently
+fixed on his, silently asking charity--silently, but in the holy name of
+God; and the Atheist, taken unawares, at the very core of his heart bids
+"God bless her," as he relieves her uncomplaining miseries.
+
+If then Atheists do exist, and if their deathbeds may be described for
+the awful or melancholy instruction of their fellow-men, let them be
+such Atheists as those whom, let us not hesitate to say, we may
+blamelessly love with a troubled affection; for our Faith may not have
+preserved us from sins from which they are free--and we may give even to
+many of the qualities of their most imperfect and unhappy characters
+almost the name of virtues. No curses on their deathbeds will they be
+heard to utter. No black scowlings--no horrid gnashing of teeth--no
+hideous shriekings will there appal the loving ones who watch and weep
+by the side of him who is dying disconsolate. He will hope, and he will
+fear, now that there is a God indeed everywhere present--visible now in
+the tears that fall, audible now in the sighs that breathe for his
+sake--in the still small voice. That Being forgets not those by whom he
+has been forgotten; least of all, the poor "Fool who has said in his
+heart there is no God," and who knows at last that a God there is, not
+always in terror and trembling, but as often perhaps in the assurance of
+forgiveness, which, undeserved by the best of the good, may not be
+withheld even from the worst of the bad, if the thought of a God and a
+Saviour pass but for a moment through the darkness of the departing
+spirit--like a dove shooting swiftly, with its fair plumage, through the
+deep but calm darkness that follows the subsided storm.
+
+So, too, with respect to Deists. Of unbelievers in Christianity there
+are many kinds--the reckless, the ignorant, the callous, the confirmed,
+the melancholy, the doubting, the despairing--the _good_. At their
+deathbeds, too, may the Christian poet, in imagination, take his
+stand--and there may he even hear
+
+    "The still sad music of humanity,
+    Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power
+    To soften and subdue!"
+
+Oftener all the sounds and sights there will be full of most rueful
+anguish; and that anguish will groan in the poet's lays when his human
+heart, relieved from its load of painful sympathies, shall long
+afterwards be inspired with the pity of poetry, and sing in elegies,
+sublime in their pathos, the sore sufferings and the dim distress that
+clouded and tore the dying spirit, longing, but all unable--profound
+though its longings be--as life's daylight is about to close upon that
+awful gloaming, and the night of death to descend in oblivion--to
+believe in the Redeemer.
+
+Why then turn but to such deathbed, if indeed religion, and not
+superstition, described that scene--as that of Voltaire? Or even of
+Rousseau, whose dying eyes sought, in the last passion, the sight of the
+green earth, and the blue skies, and the sun shining so brightly, when
+all within the brain of his worshipper was fast growing dimmer and more
+dim--when all the unsatisfied spirit, that scarcely hoped a future life,
+knew not how it could ever take farewell of the present with tenderness
+enough, and enough of yearning and craving after its disappearing
+beauty, and when as if the whole earth were at that moment beloved even
+as his small peculiar birthplace--
+
+    "Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."
+
+The Christian poet, in his humane wisdom, will, for instruction's sake
+of his fellow-men, and for the discovery and the revealment of
+ever-sacred truth, keep aloof from such death-beds as these, or take his
+awful stand beside them to drop the perplexed and pensive tear. For we
+know not what it is that we either hear or see; and holy Conscience,
+hearing through a confused sound, and seeing through an obscure light,
+fears to condemn, when perhaps she ought only to pity--to judge another,
+when perhaps it is her duty but to use that inward eye for her own
+delinquencies. He, then, who designs to benefit his kind by strains of
+high instruction, will turn from the deathbed of the famous Wit, whose
+brilliant fancy hath waxed dim as that of the clown--whose malignant
+heart is quaking beneath the Power it had so long derided, with terrors
+over which his hated Christian triumphs--and whose intellect, once so
+perspicacious that it could see but too well the motes that are in the
+sun, the specks and stains that are in the flowing robe of nature
+herself--prone, in miserable contradiction to its better being, to turn
+them as proofs against the power and goodness of the Holy One who
+inhabiteth eternity--is now palsy-stricken as that of an idiot, and
+knows not even the sound of the name of its once vain and proud
+possessor--when crowded theatres had risen up with one rustle to honour,
+and then, with deafening acclamations,
+
+    "Raised a mortal to the skies!"
+
+There he is--it matters not now whether on down or straw--stretched,
+already a skeleton, and gnashing--may it be in senselessness, for
+otherwise what pangs are these!--gnashing his teeth, within lips once so
+eloquent, now white with foam and slaver; and the whole mouth, of yore
+so musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painted
+death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of
+God of all His beams?--with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of
+the Cross?--with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood
+and water came from the wound in His blessed side?--with wit, to drive
+away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the
+stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?--with wit, to
+deride the ineffable glory of transfigured Godhead on the Mount, and the
+sweet and solemn semblance of the Man Jesus in the garden?--with wit, to
+darken all the decrees of Providence?--and with wit,
+
+    "To shut the gates of Mercy on mankind?"
+
+Nor yet will the Christian poet long dwell in his religious strains,
+though awhile he may linger there, "and from his eyelids wipe the tears
+that sacred pity hath engendered," beside the dying couch of Jean Jaques
+Rousseau--a couch of turf beneath trees--for he was ever a lover of
+Nature, though he loved all things living or dead as madmen love. His
+soul, while most spiritual, was sensual still, and with tendrils of
+flesh and blood embraced--even as it did embrace the balm-breathing form
+of voluptuous woman--the very phantoms of his most etherealised
+imagination. Vice stained all his virtues--as roses are seen, in some
+certain soils, and beneath some certain skies, always to be blighted,
+and their fairest petals to bear on them something like blots of blood.
+Over the surface of the mirror of his mind, which reflected so much of
+the imagery of man and nature, there was still, here and there, on the
+centre or round the edges, rust-spots, that gave back no image, and
+marred the proportions of the beauty and the grandeur that yet shone
+over the rest of the circle set in the rich carved gold. His disturbed,
+and distracted, and defeated friendships, that all vanished in insane
+suspicions, and seemed to leave his soul as well satisfied in its fierce
+or gloomy void, as when it was filled with airy and glittering visions,
+are all gone for ever now. Those many thoughts and feelings--so
+melancholy, yet still fair, and lovely, and beautiful--which, like
+bright birds encaged, with ruffled and drooping wings, once so apt to
+soar, and their music mute, that used to make the wide woods to wring,
+were confined within the wires of his jealous heart--have now all flown
+away, and are at rest! Who sits beside the wild and wondrous genius,
+whose ravings entrance the world? Who wipes the death-sweat from that
+capacious forehead, once filled with such a multitude of disordered but
+aspiring fancies? Who, that his beloved air of heaven may kiss and cool
+it for the last time, lays open the covering that hides the marble
+sallowness of Rousseau's sin-and-sorrow-haunted breast? One of Nature's
+least-gifted children--to whose eyes nor earth nor heaven ever beamed
+with beauty--to whose heart were known but the meanest charities of
+nature; yet mean as they were, how much better in such an hour than all
+his imaginings most magnificent! For had he not suffered his own
+offspring to pass away from his eyes, even like the wood-shadows, only
+less beloved and less regretted? And in the very midst of the
+prodigality of love and passion, which he had poured out over the
+creations of his ever-distempered fancy, let his living children, his
+own flesh and blood, disappear as paupers in a chance-governed world? A
+world in which neither parental nor filial love were more than the names
+of nonentities--Father, Son, Daughter, Child, but empty syllables, which
+philosophy heeded not--or rather loved them in their emptiness, but
+despised, hated, or feared them, when for a moment they seemed pregnant
+with a meaning from heaven, and each in its holy utterance signifying
+God!
+
+No great moral or religious lesson can well be drawn, or say rather so
+well, from such anomalous deathbeds, as from those of common
+unbelievers. To show, in all its divine power, the blessedness of the
+Christian's faith, it must be compared, rather than contrasted, with the
+faith of the best and wisest of Deists. The ascendancy of the heavenly
+over the earthly will then be apparent--as apparent as the superior
+lustre of a star to that of a lighted-up window in the night. For above
+all other things in which the Christian is happier than the Deist--with
+the latter, the life beyond the grave is but a dark hope--to the former,
+"immortality has been brought to light by the Gospel." That difference
+embraces the whole spirit. It may be less felt--less seen when life is
+quick and strong; for this earth alone has much and many things to
+embrace and enchain our being--but in death the difference is as between
+night and day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE.--In the later editions of "The Omnipresence of the Deity," the
+passage animadverted on in the preceding chapter has been altered as
+follows:--
+
+    "Lo! there, in yonder spectre-haunted room,
+    What sightless demons horrified the gloom,
+    When pale and shivering, and bedew'd with fear,
+    The dying Sceptic felt his hour draw near!
+    Ere the last throes with anguish lined his cheek,
+    He yell'd for mercy with a hollow shriek,
+    Mutter'd some accents of unmeaning prayer,
+    Lock'd his white lips--let God the rest declare.
+    Go, child of Darkness! see a Christian die;
+    No horror pales his lip, or dims his eye;
+    No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start
+    The hope Religion pillows on his heart,
+    When with a falt'ring hand he waves adieu
+    To hearts as tender as their tears are true;
+    Meek as an infant to the mother's breast
+    Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest,
+    So to our God the yielding soul retires,
+    And in one sigh of sainted peace expires."
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+FIRST CANTICLE.
+
+
+The present Age, which, after all, is a very pretty and pleasant one, is
+feelingly alive and widely awake to the manifold delights and advantages
+with which the study of Natural History swarms, and especially that
+branch of it which unfolds the character and habits, physical, moral,
+and intellectual, of those most interesting and admirable
+creatures--Birds. It is familiar not only with the shape and colour of
+beak, bill, claw, talon, and plume, but with the purposes for which they
+are designed, and with the instincts which guide their use in the
+beautiful economy of all-gracious Nature. We remember the time when the
+very word Ornithology would have required interpretation in mixed
+company; when a naturalist was looked on as a sort of out-of-the-way but
+amiable monster. Now, one seldom meets with man, woman, or child, who
+does not know a hawk from a handsaw, or even, to adopt the more learned
+reading, from a heron-shew; a black swan is no longer erroneously
+considered a _rara avis_ any more than a black sheep; while the Glasgow
+Gander himself, no longer apocryphal, has taken his place in the
+national creed, belief in his existence being merely blended with wonder
+at his magnitude, and some surprise perhaps among the scientific that he
+should be as yet the sole specimen of that enormous Anser.
+
+The chief cause of this advancement of knowledge in one of its most
+delightful departments, has been the gradual extension of its study from
+stale books written by men, to that book ever fresh from the hand of
+God. And the second--another yet the same--has been the gradual change
+wrought by a philosophical spirit in the observation, delineation, and
+arrangement of the facts and laws with which the science is conversant,
+and which it exhibits in the most perfect harmony and order. Neophytes
+now range for themselves, according to their capacities and
+opportunities, the fields, woods, rivers, lakes, and seas; and
+proficients, no longer confining themselves to mere nomenclature, enrich
+their works with anecdotes and traits of character, which, without
+departure from truth, have imbued bird-biography with the double charm
+of reality and romance.
+
+Compare the intensity and truth of any natural knowledge insensibly
+acquired by observation in very early youth, with that corresponding to
+it picked up in later life from books! In fact, the habit of
+distinguishing between things as different, or of similar forms,
+colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and childhood, and boyhood,
+in a free intercourse and communion with Nature, while we are merely
+seeking and finding the divine joy of novelty and beauty, perpetually
+occurring before our eyes in all her haunts, may be made the foundation
+of an accuracy of judgment of inappreciable value as an intellectual
+endowment. So entirely is this true, that we know many observant
+persons--that is, observant in all things intimately related with their
+own pursuits, and with the experience of their own early education--who,
+with all the pains they could take in after life, have never been able
+to distinguish by name, when they saw them, above half-a-dozen, if so
+many, of our British singing-birds; while as to knowing them by their
+song, that is wholly beyond the reach of their uninstructed ear, and a
+shilfa chants to them like a yellow yoldrin. On seeing a small bird
+peeping out of a hole in the eaves, and especially on hearing him
+chatter, they shrewdly suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does not
+by any means follow that their suspicions are always verified; and
+though, when sitting with her white breast so lovely out of the "auld
+clay bigging" in the window-corner, he cannot mistake Mistress Swallow,
+yet when flitting in fly-search over the stream, and ever and anon
+dipping her wing-tips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance that
+he misnames her Miss Marten.
+
+What constant caution is necessary during the naturalist's perusal even
+of the very best books! From the very best we can only obtain knowledge
+at second-hand, and this, like a story circulated among village gossips,
+is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it passes from one to
+another; but in field-study we go at once to the fountain-head, and
+obtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the theories and opinions of
+previous observers. Hence it is that the utility of books becomes
+obvious. You witness with your own eyes some puzzling, perplexing,
+strange, and unaccountable--fact; twenty different statements of it have
+been given by twenty different ornithologists; you consult them all, and
+getting a hint from one, and a hint from another, here a glimmer of
+light to be followed, and there a gloom of darkness to be avoided--why,
+who knows but that in the end you do yourself solve the mystery, and
+absolutely become not only happy but illustrious? People sitting in
+their own parlour with their feet on the fender, or in the sanctum of
+some museum, staring at stuffed specimens, imagine themselves
+naturalists; and in their presumptuous and insolent ignorance, which is
+often total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who have
+for many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiar
+with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, and
+set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and
+perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a
+system in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion with
+nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied--nor is he anything else than a
+slave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons in the
+fields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation everywhere
+displays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder,
+and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. The
+rich boy is to be envied, nor is he anything else than a king. The one
+sits bewildered among words, the other walks enlightened among things;
+the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substance--the
+very essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve years old he may be a
+better naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he to
+outlive old Tommy Balmer.
+
+In education--late or early--for heaven's sake let us never separate
+things and words! They are married in nature; and what God hath put
+together let no man put asunder--'tis a fatal divorce. Without things,
+words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than drag
+out an useless existence in the dark; without words, their stay and
+support, things unaccountably disappear out of the store-house, and may
+be for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, stronger
+than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for
+ever happy in its bright prison-house. On this principle, it is indeed
+surprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the most
+interesting parts of natural history--ay, even a babe in arms. Remember
+Coleridge's beautiful lines to the Nightingale:--
+
+                  "That strain again!
+    Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
+    Who, capable of no articulate sound,
+    Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
+    How he would place his hand beside his ear,
+    His little hand, the small forefinger up,
+    And bid us listen! _and I deem it wise
+    To make him Nature's child_."
+
+How we come to love the Birds of Bewick, and White, and the two Wilsons,
+and Montague, and Mudie, and Knapp, and Selby, and Swainson, and
+Audubon, and many others familiar with their haunts and habits, their
+affections and their passions, till we feel that they are indeed our
+fellow-creatures, and part of one wise and wonderful system! If there be
+sermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin and
+vesper, of the lark, who at heaven's gate sings--of the wren, who pipes
+her thanksgivings as the slant sunbeam shoots athwart the mossy portal
+of the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above the
+waterfall! In cave-roof? Yea--we have seen it so--just beneath the
+cornice. But most frequently we have detected her procreant cradle on
+old mossy stump, mouldering walls or living rock--sometimes in cleft of
+yew-tree or hawthorn--for hang the globe with its imperceptible orifice
+in the sunshine or the storm, and St. Catharine sits within heedless of
+the outer world, counting her beads with her sensitive breast that
+broods in bliss over the priceless pearls.
+
+Ay, the men we have named, and many other blameless idolaters of Nature,
+have worshipped her in a truly religious spirit, and have taught us
+their religion. All our great poets have loved the _Minnesingers_ of the
+woods--Thomson, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, as dearly as Spenser, and
+Shakespeare, and Milton. From the inarticulate language of the groves,
+they have inhaled the enthusiasm that inspired some of the finest of
+their own immortal strains. "Lonely wanderer of Nature" must every poet
+be--and though often self-wrapt his wanderings through a spiritual world
+of his own, yet as some fair flower silently asks his eye to look on it,
+some glad bird his ear solicits with a song, how intense is then his
+perception--his emotion how profound--while his spirit is thus appealed
+to, through all its human sensibilities, by the beauty and the joy
+perpetual even in the most solitary places!
+
+Our moral being owes deep obligation to all who assist us to study
+nature aright; for believe us, it is high and rare knowledge to know and
+to have the true and full use of our eyes. Millions go to the grave in
+old age without ever having learned it; they were just beginning,
+perhaps, to acquire it when they sighed to think that "they who look out
+of the windows were darkened;" and that, while they had been instructed
+how to look, sad shadows had fallen on the whole face of Nature, and
+that the time for those intuitions was gone for ever. But the science of
+seeing has now found favour in our eyes; and blessings be with them who
+can discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest of
+Nature's works--who can see as distinctly the finger of God in the
+lustre of the humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that of
+the star of Jove shining sole in heaven.
+
+Take up now almost any book you may on any branch of Natural History,
+and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and
+classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain
+ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelation
+of the sublime varieties of the inferior--as we choose to call
+it--creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit rather
+to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and
+design. With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
+day gone by showed us a science that was but a skeleton--little but dry
+bones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
+day that is now, have been desirous to show us a living, breathing, and
+moving body--to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and its
+spirit. Ere another century elapse, how familiar may men be with all the
+families of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, with
+all the interdependencies of their characters and their kindreds,
+perhaps even with the mystery of that instinct which now is seen working
+wonders, not only beyond the power of reason to comprehend, but of
+imagination to conceive!
+
+How deeply enshrouded are felt to be the mysteries of Nature, when,
+thousands of years after Aristotle, we hear Audubon confess his utter
+ignorance of what migrations and non-migrations mean--that 'tis hard to
+understand why such general laws as these should be--though their benign
+operation is beautifully seen in the happiness provided alike for
+all--whether they reside in their own comparatively small localities,
+nor ever wish to leave them--or at stated seasons instinctively fly away
+over thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for a while on some
+spot adapted to their necessities, of which they had prescience afar
+off, though seemingly wafted thither like leaves upon the wind! Verily,
+as great a mystery is that Natural Religion by the theist studied in
+woods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as that Revelation which
+philosophers will not believe because they do not understand--"the
+blinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest and holiest
+happiness--Faith!
+
+We must not now go a bird-nesting, but first time we do we shall put
+Bishop Mant's "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop--who must have
+been an indefatigable bird-nester in his boyhood--though we answer for
+him that he never stole but one egg out of four, and left undisturbed
+the callow young--treats of those beauteous and wondrous structures in a
+style that might make Professor Rennie jealous, who has written like a
+Vitruvius on the architecture of birds. He expatiates with uncontrolled
+delight on the unwearied activity of the architects, who, without any
+apprenticeship to the trade, are journeymen, nay, master-builders, the
+first spring of their full-fledged lives; with no other tools but a
+bill, unless we count their claws, which however seem, and that only in
+some kinds, to be used but in carrying materials. With their breasts and
+whole bodies, indeed, most of them round off the soft insides of their
+procreant cradles, till they fit each brooding bunch of feathers to a
+hairbreadth, as it sits close and low on eggs or eyeless young, a
+_leetle_ higher raised up above their gaping babies, as they wax from
+downy infancy into plumier childhood, which they do how swiftly! and
+how soon have they flown! You look some sunny morning into the bush, and
+the abode in which they seemed so _cosy_ the day before is utterly
+forsaken by the joyous ingrates--now feebly fluttering in the narrow
+grove, to them a wide world teeming with delight and wonder--to be
+thought of never more. With all the various materials used by them in
+building their different domiciles, the Bishop is as familiar as with
+the sole material of his own wig--though, by the by, last time we had
+the pleasure of seeing and sitting by him, he wore his own hair--"but
+that not much;" for, like our own, his sconce was bald, and, like it,
+showed the organ of constructiveness as fully developed as Christopher
+or a Chaffinch. He is perfectly well acquainted, too, with all the
+diversities of their modes of building--their orders of
+architecture--and eke with all those of situation chosen by the
+kinds--whether seemingly simple, in cunning that deceives by a show of
+carelessness and heedlessness of notice, or with craft of concealment
+that baffles the most searching eye--hanging their beloved secret in
+gloom not impervious to sun and air--or, trustful in man's love of his
+own home, affixing the nest beneath the eaves, or in the flowers of the
+lattice, kept shut for their sakes, or half-opened by fair hands of
+virgins whose eyes gladden with heart-born brightness as each morning
+they mark the growing beauty of the brood, till they smile to see one
+almost as large as its parent sitting on the rim of the nest, when all
+at once it hops over, and, as it flutters away like a leaf, seems
+surprised that it can fly!
+
+Yet there are still a few wretched quacks among us whom we may some day
+perhaps drive down into the dirt. There are idiots who will not even
+suffer sheep, cows, horses, and dogs, to escape the disgusting
+perversions of their anile anecdotage--who, by all manner of drivelling
+lies, libel even the common domestic fowl, and impair the reputation of
+the bantam. Newspapers are sometimes so infested by the trivial trash,
+that in the nostrils of a naturalist they smell on the breakfast-table
+like rotten eggs; and there are absolutely volumes of the slaver bound
+in linen, and lettered with the names of the expectorators on the
+outside, resembling annuals--we almost fear with prints. In such hands,
+the ass loses his natural attributes, and takes the character of his
+owner; and as the anecdote-monger is seen astride on his cuddy, you
+wonder what may be the meaning of the apparition, for we defy you to
+distinguish the one donk from the other, the rider from the ridden,
+except by the more inexpressive countenance of the one, and the ears of
+the other in uncomputed longitude dangling or erect.
+
+We can bear this libellous gossip least patiently of all with birds. If
+a ninny have some stories about a wonderful goose, let him out with
+them, and then waddle away with his fat friend into the stackyard--where
+they may take sweet counsel together in the "fause-house." Let him, with
+open mouth and grozet eyes, say what he chooses of "Pretty Poll," as she
+clings in her cage, by beak or claws, to stick or wire, and in her
+naughty vocabulary let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Aspasia
+inspiring a Pericles. But, unless his crown itch for the Crutch, let him
+spare the linnet on the briery bush among the broom--the laverock on the
+dewy braird or in the rosy cloud--the swan on her shadow--the eagle in
+his eyrie, in the sun, or at sea.
+
+The great ornithologists and the true are the authorities that are
+constantly correcting those errors of popular opinion about the fowls of
+the air, which in every country, contrary to the evidence of the senses,
+and in spite of observations that may be familiar to all, gain credence
+with the weak and ignorant, and in process of time compose even a sort
+of system of the vilest superstition. It would be a very curious inquiry
+to trace the operation of the causes that, in different lands, have
+produced with respect to birds national prejudices of admiration or
+contempt, love or even hatred; and in doing so, we should have to open
+up some strange views of the influence of imagination on the head and
+heart. It may be remarked that an excuse will be generally found for
+such fallacies in the very sources from which they spring; but no excuse
+can be found--on the contrary, in every sentence the fool scribbles, a
+glaring argument is shown in favour of his being put to a lingering and
+cruel death--the fool who keeps gossiping every week in the year,
+penny-a-line-wise, with a gawky face and a mawkish mind, about God's
+creatures to whom reason has been denied, but instinct given, in order
+that they may be happy on moor and mountain, in the hedge-roots and on
+the tops of heaven-kissing trees--by the side of rills whose sweet low
+voice gives no echo in the wild, and on the hollow thunder of seas on
+which they sit in safety around the sinking ship, or from all her
+shrieks flee away to some island and are at rest.
+
+Turn to the true Ornithologist, and how beautiful, each in the
+adaptation of its own structure to its own life, every bird that walks
+the land, wades the water, or skims the air! In his pages, pictured by
+pen or pencil, all is wondrous--as nature ever is to
+
+                  "The quiet eye
+    That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"
+
+even while gazing on the inferior creatures of that creation to which we
+belong, and are linked in being's mysterious chain--till our breath,
+like theirs, expire. All is wondrous--but nothing monstrous in his
+delineations--for the more we know of nature in her infinite varieties,
+her laws reveal themselves to us in more majestic simplicity, and we are
+inspired with awe, solemn but sweet, by the incomprehensible, yet in
+part comprehended, magnificence of Truth. The writings of such men are
+the gospel of nature--and if the apocrypha be bound up along with
+it--'tis well; for in it, too, there is felt to be inspiration--and
+when, in good time, purified from error, the leaves all make but one
+Bible.
+
+Hark to the loud, clear, mellow, bold song of the BLACKBIRD. There he
+flits along upon a strong wing, with his yellow bill visible in
+distance, and disappears in the silent wood. Not long silent. It is a
+spring-day in our imagination--his clay-wall nest holds his mate at the
+foot of the Silver-fir, and he is now perched on its pinnacle. That
+thrilling hymn will go vibrating down the stem till it reaches her
+brooding breast. The whole vernal air is filled with the murmur and the
+glitter of insects; but the blackbird's song is over all other symptoms
+of love and life, and seems to call upon the leaves to unfold into
+happiness. It is on that one Tree-top, conspicuous among many thousands
+on the fine breast of wood--here and there, a pine mingling not unmeetly
+with the prevailing oak--that the forest-minstrel sits in his
+inspirations. The rock above is one which we have often climbed. There
+lies the glorious Loch and all its islands--one dearer than the rest to
+eye and imagination, with its old Religious House--year after year
+crumbling away unheeded into more entire ruin. Far away, a sea of
+mountains, with all their billowing summits distinct in the sky, and now
+uncertain and changeful as the clouds. Yonder Castle stands well on the
+peninsula among the trees which the herons inhabit. Those coppice-woods
+on the other shore, stealing up to the heathery rocks and sprinkled
+birches, are the haunts of the roe. That great glen, that stretches
+sullenly away into the distant darkness, has been for ages the birth and
+the death-place of the red-deer. The cry of an Eagle! There he hangs
+poised in the sunlight, and now he flies off towards the sea. But again
+the song of our BLACKBIRD rises like "a steam of rich distilled
+perfumes," and our heart comes back to him upon the pinnacle of his own
+Home-tree. The source of song is yet in the happy creature's heart--but
+the song itself has subsided, like a rivulet that has been rejoicing in
+a sudden shower among the hills; the bird drops down among the balmy
+branches, and the other faint songs which that bold anthem had drowned,
+are heard at a distance, and seem to encroach every moment on the
+silence.
+
+You say you greatly prefer the song of the THRUSH. Pray, why set such
+delightful singers by the ears? We dislike the habit that very many
+people have of trying everything by a scale. Nothing seems to them to be
+good positively--only relatively. Now, it is true wisdom to be charmed
+with what is charming, to live in it for the time being, and compare the
+emotion with no former emotion whatever--unless it be unconsciously in
+the working of an imagination set agoing by delight. Although,
+therefore, we cannot say that we prefer the Thrush to the Blackbird, yet
+we agree with you in thinking him a most delightful bird. Where a Thrush
+is, we defy you to anticipate his song in the morning. He is indeed an
+early riser. By the way, Chanticleer is far from being so. You hear him
+crowing away from shortly after midnight, and, in your simplicity, may
+suppose him to be up and strutting about the premises. Far from it;--he
+is at that very moment perched in his polygamy, between two of his
+fattest wives. The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for several hours
+to come; while all the time the Thrush, having long ago rubbed his eyes,
+is on his topmost twig, broad awake, and charming the ear of dawn with
+his beautiful vociferation. During mid-day he disappears, and is mute;
+but again, at dewy even, as at dewy morn, he pours his pipe like a
+prodigal, nor ceases sometimes when night has brought the moon and
+stars.
+
+Best beloved, and most beautiful of all Thrushes that ever broke from
+the blue-spotted shell!--thou who, for five springs, hast "hung thy
+procreant cradle" among the roses, and honeysuckles, and ivy, and
+clematis that embower in bloom the lattice of our Cottage-study--how
+farest thou now in the snow? Consider the whole place as your own, my
+dear bird; and remember, that when the gardener's children sprinkle food
+for you and yours all along your favourite haunts, that it is done by
+our orders. And when all the earth is green again, and all the sky blue,
+you will welcome us to our rural domicile, with light feet running
+before us among the winter leaves, and then skim away to your new nest
+in the old spot, then about to be somewhat more cheerful in the
+undisturbing din of the human life within the flowery walls.
+
+Nay--how can we forget what is for ever before our eyes! Blessed be
+Thou--on thy shadowy bed, belonging equally to earth and heaven--O Isle!
+who art called the Beautiful! and who of thyself canst make all the Lake
+one floating Paradise--even were her shore-hills sylvan no
+more--groveless the bases of all her remoter mountains--effaced that
+loveliest splendour, sun-painted on their sky-piercing cliffs. And can
+it be that we have forsaken Thee! Fairy-land and Love-land of our youth!
+Hath imagination left our brain, and passion our heart, so that we can
+bear banishment from Thee and yet endure life! Such loss not yet is
+ours--witness these gushing tears. But Duty, "stern daughter of the
+voice of God," dooms us to breathe our morning and evening orisons far
+from hearing and sight of Thee, whose music and whose light continue
+gladdening other ears and other eyes--as if ours had there never
+listened--and never gazed. As if thy worshipper--and sun! moon! and
+stars! he asks ye if he loved not you and your images--as if thy
+worshipper--O Windermere! were--dead! And does duty dispense no reward
+to them who sacrifice at her bidding what was once the very soul of
+life? Yes! an exceeding great reward--ample as the heart's desire--for
+contentment is borne of obedience--where no repinings are, the wings of
+thought are imped beyond the power of the eagle's plumes; and happy are
+we now--with the human smiles and voices we love even more than thine,
+thou fairest region of nature! happier than when we rippled in our
+pinnace through the billowy moonlight--than when we sat alone on the
+mountain within the thunder-cloud.
+
+Why do the songs of the Blackbird and Thrush make us think of the
+songless STARLING? It matters not. We do think of him, and see him
+too--a lovable bird, and his abode is majestic. What an object of wonder
+and awe is an old Castle to a boyish imagination! Its height how
+dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear carries him, and hangs
+him over the battlements! What beauty in those unapproachable wall
+flowers, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice,
+and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below, is the sound of a
+stream the eye cannot reach--of a waterfall echoing for ever among the
+black rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history of
+the old Castle--but that little is of war, and witchcraft, and
+imprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals
+him--he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There and
+then it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard something wild and
+wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of the
+battlements, or flew out of the chinks and crannies. There were Martens
+too, so different in their looks from the pretty
+House-Swallows--Jack-daws clamouring afresh at every time we waved our
+caps, or vainly slung a pebble towards their nests--and one grove of
+elms, to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, ever and anon,
+some noiseless Heron from the Muirs.
+
+Ruins! Among all the external objects of imagination, surely they are
+most affecting! Some sumptuous edifice of a former age, still standing
+in its undecayed strength, has undoubtedly a great command over us, from
+the ages that have flowed over it; but the mouldering edifice which
+Nature has begun to win to herself, and to dissolve into her own bosom,
+is far more touching to the heart, and more awakening to the spirit. It
+is beautiful in its decay--not merely because green leaves, and wild
+flowers, and creeping mosses soften its rugged frowns, but because they
+have sown themselves on the decay of greatness; they are monitors to our
+fancy, like the flowers on a grave, of the untroubled rest of the dead.
+Battlements riven by the hand of time, and cloistered arches reft and
+rent, speak to us of the warfare and of the piety of our ancestors, of
+the pride of their might, and the consolations of their sorrow: they
+revive dim shadows of departed life, evoked from the land of
+forgetfulness; but they touch us more deeply when the brightness which
+the sun flings on the broken arches, and the warbling of birds that are
+nestled in the chambers of princes, and the moaning of winds through the
+crevices of towers, round which the surges of war were shattered and
+driven back, lay those phantoms again to rest in their silent bed, and
+show us, in the monuments of human life and power, the visible footsteps
+of Time and Oblivion coming on in their everlasting and irresistible
+career, to sweep down our perishable race, and to reduce all the forms
+of our momentary being into the undistinguishable elements of their
+original nothing.
+
+What is there below the skies like the place of mighty and departed
+cities? the vanishing or vanished capitals of renowned empires? There is
+no other such desolation. The solitudes of nature may be wild and drear,
+but they are not like the solitude from which human glory is swept away.
+The overthrow or decay of mighty human power is, of all thoughts that
+can enter the mind, the most overwhelming. The whole imagination is at
+once stirred by the prostration of that, round which so many high
+associations have been collected for so many ages. Beauty seems born but
+to perish, and its fragility is seen and felt to be inherent in it by a
+law of its being. But power gives stability, as it were, to human
+thought, and we forget our own perishable nature in the spectacle of
+some abiding and enduring greatness. Our own little span of years--our
+own confined region of space--are lost in the endurance and far-spread
+dominion of some mighty state, and we feel as if we partook of its
+deep-set and triumphant strength. When, therefore, a great and ancient
+empire falls into pieces, or when fragments of its power are heard rent
+asunder, like column after column disparting from some noble edifice, in
+sad conviction, we feel as if all the cities of men were built on
+foundations beneath which the earthquake sleeps. The same doom seems to
+be imminent over all the other kingdoms that still stand; and in the
+midst of such changes, and decays, and overthrows--or as we read of
+them of old--we look, under such emotions, on all power as
+foundationless, and in our wide imagination embrace empires covered only
+with the ruins of their desolation. Yet such is the pride of the human
+spirit, that it often unconsciously, under the influence of such
+imagination, strives to hide from itself the utter nothingness of its
+mightiest works. And when all its glories are visibly crumbling into
+dust, it creates some imaginary power to overthrow the fabrics of human
+greatness--and thus attempts to derive a kind of mournful triumph even
+in its very fall. Thus, when nations have faded away in their sins and
+vices, rotten at the heart and palsied in all their limbs, we strive not
+to think of that sad internal decay, but imagine some mighty power
+smiting empires and cutting short the records of mortal magnificence.
+Thus Fate and Destiny are said in our imagination to lay our glories
+low. Thus, even, the calm and silent air of Oblivion has been thought of
+as an unsparing Power. Time, too, though in moral sadness wisely called
+a shadow, has been clothed with terrific attributes, and the sweep of
+his scythe has shorn the towery diadem of cities. Thus the mere sigh in
+which we expire, has been changed into active power--and all the nations
+have with one voice called out "Death!" And while mankind have sunk, and
+fallen, and disappeared in the helplessness of their own mortal being,
+we have still spoken of powers arrayed against them--powers that are in
+good truth only another name for their own weaknesses. Thus imagination
+is for ever fighting against truth--and even when humbled, her visions
+are sublime--conscious even amongst saddest ruin of her own immortality.
+
+Higher and higher than ever rose the tower of Belus, uplifted by
+ecstasy, soars the LARK, the lyrical poet of the sky. Listen, listen!
+and the more remote the bird the louder seems his hymn in heaven. He
+seems, in such altitude, to have left the earth for ever, and to have
+forgotten his lowly nest. The primroses and the daisies, and all the
+sweet hill-flowers, must be unremembered in that lofty region of light.
+But just as the Lark is lost--he and his song together--as if his
+orisons had been accepted--both are seen and heard fondly wavering
+earthwards, and in a little while he is walking with his graceful crest
+contented along the furrows of the brairded corn, or on the clover lea
+that in man's memory has not felt the ploughshare; or after a pause, in
+which he seems dallying with a home-sick passion, drooping down like one
+dead, beside his mate in her shallow nest.
+
+Of all birds to whom is given dominion over the air, the Lark alone lets
+loose the power that is in his wings only for the expression of love and
+gratitude. The eagle sweeps in passion of hunger--poised in the sky his
+ken is searching for prey on sea or sward--his flight is ever animated
+by destruction. The dove seems still to be escaping from something that
+pursues--afraid of enemies even in the dangerless solitudes where the
+old forests repose in primeval peace. The heron, high over houseless
+moors, seems at dusk fearful in her laborious flight, and weariedly
+gathers her long wings on the tree-top, as if thankful that day is done,
+and night again ready with its rest. "The blackening trains o' craws to
+their repose" is an image that affects the heart of "mortal man who
+liveth here by toil," through sympathy with creatures partaking with him
+a common lot. The swallow, for ever on the wing, and wheeling fitfully
+before fancy's eyes in element adapted for perpetual pastime, is flying
+but to feed--for lack of insects prepares to forsake the land of its
+nativity, and yearns for the blast to bear it across the sea. Thou
+alone, O Lark! hast wings given thee that thou mayest be perfectly
+happy--none other bird but thou can at once soar and sing--and
+heavenward thou seemest to be borne, not more by those twinkling pinions
+than by the ever-varying, ever-deepening melody effusing from thy heart.
+
+How imagination unifies! then most intensive when working with and in
+the heart. Who thinks, when profoundly listening with his eyes shut to
+the warbling air, that there is another lark in creation? _The_
+lark--sole as the season--or the rainbow. We can fancy he sings to charm
+our own particular ear--to please us descends into silence--for our
+sakes erects his crest as he walks confidingly near our feet. Not till
+the dream-circle, of which ourselves are the centre, dissolves or
+subsides, do the fairest sights and sweetest sounds in nature lose their
+relationship to us the beholder and hearer, and relapse into the common
+property of all our kind. To self appertains the whole sensuous as well
+as the whole spiritual world. Egoism is the creator of all beauty and
+all bliss, of all hope and of all faith. Even thus doth imagination
+unify Sabbath worship. All our beloved Scotland is to the devout breast
+on that day one House of God. Each congregation--however far
+apart--hears but one hymn--sympathy with all is an all-comprehensive
+self--and Christian love of our brethren is evolved from the conviction
+that we have ourselves a soul to be saved or lost.
+
+Yet, methinks, imagination loveth just as well to pursue an opposite
+process, and to furnish food to the heart in separate picture after
+separate picture, one and all imbued not with the same but congenial
+sentiment, and therefore succeeding one another at her will, be her will
+intimated by mild bidding or imperial command. In such mood imagination,
+in still series, visions a thousand parish-kirks, each with its own
+characteristic localities, Sabbath-sanctified; distributes the beauty of
+that hallowed day in allotments all over the happy land--so that in one
+Sabbath there are a thousand Sabbaths.
+
+Keep carolling, then, all together, ye countless Larks, till heaven is
+one hymn! Imagination thinks she sees each particular field that sends
+up its own singer to the sky--the spot of each particular nest. And of
+the many hearts all over loveliest Scotland in the sweet vernal season
+a-listening your lays, she is with the quiet beatings of the happy, with
+the tumult in them that would wish to break! The little maiden by the
+well in the brae-side above the cottage, with the Bible on her knees,
+left in tendance of an infant--the palsied crone placed safely in the
+sunshine till after service--the sickly student meditating in the shade,
+and somewhat sadly thinking that these spring flowers are the last his
+eyes may see--lovers walking together on the Sabbath before their
+marriage to the house of God--life-wearied wanderers without a
+home--remorseful men touched by the innocent happiness they cannot help
+hearing in heaven--the sceptic--the unbeliever--the atheist to whom
+"hope comes not that comes to all." What different meanings to such
+different auditors hath the same music at the same moment filling the
+same sky!
+
+Does the Lark ever sing in winter? Ay, sometimes January is visited with
+a May-day hour; and in the genial glimpse, though the earth be yet barer
+than the sky, the Lark, mute for months, feels called on by the sun to
+sing, not so near to heaven's gate, and a shorter than vernal lyric, or
+during that sweetest season when neither he nor you can say whether it
+is summer or but spring. Unmated yet, nor of mate solicitous, in pure
+joy of heart he cannot refrain from ascent and song; but the snow-clouds
+look cold, and ere he has mounted as high again as the church-spire, the
+aimless impulse dies, and he comes wavering down silently to the yet
+unprimrosed brae.
+
+In our boyish days, we never felt that the Spring had really come till
+the clear-singing Lark went careering before our gladdened eyes away up
+to heaven. Then all the earth wore a vernal look, and the ringing sky
+said, "Winter is over and gone." As we roamed, on a holiday, over the
+wide pastoral moors, to angle in the lochs and pools, unless the day
+were very cloudy the song of some lark or other was still warbling
+aloft, and made a part of our happiness. The creature could not have
+been more joyful in the skies than we were on the greensward. We, too,
+had our wings, and flew through our holiday. Thou soul of glee! who
+still leddest our flight in all our pastimes--representative child of
+Erin!--wildest of the wild--brightest of the bright--boldest of the
+bold!--the lark-loved vales in their stillness were no home for thee.
+The green glens of ocean, created by swelling and subsiding storms, or
+by calms around thy ship transformed into immeasurable plains, they
+filled thy fancy with images dominant over the memories of the steadfast
+earth. The petterel and the halcyon were the birds the sailor loved, and
+he forgot the songs of the inland woods in the moanings that haunt the
+very heart of the tumultuous sea. Of that ship nothing was ever known
+but that she perished. He, too, the grave and thoughtful English boy,
+whose exquisite scholarship we all so enthusiastically admired, without
+one single particle of hopeless envy--and who accompanied us on all our
+wildest expeditions, rather from affection to his playmates than any
+love of their sports--he who, timid and unadventurous as he seemed to
+be, yet rescued little Marian of the Brae from a drowning death when so
+many grown-up men stood aloof in selfish fear--gone, too, for ever art
+thou, our beloved Edward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant years in
+the Oriental clime,
+
+                  ----"on Hoogley's banks afar,
+    Looks down on thy lone tomb the Evening Star."
+
+How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet how pale thou ever wast;
+thou who sat'st then by the Sailor's side, and listened to his sallies
+with a mournful smile--friend! dearest to our soul! loving us far better
+than we deserved; for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all our
+frailties--and in those days of hope from thy lips how elevating was
+praise! Yet how seldom do we think of thee! For months--years--not at
+all--not once--sometimes not even when by some chance we hear your name!
+It meets our eyes written on books that once belonged to you and that
+you gave us--and yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we sank down
+to the floor on hearing thou wast dead--ungrateful to thy memory for
+many years we were not--but it faded away till we forgot thee utterly,
+except when sleep showed thy grave!
+
+Methinks we hear the song of the GREY LINTIE, the darling bird of
+Scotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. When
+the simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied to
+the maiden the words, "my bonnie burdie," they must have been thinking
+of the Grey Lintie--its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure--its shape
+elegant yet unobtrusive--and its song various without any effort--now
+rich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor riotous--now tender, almost
+mournful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, are all its habits,
+endearing and delightful. It is social, yet not averse to solitude,
+singing often in groups, and as often by itself in the furze brake, or
+on the briery knoll. You often find the lintie's nest in the most
+solitary places--in some small self-sown clump of trees by the brink of
+a wild hill-stream, or on the tangled edge of a forest; and just as
+often you find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden, or in a bower
+within, or even in an old gooseberry bush that has grown into a sort of
+tree.
+
+One wild and beautiful place we well remember--ay, the very bush, in
+which we first found a grey lintie's nest--for in our parish, from some
+cause or other, it was rather a rarish bird. That far-away day is as
+distinct as the present NOW. Imagine, friend, first, a little well
+surrounded with wild cresses on the moor; something like a rivulet flows
+from it, or rather you see a deep tinge of verdure, the line of which,
+you believe, must be produced by the oozing moisture--you follow it, and
+by-and-by there is a descent palpable to your feet--then you find
+yourself between low broomy knolls, that, heightening every step, become
+ere long banks, and braes, and hills. You are surprised now to see a
+stream, and look round for its source--and there seem now to be a
+hundred small sources in fissures and springs on every side--you hear
+the murmurs of its course over beds of sand and gravel--and hark, a
+waterfall! A tree or two begins to shake its tresses on the horizon--a
+birch or a rowan. You get ready your angle--and by the time you have
+panniered three dozen, you are at a wooden bridge--you fish the pool
+above it with the delicate dexterity of a Boaz, capture the monarch of
+the flood, and on lifting your eyes from his starry side as he gasps his
+last on the silvery shore, you behold a Cottage, at one gable-end an
+ash, at the other a sycamore, and standing perhaps at the lonely door, a
+maiden like a fairy or an angel.
+
+This is the Age of Confessions; and why, therefore, may we not make a
+confession of first-love? We had finished our sixteenth year--and we
+were almost as tall as we are now; for our figure was then straight as
+an arrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. We had given over
+bird-nesting--but we had not ceased to visit the dell where first we
+found the Grey Lintie's brood. Tale-writers are told by critics to
+remember that the young shepherdesses of Scotland are not beautiful as
+the fictions of a poet's dream. But SHE was beautiful beyond poetry. She
+was so then, when passion and imagination were young--and her image, her
+undying, unfading image, is so now, when passion and imagination are
+old, and when from eye and soul have disappeared much of the beauty and
+glory both of nature and life. We loved her from the first moment that
+our eyes met--and we see their light at this moment--the same soft,
+burning light, that set body and soul on fire. She was but a poor
+shepherd's daughter; but what was that to us, when we heard her voice
+singing one of her old plaintive ballads among the braes?--When we sat
+down beside her--when the same plaid was drawn over our shoulders in the
+rain-storm--when we asked her for a kiss, and was not refused--for what
+had she to fear in her beauty, and her innocence, and her filial
+piety?--and were we not a mere boy, in the bliss of passion, ignorant of
+deceit or dishonour, and with a heart open to the eyes of all as to the
+gates of heaven? What music was in that stream! Could "Sabean odours
+from the spicy shores of Araby the Blest" so penetrate our soul, as that
+breath, balmier than the broom on which we sat, forgetful of all other
+human life! Father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts, and
+cousins, and all the tribe of friends that would throw us off--if we
+should be so base and mad as to marry a low-born, low-bred, ignorant,
+uneducated, crafty, ay, crafty and designing beggar--were all forgotten
+in our delirium--if indeed it were delirium--and not an
+everlastingly-sacred devotion to nature and to truth. For in what were
+we deluded? A voice--a faint and dewy voice--deadened by the earth that
+fills up her grave, and by the turf that, at this very hour, is
+expanding its primroses to the dew of heaven--answers, "In nothing!"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" exclaims some reader in derision. "Here's an attempt at
+the pathetic!--a miserable attempt indeed; for who cares about the death
+of a mean hut girl?--we are sick of low life." Why, as to that matter,
+who cares for the death of any one mortal being? Who weeps for the death
+of the late Emperor of all the Russias? Who wept over Napoleon the
+Great? When Chatham or Burke, Pitt or Fox died--don't pretend to tell
+lies about a nation's tears. And if yourself, who, perhaps, are not in
+low life, were to die in half an hour (don't be alarmed), all who knew
+you--except two or three of your bosom friends, who, partly from being
+somewhat dull, and partly from wishing to be decent, might whine--would
+walk along George Street, at the fashionable hour of three, the very day
+after your funeral. Nor would it ever enter their heads to abstain from
+a dinner at the Club, ordered perhaps by yourself a fortnight ago, at
+which time you were in rude health, merely because you had foolishly
+allowed a cold to fasten upon your lungs, and carry you off in the prime
+and promise of your professional life. In spite of all your critical
+slang, therefore, Mr Editor, or Master Contributor to some Literary
+Journal, SHE, though a poor _Scottish Herd_, was most beautiful; and
+when, but a week after taking farewell of her, we went, according to our
+tryst, to fold her in our arms, and was told by her father that she was
+dead,--ay, dead--that she had no existence--that she was in a
+coffin,--when we awoke from the dead-fit in which we had lain on the
+floor of that cottage, and saw her in her grave-clothes within an hour
+to be buried--when we stood at her burial--and knew that never more were
+we or the day to behold her presence--we learned then how immeasurably
+misery can surpass happiness--that the soul is ignorant of its own
+being, till all at once a thunder-stone plunges down its depths, and
+groans gurgle upwards upbraiding heaven.
+
+How easily can the heart change its mood from the awful to the
+solemn--from the solemn to the sweet--and from the sweet to the
+gay--while the mirth of this careless moment is unconsciously tempered
+by the influence of that holy hour that has subsided but not died, and
+continues to colour the most ordinary emotion, as the common things of
+earth look all lovelier in imbibed light, even after the serene moon
+that had yielded it is no more visible in her place! Most gentle are
+such transitions in the calm of nature and of the heart; all true poetry
+is full of them; and in music how pleasant are they, or how affecting!
+Those alternations of tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and of
+quiet thoughts! The organ and the AEolian harp! As the one has ceased
+pealing praise, we can list the other whispering it--nor feels the soul
+any loss of emotion in the change--still true to itself and its wondrous
+nature--just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it turns its eyes
+to admire the beauty of a dewdrop or an insect's wing.
+
+Now, we hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity of
+confining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. Gentle
+readers, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if you
+are disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairs
+to the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold--three
+brace of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock pheasant, poor
+fellow,--a man and his wife of the aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock,
+vainly presenting his long Christmas bill,--
+
+        "Some sleeping kill'd--
+    All murder'd."
+
+Why, you are indeed a most logical reasoner, and a most considerate
+Christian, when you launch out into an invective against the cruelty
+exhibited in our Cages. Let us leave this den of murder, and have a
+glass of our home-made frontignac in our own Sanctum. Come, come,
+sir,--look on this newly-married couple of CANARIES.--The architecture
+of their nest is certainly not of the florid order, but my Lady
+Yellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. Come back in a day or two,
+and you will see her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear the ear-piercing
+fife of the bridegroom!--Where will you find a set of happier people,
+unless perhaps it be in our parlour, or our library, or our nursery?
+For, to tell you the truth, there is a cage or two in almost every room
+of the house. Where is the cruelty--here, or in your blood-stained
+larder? But you must eat, you reply. We answer--not necessarily birds.
+The question is about birds--cruelty to birds; and were that sagacious
+old wild-goose, whom one single moment of heedlessness brought last
+Wednesday to your hospitable board, at this moment alive, to bear a part
+in our conversation, can you dream that, with all your ingenuity and
+eloquence, you could persuade him--the now defunct and disjected--that
+you had been under the painful necessity of eating him with stuffing and
+apple-sauce?
+
+It is not in nature that an ornithologist should be cruel--he is most
+humane. Mere skin-stuffers are not ornithologists--and we have known
+more than one of that tribe who would have had no scruple in strangling
+their own mothers, or reputed fathers. Yet if your true ornithologist
+cannot catch a poor dear bird alive, he must kill it--and leave you to
+weep for its death. There must be a few victims out of myriads of
+millions--and thousands and tens of thousands are few; but the
+ornithologist knows the seasons when death is least afflictive--he is
+merciful in his wisdom--for the spirit of knowledge is gentle--and
+"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," reconcile him to the
+fluttering and ruffled plumage blood-stained by death. 'Tis hard, for
+example, to be obliged to shoot a Zenaida dove! Yet a Zenaida dove must
+die for Audubon's Illustrations. How many has he loved in life, and
+tenderly preserved! And how many more pigeons of all sorts, cooked in
+all styles, have you devoured--ay, twenty for his one--you being a
+glutton and epicure in the same inhuman form, and he being contented at
+all times with the plainest fare--a salad perhaps of water-cresses
+plucked from a spring in the forest glade, or a bit of pemmican, or a
+wafer of portable soup melted in the pot of some squatter--and shared
+with the admiring children before a drop has been permitted to touch his
+own abstemious lips.
+
+The intelligent author of the "Treatise on British Birds" does not
+condescend to justify the right we claim to encage them; but he shows
+his genuine humanity in instructing us how to render happy and
+healthful their imprisonment. He says very prettily, "What are town
+gardens and shrubberies in squares, but an attempt to ruralise the city?
+So strong is the desire in man to participate in country pleasures, that
+he tries to bring some of them even to his room. Plants and birds are
+sought after with avidity, and cherished with delight. With flowers he
+endeavours to make his apartments resemble a garden; and thinks of
+groves and fields, as he listens to the wild sweet melody of his little
+captives. Those who keep and take an interest in song-birds, are often
+at a loss how to treat their little warblers during illness, or to
+prepare the proper food best suited to their various constitutions; but
+that knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve these little
+creatures in health: for want of it, young amateurs and bird-fanciers
+have often seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds perish."
+
+Now, here we confess is a good physician. In Edinburgh we understand
+there are about five hundred medical practitioners on the human
+race--and we have dog-doctors, and horse-doctors, who come out in
+numbers--but we have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the
+whole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of children
+teething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on his
+perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his
+lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food
+skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our
+treadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians,
+we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to die
+unattended. Why do not the ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into a
+Society for this purpose?
+
+Not one of all the philosophers in the world has been able to tell us
+what is happiness. Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have been
+miserable. Probably he was one of the most contented birds in the
+universe. Does confinement--the closest, most uncompanioned
+confinement--make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker, sitting
+with his head on his knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to night,
+in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day
+sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out
+washing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurkling
+over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it
+so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions
+circumscribed within the narrowest imaginable limits? Nonsense all!
+
+Then, gentle reader, were you ever in a Highland shieling? Often since
+you read our Recreations. It is built of turf, and is literally alive;
+for the beautiful heather is blooming, wildflowers and walls and roof
+are one sound of bees. The industrious little creatures must have come
+several long miles for their balmy spoil. There is but one human
+creature in that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He no more
+wearies of that lonesome place than do the sunbeams or the shadows. To
+himself alone he chants his old Gaelic songs, or frames wild ditties of
+his own to the raven or red-deer. Months thus pass on; and he descends
+again to the lower country. Perhaps he goes to the
+wars--fights--bleeds--and returns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and once
+more, blending in his imagination the battles of his own regiment, in
+Egypt, Spain, or Flanders, with the deeds done of yore by Ossian sung,
+sits contented by the door of the same shieling, restored and
+beautified, in which he had dreamt away the summers of his youth.
+
+What has become--we wonder--of Dartmoor Prison? During that long war its
+huge and hideous bulk was filled with Frenchmen--ay,
+
+    "Men of all climes--attach'd to none--were there;"
+
+--a desperate race--robbers and reavers, and ruffians and rapers, and
+pirates and murderers--mingled with the heroes who, fired by freedom,
+had fought for the land of lilies, with its vine-vales and "hills of
+sweet myrtle"--doomed to die in captivity, immured in that doleful
+mansion on the sullen moor. There thousands pined and wore away and
+wasted--and when not another groan remained within the bones of their
+breasts, they gave up the ghost. Young heroes prematurely old in baffled
+passions--life's best and strongest passions, that scorned to go to
+sleep but in the sleep of death. These died in their golden prime. With
+them went down into unpitied and unhonoured graves--for pity and honour
+dwell not in houses so haunted--veterans in their iron age--some
+self-smitten with ghastly wounds that let life finally bubble out of
+sinewy neck or shaggy bosom--or the poison-bowl convulsed their giant
+limbs unto unquivering rest. Yet there you saw a wild strange tumult of
+troubled happiness--which, as you looked into its heart, was
+transfigured into misery. There volatile spirits fluttered in their
+cage, like birds that seem not to hate nor to be unhappy in confinement,
+but, hanging by beak or claws, to be often playing with the glittering
+wires--to be amusing themselves, so it seems, with drawing up, by small
+enginery, their food and drink, which soon sickens, however, on their
+stomachs, till, with ruffled plumage, they are often found in the
+morning lying on their backs, with clenched feet, and neck bent as if
+twisted, on the scribbled sand, stone-dead. There you saw pale
+youths--boys almost like girls, so delicate looked they in that hot
+infected air which, ventilate it as you will, is never felt to breathe
+on the face like the fresh air of liberty--once bold and bright
+midshipmen in frigate or first-rater, and saved by being picked up by
+the boats of the ship that had sunk her by one double-shotted broadside,
+or sent her in one explosion splintering into the sky, and splashing
+into the sea, in less than a minute the thunder silent, and the fiery
+shower over and gone--there you saw such lads as these, who used almost
+to weep if they got not duly the dear-desired letter from sister or
+sweetheart, and when they did duly get it, opened it with trembling
+fingers, and even then let drop some natural tears--there we saw them
+leaping and dancing, with gross gesticulations and horrid oaths obscene,
+with grim outcasts from nature, whose mustached mouths were rank with
+sin and pollution--monsters for whom hell was yawning--their mortal mire
+already possessed with a demon. There, wretched, woe-begone, and wearied
+out with recklessness and desperation, many wooed Chance and Fortune,
+who they hoped might yet listen to their prayers--and kept rattling the
+dice--cursing them that gave the indulgence--even in their cells of
+punishment for disobedience or mutiny. There you saw some, who in the
+crowded courts "sat apart retired,"--bringing the practised skill that
+once supported, or the native genius that once adorned life, to bear on
+beautiful contrivances and fancies elaborately executed with meanest
+instruments, till they rivalled or outdid the work of art assisted by
+all the ministries of science. And thus won they a poor pittance
+wherewithal to purchase some little comfort or luxury, or ornament to
+their persons; for vanity had not forsaken some in their rusty squalor,
+and they sought to please her, their mistress or their bride. There you
+saw accomplished men conjuring before their eyes, on the paper or the
+canvass, to feed the longings of their souls, the lights and the shadows
+of the dear days that far away were beautifying some sacred spot of "_la
+belle France_"--perhaps some festal scene, for love in sorrow is still
+true to remembered joy, where once with youths and maidens
+
+    "They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire."
+
+There you heard--and hushed then was all the hubbub--some clear silver
+voice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths,
+singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the best
+and noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!"
+And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, men
+with minds that had sounded the profounds of science, and, seemingly
+undisturbed by all that clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines and
+numbers--conversing with the harmonies and lofty stars of heaven, deaf
+to all the discord and despair of earth. Or religious still even more
+than they--for those were mental, these spiritual--you beheld there men,
+whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on their
+own souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if not
+yet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come!
+
+To return to Birds in Cages;--they are, when well, uniformly as happy as
+the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no,
+to burst out into song--to hop about so pleased and pert--to play such
+fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs--to sleep so soundly, and to
+awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of
+light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other
+sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing
+to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been
+flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand
+inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not
+the slightest idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to the
+meaning of his words, would have been shocked at his ungrateful folly.
+Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest," how
+they amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then,
+finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up to
+their cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more at
+home. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duet
+or a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly tranquil and cheerful life
+than that of a Goldfinch in a cage in spring, with his wife and his
+children. All his social affections are cultivated to the utmost. He
+possesses many accomplishments unknown to his brethren among the
+trees;--he has never known what it is to want a meal in times of the
+greatest scarcity; and he admires the beautiful frostwork on the
+windows, when thousands of his feathered friends are buried in the snow,
+or, what is almost as bad, baked up into pies, and devoured by a large
+supper-party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and flirtation by
+such viands, and, remorseless, swallow dozens upon dozens of the
+warblers of the woods.
+
+Ay, ay, Mr Goldy! you are wondering what we are now doing, and
+speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if
+you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better
+wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine
+goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his
+inquisitive nose within the wires--or when a strange cat glides round
+and round the room, fascinating thee with the glare of his fierce fixed
+eyes;--but what is all that to the woes of an Editor?--Yes, sweet
+simpleton! do you not know that we are the editor of _Blackwood's
+Magazine_--Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that very man--that
+self-same much-calumniated man-monster and Ogre. There, there!--perch on
+our shoulder, and let us laugh together at the whole world.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+SECOND CANTICLE.
+
+
+The golden eagle leads the van of our Birds of Prey--and there she sits
+in her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirst
+have been appeased--her wings are folded up in a dignified
+tranquillity--her talons, grasping a leafless branch, are almost hidden
+by the feathers of her breast--her sleepless eye has lost something of
+its ferocity--and the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary state
+in the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors and
+mosses--the blackbird whistles in the birken shaw--and the cony erects
+his ears at the mouth of his burrow, and whisks away frolicsome among
+the whins or heather.
+
+There is no index to the hour--neither light nor shadow--no cloud. But
+from the composed aspect of the Bird, we may suppose it to be the hush
+of evening after a day of successful foray. The imps in the eyrie have
+been fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. The
+mother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may
+glide up to her brood--the sire is somewhere sitting within her view
+among the rocks--a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in
+exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as
+if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to
+wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler of sheep-walk and
+forest-chase.
+
+Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow lustre of her keen, wild,
+fierce eye is veiled, even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhaps
+sickness has been at the heart of the dejected bird, or fever wasted her
+wing. The sun may have smitten her, or the storm driven her against a
+rock. Then hunger and thirst--which in pride of plumage she scorned, and
+which only made her fiercer on the edge of her unfed eyrie, as she
+whetted her beak on the flint-stone, and clutched the strong
+heather-stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating prey--quell
+her courage, and in famine she eyes afar off the fowls she is unable to
+pursue, and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight is heavier and
+heavier each succeeding day--she ventures not to cross the great glens
+with or without lochs--but flaps her way from rock to rock, lower and
+lower down along the same mountain-side--and finally, drawn by her
+weakness into dangerous descent, she is discovered at grey dawn far
+below the region of snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest carrion;
+till a bullet whizzing through her heart, down she topples, and soon is
+despatched by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd stretching out his
+foe's carcass on the sward, eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, with
+leg thick as his own wrist, and foot broad as his own hand.
+
+But behold the Golden Eagle, as she has pounced, and is exulting over
+her prey! With her head drawn back between the crescent of her uplifted
+wings, which she will not fold till that prey be devoured, eye glaring
+cruel joy, neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, and talons
+driven through the victim's entrails and heart--there she is new lighted
+on the ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell and its echo. Beak
+and talons, all her life long, have had a stain of blood, for the
+murderess observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips them in loch or sea,
+except when dashing down suddenly among the terrified water-fowl from
+her watch-tower in the sky. The week-old fawn had left the doe's side
+but for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice; a rustle and a
+shadow--and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis. In an
+instant the small animal is dead--after a short exultation torn into
+pieces, and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its unswallowed or
+undigested bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumbering
+the eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which the
+young demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine.
+
+Oh for the life of an eagle written by himself! It would outsell the
+Confessions even of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would he, or she,
+write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened his
+eyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light.
+The Great Glen of Scotland--hath it not been the inheritance of his
+ancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignoble
+blood, from intermarriages of necessity or convenience with kite,
+buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the Golden Eagles of Glen-Falloch,
+surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed alliances with the Golden Eagles
+of Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair--the
+Lightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm-wheelers, the
+Cloud-cleavers, ever since the deluge. The education of the
+autobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes,
+beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in that
+capacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from the
+desert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion of
+his instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man.
+What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College of
+the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of all
+inferior creatures, he speedily made himself master--ours included. Nor
+was his knowledge confined to theory, but reduced to daily practice. He
+kept himself in constant training--taking a flight of a couple of
+hundred miles before breakfast--paying a forenoon visit to the farthest
+of the Hebride Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In one day he
+has flown to Norway on a visit to his uncle by the mother's side, and
+returned the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying sick at the Head
+of the Cambrian Dee. He soon learned to despise himself for having once
+yelled for food, when food was none; and to sit or sail, on rock or
+through ether, athirst and an hungered, but mute. The virtues of
+patience, endurance, and fortitude, have become with him, in strict
+accordance with the Aristotelian Moral Philosophy--habits. A Peripatetic
+Philosopher he could hardly be called--properly speaking, he belongs to
+the Solar School--an airy sect, who take very high ground, indulge in
+lofty flights, and are often lost in the clouds. Now and then a light
+chapter might be introduced, setting forth how he and other youngsters
+of the Blood Royal were wont to take an occasional game at High-Jinks,
+or tourney in air lists, the champions on opposite sides flying from the
+Perthshire and from the Argyllshire mountains, and encountering with a
+clash in the azure common, six thousand feet high. But the fever of love
+burned in his blood, and flying to the mountains of another continent,
+in obedience to the yell of an old oral tradition, he wooed and won his
+virgin bride--a monstrous beauty, wider-winged than himself, to kill or
+caress, and bearing the proof of her noble nativity in the radiant Iris
+that belongs in perfection of fierceness but to the Sun-starers, and in
+them is found, unimpaired by cloudiest clime, over the uttermost parts
+of the earth. The bridegroom and his bride, during the honey-moon, slept
+on the naked rock--till they had built their eyrie beneath its
+cliff-canopy on the mountain-brow. When the bride was "as Eagles wish to
+be who love their lords"--devoted unto her was the bridegroom, even as
+the cushat murmuring to his brooding mate in the central pine-grove of a
+forest. Tenderly did he drop from his talons, close beside her beak, the
+delicate spring lamb, or the too early leveret, owing to the hurried and
+imprudent marriage of its parents before March, buried in a living tomb
+on April's closing day. Through all thy glens, Albyn! hadst thou reason
+to mourn, at the bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had been
+cherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven wheeled the Royal Pair,
+from rising to setting sun. Among the bright-blooming heather they
+espied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creeping like a lizard, and from
+behind the vain shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the flight he
+would fain see shorn of its beams. The flocks were thinned--and the
+bleating of desolate dams among the woolly people heard from many a
+brae. Poison was strewn over the glens for their destruction, but the
+Eagle, like the lion, preys not on carcasses; and the shepherd dogs
+howled in agony over the carrion in which they devoured death. Ha! was
+not that a day of triumph to the Sun-starers of Cruachan, when
+sky-hunting in couples, far down on the greensward before the ruined
+gateway of Kilchurn Castle, they saw, left all to himself in the
+sunshine, the infant heir of the Campbell of Breadalbane, the child of
+the Lord of Glenorchy and all its streams! Four talons in an instant
+were in his heart. Too late were the outcries from all the turrets; for
+ere the castle-gates were flung open, the golden head of the royal babe
+was lying in gore, in the Eyrie on the iron ramparts of Ben-Slarive--his
+blue eyes dug out--his rosy cheeks torn--and his brains dropping from
+beaks that revelled yelling within the skull!--Such are a few hints for
+"Some Passages in the Life of the Golden Eagle, written by
+Himself,"--in one volume crown octavo--Blackwoods, Edinburgh and
+London.
+
+O heavens and earth!--forests and barn-yards! what a difference with a
+distinction between a GOLDEN EAGLE and a GREEN GOOSE! There, all neck
+and bottom, splay-footed, and hissing in miserable imitation of a
+serpent, lolling from side to side, up and down like an ill-trimmed
+punt, the downy gosling waddles through the green mire, and, imagining
+that King George the Fourth is meditating mischief against him, cackles
+angrily as he plunges into the pond. No swan that "on still St Mary's
+lake floats double, swan and shadow," so proud as he! He prides himself
+on being a gander, and never forgets the lesson instilled into him by
+his parents, soon as he chipt the shell in the nest among the nettles,
+that his ancestors saved the Roman Capitol. In process of time, in
+company with swine, he grazes on the common, and insults the Egyptians
+in their roving camp. Then comes the season of plucking--and this very
+pen bears testimony to his tortures. Out into the houseless winter is he
+driven--and, if he escapes being frozen into a lump of fat ice, he is
+crammed till his liver swells into a four-pounder--his cerebellum is cut
+by the cruel knife of a phrenological cook, and his remains buried with
+a cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of apoplectic aldermen, eating
+against each other at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for "Some
+Passages in the Life of a Green Goose," written by himself--in foolscap
+octavo--published by Quack and Co., Ludgate Lane, and sold by all
+booksellers in town and country.
+
+Poor poets must not meddle with eagles. In the "Fall of Nineveh," Mr
+Atherstone describes a grand review of his army by Sardanapalus. Two
+million men are put into motion by the moving of the Assyrian flag-staff
+in the hand of the king, who takes his station on a mount conspicuous to
+all the army. This flag-staff, though "tall as a mast"--Mr Atherstone
+does not venture to go on to say with Milton, "hewn on Norwegian hills,"
+or "of some tall ammiral," though the readers' minds supply the
+deficiency--this mast was, we are told, for "_two strong men_ a task;"
+but it must have been so for twenty. To have had the least chance of
+being all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have been
+less than fifty feet high--and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standard
+of Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke to
+him. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Such
+shouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firm
+ground made tremble." But this was not all.
+
+                              "At his height,
+    A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard,
+    And felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck,
+    Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank--
+    Down through the quivering air: another shout,--
+    His talons droop--his sunny eye grows dark--
+    His strengthless pennons fail--plump down he falls,
+    Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills,
+    With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd,
+    The sleeping lion in his den sprang up;
+    Listen'd awhile--then laid his monstrous mouth
+    Close to the floor, and breathed hot roarings out
+    In fierce reply."
+
+What think ye of that, John Audubon, Charles Buonaparte, J. Prideaux
+Selby, James Wilson, Sir William Jardine, and ye other European and
+American ornithologists? Pray, Mr Atherstone, did you ever see an
+eagle--a speck in the sky? Never again suffer yourself, oh, dear sir! to
+believe old women's tales of men on earth shooting eagles with their
+mouths; because the thing is impossible, even had their mouthpieces had
+percussion-locks--had they been crammed with ammunition to the muzzle.
+Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly have
+got a fright, and probably a fall--nor would there have been any hope
+for a tom-tit. But an eagle--an eagle ever so many thousand feet
+aloft--poo, poo!--he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude,
+and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string of
+wild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they would
+merely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answered
+the earth-born shout with an air-born gabble--clangour to clangour.
+Where were Mr Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, and all his
+acoustics? Two shouts slew an eagle. What became of all the other
+denizens of air--especially crows, ravens, and vultures, who, seeing two
+millions of men, must have come flocking against a day of battle? Every
+mother's son of them must have gone to pot. Then what scrambling among
+the allied troops! And what was one eagle doing by himself "up-by
+yonder?" Was he the only eagle in Assyria--the secular bird of ages? Who
+was looking at him, first a speck--then faltering--then fluttering and
+wildly screaming--then plump down like a stone? Mr Atherstone talks as
+if he saw it. In the circumstances he had no business with his "sunny
+eye growing dark." That is entering too much into the medical, or rather
+anatomical symptoms of his apoplexy, and would be better for a medical
+journal than an epic poem. But to be done with it--two shouts that slew
+an eagle a mile up the sky, must have cracked all the tympana of the two
+million shouters. The entire army must have become as deaf as a post.
+Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the mount, must have been blown into the
+air as by the explosion of a range of gunpowder-mills; the campaign
+taken a new turn; and a revolution been brought about, of which, at this
+distance of place and time, it is not easy for us to conjecture what
+might have been the fundamental features on which it would have
+hinged--and thus an entirely new aspect given to all the histories of
+the world.
+
+What is said about the lion, is to our minds equally picturesque and
+absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles?
+If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the
+huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion
+to hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be
+altered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannot
+believe that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot of
+Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"--and
+Semiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unduly upon
+a mere matter of police, is it the nature of lions, lying in their dens
+among far-off hills, to start up from their sleep, and "breathe hot
+roarings out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! Mr
+Atherstone shows off his knowledge of natural history, in telling us
+that the said lion, in roaring, "laid his monstrous mouth close to the
+floor." We believe he does so; but did Mr Atherstone learn the fact from
+Cuvier or from Wombwell? It is always dangerous to a poet to be too
+picturesque; and in this case, you are made, whether you will or no, to
+see an old, red, lean, mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy den
+in a menagerie, bathing his beard in the sawdust, and from his toothless
+jaws "breathing hot roarings out," to the terror of servant-girls and
+children, in fierce reply to a man in a hairy cap and full suit of
+velveteen, stirring him up with a long pole, and denominating him by the
+sacred name of the great asserter of Scottish independence.
+
+Sir Humphry Davy--in his own science the first man of his age--does not
+shine in his "Salmonia"--pleasant volume though it be--as an
+ornithologist. Let us see.
+
+"POIET.--The scenery improves as we advance nearer the lower parts of
+the lake. The mountains become higher, and that small island or
+peninsula presents a bold craggy outline; and the birch-wood below it,
+and the pines above, make a scene somewhat Alpine in character. But what
+is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the end of
+the lake? Surely it is an eagle!
+
+"HAL.--You are right; it is an eagle, and of a rare and peculiar
+species--the grey or silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of the
+animal, it must be the female; and her eyrie is in that high rock. I
+dare say the male is not far off."
+
+Sir Humphry speaks in his introductory pages of Mr Wordsworth as a lover
+of fishing and fishermen; and we cannot help thinking and feeling that
+he intends Poietes as an image of that great Poet. What! William
+Wordsworth, the very high-priest of nature, represented to have seen an
+eagle for the first time of his life only then, and to have boldly
+ventured on a conjecture that such was the name and nature of the bird!
+"But what is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the
+end of the lake? Surely it is an eagle!" "Yes, you are right--it is an
+eagle." Ha--ha--ha--ha--ha--ha! Sir Humphry--Sir Humphry--that guffaw
+was not ours--it came from the Bard of Rydal--albeit unused to the
+laughing mood--in the haunted twilight of that beautiful--that solemn
+Terrace.
+
+Poietes having been confirmed, by the authority of Halieus, in his
+belief that the bird is an eagle, exclaims, agreeably to the part he
+plays, "Look at the bird! She dashes into the water, _falling like a
+rock_ and raising a column of spray--she has _fallen from a great
+height_. And now she rises again into the air--_what an extraordinary
+sight_!" Nothing is so annoying as to be ordered to look at a sight
+which, unless you shut your eyes, it is impossible for you not to see. A
+person behaving in a boat like Poietes, deserved being flung overboard.
+"Look at the bird!" Why, every eye was already upon her; and if Poietes
+had had a single spark of poetry in his composition, he would have been
+struck mute by such a sight, instead of bawling out, open-mouthed and
+goggle-eyed, like a Cockney to a rocket at Vauxhall. Besides, an eagle
+does not, when descending on her prey, fall like a rock. There is
+nothing like the "_vis inertiae_" in her precipitation. You still see the
+self-willed energy of the ravenous bird, as the mass of plumes flashes
+in the spray--of which, by the by, there never was, nor will be, a
+column so raised. She is as much the queen of birds as she sinks as when
+she soars--her trust and her power are still seen and felt to be in her
+pinions, whether she shoots to or from the zenith--to a falling star she
+might be likened--just as any other devil--either by Milton or
+Wordsworth--for such a star seems to our eye and our imagination ever
+instinct with spirit, not to be impelled by exterior force, but to be
+self-shot from heaven.
+
+Upon our word, we begin to believe that we ourselves deserve the name of
+Poietes much better than the gentleman who at threescore had never seen
+an eagle. "She has fallen from a great height," quoth the
+gentleman--"What an extraordinary sight!" he continueth--while we are
+mute as the oar suspended by the up-gazing Celt, whose quiet eye
+brightens as it pursues the Bird to her eyrie in the cliff over the cove
+where the red-deer feed.
+
+Poietes having given vent to his emotions in such sublime
+exclamations--"Look at the bird!" "What an extraordinary sight!" might
+have thenceforth held his tongue, and said no more about eagles. But
+Halieus cries, "There! you see her rise with a fish in her talons"--and
+Poietes, very simply, or rather like a simpleton, returns for answer,
+"She _gives an interest which I hardly expected to have found in this
+scene_. Pray, are there _many of these animals_ in this country?" A poet
+hardly expecting to find interest in such a scene as a great Highland
+loch--Loch Maree! "Pray, are there many _of these hanimals in this
+country_?" Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an animal;
+like Mr Cobbett or Mr O'Connell--"a very fine animal;" but we
+particularly, and earnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry Davy
+not to call her so again--but to use the term bird, or any other term he
+chooses, except animal. Animal, a living creature, is too general, too
+vague by far; and somehow or other it offends our ear shockingly when
+applied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in a trifling matter of this
+kind Sir Humphry surely will not refuse our supplication. Let him call a
+horse an animal, if he chooses--or an ass--or a cow--but not an
+eagle--as he loves us, not an eagle; let him call it a bird--the Bird of
+Jove--the Queen or King of the Sky--or anything else he chooses--but not
+an animal--no--no--no--not an animal, as he hopes to prosper, to be
+praised in Maga, embalmed and immortalised.
+
+Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there were "_many_ of these
+animals" in this country. He ought to have known that there are not
+_many_ of these animals in any country. Eagles are proud--apt to hold
+their heads very high--and to make themselves scarce. A great many
+eagles all flying about together would look most absurd. They are aware
+of that, and fly in "ones and twos"--a couple perhaps to a county.
+Poietes might as well have asked Mungo Park if there were a great many
+lions in Africa. Mungo, we think, saw but one; and that was one too
+much. There were probably a few more between Sego and Timbuctoo--but
+there are not a "great many of those animals in that country"--though
+quite sufficient for the purpose. How the Romans contrived to get at
+hundreds for a single show, perplexes our power of conjecture.
+
+Halieus says--with a smile on his lip surely--in answer to the query of
+Poietes--"Of this species I have seen but these two; and, I believe, the
+young ones migrate as soon as they can provide for themselves; for this
+solitary bird requires a large space to move and feed in, and does not
+allow its offspring to partake its reign, or to live near it." This is
+all pretty true, and known to every child rising or risen six, except
+poor Poietes. He had imagined that there were "many of these animals in
+this country," that they all went a-fishing together as amicably as five
+hundred sail of Manksmen among a shoal of herrings.
+
+Throughout these Dialogues we have observed that Ornither rarely opens
+his mouth. Why so taciturn? On the subject of birds he ought, from his
+name, to be well informed; and how could he let slip an opportunity,
+such as will probably never be afforded him again in this life, of being
+eloquent on the Silver Eagle? Ornithology is surely the department of
+Ornither. Yet there is evidently something odd and peculiar in his
+idiosyncrasy; for we observe that he never once alludes to "these
+animals," birds, during the whole excursion. He has not taken his gun
+with him into the Highlands, a sad oversight indeed in a gentleman who
+"is to be regarded as generally fond of the sports of the field."
+Flappers are plentiful over all the moors about the middle of July; and
+hoodies, owls, hawks, ravens, make all first-rate shooting to sportsmen
+not over anxious about the pot. It is to be presumed, too, that he can
+stuff birds. What noble specimens might he not have shot for Mr Selby!
+On one occasion, "the SILVER EAGLE" is preying in a pool within slug
+range, and there is some talk of shooting him--we suppose with an oar,
+or the butt of a fishing-rod, for the party have no firearms--but
+Poietes insists on sparing his life, because "these animals" are a
+picturesque accompaniment to the scenery, and "give it an interest which
+he had not expected to find" in mere rivers, lochs, moors, and
+mountains. Genus Falco must all the while have been laughing in his
+sleeve at the whole party--particularly at Ornither--who, to judge from
+his general demeanour, may be a fair shot with number five at an old
+newspaper expanded on a barn-door twenty yards off, but never could have
+had the audacity to think in his most ambitious mood of letting off his
+gun at an Eagle.
+
+But further, Halieus, before he took upon him to speak so
+authoritatively about eagles, should have made himself master of their
+names and natures. He is manifestly no scientific ornithologist. We are.
+The general question concerning Eagles in Scotland may now be squeezed
+into very small compass. Exclusive of the true Osprey (Falco Haliaetus),
+which is rather a larger fishing-hawk than an eagle, there are two
+kinds, viz.--the GOLDEN EAGLE (F. Chrysaetos), and the WHITE-TAILED or
+CINEROUS EAGLE (F. Albicilla). The other two _nominal_ species are
+disposed of in the following manner:--First, the RING-TAILED EAGLE (F.
+Fulvus) is the young of the Golden Eagle, being distinguished in early
+life by having the basal and central portion of the tail white, which
+colour disappears as the bird attains the adult state. Second, the SEA
+EAGLE (F. Ossifragus), commonly so called, is the young of the
+White-tailed Eagle above named, from which it differs in having a brown
+tail; for in this species the white of the tail becomes every year more
+apparent as the bird increases in age, whereas, in the Golden Eagle, the
+white altogether disappears in the adult.
+
+It is to the RING-TAILED EAGLE, and, by consequence, to the GOLDEN
+EAGLE, that the name of BLACK EAGLE is applied in the Highlands.
+
+The White-tailed or Sea Eagle, as it becomes old, attains, in addition
+to the pure tail, a pale or bleached appearance, from which it may merit
+and obtain the name of Grey or SILVER EAGLE, as Sir Humphry Davy chooses
+to call it; but it is not known among naturalists by that name. There is
+no other species, however, to which the name can apply; and, therefore,
+Sir Humphry has committed the very gross mistake of calling the Grey or
+Silver Eagle (to use his own nomenclature) a very rare Eagle, since it
+is the most common of all the Scots, and also--_a fortiori_--of all the
+English Eagles--being in fact the SEA EAGLE of the Highlands.
+
+It preys often on fish dead or alive; but not exclusively, as it also
+attacks young lambs, and drives off the ravens from carrion prey, being
+less fastidious in its diet than the GOLDEN EAGLE, which probably kills
+its own meat--and has been known to carry off children; for a striking
+account of one of which hay-field robberies you have but a few minutes
+to wait.
+
+As to its driving off its young, its habits are probably similar in this
+respect to other birds of prey, none of which appear to keep together in
+families after the young can shift for themselves; but we have never met
+with any one who has seen them in the act of driving. It is stated
+vaguely, in all books, of all eagles.
+
+As to its requiring a large range to feed in--we have only to remark
+that, from the powerful flight of these birds, and the wild and barren
+nature of the countries which they inhabit, there can be no doubt that
+they fly far, and "prey in distant isles"--as Thomson has it; but
+Halieus needed not have stated this circumstance as a character of this
+peculiar eagle--for an eagle with a small range does not exist; and
+therefore it is to be presumed that they require a large one.
+
+Further, all this being the case, there seems to be no necessity for the
+old eagles giving themselves the trouble to drive off the young ones,
+who by natural instinct will fly off of their own accord, as soon as
+their wings can bear them over the sea. If an eagle were so partial to
+his native vale, as never on any account, hungry or thirsty, drunk or
+sober, to venture into the next parish, why then the old people would be
+forced, on the old principle of self-preservation, to pack off their
+progeny to bed and board beyond Benevis. But an Eagle is a Citizen of
+the World. He is friendly to the views of Mr Huskisson on the Wool
+Trade, the Fisheries, and the Colonies--and acts upon the old adage,
+
+    "Every bird for himself, and God for us all!"
+
+To conclude, for the present, this branch of our subject, we beg leave
+humbly to express our belief, that Sir Humphry Davy never saw the Eagle,
+by him called the Grey or Silver, hunting for fish in the style
+described in "Salmonia." It does not dislike fish--but it is not its
+nature to keep hunting for them so, not in the Highlands at least,
+whatever it may do on American continent or isles. Sir Humphry talks of
+the bird dashing down repeatedly upon a pool within shot of the anglers.
+We have angled fifty times in the Highlands for Sir Humphry's once, but
+never saw nor heard of such a sight. He has read of such things, and
+introduced them into this dialogue for the sake of effect--all quite
+right to do--had his reading lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. The
+common Eagle--which he ignorantly, as we have seen, calls so rare--is a
+shy bird, as all shepherds know--and is seldom within range of the
+rifle. Gorged with blood, they are sometimes run in upon and felled with
+a staff or club. So perished, in the flower of his age, that Eagle whose
+feet now form handles to the bell-ropes of our Sanctum at Buchanan
+Lodge--and are the subject of a clever copy of verses by Mullion,
+entitled "All the Talons."
+
+We said in "The Moors," that we envied not the eagle or any other bird
+his wings, and showed cause why we preferred our own feet. Had Puck
+wings? If he had, we retract, and would sport Puck.
+
+                  _Oberon._
+
+    "Fetch me this herb--and be thou here again,
+    Ere the Leviathan can swim a league."
+
+                  _Puck._
+
+    "I'll put a girdle round about the earth
+    In forty minutes."
+
+How infinitely more poetical are wings like these than seven-league
+boots! We declare, on our conscience, that we would not accept the
+present of a pair of seven-league boots to-morrow--or, if we did, it
+would be out of mere politeness to the genie who might press them on us,
+and the wisest thing we could do would be to lock them up in a drawer
+out of the reach of the servants. Suppose that we wished to walk from
+Clovenford to Innerleithen--why, with seven-league boots on, one single
+step would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Peebles! That would
+never do. By mincing one's steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop at
+Innerleithen; but suppose a gad-fly were to sting one's hip at the
+Pirn--one unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier,
+and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan water! Therefore,
+there is nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter--and glide--and
+float and soar--now like a humming-bird among the flowers--now like a
+swan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying adown a river--now like
+an eagle afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards,
+invisible in excess of light--and bidding farewell to earth and its
+humble shadows. "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee
+away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some heavy hour or other, from
+the depth of his very soul, devoutly--passionately--hopelessly--breathed
+that wish to escape beyond the limits of woe and sin--not into the world
+of dreamless death; for weary though the immortal pilgrim may have been,
+never desired he the doom of annihilation, untroubled although it be,
+shorn of all the attributes of being--but he has prayed for the wings of
+the dove, because that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away from
+the sight of human dwellings, has seemed to disappear to his imagination
+among old glimmering forests, wherein she foldeth her wing and falleth
+gladly asleep--and therefore, in those agitated times when the spirits
+of men acknowledge kindred with the inferior creatures, and would fain
+interchange with them powers and qualities, they are willing even to lay
+down their intelligence, their reason, their conscience itself, so that
+they could but be blessed with the faculty of escaping from all the
+agonies that intelligence, and reason, and conscience alone can know,
+and beyond the reach of this world's horizon to flee away and be at
+rest!
+
+Puck says he will put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.
+At what rate is that per second, taking the circumference of the earth
+at 27,000 miles, more or less? There is a question for the mechanics,
+somewhat about as difficult of solution as Lord Brougham's celebrated
+one of the Smuggler and the Revenue Cutter--for the solution of which he
+recommended the aid of algebra. It is not so quick as you would imagine.
+We forget the usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he is
+in training--and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we are
+sorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would take a good,
+stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to accomplish a journey to
+our planet from one of the fixed stars. The great difficulty, we
+confess, would be to get him safely conveyed thither. If that could be
+done, we should have no fear of his finding his way back, if not in our
+time, in that of our posterity. However red-hot he might have been on
+starting, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on his arrival at the goal;
+yet we should have no objection to back him against Time for a
+trifle--Time, we observe, in almost all matches being beat, often indeed
+by the most miserable hacks, that can with difficulty raise a gallop.
+Time, however, possibly runs booty; for when he does make play, it must
+be confessed that he is a spanker, and that nothing has been seen with
+such a stride since Eclipse.
+
+O beautiful and beloved Highland Parish! in whose dashing glens our
+beating heart first felt the awe of solitude, and learned to commune
+(alas! to what purpose?) with the tumult of its own thoughts! The
+circuit of thy skies was indeed a glorious arena spread over the
+mountain-tops for the combats of the great birds of prey! One wild cry
+or another was in the lift--of the hawk, or the glead, or the raven, or
+the eagle--or when those fiends slept, of the peaceful heron, and
+sea-bird by wandering boys pursued in its easy flight, till the
+snow-white child of ocean wavered away far inland, as if in search of a
+steadfast happiness unknown on the restless waves. Seldom did the eagle
+stoop to the challenge of the inferior fowl; but when he did, it was
+like a mailed knight treading down unknown men in battle. The hawks, and
+the gleads, and the ravens, and the carrion-crows, and the hooded-crows,
+and the rooks, and the magpies, and all the rest of the rural militia,
+forgetting their own feuds, sometimes came sallying from all quarters,
+with even a few facetious jackdaws from the old castle, to show fight
+with the monarch of the air. Amidst all that multitude of wings
+winnowing the wind, was heard the sough and whizz of those mighty vans,
+as the Royal Bird, himself an army, performed his majestic evolutions
+with all the calm confidence of a master in the art of aerial war, now
+shooting up half-a-thousand feet perpendicular, and now suddenly
+plump-down into the rear of the croaking, cawing, and chattering
+battalions, cutting off their retreat to the earth. Then the rout became
+general, the missing, however, far outnumbering the dead. Keeping
+possession of the field of battle, hung the eagle for a short while
+motionless--till with one fierce yell of triumph he seemed to seek the
+sun, and disappear like a speck in the light, surveying half of Scotland
+at a glance, and a thousand of her isles.
+
+Some people have a trick of describing incidents as having happened
+within their own observation, when in fact they were at the time lying
+asleep in bed, and disturbing the whole house with the snore of their
+dormitory. Such is too often the character of the eyewitnesses of the
+present age. Now, we would not claim personal acquaintance with an
+incident we had not seen--no, not for a hundred guineas per sheet; and,
+therefore, we warn the reader not to believe the following little story
+about an eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby crest, and a
+favourite sign of inns in the north of England) on our authority. "I
+tell the tale as 'twas told to me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws,
+in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he
+have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how
+to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many
+extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is
+believing," so likewise "believing is seeing," as every one must allow
+who reads these our Recreations.
+
+Almost all the people in the parish were leading in their meadow-hay
+(there were not in all its ten miles square twenty acres of ryegrass)
+on the same day of midsummer, so drying was the sunshine and the
+wind,--and huge heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view the horses
+that drew them along the sward, beginning to get green with second
+growth, were moving in all directions towards the snug farmyards. Never
+had the parish seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy air with
+laughter, whistle, and song. But the Tree-gnomons threw the shadow of
+"one o'clock" on the green dial-face of the earth--the horses were
+unyoked, and took instantly to grazing--groups of men, women, lads,
+lasses, and children collected under grove, and bush, and
+hedgerow--graces were pronounced, some of them rather too tedious in
+presence of the mantling milk-cans, bullion-bars of butter, and
+crackling cakes; and the great Being who gave them that day their daily
+bread, looked down from his Eternal Throne, well pleased with the piety
+of his thankful creatures.
+
+The great Golden Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped
+down, and away with something in his talons. One single sudden female
+shriek--and then shouts and outcries as if a church spire had tumbled
+down on a congregation at a sacrament. "Hannah Lamond's bairn! Hannah
+Lamond's bairn!" was the loud fast-spreading cry. "The Eagle's taen aff
+Hannah Lamond's bairn!" and many hundred feet were in another instant
+hurrying towards the mountain. Two miles of hill and dale, and copse and
+shingle, and many intersecting brooks, lay between; but in an incredibly
+short time the foot of the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was
+well known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. But who
+shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart the sailor, who had
+been at the storming of many a fort, once attempted in vain? All kept
+gazing, or weeping, or wringing of hands, rooted to the ground, or
+running back and forwards, like so many ants, essaying their new wings,
+in discomfiture. "What's the use--what's the use o' ony puir human
+means? We have nae power but in prayer!" And many knelt down--fathers
+and mothers thinking of their own babies--as if they would force the
+deaf heavens to hear.
+
+Hannah Lamond had been all this while sitting on a stone, with a face
+perfectly white, and eyes like those of a mad person, fixed on the
+eyrie. Nobody noticed her; for strong as all sympathies with her had
+been at the swoop of the Eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agony
+of eyesight. "Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee wean baptised in the
+name o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" and on uttering
+these words, she flew off through the brakes and over the huge stones,
+up--up--up--faster than ever huntsman ran in to the death--fearless as a
+goat playing among the precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt,
+that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk in
+their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb the
+walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the
+edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep as
+draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing
+eyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of the
+soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's
+passion--who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast,
+hurried off by a demon to a hideous death--bear her limbs aloft wherever
+there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercer
+and more furious than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in
+blood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wing would fain flap
+her down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance?
+
+No stop--no stay--she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her
+feet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands
+strengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear, then,
+but once crossed her heart, as up--up--up--to the little image made of
+her own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing--will
+not the same God save me when my child is at my breast?" Down came the
+fierce rushing of the Eagle's wings--each savage bird dashing close to
+her head, so that she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once
+they quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an
+ash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the
+Christian mother, falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and
+blood, clasped her child--dead--dead--no doubt--but unmangled and
+untorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleep
+among the fresh hay in a nook of the harvest-field. Oh! what pang of
+perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeble
+cry--"It lives! it lives! it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud
+laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious
+innocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love. "O, thou
+great and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me--one of the
+most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save me lest I perish, even for thy
+own name's sake! O Thou, who died to save sinners, have mercy upon me!"
+Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old
+trees--far--far down--and dwindled into specks a thousand creatures of
+her own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound of
+the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native
+strath?--and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands
+the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here
+must she die--and when her breast is exhausted--her baby too. And those
+horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her child
+will be devoured at last, even within the dead arms that can protect it
+no more.
+
+Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half-way up the
+cliffs. But his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart
+sick--and he who had so often reefed the topgallant-sail, when at
+midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with
+his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And who
+will take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, who,
+through exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in her
+grasp the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God."
+She looked round expecting to see a spirit; but nothing moved except a
+rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling
+rock. Her eye--by some secret sympathy with the inanimate
+object--watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far off, on a small
+platform. Her child was bound upon her shoulders--she knew not how or
+when--but it was safe--and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid
+down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm
+root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers
+suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by
+brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stone
+leapt over a ledge and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall.
+There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to
+follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them; but
+she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall
+of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy
+centuries old--long ago dead, and without a single green leaf--but with
+thousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as
+with a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck--and with hands and feet
+clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down,
+she saw the whole population of the parish--so great was the
+multitude--on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms--a hymn
+breathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn was the
+strain--but nothing dirge-like--sounding not of death, but deliverance.
+Often had she sung that tune--perhaps the very words--but them she heard
+not--in her own hut, she and her mother--or in the kirk, along with all
+the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the
+ribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to
+be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into
+a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth--the psalm
+was hushed--but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and a
+she-goat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights," thought she,
+"do these creatures climb--but the dam will lead down her kids by the
+easiest paths; for in the brute creatures holy is the power of a
+mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping
+baby, and for the first time she wept.
+
+Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before by
+human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the Golden
+Eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their
+eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part of
+the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet
+accessible--and more than one person in the parish had reached the
+bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it--and ere the
+cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, through
+among dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were
+traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and
+then the head of another, and she knew that God had delivered her and
+her child into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a word was
+spoken--she hushed her friends with her hands--and with uplifted eyes
+pointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where
+those creatures nibble the wildflowers, became now more
+frequent--trodden lines, almost as plain as sheep-paths, showed that the
+dam had not led her young into danger; and now the brushwood dwindled
+away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence
+above the stream, and forming part of the strath.
+
+There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing and many tears, among
+the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs--sublime was the
+shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie--then had
+succeeded a silence deep as death--in a little while arose that hymning
+prayer, succeeded by mute supplication--the wildness of thankful and
+congratulatory joy had next its sway--and now that her salvation was
+sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake
+was all this alternation of agony? A poor humble creature, unknown to
+many even by name--one who had had but few friends, nor wished for
+more--contented to work all day, here--there--anywhere--that she might
+be able to support her aged mother and her child--and who on Sabbath
+took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, in the kirk.
+
+"Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the
+parish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death.
+"Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother and
+then another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses,
+many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no a
+single scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun hae
+stuck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maun
+they be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"
+
+Hannah started up from her swoon--and, looking wildly round, cried, "Oh!
+the Bird--the Bird!--the Eagle--the Eagle!--the Eagle has carried off my
+bonny wee Walter--is there nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her baby
+into her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the
+sorely bewildered creature said in a low voice, "Am I wauken--oh! tell
+me if I'm wauken--or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever."
+
+Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was a
+mother--and you may guess what a mother--yet--frown not, fair and gentle
+reader--frown not, pure and stainless as thou art--to her belonged not
+the sacred name of wife--and that baby was the child of sin and of
+shame--yes--"the child of misery, baptised in tears!" She had
+loved--trusted--been betrayed--and deserted. In sorrow and
+solitude--uncomforted and despised--she bore her burden. Dismal had been
+the hour of travail--and she feared her mother's heart would have
+broken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing is
+forgiveness--alike to the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! And
+then Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not
+such as her fellow-creatures deemed it--for there were dreadful secrets
+which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she
+bowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes of
+repentance--walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the
+kirk--yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her
+sadness inspired a general pity--she was excluded from no house she had
+heart to visit--no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice
+people took of her baby--no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty;
+for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung
+the lullaby, forbade all such approach--and an universal sentiment of
+indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled
+seducer--if all had been known, too weak word for his crime--who left
+thus to pine in sorrow, and in shame far worse than sorrow, one who till
+her unhappy fall had been held up by every mother as an example to her
+daughters.
+
+Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer--but she had
+striven--and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do so--to think
+not of him now that he had deserted her for ever. Sometimes his image,
+as well in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart--but she
+closed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all the
+love towards him that slept--but was not dead--arose in yearnings of
+still more exceeding love towards his child. Round its head was gathered
+all hope of comfort--of peace--of reward of her repentance. One of its
+smiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In her
+breast--on her knee--in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetual
+prayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness of
+affection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the hand
+of God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after the
+hour of rescue and deliverance, stretched her on the greensward like a
+corpse.
+
+The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strange
+story without names had been told to the Wood-ranger of the
+Cairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious to know what truth there was
+in it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd,
+went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined,
+and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierce
+eyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side.
+
+His heart died within him, not in fear, but in remorse. What a worm he
+felt himself to be! And fain would he have become a worm, that, to
+escape all that united human scorn, he might have wriggled away in slime
+into some hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hannah met his in
+forgiveness--an un-upbraiding tear--a faint smile of love. All his
+better nature rose within him, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes,
+good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is your
+scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in the
+woods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her--but here I
+am--not to offer retribution--for that may not--will not--must not
+be--guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim that
+innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to
+deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder--I call on you to
+seize your prisoner."
+
+The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge and
+enlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Their
+anger subsided into a stern satisfaction--and that soon softened, in
+sight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness,
+into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been,
+had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in his
+uncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness. The old
+clergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers,
+whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer was
+over, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferior
+to a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation was
+freed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. And
+although the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much better
+than we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-ranger
+never became altogether a saint--nor acquired the edifying habit of
+pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his
+eyes--yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very
+serious laid to his prejudice--that he became in due time an elder of
+the Kirk--gave his children a religious education--erring only in making
+rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to
+manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+THIRD CANTICLE.
+
+
+The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roaming
+pedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has not
+yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional big
+rain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimes
+utters a sullen groan--the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise is
+repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak--croak--croak! manifestly from
+a thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser the
+croak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the black
+sultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird on
+the wing. By-and-by something black lifts itself slowly and heavily up
+from a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared the
+rock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be a
+Raven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and in
+his strong straight-forward flight aims at the head of another glen; but
+he wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alighting among the heather,
+folds his huge massy wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with the
+same savage croak--croak--croak! No other bird so like a demon--and
+should you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawl
+to a hut, your life is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase. Never was
+there a single hound in Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordship
+became a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that feathered
+fiend, covered though they be with strong hairs or bristles, that grimly
+adorn a bill of formidable dimensions, and apt for digging out
+eye-socket and splitting skull-structure of dying man or beast. That
+bill cannot tear in pieces like the eagle's beak, nor are its talons so
+powerful to smite as to compress--but a better bill for
+cut-and-thrust--- push, carte, and tierce--the dig dismal and the plunge
+profound--belongs to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor needs
+the wound to be repeated on the same spot. Feeder foul and obscene! to
+thy nostril upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of thy quarry from
+afar," sweeter is the scent of carrion, than to the panting lover's
+sense and soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath and bosom, when,
+lying in her innocence in his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem laden
+with something more ethereally pure than "Sabean odours from the spicy
+shores of Araby the Blest."
+
+The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. It
+cannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery of
+life. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear the
+dying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, or
+sit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof--hopping in a
+circle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keep
+dilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When the
+prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing
+carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by
+claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled
+and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and
+turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a
+self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then
+folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to
+gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of
+consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about,
+round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost
+snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At
+last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is
+stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid
+instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and
+preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course
+of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and
+with difficulty able either to croak or to fly.
+
+The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundred
+years, perhaps a couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, girls
+into maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into old
+decrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at the
+head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages,
+deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is--at least so men say--that he is
+aware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings
+against door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity,
+or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As
+the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft
+in the air--or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse
+like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the
+house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse
+hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little
+grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is
+sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that
+he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of
+human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact,
+much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was the
+punishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood bore
+the human shape, and who, soon as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, flew
+off to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude of
+the drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in
+burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs,
+as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse
+that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says
+the Celtic superstition--muttered to us in a dream--adding that there
+are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the
+forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak
+at the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible.
+
+There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty years
+ago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom of
+Helvyllyn," was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because no
+adherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountains
+when the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathed
+and pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quaker
+as the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point, with what glee
+the few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Club
+must have flocked to the Ordinary! Without asking each other to which
+part this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maxim
+which regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come,
+first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became
+animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the
+most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab.
+The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after
+going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled,
+and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black
+feather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue,
+pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox,
+and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of choking
+soft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was so
+provokingly insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak--then a drab
+wraprascal--then a drab broadcloth coat, made in the oldest
+fashion--then a drab waistcoat of the same--then a drab under-waistcoat
+of thinner mould--then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish--then a
+flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the
+members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days
+at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about
+eight A.M. on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve
+o'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat down
+to supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that the
+President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary,
+treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary and
+extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so
+tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead
+bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably
+fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh
+bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even
+although a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable
+difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of
+"Order!--order!--Chair!--chair!"--must have been frequent; and had the
+office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown
+it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles and obstructions
+having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well
+believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to
+their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously
+down to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the first
+half-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of
+his prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command
+of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system,
+exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen--there be's Mister Wudsworth--Ho, ho,
+ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale
+to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their
+orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath
+the moon and stars.
+
+But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood of
+rueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale
+of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet
+wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude,
+he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen
+mountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, and
+diamonds, beneath the resplendent night-heavens. The din of populous
+cities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in the
+presence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuing
+their multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The very
+sheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in all
+their pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had become
+hateful to his spirit--for what were they but the floating enginery of
+Mammon? Truth, integrity, honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gain
+by the friends he loved and had respected most--sacrificed without shame
+and without remorse--repentance being with them a repentance only over
+ill-laid schemes of villany--plans for the ruination of widows and
+orphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The brother of his bosom
+made him a bankrupt--and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother was
+unpaid. But she died before the second Christmas--and he was left alone
+in the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to him
+from a distant relation--almost the only one of his name--who died
+abroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on--and his enthusiastic
+spirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in some
+profound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her Great
+Laws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight,
+beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousand
+flat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which a
+great thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the first
+time, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himself
+alone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatry
+almost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and
+"stars that are the poetry of heaven."
+
+Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the lore that links the human heart
+to the gracious form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In early youth he
+had been intended for the Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful and
+ungenial toils had not extinguished the fine scholarship that native
+aptitude for learning had acquired in the humble school of the village
+in which he was born. He had been ripe for College when the sudden death
+of his father, who had long been at the head of a great mercantile
+concern, imposed it upon him, as a sacred duty owed to his mother and
+his sisters, to embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope ever to
+retrieve their fortunes--and for ten years for their sake he was a
+slave, till ruin set him free. Now he was master of his own destiny--and
+sought some humble hut in that magnificent scenery, where he might pass
+a blameless life, and among earth's purest joys prepare his soul for
+heaven. Many such humble huts had he seen during that one bold, bright,
+beautiful spring winter-day. Each wreath of smoke from the breathing
+chimneys, while the huts themselves seemed hardly awakened from sleep in
+the morning-calm, led his imagination up into the profound peace of the
+sky. In any one of those dwellings, peeping from sheltered dells, or
+perched on wind-swept eminences, could he have taken up his abode, and
+sat down contented at the board of their simple inmates. But in the very
+delirium of a new bliss, the day faded before him--twilight looked
+lovelier than dream-land in the reflected glimmer of the snow--and thus
+had midnight found him, in a place so utterly lonesome in its remoteness
+from all habitations, that even in summer no stranger sought it without
+the guidance of some shepherd familiar with the many bewildering passes
+that stretched away in all directions through among the mountains to
+distant vales. No more fear or thought had he of being lost in the
+wilderness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest to forest in the
+winter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to the
+instinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether.
+
+As he continued gazing on the heavens, the moon all at once lost
+something of her brightness--the stars seemed fewer in number--and the
+lustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The blue ethereal frame grew
+discoloured with streaks of red and yellow--and a sort of dim darkness
+deepened and deepened on the air, while the mountains appeared higher,
+and at the same time further off, as if he had been transported in a
+dream to another region of the earth. A sound was heard, made up of
+far-mustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging of trees, and the
+murmur as of a great lake or sea beginning to break on the shore. A few
+flakes of snow touched his face, and the air grew cold. A clear tarn had
+a few minutes before glittered with moonbeams, but now it had
+disappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, and ere long it was a storm
+of snow. "O God! my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he hear his own
+voice in the roaring tempest.
+
+Men have died in dungeons--and their skeletons been found long years
+afterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through what
+hideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eye
+saw, no ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders,
+but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day in
+spring--long after the snows were melted--except here and there a patch
+like a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure--a huge Raven rose
+heavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who,
+going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld a
+rotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, and
+began to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of its
+master--a name unknown in that part of the country--and weeks elapsed
+before any person could be heard of that could tell the history of the
+sufferer. A stranger came and went--taking the faithful creature with
+him that had so long watched by the dead--but long before his arrival
+the remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little way
+on from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yards
+from the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of----, not far from the foot
+of Ullswater.
+
+Gentle reader! we have given you two versions of the same story--and
+pray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the
+second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not
+decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that
+we are strongest in humour--others, that our power is in pathos. The
+judicious declare that our forte lies in both--in the two united, or
+alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims
+some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious
+an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated
+with such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, of
+the Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!"
+Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that--this--article
+confesses that he has more than once committed that capital crime. But
+no intelligent jury, taking into consideration the law as well as the
+fact--and it is often their duty to do so, let high authorities say what
+they will--would for a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded to,
+to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homicide." The gentleman or lady
+who has honoured us so far with perusal, knows enough of human life, and
+of their own hearts, to know also that there is no other subject which
+men of genius--and who ever denied that we are men of genius?--have been
+accustomed to view in so many ludicrous lights as this same subject of
+death; and the reason is at once obvious--yet _recherche_--videlicet,
+Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild,
+dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times men
+talking about it cannot choose but laugh!
+
+Too-hoo--too-hoo--too-whit-too-hoo!--we have got among the OWLS.
+Venerable personages, in truth, they are--perfect Solomons! The
+spectator, as in most cases of very solemn characters, feels himself at
+first strongly disposed to commit the gross indecorum of bursting out
+a-laughing in their face. One does not see the absolute necessity either
+of man or bird looking at all times so unaccountably wise. Why will an
+Owl persist in his stare? Why will a Bishop never lay aside his wig?
+
+People ignorant of Ornithology will stare like the Bird of Wisdom
+himself on being told that an OWL is an Eagle. Yet, bating a little
+inaccuracy, it is so. Eagles, kites, hawks, and owls, all belong to the
+genus Falco. We hear a great deal too much in poetry of the moping Owl,
+the melancholy Owl, the boding Owl, whereas he neither mopes nor bodes,
+and is no more melancholy than becomes a gentleman. We also hear of the
+Owl being addicted to spirituous liquors; and hence the expression, as
+drunk as an Owl. All this is mere Whig personality, the Owl being a Tory
+of the old school, and a friend of the ancient establishments of church
+and state. Nay, the same political party, although certainly the most
+shortsighted of God's creatures, taunt the Owl with being blind. As
+blind as an Owl, is a libel in frequent use out of ornithological
+society. Shut up Lord Jeffrey himself in a hay-barn with a well-built
+mow, and ask him in the darkness to catch you a few mice, and he will
+tell you whether or not the Owl be blind. This would be just as fair as
+to expect the Owl to see, like Lord Jeffrey, through a case in the
+Parliament House during daylight. Nay, we once heard a writer in Taylor
+and Hessey call the Owl stupid, he himself having longer ears than any
+species of Owl extant. What is the positive character of the Owl may
+perhaps appear by-and-by; but we have seen that, describing his
+character by negations, we may say that he resembles Napoleon Buonaparte
+much more than Joseph Hume or Alderman Wood. He is not moping--not
+boding--not melancholy--not a drunkard--not blind--not stupid; as much
+as it would be prudent to say of any man, whether editor or contributor,
+in her Majesty's dominions.
+
+We really have no patience with people who persist in all manner of
+misconceptions regarding the character of birds. Birds often appear to
+such persons, judging from, of, and by themselves, to be in mind and
+manners the reverse of their real character. They judge the inner bird
+by outward circumstances inaccurately observed. There is the owl. How
+little do the people of England know of him--even of him the barn-door
+and domestic owl--yea, even at this day--we had almost said the Poets!
+Shakespeare, of course, and his freres, knew him to be a merry
+fellow--quite a madcap--and so do now all the Lakers. But Cowper had his
+doubts about it; and Gray, as every schoolboy knows, speaks of him like
+an old wife. The force of folly can go no further, than to imagine an
+owl complaining to the moon of being disturbed by people walking in a
+country churchyard. And among all our present bardlings, the owl is
+supposed to be constantly on the eve of suicide. If it were really so,
+he ought in a Christian country to be pitied, not pelted, as he is sure
+to be when accidentally seen in sunlight--for melancholy is a
+misfortune, especially when hereditary and constitutional, as it is
+popularly believed to be in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was in
+Dr Johnson. In young masters and misses we can pardon any childishness;
+but we cannot pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained by the manly
+minds of grown-up English clodhoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. They
+keep terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they shoot the owls,
+any one of whom we would cheerfully back against the famous Billy. "The
+very commonest observation teaches us," says the author of the "Gardens
+of the Menagerie," "that they are in reality the best and most efficient
+protectors of our cornfields and granaries from the devastating pillage
+of the swarms of mice and other small _rodents_." Nay, by their constant
+destruction of these petty but dangerous enemies, the owls, he says,
+"earn an unquestionable title to be regarded as among the _most active
+of the friends of man_; a title which only one or two among them
+occasionally forfeit by their aggressions on the defenceless poultry."
+Roger or Dolly beholds him in the act of murdering a duckling, and, like
+other light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they forget all the
+service he has done the farm, the parish, and the state; he is shot _in
+the act_, and nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on the
+barn-door. Others again call him dull and shortsighted--nay, go the
+length of asserting that he is stupid--as stupid as an owl. Why, our
+excellent fellow, when you have the tithe of the talent of the common
+owl, and know half as well how to use it, you may claim the medal.
+
+The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. The Owl is the Nimrod of the
+Night. Then, like one who shall be nameless, he sails about seeking
+those whom he may devour. To do him justice, he has a truly ghost-like
+head and shoulders of his own. What horror to the "small birds rejoicing
+in spring's leafy bowers," fast-locked we were going to say in each
+other's arms, but sitting side by side in the same cosy nuptial nest, to
+be startled out of their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, beaked face
+of a horrible monster with horns, picked out of feathered bed, and
+wafted off in one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of hissing, and
+snappish, and shapeless powder-puffs, in the loophole of a barn? In a
+house where a cat is kept, mice are much to be pitied. They are so
+infatuated with the smell of a respectable larder, that to leave the
+premises, they confess, is impossible. Yet every hour--nay, every minute
+of their lives--must they be in the fear of being leaped out upon by
+four velvet paws--and devoured with kisses from a whiskered mouth, and a
+throat full of that incomprehensible music--a purr. Life, on such terms,
+seems to us anything but desirable. But the truth is, that mice in the
+fields are not a whit better off. Owls are cats with wings. Skimming
+along the grass tops, they stop in a momentary hover, let drop a talon,
+and away with Mus, his wife, and small family of blind children. It is
+the white, or yellow, or barn, or church, or Screech-Owl, or
+Gilley-Owlet, that behaves in this way; and he makes no bones of a
+mouse, uniformly swallowing him alive. Our friend, we suspect, though no
+drunkard, is somewhat of a glutton. In one thing we agree with him, that
+there is no sort of harm in a heavy supper. There, however, we are
+guilty of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, who rise in the
+morning, seems a supper, is to him who gets up at evening twilight, a
+breakfast. We therefore agree with him in thinking that there is no sort
+of harm in a heavy breakfast. After having passed a pleasant night in
+eating and flirting, he goes to bed betimes about four o'clock in the
+morning; and, as Bewick observes, makes a blowing hissing noise,
+resembling the snoring of a man. Indeed nothing can be more diverting to
+a person annoyed by blue devils, than to look at a white Owl and his
+wife asleep. With their heads gently inclined towards each other, there
+they keep snoring away like any Christian couple. Should the one make a
+pause, the other that instant awakes, and, fearing something may be
+wrong with his spouse, opens a pair of glimmering winking eyes, and
+inspects the adjacent physiognomy with the scrutinising stare of a
+village apothecary. If all be right, the concert is resumed, the snore
+sometimes degenerating into a sort of snivel, and the snivel into a
+blowing hiss. First time we heard this noise was in a churchyard when we
+were mere boys, having ventured in after dark to catch the minister's
+colt for a gallop over to the parish capital, where there was a
+dancing-school ball. There had been a nest of Owls in some hole in the
+spire; but we never doubted for a moment that the noise of snoring,
+blowing, hissing, and snapping proceeded from a testy old gentleman that
+had been buried that forenoon, and had come alive again a day after the
+fair. Had we reasoned the matter a little, we must soon have convinced
+ourselves that there was no ground for alarm to us at least; for the
+noise was like that of some one half stifled, and little likely to heave
+up from above him a six-feet-deep load of earth--to say nothing of the
+improbability of his being able to unscrew the coffin from the inside.
+Be that as it may, we cleared about a dozen of decent tombstones at
+three jumps--the fourth took us over a wall five feet high within and
+about fifteen without, and landed us, with a squash, in a
+cabbage-garden, enclosed on the other three sides by a house and a
+holly-hedge. The house was the sexton's, who, apprehending the stramash
+to proceed from a resurrectionary surgeon mistaken in his latitude,
+thrust out a long duck-gun from a window in the thatch, and swore to
+blow out our brains if we did not instantly surrender ourselves, and
+deliver up the corpse. It was in vain to cry out our name, which he knew
+as well as his own. He was deaf to reason, and would not withdraw his
+patterero till we had laid down the corpse. He swore that he saw the
+sack in the moonlight. This was a horse-cloth with which we had intended
+to saddle the "cowt," and that had remained, during the supernatural
+agency under which we laboured, clutched unconsciously and convulsively
+in our grasp. Long was it ere Davie Donald would see us in our true
+light--but at length he drew on his Kilmarnock nightcap, and coming out
+with a bouet, let us through the trance and out of the front door,
+thoroughly convinced, till we read Bewick, that old Southfield was not
+dead, although in a very bad way indeed. Let this be a lesson to
+schoolboys not to neglect the science of natural history, and to study
+the character of the White Owl.
+
+OWLS--both White and common Brown, are not only useful in a mountainous
+country, but highly ornamental. How serenely beautiful their noiseless
+flight; a flake of snow is not winnowed through the air more
+softly-silent! Gliding along the dark shadows of a wood, how spiritual
+the motion--how like the thought of a dream! And then, during the hushed
+midnight hours, how jocund the whoop and hollo from the heart of a
+sycamore--grey rock, or ivied Tower! How the Owls of Windermere must
+laugh at the silly Lakers, that under the garish eye of day, enveloped
+in clouds of dust, whirl along in rattling post-shays in pursuit of the
+picturesque! Why, the least imaginative Owl that ever hunted mice by
+moonlight on the banks of Windermere, must know the character of its
+scenery better than any poetaster that ever dined on char at Bowness or
+Lowood. The long quivering lines of light illumining some sylvan
+isle--the evening-star shining from the water to its counterpart in the
+sky--the glorious phenomenon of the double moon--the night-colours of
+the woods--and, once in the three years perhaps, that loveliest and most
+lustrous of celestial forms, the lunar rainbow--all these and many more
+beauteous and magnificent sights are familiar to the Owls of Windermere.
+And who know half so well as they do the echoes of Furness, and
+Applethwaite, and Loughrigg, and Landale, all the way on to Dungeon-Gill
+and Pavey-Ark, Scawfell and the Great Gable, and that sea of mountains,
+of which every wave has a name? Midnight--when asleep so still and
+silent--seems inspired with the joyous spirit of the Owls in their
+revelry--and answers to their mirth and merriment through all her
+clouds. The Moping Owl, indeed!--the Boding Owl, forsooth!--the
+Melancholy Owl, you blockhead!--why, they are the most
+cheerful--joy-portending--and exulting of God's creatures! Their flow of
+animal spirits is incessant--crowing-cocks are a joke to them--blue
+devils are to them unknown--not one hypochondriac in a thousand
+barns--and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one of
+them utter a complaint.
+
+But what say ye to an Owl, not only like an eagle in plumage, but equal
+to the largest eagle in size--and therefore named, from the King of
+Birds, the EAGLE OWL. Mr Selby! you have done justice to the monarch of
+the Bubos. We hold ourselves to be persons of tolerable courage, as the
+world goes--but we could not answer for ourselves showing fight with
+such a customer, were he to waylay us by night in a wood. In comparison,
+Jack Thurtell looked harmless. No--that bold, bright-eyed murderer, with
+Horns on his head like those on Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, would
+never have had the cruel cowardice to cut the weasand, and smash out the
+brains of such a miserable wretch as Weare! True, he is fond of
+blood--and where's the harm in that? It is his nature. But if there be
+any truth in the science of Physiognomy--and be that of Phrenology what
+it will, most assuredly there is truth in it--the original of that Owl,
+for whose portrait the world is indebted to Mr Selby, and Sir Thomas
+Lawrence never painted a finer one of Prince or Potentate of any Holy or
+Unholy Alliance, must have despised Probert from the very bottom of his
+heart. No prudent Eagle but would be exceedingly desirous of keeping on
+good terms with him--devilish shy, i' faith, of giving him any offence
+by the least hauteur of manner, or the slightest violation of etiquette.
+An Owl of this character and calibre is not afraid to show his horns at
+mid-day on the mountain. The Fox is not over and above fond of him--and
+his claws can kill a cub at a blow. The Doe sees the monster sitting on
+the back of her fawn, and, maternal instinct overcome by horror, bounds
+into the brake, and leaves the pretty creature to its fate. Thank
+Heaven, he is, in Great Britain, a rare bird! Tempest-driven across the
+Northern Ocean from his native forests in Russia, an occasional visitant
+he "frightens this isle from its propriety," and causes a hideous
+screaming through every wood he haunts. Some years ago, one was killed
+in the upland moors in the county of Durham--and, of course, paid a
+visit to Mr Bullock's Museum. Eagle-like in all its habits, it builds
+its nest on high rocks--sometimes on the loftiest trees--and seldom lays
+more than two eggs. One is one more than enough--and we who fly by night
+trust never to fall in with a live specimen of the Strix-Bubo of
+Linnaeus.
+
+But largest and loveliest of all the silent night-gliders--the SNOWY
+OWL! Gentle reader--if you long to see his picture, we have told you
+where it may be found;--and in the College Museum, within a glass vase
+on the central table in the Palace of Stuffed Birds, you may admire his
+outward very self--the semblance of the Owl he was when he used to eye
+the moon shining over the Northern Sea:--but if you would see the noble
+and beautiful Creature himself, in all his living glory, you must seek
+him through the long summer twilight among the Orkney or the Shetland
+Isles. The Snowy Owl dearly loves the snow--and there is, we believe, a
+tradition among them, that their first ancestor and ancestress rose up
+together from a melting snow-wreath on the very last day of a Greenland
+winter, when all at once the bright fields reappear. The race still
+inhabits that frozen coast--being common, indeed, through all the
+regions of the Arctic Circle. It is numerous on the shores of Hudson's
+Bay, in Norway, Sweden, and Lapland--but in the temperate parts of
+Europe and America "rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno."
+
+We defy all the tailors on the face of the habitable globe; and what
+countless cross-legged fractional parts of men--who, like the beings of
+whom they are constituents, are thought to double their numbers every
+thirty years--must not the four quarters of the earth, in their present
+advanced state of civilisation, contain!--we defy, we say, all the
+tailors on the face of the habitable globe to construct such a surtout
+as that of the Snowy Owl, covering him, with equal luxury and comfort,
+in summer's heat and winter's cold. The elements, in all their freezing
+fury, cannot reach the body of the bird through that beautiful
+down-mail. Well guarded are the opening of those great eyes. Neither the
+driving dust, nor the searching sleet, nor the sharp frozen snow-stour,
+give him the ophthalmia. Gutta Serena is to him unknown--no Snowy Owl
+was ever couched for cataract--no need has he for an oculist, should he
+live an hundred years; and were they to attempt any operation on his
+lens or iris, how he would hoot at Alexander and Wardrope!
+
+Night, doubtless, is the usual season of his prey; but he does not shun
+the day, and is sometimes seen hovering unhurt in the sunshine. The red
+or black grouse flies as if pursued by a ghost; but the Snowy Owl,
+little slower than the eagle, in dreadful silence overtakes his flight,
+and then death is sudden and sure. Hawking is, or was, a noble
+pastime--and we have now prevented our eyes from glancing at
+Jer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk; but Owling, we do not doubt, would be
+noways inferior sport; and were it to become prevalent in modern times,
+as Hawking was in times of old, why, each lady, as Venus already fair,
+with an Owl on her wrist, would look as wise as Minerva.
+
+But our soul sickens at all those dreams of blood! and fain would turn
+away from fierce eye, cruel beak, and tearing talon--war-weapons of them
+that delight in wounds and death--to the contemplation of creatures
+whose characteristics are the love of solitude--shy gentleness of
+manner--the tender devotion of mutual attachment--and, in field or
+forest, a lifelong passion for peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.
+
+FOURTH CANTICLE.
+
+
+Welcome then the RING-DOVE--the QUEST--or CUSHAT, for that is the very
+bird we have had in our imagination. There is his full-length portrait,
+stealthily sketched as the Solitary was sitting on a tree. You must
+catch him napping, indeed, before he will allow you an opportunity of
+colouring him on the spot from nature. It is not that he is more jealous
+or suspicious of man's approach than other bird; for never shall we
+suffer ourselves to believe that any tribe of the descendants of the
+Dove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings of reappearing earth, can
+in their hearts hate or fear the race of the children of man. But Nature
+has made the Cushat a lover of the still forest-gloom; and therefore,
+when his lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, he flies to some
+yet profounder, some more central solitude, and folds his wing in the
+hermitage of a Yew, sown in the time of the ancient Britons.
+
+It is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the Ring-Dove, from whom are
+descended all the varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer praise
+can we give them all, than that the Dove is the emblem of Innocence, and
+that the name of innocence--not of frailty--is Woman? When Hamlet said
+the reverse, he was thinking, you know, of the Queen--not of Ophelia. Is
+not woman by nature chaste as the Dove--as the Dove faithful? Sitting
+all alone with her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove devoted to
+her own nest? Murmureth she not a pleasant welcome to her wearied
+home-returned husband, even like the Dove among the woodlands when her
+mate re-alights on the pine? Should her spouse be taken from her and
+disappear, doth not her heart sometimes break, as they say it happens to
+the Dove? But oftener far, findeth not the widow that her orphans are
+still fed by her own hand, that is filled with good things by
+Providence; till grown up, and able to shift for themselves, away they
+go--just as the poor Dove lamenteth for her mate in the snare of the
+fowler, yet feedeth her young continually through the whole day, till
+away too go they--alas, in neither case, perhaps, ever more to return!
+
+We dislike all favouritism, all foolish and capricious partiality for
+particular bird or beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will
+_tell_ upon all one thinks or feels towards any place or person in this
+world of ours, near or remote. God forbid we should criticise the
+Cushat! We desire to speak of him as tenderly as of a friend buried in
+our early youth. Too true it is, that often and oft, when schoolboys,
+have we striven to steal upon him in his solitude, and to shoot him to
+death. In morals, and in religion, it would be heterodox to deny that
+the will is as the deed. Yet in cases of high and low-way robbery and
+murder, there does seem, treating the subject not in philosophical but
+popular style, to be some little difference between the two; at least we
+hope so, for otherwise we can with difficulty imagine one person not
+deserving to be ordered for execution, on Wednesday next, between the
+hours of eight and nine ante-meridian. Happily, however, for our future
+peace of mind, and not improbably for the whole confirmation of our
+character, our Guardian Genius--(every boy has one constantly at his
+side, both during school and play hours, though it must be confessed
+sometimes a little remiss in his duty, for the nature even of angelical
+beings is imperfect)--always so contrived it, that with all our cunning
+we never could kill a Cushat. Many a long hour--indeed whole
+Saturdays--have we lain perdue among broom and whins, the beautiful
+green and yellow skirting of sweet Scotia's woods, watching his egress
+or ingress, our gun ready cocked, and finger on trigger, that on the
+flapping of his wings not a moment might be lost in bringing him to the
+ground. But couch where we might, no Cushat ever came near our insidious
+lair. Now and then a Magpie--birds who, by the by, when they suspect you
+of any intention of shooting them, are as distant in their manners as
+Cushats themselves, otherwise as impudent as Cockneys--would come,
+hopping in continual tail-jerks, with his really beautiful plumage, if
+one could bring oneself to think it so, and then sport the pensive
+within twenty yards of the muzzle of Brown-Bess, impatient to let fly.
+But our soul burned, our heart panted for a Cushat; and in that strong
+fever-fit of passion, could we seek to slake our thirst for that wild
+blood with the murder of a thievish eavesdropper of a Pye? The
+Blackbird, too, often dropt out of the thicket into an open glade in the
+hazel-shaws, and the distinctness of his yellow bill showed he was far
+within shot-range. Yet, let us do ourselves justice, we never in all our
+born days dreamt of shooting a Blackbird--him that scares away sadness
+from the woodland twilight gloom, at morn or eve; whose anthem, even in
+those dim days when Nature herself it might be well thought were
+melancholy, forceth the firmament to ring with joy. Once "the snow-white
+cony sought its evening meal," unconscious of our dangerous vicinity,
+issuing with erected ears from the wood edge. That last was, we confess,
+such a temptation to touch the trigger, that had we resisted it we must
+have been either more or less than boy. We fired; and kicking up his
+heels, doubtless in fright, but as it then seemed to us, during our
+disappointment, much rather in frolic--nay, absolute derision--away
+bounced Master Rabbit to his burrow, without one particle of soft
+silvery wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our unerring aim. As
+if the branch on which he had been sitting were broken, away then went
+the crashing Cushat through the intermingling sprays. The free flapping
+of his wings was soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and ere we
+could recover from our almost bitter amazement, the creature was
+murmuring to his mate on her shallow nest--a far-off murmur, solitary
+and profound--to reach unto which, through the tangled mazes of the
+forest, would have required a separate sense, instinct, or faculty,
+which we did not possess. So, skulking out of our hiding-place, we made
+no comment on the remark of homeward-plodding labourer, who had heard
+the report, and now smelt the powder--"Cushats are geyan kittle birds to
+kill"--but returned, with our shooting-bag as empty as our stomach, to
+the Manse.
+
+"Why do the birds sing on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us--and we
+answered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although the
+birds certainly do sing on Sunday--behaviour that with our small gentle
+Calvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being so
+innocent as during the week-days they appeared to be--we cannot set
+down their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in the holy
+superstition of the world-wearied heart that man believes the inferior
+creatures to be conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that they know
+it to be the day of our rest? Or is it that we transfer the feeling of
+our inward calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus imbue them with
+a character of reposing sanctity, existing only in our own spirits? Both
+solutions are true. The instincts of those creatures we know only in
+their symptoms and their effects, in the wonderful range of action over
+which they reign. Of the instincts themselves--as feelings or ideas--we
+know not anything, nor ever can know; for an impassable gulf separates
+the nature of those that may be to perish, from ours that are to live
+for ever. But their power of memory, we must believe, is not only
+capable of minutest retention, but also stretches back to afar--and some
+power or other they do possess, that gathers up the past experience into
+rules of conduct that guide them in their solitary or gregarious life.
+Why, therefore, should not the birds of Scotland know the Sabbath-day?
+On that day the Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler among the
+murmurs of his own waterfall; and, as he flits down the banks and braes
+of the burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound about the cottage that
+is the boundary of his furthest flight--for "the dizzying mill-wheel
+rests." The merry-nodding rooks, that in spring-time keep following the
+very heels of the ploughman--may they not know it to be Sabbath, when
+all the horses are standing idle in the field, or taking a gallop by
+themselves round the head-rig? Quick of hearing are birds--one and
+all--and in every action of their lives are obedient to sounds. May they
+not, then--do they not connect a feeling of perfect safety with the
+tinkle of the small kirk-bell? The very jay himself is not shy of people
+on their way to worship. The magpie, that never sits more than a minute
+at a time in the same place on a Saturday, will on the Sabbath remain on
+the kirkyard wall with all the composure of a dove. The whole feathered
+creation know our hours of sleep. They awake before us; and ere the
+earliest labourer has said his prayers, have not the woods and valleys
+been ringing with their hymns? Why, therefore, may not they, who know,
+each week-day, the hour of our lying down and our rising up, know also
+the day of our general rest? The animals whose lot is labour, shall
+they not know it? Yes; the horse on that day sleeps in shade or sunshine
+without fear of being disturbed--his neck forgets the galling collar,
+"and there are forty feeding like one," all well knowing that their
+fresh meal on the tender herbage will not be broken in upon before the
+dews of next morning, ushering in a new day to them of toil or travel.
+
+So much for our belief in the knowledge, instinctive or from a sort of
+reason, possessed by the creatures of the inferior creation of the
+heaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. But it is also true that we
+transfer our inward feelings to their outward condition, and with our
+religious spirit imbue all the ongoings of animated and even inanimated
+life. There is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of pensiveness, a
+touch of pathos, in all profound rest. Perhaps because it is so much in
+contrast with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Perhaps because the
+soul, when undisturbed, will, from the impulse of its own divine nature,
+have high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such state, it transmutes all
+things into a show of sympathy with itself. The church-spire, rising
+high above the smoke and stir of a town, when struck by the sun-fire,
+seems, on a market-day, a tall building in the air, that may serve as a
+guide to people from a distance flocking into the bazaars. The same
+church-spire, were its loud-tongued bell to call from aloft on the
+gathering multitude below, to celebrate the anniversary of some great
+victory, Waterloo or Trafalgar, would appear to stretch up its stature
+triumphantly into the sky--so much the more triumphantly, if the
+standard of England were floating from its upper battlements. But to the
+devout eye of faith, doth it not seem to express its own character, when
+on the Sabbath it performs no other office than to point to heaven?
+
+So much for the second solution. But independently of both, no wonder
+that all nature seems to rest on the Sabbath; for it doth rest--all of
+it, at least, that appertains to man and his condition. If the Fourth
+Commandment be kept--at rest is all the household--and all the fields
+round it are at rest. Calm flows the current of human life, on that
+gracious day, throughout all the glens and valleys of Scotland, as a
+stream that wimples in the morning sunshine, freshened but not flooded
+with the soft-falling rain of a summer night. The spiral smoke-wreath
+above the cottage is not calmer than the motion within. True, that the
+wood warblers do not cease their songs; but the louder they sing, the
+deeper is the stillness. And what perfect blessedness, when it is only
+joy that is astir in rest!
+
+Loud-flapping Cushat! it was thou that inspiredst these solemn fancies;
+and we have only to wish thee, for thy part contributed to our
+Recreations, now that the acorns of autumn must be well-nigh consumed,
+many a plentiful repast, amid the multitude of thy now congregated
+comrades, in the cleared stubble lands--as severe weather advances, and
+the ground becomes covered with snow, regales undisturbed by fowler, on
+the tops of turnip, rape, and other cruciform plants, which all of thy
+race affect so passionately--and soft blow the sea-breezes on thy
+unruffled plumage, when thou takest thy winter's walk with kindred
+myriads on the shelly shore, and for a season minglest with gull and
+seamew--apart every tribe, one from the other, in the province of its
+own peculiar instinct--yet all mysteriously taught to feed or sleep
+together within the roar or margin of the main.
+
+Sole-sitting Cushat! We see thee through the yew-tree's shade, on some
+day of the olden time, but when or where we remember not--for what has
+place or time to do with the vision of a dream? That we see thee is all
+we know, and that serenely beautiful thou art! Most pleasant is it to
+dream, and to know we dream! By sweet volition we keep ourselves half
+asleep and half awake; and all our visions of thought, as they go
+swimming along, partake at once of reality and imagination. Fiction and
+truth--clouds, shadows, phantoms and phantasms--ether, sunshine,
+substantial forms and sounds that have a being, blending together in a
+scene created by us, and partly impressed upon us, and which one motion
+of the head on the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more oppressive
+delight! In some such dreaming state of mind are we now; and, gentle
+reader, if thou art broad awake, lay aside the visionary volume, or read
+a little longer, and likely enough is it that thou too mayest fall half
+asleep. If so, let thy drowsy eyes still pursue the glimmering
+paragraphs--and wafted away wilt thou feel thyself to be into the heart
+of a Highland forest, that knows no bounds but those of the uncertain
+sky.
+
+Away from our remembrance fades the noisy world of men into a silent
+glimmer--and now it is all no more than a mere faint thought.
+On--on--on! through briery brake--matted thicket--grassy
+glade--On--on--on! further into the Forest! What a confusion of huge
+stones, rocks, knolls, all tumbled together into a chaos--not without
+its stern and sterile beauty! Still are there, above, blue glimpses of
+the sky--deep though the umbrage be, and wide-flung the arms of the
+oaks, and of pines in their native wilderness gigantic as oaks, and
+extending as broad a shadow. Now the firmament has vanished--and all is
+twilight. Immense stems, "in number without number
+numberless,"--bewildering eye and soul--all
+still--silent--steadfast--and so would they be in a storm. For what
+storm--let it rage aloft as it might, till the surface of the forest
+toss and roar like the sea--could force its path through these many
+million trunks? The thunder-stone might split that giant there--how
+vast! how magnificent!--but the brother by his side would not tremble;
+and the sound--in the awful width of the silence--what more would it be
+than that of the woodpecker alarming the insects of one particular tree!
+
+Poor wretch that we are!--to us the uncompanioned silence of the
+solitude hath become terrible. More dreadful is it than the silence of
+the tomb; for there, often arise responses to the unuttered soliloquies
+of the pensive heart. But this is as the silence, not of Time, but of
+Eternity. No burial heaps--no mounds--no cairns! It is not as if man had
+perished here, and been forgotten; but as if this were a world in which
+there had been neither living nor dying. Too utter is the solitariness
+even for the ghosts of dead! For they are thought to haunt the
+burial-places of what once was their bodies--the chamber where the
+spirit breathed its final farewell--the spot of its transitory love and
+delight, or of its sin and sorrow--to gaze with troubled tenderness on
+the eyes that once they worshipped--with cold ear to drink the music of
+the voices long ago adored; and in all their permitted visitations, to
+express, if but by the beckoning of the shadow of a hand, some
+unextinguishable longing after the converse of the upper world, even
+within the gates of the grave.
+
+A change comes over us. Deep and still as is the solitude, we are
+relieved of our awe, and out of the forest-gloom arise images of beauty
+that come and go, gliding as on wings, or, statue-like, stand in the
+glades, like the sylvan deities to whom of old belonged, by birthright,
+all the regions of the woods. On--on--on!--further into the Forest!--and
+let the awe of imagination be still further tempered by the delight
+breathed even from any one of the lovely names sweet-sounding through
+the famous fables of antiquity. Dryad, Hamadryad! Faunus!
+Sylvanus!--Now, alas! ye are but names, and no more! Great Pan himself
+is dead, or here he would set up his reign. But what right has such a
+dreamer to dream of the dethroned deities of Greece? The language they
+spoke is not his language; yet the words of the great poets who sang of
+gods and demigods, are beautiful in their silent meanings as they meet
+his adoring eyes; and, mighty Lyrists! has he not often floated down the
+temple-crowned and altar-shaded rivers of your great Choral Odes?
+
+On--on--on!--further into the Forest!--unless, indeed, thou dreadest
+that the limbs that bear on thy fleshy tabernacle may fail, and the
+body, left to itself, sink down and die. Ha! such fears thou laughest to
+scorn; for from youth upwards thou hast dallied with the wild and
+perilous: and what but the chill delight in which thou hast so often
+shivered in threatening solitude brought thee here! These dens are not
+dungeons, nor are we a thrall. Yet if dungeons they must be called--and
+they are deep, and dark, and grim--ten thousand gates hath this great
+prison-house, and wide open are they all. So on--on--on!--further into
+the Forest! But who shall ascend to its summit? Eagles and dreams. Round
+its base we go, rejoicing in the new-found day, and once more cheered
+and charmed with the music of birds. Say whence came, ye scientific
+world-makers, these vast blocks of granite? Was it fire or water, think
+ye, that hung in air the semblance of yon Gothic cathedral, without
+nave, or chancel, or aisle--a mass of solid rock? Yet it looks like the
+abode of Echoes; and haply when there is thunder, rolls out its
+lengthening shadow of sound to the ear of the solitary shepherd afar off
+on Cairngorm.
+
+On--on--on!--further into the Forest! Now on all sides leagues of
+ancient trees surround us, and we are safe as in the grave from the
+persecuting love or hatred of friends or foes. The sun shall not find us
+by day, nor the moon by night. Were our life forfeited to what are
+called the laws, how could the laws discover the criminal? How could
+they drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? And
+if here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death--and famine is a
+natural death--what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but so
+it often is with us in severest solitude--our dreams will be hideous
+with sin and death.
+
+Hideous, said we, with sin and death? Thoughts that came flying against
+us like vultures, like vultures have disappeared, disappointed of their
+prey, and afraid to fix their talons in a thing alive. Hither--by some
+secret and sacred impulse within the soul, that often knoweth not the
+sovereign virtue of its own great desires--have we been led as into a
+penitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, we may lay down the
+burden of guilt or remorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven-pardoned
+man. What guilt?--O my soul! canst thou think of Him who inhabiteth
+eternity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?--For the dereliction of duty
+every day since thou received'st from Heaven the understanding of good
+and of evil. All our past existence gathers up into one dread
+conviction, that every man that is born of woman is a sinner, and worthy
+of everlasting death. Yet with the same dread conviction is interfused a
+knowledge, clear as the consciousness of present being, that the soul
+will live for ever. What was the meaning, O my soul! of all those
+transitory joys and griefs--of all those fears, hopes, loves, that so
+shook, each in its own fleeting season, the very foundations on which
+thy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, hatred, pride, and
+ambition--what are they all but so many shapes of sin coeval with thy
+birth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light into the Forest, was like
+the opening of the eye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed of its
+nakedness, because of the foulness and pollution of sin. But the awful
+thoughts that have travelled through its chambers have ventilated,
+swept, and cleansed them--and let us break away from beneath the weight
+of confession.
+
+Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears--of abject
+superstitions--and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages
+been laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them--and, without
+violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear
+testimony to the truth. But think of the calm, purified, enlightened,
+and elevated conscience of the highest natures--from which objectless
+fear has been excluded--and which hears, in its stillness, the eternal
+voice of God. What calm celestial joy fills all the being of a good man,
+when conscience tells him he is obeying God's law! What dismal fear and
+sudden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves but one single step out
+of the right path that is shining before his feet! It is not a mere
+selfish terror--it is not the dread of punishment only that appals
+him--for, on the contrary, he can calmly look on the punishment which he
+knows his guilt has incurred, and almost desires that it should be
+inflicted, that the incensed power may be appeased. It is the
+consciousness of offence that is unendurable--not the fear of consequent
+suffering; it is the degradation of sin that his soul deplores--it is
+the guilt which he would expiate, if possible, in torments; it is the
+united sense of wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and remorse, that
+renders a moment's pang of the conscience more terrible to the good than
+years of any other punishment--and it thus is the power of the human
+soul to render its whole life miserable by its very love of that virtue
+which it has fatally violated. This is a passion which the soul could
+not suffer--unless it were immortal. Reason, so powerful in the highest
+minds, would escape from the vain delusion; but it is in the highest
+minds where reason is most subjected to this awful power--they would
+seek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happiness
+that earth ever yielded--and would rejoice to pour out their heart's
+blood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deep
+transgression! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states of
+mind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation of
+the dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men's
+sons--and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, or
+found strength to support it, the conviction of their reasonableness and
+of their awful reality remains; nor can it be removed from the minds of
+the wise and virtuous, without the obliteration from the tablets of
+memory of all the moral judgments which conscience has there recorded.
+
+It is melancholy to think that even in our own day, a philosopher, and
+one of high name too, should have spoken slightingly of the universal
+desire of immortality, as no argument at all in proof of it, because
+arising inevitably from the regret with which all men must regard the
+relinquishment of this life. By thus speaking of the desire as a
+delusion necessarily accompanying the constitution of mind which it has
+pleased the Deity to bestow on us, such reasoners but darken the mystery
+both of man and of Providence. But this desire of immortality is not of
+the kind they say it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of the
+character of a blind and weak feeling of regret at merely leaving this
+present life. "I would not live alway," is a feeling which all men
+understand--but who can endure the momentary thought of annihilation?
+Thousands, and tens of thousands--awful a thing as it is to die--are
+willing to do so--"passing through nature to eternity"--nay, when the
+last hour comes, death almost always finds his victim ready, if not
+resigned. To leave earth, and all the light both of the sun and of the
+soul, is a sad thought to us all--transient as are human smiles, we
+cannot bear to see them no more--and there is a beauty that binds us to
+life in the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees gushing for his
+sake. But between that regret for departing loves and affections, and
+all the gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth--between that love and
+the dread of annihilation, there is no connection. The soul can bear to
+part with all it loves--the soft voice--the kindling smile--the starting
+tear--and the profoundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved; but it
+cannot bear to part with its existence. It cannot even believe the
+possibility of that which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves--its
+passions--its joys--its agonies are _not itself_. They may perish, but
+it is imperishable. Strip it of all it has seen, touched, enjoyed, or
+suffered--still it seems to survive; bury all it knew, or could know in
+the grave--but itself cannot be trodden down into the corruption. It
+sees nothing like itself in what perishes, except in dim analogies that
+vanish before its last profound self-meditation--and though it parts
+with its mortal weeds at last, as with a garment, its life is felt at
+last to be something not even in contrast with the death of the body,
+but to flow on like a flood, that we believe continues still to flow
+after it has entered into the unseen solitude of some boundless desert.
+
+                  "Behind the cloud of death,
+    Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt
+    That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold.
+    How the grave's alter'd! fathomless as hell!
+    A real hell to those who dream'd of heaven,
+    ANNIHILATION! How it yawns before me!
+    Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,
+    The privilege of angels and of worms,
+    An outcast from existence! and this spirit,
+    This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,
+    This particle of energy divine,
+    Which travels nature, flies from star to star,
+    And visits gods, and emulates their powers,
+    _For ever is extinguish'd._"
+
+If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to perish, why may not we ask
+God, in that deep despair which, in that case, must inevitably flow from
+the consciousness of those powers with which He has at once blessed and
+cursed us--why that intellect, whose final doom is death, and that final
+doom within a moment, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that of
+Life, and no idea in which its flight can be lost but that of Eternity?
+If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why should
+that cradle have been hung amid the stars, and that tomb illumined by
+their eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not this
+earth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capacious
+enough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be
+extinguished in the darkness of its bosom? What had we to do with
+planets, and suns, and spheres, "and all the dread magnificence of
+heaven?" Were we framed merely that we might for a few years rejoice in
+the beauty of the stars, as in that of the flowers beneath our feet? And
+ought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, as
+for the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idle
+show, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the work
+of the Eternal God, and He has given us power therein to read and to
+understand His glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by the
+face of heaven--our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face is
+overspread by its celestial smiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits is
+already in the heavens. Well are we entitled to give names unto the
+stars; for we know the moment of their rising and their setting, and
+can be with them at every part of their shining journey through the
+boundless ether. While generations of men have lived, died, and are
+buried, the astronomer thinks of the golden orb that shone centuries ago
+within the vision of man, and lifts up his eye undoubting, at the very
+moment when it again comes glorious on its predicted return. Were the
+Eternal Being to slacken the course of a planet, or increase even the
+distance of the fixed stars, the decree would be soon known on earth.
+Our ignorance is great, because so is our knowledge; for it is from the
+mightiness and vastness of what we do know that we imagine the
+illimitable unknown creation. And to whom has God made these
+revelations? To a worm that next moment is to be in darkness? To a piece
+of earth momentarily raised into breathing existence? To a soul
+perishable as the telescope through which it looks into the gates of
+heaven?
+
+    "Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander'd there
+    To waft us home--the message of despair?"
+
+No; there is no despair in the gracious light of heaven. As we travel
+through those orbs, we feel indeed that we have no power, but we feel
+that we have mighty knowledge. We can create nothing, but we can dimly
+understand all. It belongs to God only to _create_, but it is given to
+man to _know_--and that knowledge is itself an assurance of immortality.
+
+    "Renounce St Evremont, and read St Paul.
+    Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd,
+    His mounting mind made long abode in heaven.
+    This is freethinking, unconfined to parts,
+    To send the soul, on curious travel bent,
+    Through all the provinces of human thought:
+    To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man;
+    Of this vast universe to make the tour;
+    In each recess of space and time, at home;
+    Familiar with their wonders: diving deep;
+    And like a prince of boundless interests there,
+    Still most ambitious of the most remote;
+    To look on truth unbroken, and entire;
+    Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths,
+    By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford
+    An archlike, strong foundation, to support
+    Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete
+    Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand
+    More firm; who most examine, most believe.
+    Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole
+    Conveys the sense, and GOD is understood,
+    Who not in fragments writes to human race.
+    Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply."
+
+Renounce St Evremont! Ay, and many a Deistical writer of high repute now
+in the world. But how came they by the truths they did know? Not by the
+work of their own unassisted faculties--for they lived in a Christian
+country; they had already been imbued with many high and holy beliefs,
+of which--had they willed it--they could never have got rid; and to the
+very last the light which they, in their pride, believed to have
+emanated from the inner shrine--the penetralia of Philosophy--came from
+the temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long---
+though they knew it not, or strived to forget it--in the light of
+revelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds from
+earth, was still shining strong in heaven. Had the New Testament never
+been--think ye that men in their pride, though
+
+    "Poor sons of a day,"
+
+could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a _religion
+of humility_? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell--so by pride
+man, after his miserable fall, strove to lift up his helpless being from
+the dust; and though trailing himself, soul and body, along the soiling
+earth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here his
+very sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors,
+murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they had
+forgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foul
+imaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their own
+idolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame," while they
+were the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should
+we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in
+moral speculation we hear but little--too little--of the confession of
+what it owes to the Christian religion--in all the Philosophy,
+nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we _see_ that "the
+dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there
+is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exaltation of itself--which the
+spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to say
+that a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so--for seldom
+indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly of
+humility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our great
+divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but when
+we listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given.
+
+    "It is as if an angel shook his wings."
+
+Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is now
+the air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of that
+religion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that of
+the humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it--and
+the lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling on the mountain-side, or
+in the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing to
+the Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount--and saying, "I see my duties to
+man and God _here_!" The religious establishments of Christianity,
+therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but to
+show all its springs and sources, than all the works of all the
+Philosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice.
+
+Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou wide-antlered king of the
+red-deer of Braemar, from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Ere
+now we have beheld thee, or one stately as thee, gazing abroad, from a
+rock over the heather, to all the points of heaven, and soon as our
+figure was seen far below, leading the van of the flight thou went'st
+haughtily away into the wilderness. But now thou glidest softly and
+slowly through the gloom--no watchfulness, no anxiety in thy large
+beaming eyes; and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest thyself down
+in unknown fellowship with one of those human creatures, a glance of
+whose eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send thee belling through the
+forest, terrified by the flash or sound that bespoke a hostile nature
+wont to pursue thy race unto death.--The hunter is upon
+thee--away--away! Sudden as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, and
+in the gloom as suddenly is lost.
+
+On--on--on! further into the Forest!--and now a noise as of "thunder
+heard remote." Waterfalls--hundreds of waterfalls sounding for
+ever--here--there--everywhere--among the remoter woods. Northwards one
+fierce torrent dashes through the centre--but no villages--only a few
+woodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of
+precipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out of
+the reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is in
+flood.
+
+Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again
+for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by
+our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters--wilt
+thou--short as hitherto has been thy journeying--wilt thou be our guide
+out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more
+of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the
+labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of
+silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind
+without entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases of
+the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, the
+small rivulet now gives utterance to a song; and sliding down shelving
+rocks, so low in their mossy verdure as hardly to deserve that name,
+glides along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a little
+hermit flower. No danger now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirsty
+earth; for it has a channel and banks of its own--and there is a
+waterfall! Thenceforwards the rivulet never loses its merry voice--and
+in an hour it is a torrent. What beautiful symptoms now of its approach
+to the edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and whispering airs are here
+visitants--and there the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from the
+ground! The glades are more frequent--more frequent open spaces cleared
+by the woodman's axe--and the antique Oak-Tree all alone by itself,
+itself a grove. The torrent may be called noble now; and that deep blue
+atmosphere--or say rather, that glimmer of purple air--lies over the
+Strath in which a great River rolls along to the Sea.
+
+Nothing in all nature more beautiful than the boundary of a great
+Highland Forest. Masses of rocks thrown together in magnificent
+confusion, many of them lichened and weather-stained with colours
+gorgeous as the eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the rainbow,
+or the barred and clouded glories of setting suns--some towering aloft
+with trees sown in the crevices by bird or breeze, and checkering the
+blue sky--others bare, black, abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shattered
+as if by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, places of perfect
+peace--circles among the tall heather, or taller lady-fern, smoothed
+into velvet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet--rocks where
+the undisturbed linnet hangs her nest among the blooming briers, all
+floating with dew-draperies of honeysuckle alive with bees--glades green
+as emerald, where lie the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a lovely
+doe reposes with her fawn; and further down, where the fields half
+belong to the mountain and half to the strath, the smoke of hidden
+huts--a log-bridge flung across the torrent--a hanging-garden, and a
+little broomy knoll, with a few laughing children at play, almost as
+wild-looking as the wanderers of the woods!
+
+Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely wilderness, and behold down
+along a mile-broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, floweth the
+noblest of Scotia's rivers, the strong-sweeping Spey! Let Imagination
+launch her canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman--for need is none of
+oar or sail; keep the middle course while all the groves go by, and ere
+the sun has sunk behind yon golden mountains--nay, mountains they are
+not, but a transitory pomp of clouds--thou mayest list the roaring, and
+behold the foaming of the Sea.
+
+Was there ever such a descriptive dream of a coloured engraving of the
+Cushat, Quest, or Ring-Dove, dreamt before? Poor worn-out and glimmering
+candle!--whose wick of light and life in a few more flickerings will be
+no more--what a contrast dost thou present with thyself of eight hours
+ago! Then, truly, wert thou a shining light, and high aloft in the
+room-gloaming burned thy clear crest like a star--during its midnight
+silence, a _memento mori_ of which our spirit was not afraid. Now thou
+art dying--dying--dead! Our cell is in darkness. But methinks we see
+another--a purer--a clearer light--one more directly from Heaven. We
+touch but a spring in a wooden shutter--and lo! the full blaze of day.
+Oh! why should we mortal beings dread that night-prison--the Grave?
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+FIRST COURSE.
+
+
+It greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died before
+our numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining with
+him, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claims
+to immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, a
+dread of Us--not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner to
+Us, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knew
+and felt must have hung his reputation with posterity--his posthumous
+fame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinner
+among the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet,
+perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have died
+without attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It might
+have been a failure. How liable to imperfection the _materiel_ on which
+he would have had to work! How defective the instruments!
+Yes--yes!--happier far was it for the good old man that he should have
+fallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in his
+imagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent in
+matter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died of
+a broken heart!
+
+"Travelling," it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his
+"Traveller's Oracle," "is a recreation to be recommended, especially to
+those whose employments are sedentary--who are engaged in abstract
+studies--whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy by
+hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domestic
+felicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; and
+therefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life to
+undertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be exposed to long
+and violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed to
+drink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine."
+
+Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by
+"long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown in
+England, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, some
+occasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes and
+cross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy the
+most sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in an
+easy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriage
+spinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows all
+galloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. The
+truth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentary
+life, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch of
+M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on the
+roof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only look
+at that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in
+between a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races.
+Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?
+
+We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no man
+who has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, be
+afraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear or
+trembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne--the Navy--and the Army.
+These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objection
+whatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of the
+Whigs--the Angler's delight--the cause of Liberty all over the
+World--Christopher North--Maga the Immortal.--"Nature will not suffer
+any sudden transition!" Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! His
+very own mother could not know him--he has lost all resemblance to his
+twin-brother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not have
+distinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow--so completely is
+his apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for him
+to establish an _alibi_. He sees a figure in the mirror above the
+chimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced
+Bacchanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then he takes care to
+imitate the manual exercise of the phantom--lifting his glass to his
+lips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul.
+
+The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down any
+rule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in a
+day, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; but
+that nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude,
+which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating."
+
+We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for the
+rule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating.
+What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued--quite done up
+as it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark in
+heaven--tira-lira--or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, who
+forthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, the
+sunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day--or tripping along, all
+by her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs,
+the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand,
+to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on the
+meridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak,
+beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry!
+Where is your "sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide in
+exercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed both
+in mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy," you continue to pass over
+houseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, through
+villages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower,
+till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all the
+west, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday
+Night--for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream--and know
+not, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather,
+that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," is yet among the number
+of our bosom friends--alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune,
+the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor,
+puny, idle, and unmeaning word!
+
+Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." It is produced in us by
+three platefuls of hotch-potch--and, to the eyes of an ordinary
+observer, our dinner would seem to be at an end. But no--strictly
+speaking, it is just going to begin. About an hour ago did we, standing
+on the very beautiful bridge of Perth, see that identical salmon, with
+his back-fin just visible above the translucent tide, arrowing up the
+Tay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubting that he should spend his
+honeymoon among the gravel-beds of Kinnaird or Moulinearn, or the rocky
+sofas of the Tummel, or the green marble couches of the Tilt. What has
+become now of "the sense of satiety in eating?" John--the
+castors!--mustard--vinegar--cayenne--catchup--pease and potatoes, with a
+very little butter--the biscuit called "rusk"--and the memory of the
+hotch-potch is as that of Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton,
+exquisite though much of the five-year-old blackfaced must assuredly be,
+can, with any rational hopes of success, contend against a haunch of
+venison, will be asserted by no devout lover of truth. Try the two by
+alternate platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you leave off
+after the venison. That "sense of satiety in eating," of which Dr
+Kitchiner speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon devoured above--but of
+all the transitory feelings of us transitory creatures on our transit
+through this transitory world, in which the Doctor asserts nature will
+not suffer any sudden transitions, the most transitory ever experienced
+by us is "the sense of satiety in eating." Therefore, we have now seen
+it for a moment existing on the disappearance of the hotch-potch--dying
+on the appearance of the Tay salmon--once more noticeable as the last
+plate of the noble fish melted away--extinguished suddenly by the vision
+of the venison--again felt for an instant, and but for an instant--for a
+brace and a half of as fine grouse as ever expanded their voluptuous
+bosoms to be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety in eating indeed!
+If you please, my dear friend, one of the backs--pungent with the most
+palate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heart-warming, soul-exalting of all
+tastes--the wild bitter-sweet.
+
+But the Doctor returns to the subject of travelling--and fatigue. "When
+one begins," he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn often
+and be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movement
+occasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and is
+sensible of a bitter taste, _seek refreshment and repose_, if you wish
+to PREVENT ILLNESS, already beginning to take place." Why, our dear
+Doctor, illness in such a deplorable case as this, is just about to end,
+and death is beginning to take place. Thank Heaven, it is a condition to
+which we do not remember having very nearly approximated! Who ever saw
+us yawn? or drowsy? or with our appetite impaired, except on the
+withdrawal of the table-cloth? or low-spirited, but when the Glenlivet
+was at ebb? Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensible
+of a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringer
+on our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, from
+January to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's or
+Kendal's chronometer.
+
+But the Doctor proceeds--"By raising the temperature of my room to about
+65 deg., a broth diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a
+pint of warm water, and repeating it every half-hour till it moves the
+bowels twice or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or two sooner than
+usual, I have often very speedily got rid of colds, &c."
+
+Why, there may be no great harm in acting as above; although we should
+far rather recommend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea-spoonful of Epsom
+salts in half a pint of warm water, reminds one, somehow or other, of
+Tims. A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so easy--and that the
+Cockneys well know--to move the bowels of old Christopher North. We do
+not believe that a tea-spoonful of anything in this world would have any
+serious effect on old "Ironsides." We should have no hesitation in
+backing him against so much corrosive sublimate. He would dine out on
+the day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic;--and would, we verily
+believe, rise triumphant from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid.
+
+We could mention a thousand cures for "colds, et cetera," more
+efficacious than a broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of Epsom
+salts, or early roosting. What say you, our dear Dean, to half-a-dozen
+tumblers of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to the same amount? Or
+an equal quantity, in its gradual decrease revealing deeper and deeper
+still the romantic Welsh scenery of the Devil's Punch-Bowl? _Adde tot_
+small-bearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea foam, and worthy, as
+they stud the Ambrosial brodd, to be licked off all at once by the
+lambent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated calumny against the
+character of toasted cheese--that, forsooth, it is indigestible--has
+been trampled under the march of mind; and therefore, you may tuck in a
+pound of double Gloucester. Other patients, labouring under catarrh,
+may, very possibly, prefer the roasted how-towdy--or the green goose
+from his first stubble-field--or why not, by way of a little variety, a
+roasted maukin, midway between hare and leveret, tempting as maiden
+between woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, between a frock
+and a gown? Go to bed--no need of warming-pans--about a quarter before
+one;--you will not hear that small hour strike--you will sleep sound
+till sunrise, sound as the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings of
+Scotland were crowned of old. And if you contrive to carry a cold about
+you next day, you deserve to be sent to Coventry by all sensible
+people--and may, if you choose, begin taking, with Tims, a tea-spoonful
+of Epsom salts in a half-pint of warm water every half-hour, till it
+moves your bowels twice or thrice; but if you do, be your sex, politics,
+or religion what they may, never shall ye be suffered to contribute even
+a bit of Balaam to the Magazine.
+
+The Doctor then treats of the best Season for travelling, and very
+judiciously observes that it is during these months when there is no
+occasion for a fire--that is, just before and after the extreme heat. In
+winter, Dr Kitchiner, who was a man of extraordinary powers of
+observation, observed, "that the ways are generally bad, and often
+dangerous, especially in hilly countries, by reason of the snow and ice.
+The days are short--a traveller comes late to his lodging, and is often
+forced to rise before the sun in the morning--besides, the country looks
+dismal--nature is, as it were, half dead. The summer corrects all these
+inconveniences." Paradoxical as this doctrine may at first sight
+appear--yet we have verified it by experience--having for many years
+found, without meeting with one single exception, that the fine, long,
+warm days of summer are an agreeable and infallible corrective of the
+inconveniences attending the foul, short, cold days of winter--a season
+which is surly without being sincere, blustering rather than bold--an
+intolerable bore--always pretending to be taking his leave, yet
+domiciliating himself in another man's house for weeks together--and, to
+be plain, a season so regardless of truth, that nobody believes him till
+frost has hung an ice-padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd voice
+is dumb under the wreathed snows.
+
+"Cleanliness when travelling," observes the Doctor, "is doubly
+necessary; to sponge the body every morning with tepid water, and then
+rub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly contribute to preserve
+health. To put the feet into warm water for a couple of minutes just
+before going to bed, is very refreshing, and inviting to sleep; for
+promoting tranquillity, both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may be
+regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience."
+
+Far be it from us to seek to impugn such doctrine. A dirty dog is a
+nuisance not to be borne. But here the question arises--who--what--is a
+dirty dog? Now there are men (no women) naturally--necessarily--dirty.
+They are not dirty by chance--or accident--say twice or thrice per diem;
+but they are always dirty--at all times and in all places--and never and
+nowhere more disgustingly so than when figged out for going to church.
+It is in the skin, in the blood--in the flesh, and in the bone--that
+with such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon--no
+less in the hair. Now, such persons do not know that they are
+dirty--that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often think
+themselves pinks of purity--incarnations of carnations--impersonations
+of moss-roses--the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form of
+that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons to change their linen every
+half-hour, night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight clean
+shirts in the twenty-four hours--and it might not be reasonable,
+perhaps, to demand more of them under a government somewhat too
+Whiggish--yet though we cheerfully grant that one and all of the shirts
+would be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given moment from sunrise
+to sunset, and over again, the wearer would be clean. He would be just
+every whit and bit as dirty as if he had known but one single shirt all
+his life--and firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the universe.
+
+Men again, on the other hand, there are--and, thank God, in great
+numbers--who are naturally so clean, that we defy you to make them _bona
+fide_ dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, and
+expect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing of
+swans--that is, Poets--when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the
+ditch,--
+
+    "He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,
+    But soars far off among the swans of Thames."
+
+Pleasant people of this kind of constitution you see going about of a
+morning rather in dishabille--hair uncombed haply--face and hands even
+unwashed--and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are
+they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to be
+among the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake
+hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger that
+their heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of the
+highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail on
+the large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as unclouded
+skies--the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree--what need,
+in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though,
+from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little toozy? It
+is not dim--dull--oily--like half-withered sea-weeds! It will soon comb
+itself with the fingers of the west wind--that tent-like tree its
+toilette--its mirror that pool of the clear-flowing Tweed.
+
+Some streams, just like some men, are always dirty--you cannot possibly
+tell why--unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet
+weather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds,
+infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so many
+common-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, and
+threatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet,
+soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed into filth.
+The sun sees his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out of his
+senses. He shines no more that day. The clouds have no notion of being
+caricatured, and the trees keep cautiously away from the brink of such
+streams--save, perchance, now and then, here and there, a weak
+well-meaning willow--a thing of shreds and patches--its leafless wands
+covered with bits of old worsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle
+(see Dr Jamieson), and the remains of a pair of corduroy breeches, long
+hereditary in the family of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm Gypsies.
+
+Some streams, just like some men, are always clean--you cannot well tell
+why--producible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In
+dry, the pearly waters are singing among the freshened flowers--so that
+the trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. In wet, they grow, it
+is true, dark and drumly--and at midnight, when heaven's candles are put
+out, loud and oft the angry spirit of the water shrieks. But Aurora
+beholds her face in the clarified pools and shallows--far and wide
+glittering with silver or with gold. All the banks and braes reappear
+green as emerald from the subsiding current--into which look with the
+eye of an angler, and you behold a Fish--a twenty-pounder--steadying
+himself--like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George Scougal's leister
+to strike him through the spine! Yes, these are the images of trees far
+down, as if in another world; and, whether you look up or look down,
+alike in all its blue, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morning
+sky!
+
+Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus illustrated--generally
+sweet--at least in their own green Isle; and that was the best argument
+in favour of Catholic Emancipation.--So are Scotsmen. Whereas,
+blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand,
+immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to your
+nose--and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit has
+substituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetid
+fives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of the
+plague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantly
+denominated dirt--one week's earth--washed off the feet of a pretty
+young girl on a Saturday night, at a single sitting in the little
+rivulet that runs almost round about her father's hut, as would have
+served him to raise his mignonette in, or his crop of cresses. How
+beautifully glowed the crimson-snow of the singing creature's new-washed
+feet! First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucid
+waters--and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of the
+heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes of
+the stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the
+Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow
+her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic
+accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of
+the Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fifty
+glorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forests
+from the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs of Cairngorm.
+
+It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truth
+than perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm--"that a clean
+skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience." But the
+Doctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words
+"clean skin"--his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-hand
+basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give a
+Cockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin--just as many good people think
+that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clear
+conscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in both
+cases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass through
+nature to eternity clean-skinned and pious--with slight expense either
+in soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodily
+scrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in bad
+odour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, and
+finally go out like the stink of a candle.
+
+Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and a
+note-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliterated
+by the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, or
+read, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it--do this
+upon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you--at all
+events do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity."
+
+Suppose all people behaved in this way--and what an absurd world we
+should have of it--every man, woman, and child who could write, jotting
+away at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see,
+hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this one
+especially--in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. The
+memory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we have
+observed, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does not
+bear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds
+himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the
+Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the
+Memory--each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by
+itself, is in a very awkward predicament--gets comatose--snores loudly,
+and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination
+and our Judgment--nay, our very Reason itself--than our Memory--provided
+we were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy.
+Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or they
+carelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receive
+impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a
+bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.
+
+The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never,
+properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in
+the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of
+its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in
+the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from
+understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of
+which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and
+the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees,
+hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge,
+either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in
+their very being spontaneous and free--the mind being even unconscious
+of them as they are going on--while the edifice has all the time been
+silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent
+workers--Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind
+or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and
+Foreman--had not only originally planned, but had even daily
+superintended the building of the Temple.
+
+Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple
+question--Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most
+various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney,
+without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could.
+Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth,
+what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad--a moon to a mutton chop--a
+comet to a curry--a planet to a pate! What gross ingratitude to the
+Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to
+remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made
+with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but
+then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature
+gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the
+slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the
+tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but
+which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their
+miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever--yea, even to the great Day
+of Judgment.
+
+If men will but look and listen, and feel and think--they will never
+forget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, that
+to our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget our
+wives--unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimes
+will be? Do we forget our triumphs--our defeats--our ecstasies, our
+agonies--the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"--the ghost-like
+voice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes--or her seraph
+hymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we may
+enter in among the white-robed spirits, and
+
+    "Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"
+
+What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by
+the most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparison
+with the Library of Useful Knowledge, that _every_ man--who is a
+man--carries within the Ratcliffe--the Bodleian of his own breast?
+
+What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebub
+of a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in the
+ceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp--vanished like a
+thought!
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+SECOND COURSE.
+
+
+Above all things, continues Dr Kitchiner, "avoid travelling through the
+night, which, by interrupting sleep, and exposing the body to the night
+air, is always prejudicial, even in the mildest weather, and to the
+strongest constitutions." Pray, Doctor, what ails you at the night air?
+If the night air be, even in the mildest weather, prejudicial to the
+strongest constitutions, what do you think becomes of the cattle on a
+thousand hills? Why don't all the bulls in Bashan die of the asthma--or
+look interesting by moonlight in a galloping consumption? Nay, if the
+night air be so very fatal, how do you account for the longevity of
+owls? Have you never read of the Chaldean shepherds watching the courses
+of the stars? Or, to come nearer our own times, do you not know that
+every blessed night throughout the year, thousands of young lads and
+lasses meet, either beneath the milk-white thorn--or on the lea-rig,
+although the night be ne'er sae wet, and they be ne'er sae weary--or
+under a rock on the hill--or--no uncommon case--beneath a frozen
+stack--not of chimneys, but of corn-sheaves--or on a couch of snow--and
+that they are all as warm as so many pies; while, instead of feeling
+what you call "the lack of vigour attendant on the loss of sleep, which
+is as enfeebling and as distressing as the languor that attends the want
+of food," they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, "neither to haud
+nor bind;" the eyes of the young lads being all as brisk, bold, and
+bright as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of the young lasses
+shine with a soft, faint, obscure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewy
+Pleiades, over which nature has insensibly been breathing a mist almost
+waving and wavering into a veil of clouds?
+
+Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion for those unfortunate blades,
+who, _nolentes-volentes_, must remain out perennially all night--we mean
+the blades of grass, and also the flowers? Their constitutions seem
+often far from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty night, and you
+will hear them--we have done so many million times--shivering, ay,
+absolutely shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the night air be
+indeed what Dr Kitchiner has declared it to be--Lord have mercy on the
+vegetable world! What agonies in that field of turnips! Alas, poor
+Swedes! The imagination recoils from the condition of that club of
+winter cabbages--and of what materials, pray, must the heart of that man
+be made, who could think but for a moment on the case of those carrots,
+without bursting into a flood of tears!
+
+The Doctor avers that the firm health and fine spirits of persons who
+live in the country, are not more from breathing a purer air, than from
+enjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the most distressing misery of "this
+Elysium of bricks and mortar," is the rareness with which we enjoy "the
+sweets of a slumber unbroke."
+
+Doctor--in the first place, it is somewhat doubtful whether or not
+persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits
+than persons who live in towns--even in London. What kind of persons do
+you mean? You must not be allowed to select some dozen or two of the
+hairiest among the curates--a few chosen rectors whose faces have been
+but lately elevated to the purple--a team of prebends issuing sleek from
+their golden stalls--a picked bishop--a sacred band the elite of the
+squirearchy--with a corresponding sprinkling of superior noblemen from
+lords to dukes--and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with an equal
+number of external objects taken from the common run of Cockneys. This,
+Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at--but you must clap your
+hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural
+population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes
+first--be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag,
+tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age
+(for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and
+perennial poverty;--Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced
+in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the
+overseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn bastard, is
+about to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;--Be it a
+landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ruby cheeks, the
+whole machinery of his mouth so deranged by tippling that he
+simultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers and
+snores--pot-bellied--shanked like a spindle-strae--and bidding fair to
+be buried on or before Saturday week;--Be it a half-drunk horse-cowper,
+swinging to and fro in a wraprascal on a bit of broken-down blood that
+once won a fifty, every sentence, however short, having but two
+intelligible words, an oath and a lie--his heart rotten with falsehood,
+and his bowels burned up with brandy, so that sudden death may pull him
+from his saddle before he put spurs to his sporting filly that she may
+bilk the turnpike man, and carry him more speedily home to beat or
+murder his poor, pale, industrious char-woman of a wife;--Be it--not a
+beggar, for beggars are prohibited from this parish--but a pauper in the
+sulks, dying on her pittance from the poor-rates, which altogether
+amount in merry England but to about the paltry sum of, more or less,
+six millions a-year--her son, all the while, being in a thriving way as
+a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits
+from his business of L300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore
+him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the
+bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw
+had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously
+as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters,
+and stumbling every foot-fall down that other flight of steps that
+consist of flags that are mortal damp and mortal cold, and lead to
+nothing but a parcel of rotten planks, and overhead a vault dripping
+with perpetual moisture, green and slobbery, such as toads delight in
+crawling heavily through with now and then a bloated leap, and hideous
+things more worm-like, that go wriggling briskly in and out among the
+refuse of the coffins, and are heard, by imagination at least, to emit
+faint angry sounds, because the light of day has hurt their eyes, and
+the air from the upper world weakened the rank savoury smell of
+corruption, clothing, as with a pall, all the inside walls of the
+tombs;--Be it a man yet in the prime of life as to years, six feet and
+an inch high, and measuring round the chest forty-eight inches (which is
+more, reader, than thou dost by six, we bet a sovereign, member
+although thou even be'st of the Edinburgh Six Feet Club), to whom
+Washington Irving's Jack Tibbuts was but a Tims--but then ever so many
+gamekeepers met him all alone in my lord's pheasant preserve, and though
+two of them died within the month, two within the year, and two are now
+in the workhouse--one a mere idiot, and the other a madman--both
+shadows--so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so sorely were their
+skulls fractured;--yet the poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and there
+he sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the edge of the wood whose
+haunts he must thread no more--for the keepers were grim bone-breakers
+enough in their way--and when they had gotten him on his back, one
+gouged him like a Yankee, and the other bit off his nose like a Bolton
+Trotter--and one smashed his _os frontis_ with the nailed heel of a
+two-pound wooden clog, a Preston Purrer;--so that Master Allonby is now
+far from being a beauty, with a face of that description attached to a
+head wagging from side to side under a powerful palsy, while the
+Mandarin drinks damnation to the Lord of the Manor in a horn of
+eleemosynary ale, handed to him by the village blacksmith, in days of
+old not the worst of the gang, and who, but for a stupid jury, a
+merciful judge, and something like prevarication in the circumstantial
+evidence, would have been hanged for a murderer--as he was--dissected,
+and hung in chains;--Be it a red-haired woman, with a pug nose, small
+fiery eyes, high cheekbones, bulging lips, and teeth like
+swine-tusks,--bearded--flat-breasted as a man--tall, scambling in her
+gait, but swift, and full of wild motions in her weather-withered arms,
+all starting with sinews like whipcord--the Pedestrian Post to and fro
+the market town twelve miles off--and so powerful a pugilist that she
+hit Grace Maddox senseless in seven minutes--tried before she was
+eighteen for child-murder, but not hanged, although the man-child, of
+which the drab was self-delivered in a ditch, was found with blue
+finger-marks on its windpipe, bloody mouth, and eyes forced out of their
+sockets, buried in the dunghill behind her father's hut--not hanged,
+because a surgeon, originally bred a sow-gelder, swore that he believed
+the mother had unconsciously destroyed her offspring in the throes of
+travail, if indeed it had ever breathed, for the lungs would not swim,
+he swore, in a basin of water--so the incestuous murderess was let
+loose; her brother got hanged in due time after the mutiny at the
+Nore--and her father, the fishmonger--why, he went red raving mad as if
+a dog had bitten him--and died, as the same surgeon and sow-gelder
+averred, of the hydrophobia, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth,
+and some said cursing, but that was a calumny, for something seemed to
+be the matter with his tongue, and he could not speak, only
+splutter--nobody venturing, except his amiable daughter--and in that
+particular act of filial affection she was amiable--to hold in the
+article of death the old man's head;--Be it that moping idiot that would
+sit, were she suffered, on, on, on--night and day for ever, on the
+self-same spot, whatever that spot might be on which she happened to
+squat at morning, mound, wall, or stone--motionless, dumb, and, as a
+stranger would think, also blind, for the eyelids are still shut--never
+opened in sun or storm;--yet that figure--that which is now, and has for
+years been, an utter and hopeless idiot, was once a gay, laughing,
+dancing, singing girl, whose blue eyes seemed full of light, whether
+they looked on earth or heaven, the flowers or the stars--her
+sweetheart--a rational young man, it would appear--having leapt out upon
+her suddenly, as she was passing through the churchyard at night, from
+behind a tombstone, in a sack which she, having little time for
+consideration, and being naturally superstitious, supposed to be a
+shroud, and the wearer thereof, who was an active stripling of sound
+flesh and blood, to be a ghost or skeleton, all one horrid rattle of
+bones; so that the trick succeeded far beyond the most sanguine
+expectation of the Tailor who played the principal part--and sense,
+feeling, memory, imagination, and reason, were all felled by one blow of
+fear--as butcher felleth ox--while by one of those mysteries, which
+neither we, nor you, nor anybody else, can understand, life remained not
+only unimpaired, but even invigorated; and there she sits, like a clock
+wound up to go a certain time, the machinery of which being good, has
+not been altogether deranged by the shock that sorely cracked the case,
+and will work till the chain is run down, and then it will tick no
+more;--Be it that tall, fair, lovely girl, so thin and attenuated that
+all wonder she can walk by herself--that she is not blown away even by
+the gentle summer breeze that wooes the hectic of her cheek--dying all
+see--and none better than her poor old mother--and yet herself
+thoughtless of the coming doom, and cheerful as a nest-building
+bird--while her lover, too deep in despair to be betrayed into tears, as
+he carries her to her couch, each successive day feels the dear and
+dreadful burden lighter and lighter in his arms. Small strength will it
+need to support her bier! The coffin, as if empty, will be lowered
+unfelt by the hands that hold those rueful cords!
+
+In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we shall endeavour to prevent
+ourselves from pursuing this argument any further--and perhaps quite
+enough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that persons
+who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than the
+inhabitants of towns--is exceedingly problematical. But even admitting
+the fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he has
+attributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "their
+enjoying plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is entirely out in
+his conjecture. The working classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubt
+it, sound sleep--but not plenty of it. They have but a short allowance
+of sleep--and whether it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themselves;
+while as to the noises in towns and cities, they are nothing to what one
+hears in the country--unless, indeed, you perversely prefer private
+lodgings at a pewterer's. Did we wish to be personal, we could name a
+single waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all the visitors from
+town awake within a circle of four miles diameter; and in wet weather,
+not only keeps them all awake, but impresses them with a constantly
+recurring conviction during the hours of night, that there is something
+seriously amiss about the foundation of the river, and that the whole
+parish is about to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the old
+castle that over-looks the linn. Then, on another point, we are
+certain--namely, that rural thunder is many hundred times more powerful
+than villatic. London porter is above admiration--but London thunder
+below contempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it hollow. But, my
+faith! a thunderstorm in the country--especially if it be mountainous,
+with a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inevitably think of that
+land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and even our town readers
+will acknowledge that country thunder much more frequently proves mortal
+than the thunder you meet with in cities. In the country, few
+thunderstorms are contented to pass over without killing at least one
+horse, some milch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or turkeys, an old
+woman or two, perhaps the Minister of the parish, a man about forty,
+name unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, the child escaping with
+singed eyebrows, and a singular black mark on one of its great toes. We
+say nothing of the numbers stupified, who awake the day after, as from a
+dream, with strange pains in their heads, and not altogether sure about
+the names or countenances of the somewhat unaccountable people whom they
+see variously employed about the premises, and making themselves pretty
+much at home. In towns, not one thunderstorm in fifty that performs an
+exploit more magnanimous than knocking down an old wife from a
+chimney-top--singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an
+ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to
+dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called--or cutting a
+few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had
+been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of
+some still higher preferment.
+
+Our dear deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat and
+drink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they may
+indulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travelling
+itself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment is
+required than in a state of rest. What you might not consider
+intemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatal
+inflammations, &c., in situations where you are least able to obtain
+medical assistance."
+
+All this is very loosely stated, and must be set to rights. If you shut
+yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that keeps
+wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and changes horses in
+half a minute, certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat and drink
+the better; and perhaps an hourly hundred drops of laudanum, or
+equivalent grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the transit from
+London to Edinburgh might be performed in a phantasma. But the free
+agent ought to live well on his travels--some degrees better, without
+doubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There is
+always something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost,
+which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an
+unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many
+unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of
+domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one
+of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling
+at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and,
+except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an
+agreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of the
+dishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus--but false that
+therefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if now
+alive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all day
+with his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the
+afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise forty
+or fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was our
+nourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What we
+want, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, under
+such circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach and
+constitution cannot over-eat himself--no, not for his immortal soul.
+
+We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of the
+most free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how to
+disturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literary
+characters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained," quoth
+he slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works."
+
+The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rather
+more common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comes
+to--and know better what is the province of their profession. Any one
+man may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any third
+man in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author--or his
+bookseller--or his parish minister--or his butcher--or his baker--or his
+"man of business"--or his house-builder--may, one and all, give such
+travellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to the
+said eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimes
+done--but fortunately we cannot speak from experience, not being
+ourselves an eminent author. The more general the intercourse between
+men of taste, feeling, cultivation, learning, genius, the better; but
+that intercourse should be brought about freely and of its own accord,
+as fortunate circumstances permit, and there should be no impertinent
+interference of selfish or benevolent go-betweens. It would seem that Dr
+Kitchiner thought the commonest traveller, one who was almost, as it
+were, bordering on a Bagman, had nothing to do but call on the publisher
+of any great writer, and get a free admission into his house. Had the
+Doctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing and
+blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only to
+hope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will not
+degrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence," by thrusting
+their ugly or comely faces--both are equally odious--into the privacy of
+gentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from the
+protection of the laws of civilised society--or subject their fire-sides
+to be infested by one-half of the curious men of the country, two-thirds
+of the clever, and all the blockheads.
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+THIRD COURSE.
+
+
+Having thus briefly instructed travellers how to get a look at Lions,
+the Doctor suddenly exclaims--"IMPRIMIS, BEWARE OF DOGS!" "There have,"
+he says, "been many arguments, _pro_ and _con_, on the dreadful disease
+their bite produces--it is enough to prove that multitudes of men,
+women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten by
+dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily
+disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is
+of more value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic
+say otherwise?"
+
+Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise of
+one kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why,
+then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog
+leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when so
+afflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left at
+pedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fear
+hydrophobia--though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of a
+tolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "the
+rabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, to
+dread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the very
+sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have
+died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not
+run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely
+deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a
+multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical--having
+died, it is true, _in_, but not _of_ hydrophobia--states of mind and
+body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure
+spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies
+_in_ a state of hydrophobia--for he abhorred water, and knew
+instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies
+at all _of_ hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty
+years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess
+the other two--why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was
+dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself
+bitten--and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and
+measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created,
+would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its
+education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an
+impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible
+disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily
+disposed of--eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged
+at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable
+the industrious to live--two having died of drinking--one of extreme old
+age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood,
+their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by
+neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women,
+and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?
+
+Gentle reader--a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times
+the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe--along
+all roads, public and private--with stiles or turnpikes--metropolitan
+streets and suburban paths--and at all seasons of the revolving year and
+day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken
+by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many
+million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a
+yard--their sides panting--flag struck--and the whole dog showing
+symptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do not
+assert--they may have been mad--but they certainly were fatigued; and
+the difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness and
+insanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, would
+have fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against the
+harmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun,
+and the flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming a
+levy _en masse_, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor,
+sitting in his coach--like Napoleon at Waterloo--would have cried "_Tout
+est perdu--sauve, qui peut!_"--and re-galloping to a provincial town,
+would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens.
+
+"The life of the most humble human being," quoth the Doctor, "is of more
+value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic say
+otherwise?"
+
+This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutal
+Cynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all--being an Eclectic,
+and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
+Peripateticism--with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. The
+most brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer for
+himself--while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him,
+that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than all
+the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there is
+many a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of many
+men, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a question
+in philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt on
+the subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question,
+as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as the
+human soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an old
+woman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity,
+either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogs
+now alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a human
+soul should be lost;--but not a single human soul is going to be lost,
+although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now,
+would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on his
+Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of a
+century and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a mad
+dog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs of
+harriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, and
+cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all the
+Newfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the
+infinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great Britain
+and Ireland--to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and in
+the realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument at
+once--What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, and
+one-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one of
+Christopher North's Newfoundland dogs--Fro--Bronte--or O'Bronte?
+Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brute
+creation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses,
+hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses,
+mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese,
+and how-towdies?
+
+"Semi-drowning in the sea"--he continues--"and all the pretended
+specifics, are mere delusions--there is no real remedy but cutting the
+part out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannot
+always be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always prevent
+the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might
+St Paul tell us to '_beware of dogs_.' First Epistle to Philippians,
+chap. iii., v. 2."
+
+Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to
+be administered. It is not possible to tell, _a priori_, how much
+drowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning to
+James, is total drowning to John;--Tom is easy of resuscitation--Bob
+will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United
+Kingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, who
+turns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriest
+bungler in the anatomy of the human frame--to scarify the fleshless
+spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity,
+might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large
+blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the
+wound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to be
+attempted"--but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousand
+other cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always be
+prevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain than
+horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of
+sane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army,
+therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be
+no flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?
+
+Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is,
+at times, sensible on dogs.
+
+"Therefore," quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn in
+your Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be marked
+the Inches, and so it may serve for a measure.
+
+"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, when
+they hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwary
+visitors. Whenever _Counsellor Cautious_ went to a house, &c., where he
+was not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at the
+door, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against the
+Enemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, that
+it might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House till
+it was.
+
+"_Sword_ and _Tuck Sticks_, as commonly made, are hardly so good a
+weapon as a stout Stick--the Blades are often inserted into the Handles
+in such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;--if
+you wish for a _Sword-Cane_, you must have one made with a good
+Regulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged for
+the entire Stick.--I have seen a Cane made by Mr PRICE, _of the Stick
+and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand_, near Temple Bar, which was
+excellently put together.
+
+"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is _an
+Iron Stick_ of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook
+next the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about five
+inches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted the
+colour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, while
+it is in fact a most formidable Instrument."
+
+We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen one
+once, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berenger
+in his _Helps and Hints_ prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usually
+carried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry.
+So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke.
+
+"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walking
+alone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned upon
+me, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more than
+judgment, I gave point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was,
+which, screening me at the same time, _was an article from which he did
+not expect thrusts_; but which, although made at guess, for I could not
+see him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself,
+his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole being
+the work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors of
+hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."
+
+There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a word
+or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog,
+but a young lady of our own species. "If," says the Colonel, "you can
+seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, he
+cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping him
+thus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, with
+the other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus
+without danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at
+extrication." But here comes the Colonel's infallible _vade-mecum_.
+
+"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the
+skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below,
+stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so
+strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c.,
+are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are
+glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never
+tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them;
+though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other
+kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."
+
+Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our
+Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments
+for drawing--a sketch and note-book--paper--ink--and PINS--NEEDLES--AND
+THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond
+Street--pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street--a folding
+one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches--a
+hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement,
+in good strong silver cases--a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass--a
+night-lamp--a tinder-box--two pair of spectacles, with strong silver
+frames--an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck--a
+traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for
+taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers,
+and long corkscrew--galoches or paraloses--your own knife and fork, and
+spoon--a Welsh wig--a spare hat--umbrella--two great-coats, one for cool
+and fair weather (_i.e._ between 45 deg. and 55 deg. of Fahrenheit), and another
+for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and
+denominated a "dreadnought."
+
+Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will
+provide himself before leaving _Dulce Domum_ to brave the perils of a
+Tour through the Hop-districts.
+
+"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the
+outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up
+the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have
+plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."
+
+In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the
+outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the
+discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to
+London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers _sans_
+drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in
+proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than
+true--no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly
+frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the
+united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to
+separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel.
+All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us--and it
+underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice.
+For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt--then with a
+flannel one--and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts.
+This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A
+plain woollen waistcoat without buttons--with hooks and eyes--took the
+lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver,
+called an under-waistcoat--the body being flannel, the breast-edges
+bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars--then came a natty red
+waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect
+on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember was
+irresistible--and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of
+our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre--the
+double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine--so that
+between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of
+our dress--"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began
+the coats, which--as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats--never
+exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had
+lived to moralise over the mutability of human
+affairs--thread-bare--napless--and what ignorant people might have
+called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest,
+unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat--and not, perhaps, of
+the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty,
+what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in
+Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured
+great-coat--not braided and embroidered _a la militaire_--for we scorned
+to sham travelling-captain--but _simplex munditiis_, plain in its
+neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening
+that its wearer was up to snuff--and to close this strange eventful
+history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the
+sleets and snows--held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus,
+and "the rest"--and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.
+
+The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No
+stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth--beginning with singles--and then
+getting into the full uncut squares--the amount of the whole being
+somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion,
+and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an
+attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty
+to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the
+bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle--and beneath the
+cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had
+kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we
+always found sufficient--and that a black beaver--for a lily castor
+suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and
+hereditary monarchy."
+
+As to our lower extremities--One pair only of roomy shoes--one pair of
+stockings of the finest lamb's-wool--another of common close worsted,
+knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch--thirdly, Shetland hose. All
+three pair reaching well up towards the fork--each about an
+inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers--one pair
+only--within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep--then one pair of
+elderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls--one pair of Manchester white
+cords--ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"--and
+at or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as
+"Johnny's grey breeks"--neat but not gaudy--mud-repellers--themselves a
+host--never in all their lives "thoroughly wet
+through"--frost-proof--and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold,
+as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibeg
+of Phoebus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell to
+some star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured the
+cerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in the
+Western Sea.
+
+
+
+
+DR KITCHINER.
+
+FOURTH COURSE.
+
+
+Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue if
+you are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive," says the Doctor,
+"and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance of
+getting a good bed--this done, order your luggage to your room. A
+travelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very
+necessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes of
+linen--a night-shirt--shaving apparatus--comb, clothes, tooth and hair
+brushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that you
+can fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the first
+unostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord.
+However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen your
+flint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-hole
+every night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with spring
+bayonets."
+
+Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistols
+with spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace of
+black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausages
+for the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, and
+far safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duelling
+black-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;--and, that
+etiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist's
+weapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have
+to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, than
+according to the present fashion.
+
+The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout--a prodigious
+fuss--all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see
+the chambermaid, and overlook the airing with his own hands and eyes.
+He is also an advocate of the warming-pan--and for the adoption, indeed,
+of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goes
+on the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns--and often
+reminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers never
+can be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were not
+afflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they should
+carry their own sheets with them--namely, a "light eider-down quilt, and
+two dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder the
+disagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's own
+sheets--and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm,
+his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If the
+traveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimes
+be prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters,
+shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened."
+
+Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes that
+it is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water,
+fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again,
+they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reeking
+state, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams of
+that pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotest
+thing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies has
+refreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore,
+to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plenty
+of flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsome
+consideration for the liberty of choosing your bed."
+
+Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles,
+what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens,
+back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed
+choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords,
+Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay
+Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the
+headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting
+fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance
+to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal
+establishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment,
+to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in
+the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist,
+think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system,
+if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitory
+life of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where all
+travellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept in
+inns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This would
+be inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark,
+in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of following
+the sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings of
+love and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this world
+and its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinkling
+of an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearance
+would a bedroom then exhibit!
+
+The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder.
+We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a few
+other occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes put
+to the fire in their presence," merely at the expense of subjugating
+themselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions,
+boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employed
+in inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As the
+Director-General would say--he deals in buttery touches.) Their feverish
+and restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on damps
+and deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They
+become the groundwork of practical jokes--perhaps are bitten to death by
+fleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel,
+has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. The
+Doctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but the
+insidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn the
+tormentor--and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair of
+blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for
+years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer
+that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable
+temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of
+one of the plagues of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from top
+to bottom absolutely tattooed!
+
+The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe that
+unless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformly
+robbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during the
+midnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes down
+stairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or--what is almost as
+noiseless--worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breeches
+are beneath your bolster--but that trick of travellers has long been "as
+notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of your
+breeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this
+world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cry
+out--for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is on
+your mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses your
+windpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah
+Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from
+a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off
+all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians,
+whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton
+wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar--swearing by Satan
+and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before
+daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your
+brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore you
+must use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts of
+doors, and on many occasions save the property and life of the
+traveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the
+simplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, and
+unites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door so
+fastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weight
+does not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom should
+always be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, it
+will be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table and
+chair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into the
+closets, and every place where concealment is possible--of course,
+although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend of
+the Doctor's used to place a bureau against the door, and "thereon he
+set a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, on
+being shook, they instantly became _molto agitato_." Upon one alarming
+occasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or some
+other Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of the
+travelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath the
+bolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnight
+assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockery
+gave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned."
+
+With all these fearful apprehensions--in his mind, Dr Kitchiner must
+have been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, to
+have slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers must
+we have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in the
+bed, or scamp below it--closet and chimney uninspected, door unbolted
+and unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying to
+think that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female,
+thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay,
+forgotten by the whole world--till the crowing of cocks, or the ringing
+of bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a Manchester
+Bagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose,
+and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed us
+the floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. We
+really know not whether to be most proud of having been the favourite
+child of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution did
+we ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills that
+flesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly a
+short fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all the
+happiness--let us trust it was innocent--of the day; and humbly
+imploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the time
+we speak of, we were young--and every morning, whatever the atmosphere
+might be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes of
+the soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life's
+horizon!
+
+But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted and
+screwed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there had
+suddenly rung through the house the cry of FIRE--FIRE--FIRE! how was Dr
+Kitchiner to get out? Tables, bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the
+only door--all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the whole
+crockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistols
+with spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction of
+persons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaring
+flames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and over
+and above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplest
+that we have seen." The wind-board is in like manner, and by the same
+unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, so
+egress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied--no fire-engine in the
+town--but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for a
+month, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element is
+growling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling with
+something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard
+crying--"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive!
+Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor
+falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length
+fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord,
+landlady, chambermaid, and boots--each in a different key--from manly
+bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a
+madman--for, gentle reader, it has been a--Dream.
+
+We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of our
+journey on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with
+"Observations on Pedestrians." Here we are at home--and could, we
+imagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. The
+strength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is
+"in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is as
+the quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy of
+that organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes." This statement of
+the strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophical
+to those who are up to it--but to us it resembles a definition we have
+heard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter."
+It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of a
+strong man--but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strong
+back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With
+a strong stomach alone--yea, even the stomach of a horse--a man will
+make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems
+himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more
+on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on
+the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce
+that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off
+superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up
+fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of
+the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus,
+he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man,
+suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk
+ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the
+action of the body has exonerated the mind."
+
+The Doctor warms as he walks--and is very near leaping over the fence of
+Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but
+expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be
+laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce
+its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they
+are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ
+more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by
+the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more
+miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ
+themselves in that VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE."
+Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor
+throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of
+walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by
+the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when
+he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus,
+he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately
+after any great exertion, either of mind or body--that is, one might
+say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia.
+Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion,
+especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and
+remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been
+dispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach,
+when it is required." To all this we say--Fudge! The sooner you get hold
+of a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with
+a pot of porter--then leisurely on with a clean shirt--wash your face
+and hands in gelid--none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if
+you should shave--then keep walking up and down the parlour rather
+impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act
+agreeably to nature--stir up the waiter with some original jest by way
+of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare--and
+never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the
+extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name
+fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till
+there is no vestige left of the first--a second course being looked on
+by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which
+the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,--
+
+    "Nor fame I slight--nor for her favours call--
+    She comes unlook'd for--if she comes at all."
+
+To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence,
+the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned
+from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why,
+better--better, thank ye--I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the
+return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before
+yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put
+on one of my stockings myself?"
+
+The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man
+can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this
+sentence to Will Whipcord--"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor
+of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir--a man can beat a
+horse!"
+
+Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a
+horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism
+on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon
+as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse--only mind, the horse
+carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We
+know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender,
+arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles
+a-day, for many days--and that for four days they have gone a hundred
+miles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, the
+Prince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparative
+pedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained by
+any accredited match in England.
+
+The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a
+Mr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall
+be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of the
+inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says,
+"that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it
+is almost impossible to proceed;"--"at other times you are exposed to
+the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a
+hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an
+uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is
+necessarily more confined--a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an
+important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be
+considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it
+may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian
+excursion--_in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not
+apprised of these things till we had experienced them_." What! Mr
+Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not
+apprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality,
+that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, either
+in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof
+positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the
+weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge
+when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene
+atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory
+studies _sub dio_? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under the
+shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown
+friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin?
+Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had
+there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of
+you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and
+hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the
+palm of your hand? Button your jacket, good sir--scorn an
+umbrella--emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at the
+pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm--poor spite indeed in Densissimus
+Imber--and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour
+against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till
+you have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England
+(we forget the county)--ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your
+first-born.
+
+Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's picture
+of a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one great
+inconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons," quoth he, "who take a
+pedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to the
+uncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visiting
+unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a _piece of
+oil-skin_ to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they
+will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the
+breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here
+a question of great difficulty and importance arises--Breeches or
+trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he,
+"should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers.
+The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were
+exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my
+astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has
+to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more
+inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are
+collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing
+garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These
+should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the
+upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is
+much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you
+always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up
+the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to
+those who walk long distances."
+
+We are strongly inclined to agree with the Doctor in his panegyric on
+breeches. True, that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark colour,
+such as black, and worn with white, or even grey or bluish, stockings,
+they are apt, in the present state of public taste, to stamp you a
+schoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress, or an exciseman going to
+a ball. We could dispense too with the knee-buckles and plush
+lining--though we allow the one might be ornamental and the other
+useful. But what think you, gentle reader, of walking with a Pedometer?
+A Pedometer is an instrument cunningly devised to tell you how far and
+how fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a "perambulator in
+miniature." The box containing the wheels is made of the size of a
+watch-case, and goes into the breeches pocket, and by means of a string
+and hook, fastened at the waistband or at the knee, the number of steps
+a man takes, in his regular paces, are registered from the action of the
+spring upon the internal wheel-work at every step, to the amount of
+30,000. It is necessary, to ascertain the distance walked, that the
+average length of one pace be precisely known, and that multiplied by
+the number of steps registered on the dial-plate.
+
+All this is very ingenious; and we know one tolerable pedestrian who is
+also a Pedometrist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fortune in a
+mountainous island, like Great Britain, where pedestrianism is
+indigenous to the soil. A good walker is as regular in his going as
+clock-work. He has his different paces--three, three and a half--four,
+four and a half--five, five and a half--six miles an hour--toe and heel.
+A common watch, therefore, is to him, in the absence of milestones, as
+good as a Pedometer, with this great and indisputable advantage, that a
+common watch continues to go even after you have yourself stopped,
+whereas, the moment you sit down on your oil-skin patch, why, your
+Pedometer (which, indeed, from its name and construction, is not
+unreasonable) immediately stands still. Neither, we believe, can you
+accurately note the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer.
+
+What pleasure on this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile
+walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the
+gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a long
+summer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyes
+with honey-dew, and stretches out, under the loving hands of nourrice
+Nature, the whole elongated animal economy, steeped in rest divine from
+the organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, be it on a bed
+of down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? If in
+an inn, nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neither
+landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots;--you are left to yourself
+without being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by all
+the menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer
+appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your
+dinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by the
+rumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at your
+departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise.
+
+
+
+
+SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.
+
+FIRST RHAPSODY.
+
+
+No weather more pleasant than that of a mild WINTER day. So gracious the
+season, that Hyems is like Ver--Januarius like Christopher North. Art
+thou the Sun of whom Milton said,--
+
+    "Looks through the horizontal misty air,
+    Shorn of his beams,"
+
+an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian on
+a June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by the
+sleeping though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, and
+murmurs--the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake,
+her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods be
+leafless--they look as alive as when laden, with umbrage; and who can
+tell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? The
+fields laugh not now--but here and there they smile. If we see no
+flowers we think of them--and less of the perished than of the unborn;
+for regret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace there is the promise of
+joy--and therefore in the silent pastures a perfect beauty how
+restorative to man's troubled heart!
+
+The Shortest Day in all the year--yet is it lovelier than the Longest.
+Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancy
+filled the sky--with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In the
+air life is audible--circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by
+happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar--the self-same Robin
+Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the
+gable of the school-house his sweet winter song!
+
+In company we are silent--in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do we
+love our own voice that we cannot bear to hear it mixed with that of
+others--perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the
+hush expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the
+speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling
+itself in Neaera's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country,
+among trees standing still among untrodden leaves--as now--how we do
+speak! All thoughts--all feelings--desire utterance; left to themselves
+they are not happy till they have evolved into words--winged words that
+sometimes settle on the ground, like moths on flowers--sometimes seek
+the sky, like eagles above the clouds.
+
+No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours--the act of
+composition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is at
+such solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among the
+clouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperceptible
+transformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spirit
+of beauty.
+
+Who but Him who made it knoweth aught of the Laws of Spirit? All of us
+may know much of what is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," in
+obedience to them; but leaving the open day, we enter at once into
+thickest night. Why at this moment do we see a spot once only visited by
+us--unremembered for ever so many flights of black or bright winged
+years--see it in fancy as it then was in nature, with the same dewdrops
+on that wondrous myrtle beheld but on that morning--such a myrtle as no
+other eyes beheld ever on this earth but ours, and the eyes of one now
+in heaven?
+
+Another year is about to die--and how wags the world? "What great events
+are on the gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule--their guidance
+is but over the outer world, and almost powerless their folly or their
+wisdom over the inner region in which we mortals live, and move, and
+have our being, where the fall of a throne makes no more noise than that
+of a leaf!
+
+Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are both dead and buried at last, and
+white lie the snow on their graves! Youth is the season of all sorts of
+insolence, and therefore we can forgive and forget almost anything in
+SPRING. He has always been a privileged personage; and we have no doubt
+that he played his pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets you
+unexpectedly on the hill-side; and was there ever a face in this world
+so celestialised by smiles! All the features are framed of light. Gaze
+into his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there is
+something more sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, or
+in the depths of the waveless seas. More sublime, because essentially
+spiritual. There stands the young Angel, entranced in the conscious
+mystery of his own beautiful and blessed being; and the earth becomes
+all at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of the Morning. So
+might some great painter image the First-born of the Year, till nations
+adored the picture.--To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to the
+Mount of the Vision, and,
+
+    "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
+
+Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers of frost; blashes a
+storm of sleet in your face, and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a
+winding-sheet of snow, in which you would infallibly perish but for a
+pocket-pistol of Glenlivet.--The day after to-morrow, you behold
+him--Spring--walking along the firmament, sad, but not sullen--mournful,
+but not miserable--disturbed, but not despairing--now coming out towards
+you in a burst of light--and now fading away from you in a gathering of
+gloom--even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. On
+Thursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of his
+Springship. There he is, stripped to the buff--playing at hide-and-seek,
+hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-down
+waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. You turn up the whites
+of your eyes, and the browns of your hands in amazement, till the Two,
+by way of change of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and, like a
+couple of hawks diverting themselves with an owl, in conclusion buffet
+you off the premises. You insert the occurrence, with suitable
+reflections, in your Meteorological Diary, under the head--Spring.--On
+Friday, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your nose, for you
+are confined to bed by rheumatism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless
+sanctum but your condoling Mawsey. 'Tis a pity. For never since the
+flood-greened earth on her first resurrection morn laughed around
+Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! By all that is various and
+vanishing, the arch seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and all
+creation to be gladly and gloriously gathered together without being
+crowded--plains, woods, villages, towns, hills, and clouds, beneath the
+pathway of Spring, once more an Angel--an unfallen Angel! While the
+tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fading and
+fluctuating--deepening and dying--now gone, as if for ever--and now back
+again in an instant, as if breathing and alive--is felt, during all that
+wavering visitation, to be of all sights the most evanescent, and yet
+inspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung the
+image on the cloud--profound as the gloom it illumines--that it shone
+and is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabiteth eternity.--The
+grim noon of Saturday, after a moaning morning, and one silent
+intermediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins to gleam fitfully with
+lightning like a maniac's eye; and is not that
+
+                    "The sound
+    Of thunder heard remote?"
+
+On earth wind there is none--not so much as a breath. But there is a
+strong wind in heaven--for see how that huge cloud-city, a night within
+a day, comes moving on along the hidden mountain-tops, and hangs over
+the loch all at once black as pitch, except that here and there a sort
+of sullen purple heaves upon the long slow swell, and here and there
+along the shores--how caused we know not--are seen, but heard not, the
+white melancholy breakers! Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! But
+ere the thanksgiving has been worded, an airquake has split asunder the
+cloud-city, the night within the day, and all its towers and temples are
+disordered along the firmament, to a sound that might waken the dead.
+Where are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to purchase gunpowder
+explosions on Lowood bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See!
+there are our artillerymen stalking from battery to battery--all hung up
+aloft facing the west--or "each standing by his gun" with lighted match,
+moving or motionless, Shadow-figures, and all clothed in black-blue
+uniform, with blood-red facings portentously glancing in the sun, as he
+strives to struggle into heaven. The Generalissimo of all the forces,
+who is he but--Spring?--Hand in hand with Spring, Sabbath descends from
+heaven unto earth; and are not their feet beautiful on the mountains?
+Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from that humble spire,
+overtopped by its coeval trees, yet is it heard in the heart of
+infinitude. So is the bleating of these silly sheep on the braes--and
+so is that voice of psalms, all at once rising so spirit-like, as if the
+very kirk were animated, and singing a joyous song in the wilderness to
+the ear of the Most High. For all things are under his care--those that,
+as we dream, have no life--the flowers, and the herbs, and the
+trees--those that some dim scripture seems to say, when they die,
+utterly perish--and those that all bright scripture, whether written in
+the book of God, or the book of Nature, declares will live for ever!
+
+If such be the character and conduct of Spring during one week, wilt
+thou not forget and forgive--with us--much occasional conduct on his
+part that appears not only inexplicable, but incomprehensible? But we
+cannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn. SUMMER is a
+season come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himself
+like a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing,
+his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way
+to make his best friends ashamed of him--in a way absolutely disgraceful
+to a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with the
+Sun--his benefactor, nay, his father--what else could he expect but that
+that enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenance
+from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel along
+the mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky--and
+sullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By-and-by, like
+a great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper--and when he found
+that would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Still
+the Sun would not look on him--or if he did, 'twas with a sudden and
+short half-smile half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last the
+Summer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving, the one burst out into a
+flood of tears, the other into a flood of light. In simple words, the
+Summer wept and the Sun smiled--and for one broken month there was a
+perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! How beautiful is penitence!
+How beautiful forgiveness! For one week the Summer was restored to his
+pristine peace and old luxuriance, and the desert blossomed like the
+rose.
+
+Therefore ask we the Summer's pardon for thanking Heaven that he was
+dead. Would that he were alive again, and buried not for ever beneath
+the yellow forest leaves! O thou first, faint, fair, finest tinge of
+dawning Light that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking face of
+the morn, Light and no-Light, a shadowy Something, that as we gaze is
+felt to be growing into an emotion that must be either Innocence or
+Beauty, or both blending together into devotion before Deity, once more
+duly visible in the divine colouring that forebodes another day to
+mortal life--before Thee what holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward in
+some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble with dewdrops, and the
+happy little birds are beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the
+boughs--before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, and breathe deeper and
+deeper--as the lustre waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more bright,
+till range after range arise of crimson clouds in altitude sublime, and
+breast above breast expands of yellow woods softly glittering in their
+far-spread magnificence--then what holy bliss to breathe deeper and
+deeper unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand the heavens and the
+earth, our high but most humble orisons! But now it is Day, and broad
+awake seems the whole joyful world. The clouds--lustrous no more--are
+all anchored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for the wind. Time is
+not felt--and one might dream that the Day was to endure for ever. Yet
+the great river rolls on in the light--and why will he leave those
+lovely inland woods for the naked shores? Why--responds some
+voice--hurry we on our own lives--impetuous and passionate far more than
+he with all his cataracts--as if anxious to forsake the regions of the
+upper day for the dim place from which we yet recoil in fear--the dim
+place which imagination sometimes seems to see even through the
+sunshine, beyond the bourne of this our unintelligible being, stretching
+sea-like into a still more mysterious night! Long as a Midsummer Day is,
+it has gone by like a Heron's flight. The sun is setting!--and let him
+set without being scribbled upon by Christopher North. We took a
+pen-and-ink sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere." Poor nature is much
+to be pitied among painters and poets. They are perpetually falling into
+
+    "Such perusal of her face
+    As they would draw it."
+
+And often must she be sick of the Curious Impertinents. But a Curious
+Impertinent are not we--if ever there was one beneath the skies, a
+devout worshipper of Nature; and though we often seem to heed not her
+shrine--it stands in our imagination, like a temple in a perpetual
+Sabbath.
+
+It was poetically and piously said by the Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes,
+that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. Take Summer, which
+early in our soliloquy we abused in good set terms. Its weather was
+broken, but not bad; and much various beauty and sublimity is involved
+in the epithet "broken," when applied to the "season of the year."
+Commonplace people, especially town-dwellers, who _flit_ into the
+country for a few months, have a silly and absurd idea of Summer, which
+all the atmospherical phenomena fail to drive out of their foolish
+fancies. They insist on its remaining with us for half a year at least,
+and on its being dressed in its Sunday's best every day in the week as
+long as they continue in country quarters. The Sun must rise, like a
+labourer, at the very earliest hour, shine all day, and go to bed late,
+else they treat him contumeliously, and declare that he is not worth his
+meat. Should he retire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems most
+natural and reasonable for one to do who lives so much in the public
+eye, why, a whole watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfied
+expostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is the Sun? Are we never to
+have any Sun?" They also insist that there shall be no rain of more than
+an hour's duration in the daytime, but that it shall all fall by night.
+Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and is
+shining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred green
+parasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in his
+chariot. A _broken_ summer for us. Now and then a few continuous
+days--perhaps a whole week--but, if that be denied, now and then,
+
+    "Like angels' visits, few and far between,"
+
+one single Day--blue-spread over heaven, green-spread over earth--no
+cloud above, no shade below, save that dove-coloured marble lying
+motionless like the mansions of peace, and that pensive gloom that falls
+from some old castle or venerable wood--the stillness of a sleeping joy,
+to our heart profounder than that of death, in the air, in the sky, and
+resting on our mighty mother's undisturbed breast--no lowing on the
+hills, no bleating on the braes--the rivers almost silent as lochs, and
+the lochs, just visible in their aerial purity, floating dream-like
+between earth and sky, imbued with the beauty of both, and seeming to
+belong to either, as the heart melts to human tenderness, or beyond all
+mortal loves the imagination soars! Such days seem now to us--as memory
+and imagination half restore and half create the past into such weather
+as may have shone over the bridal morn of our first parents in
+Paradise--to have been frequent--nay, to have lasted all the Summer
+long--when our boyhood was bright from the hands of God. Each of those
+days was in itself a life! Yet all those sunny lives melted into one
+Summer--and all those Summers formed one continuous bliss. Storms and
+snows vanished out of our ideal year; and then morning, noon, and night,
+wherever we breathed, we _felt_, what now we but _know_, the inmost
+meaning of that profound verse of Virgil the Divine--
+
+    "Devenere locos laetos, et amoena vireta
+    Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.
+    Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
+    Purpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt."
+
+Few--no such days as those seem now ever to be born. Sometimes we indeed
+gaze through the face into the heart of the sky, and for a moment feel
+that the ancient glory of the heavens has returned on our dream of life.
+But to the perfect beatitude of the skies there comes from the soul
+within us a mournful response, that betokens some wide and deep--some
+everlasting change. Joy is not now what joy was of yore; like a fine
+diamond with a flaw is now Imagination's eye; other motes than those
+that float through ether cross between its orb and the sun; the "fine
+gold has become dim," with which morning and evening of old embossed the
+skies; the dewdrops are not now the pearls once they were, left on
+
+    "Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers,"
+
+by angels' and by fairies' wings; knowledge, custom, experience, fate,
+fortune, error, vice, and sin, have dulled, and darkened, and deadened
+all things; and the soul, unable to bring over the Present the ineffable
+bliss and beauty of the Past, almost swoons to think what a ghastly
+thunder-gloom may by Providence be reserved for the Future!
+
+Nay--nay--things are not altogether so bad with us as this
+strain--sincere though it be as a stream from the sacred
+mountains--might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a _broken_ Summer. It
+would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the
+Highland hills, _sans_ great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower,
+aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny
+blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs.
+Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the
+thermometer keeps ranging between 60 deg. and 70 deg., three times a-day. What
+refreshment in the very sound--Soaking! Old bones wax dry--nerves
+numb--sinews stiff--flesh frail--and there is a sad drawback on the
+Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our
+craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the
+approach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizens
+of heaven; how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee are
+streaming, and gleaming athwart the sunny mountain-gloom, while ever as
+they descend on earth, lift up the streams along the wilderness louder
+and louder a choral song. Look now at the heather--and smile whenever
+henceforth you hear people talk of _purple_. You have been wont to call
+a gold guinea or a sovereign _yellow_--but if you have got one in your
+pocket, place it on your palm, and in the light of that broom is it not
+a _dirty brown_? You have an emerald ring on your finger--but how grey
+it looks beside the _green_ of those brackens, that pasture, that wood!
+Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, sir, for the first time in
+your life. Widening and widening over your head, all the while you have
+been gazing on the heather, the broom, the bracken, the pastures, and
+the woods, have the eternal heavens been preparing for you a vision of
+the sacred _Blue_. Is not that an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn that
+mercantile and manufacturing image, steal that blue from the sky, and
+let the lady of your love tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and a
+saintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as she beseeches Heaven to
+bless thee in her prayers! Set slowly--slowly--slowly--O Sun of Suns! as
+may be allowed by the laws of Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunk
+behind those mountains into the sea, will that celestial ROSY-RED be
+tabernacled in the heavens!
+
+Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have so soaked and steeped our old
+crazy carcass in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of youth,
+that we should not be surprised were we to outlive that raven croaking
+in pure _gaiete du coeur_ on the cliff. Threescore and ten years!
+Poo--'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers--for twenty
+years more keep to the Highland fling--and at the close of other twenty,
+jig it into the grave to that matchless strathspey, the Reel of
+Tullochgorum!
+
+Having thus made our peace with last Summer, can we allow the Sun to go
+down on our wrath towards the AUTUMN, whose back we yet see on the
+horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I
+meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season,
+and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two
+smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell,
+and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat,
+and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener
+and greener--reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and
+cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill,
+with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, and
+with unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dream
+of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvest
+treading on the heels of Christmas,
+
+    "And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"
+
+when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions of foolish and false
+prophets, came rustling from all the airts, far, far and wide over the
+rain-drenched kingdom, the great armament of the Autumnal Winds! Groaned
+the grain, as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its head, and knew
+that again the Sun was in Heaven. Death became life; and the hearts of
+the husbandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the reapers brandished
+their sickles in the breezy light, and every field glittered with
+Christian crescents. Auld wives and bits o' weans mingled on the
+rig--kilted to the knees, like the comely cummers, and the handsome
+hizzies, and the lo'esome lassies wi' their silken snoods--among the
+heather-legged Highlandmen, and the bandy Irishers, brawny all, and with
+hook, scythe, or flail, inferior to none of the children of men. The
+scene lies in Scotland--but now, too, is England "Merry England"
+indeed, and outside passengers on a thousand coaches see stooks rising
+like stacks, and far and wide, over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice
+in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest
+of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last
+ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over
+in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields
+now--but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or
+stony soil--are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, but
+some stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, as
+the huge wains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by the gates they
+hide, and then, crested perhaps with laughing boys and girls,
+
+    "Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings,"
+
+no--not rings--for Beattie, in that admirable line, lets us hear a cart
+going out empty in the morning--but with a _cheerful dull_ sound,
+ploughing along the black soil, _the clean dirt_ almost up to the
+axletree, and then, as the wheels, rimmed you might always think with
+silver, reach the road, macadamised till it acts like a railway, how
+glides along downhill the moving mountain! And see now, the growing
+Stack glittering with a charge of pitchforks! The trams fly up from
+Dobbin's back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the mire. Up they go,
+tossed from sinewy arms like feathers, and the Stack grows before your
+eyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, without line or measure, but
+shaped by the look and the feel, true almost as the spring instinct of
+the nest-building bird. And are we not heartily ashamed of ourselves,
+amidst this general din of working mirthfulness, for having, but an hour
+ago, abused the jovial and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven that he
+was dead? Let us retire into the barn with Shoosy, and hide our blushes.
+
+Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore for one paragraph let us
+compare AUTUMN with SPRING. Suppose ourselves sitting beneath THE
+SYCAMORE of Windermere! Poets call Spring Green-Mantle--and true it is
+that the groundwork of his garb is green--even like that of the proud
+peacock's changeful neck, when the creature treads in the circle of his
+own splendour, and the scholar who may have forgotten his classics, has
+yet a dream of Juno and of her watchful Argus with his hundred, his
+thousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, like that of Joseph, is a coat of
+many colours. Call it patch-work if you choose,
+
+    "And be yourself the great sublime you draw."
+
+Some people look on nature with a milliner's or a mantua-maker's
+eye--arraying her in furbelows and flounces. But use your own eyes and
+ours, and from beneath THE SYCAMORE let us two, sitting together in
+amity, look lovingly on the SPRING. Felt ever your heart before, with
+such an emotion of harmonious beauty, the exquisitely delicate
+distinctions of character among the lovely tribes of trees! That is
+BELLE ISLE. Earliest to salute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of green
+gentle as its own, is the lake-loving ALDER, whose home, too, is by the
+flowings of all the streams. Just one degree fainter in its hue--or
+shall we rather say brighter--for we feel the difference without knowing
+in what it lies--stands, by the Alder's rounded softness, the spiral
+LARCH, all hung over its limber sprays, were you near enough to admire
+them, with cones of the Tyrian dye. That stem, white as silver, and
+smooth as silk, seen so straight in the green sylvan light, and there
+airily overarching the coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy might
+picture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant as is her life on that
+Fortunate Isle, is yet said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadness
+to unsorrowing things--to belong to a Tree that _weeps_,--though a
+weight of joy it is, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses the
+BIRCH'S pendent beauty, till it droops--as we think--like that of a
+being overcome with grief! Seen standing all along by themselves, with
+something of a foreign air, and an exotic expression, yet not unwelcome
+or obtrusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, twinkling to the
+touch of every wandering wind, and restless even amidst what seemeth now
+to be everlasting rest, we cannot choose but admire that somewhat darker
+grove of columnar Lombardy POPLARS. How comes it that some SYCAMORES so
+much sooner than others salute the Spring? Yonder are some but budding,
+as if yet the frost lay on the honey-dew that protects the beamy germs.
+There are others warming into expansion, half-budded and half-leaved,
+with a various light of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly from
+afar. And in that nook of the still sunnier south, trending eastward, a
+few are almost in their full summer foliage, and soon will the bees be
+swarming among their flowers. A HORSE CHESTNUT has a grand oriental air,
+and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yellowing in the light--that
+shows he belongs to the line of the Prophet. ELMS are then most
+magnificent--witness Christ-Church walk--when they hang over head in
+heaven like the chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are the
+august--and methinks "a dim religious light" is in that vault of
+branches just vivifying to the Spring, and though almost bare, tinged
+with a coming hue that ere long will be majestic brightness. Those old
+OAKS seem sullen in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their power,
+like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. But they, too, are relaxing
+from their wonted sternness--soon will that faint green be a glorious
+yellow; and while the gold-laden boughs stoop boldly to the storms with
+which they love to dally, bounds not the heart of every Briton to the
+music of his national anthem,
+
+    "Rule, Britannia,
+    Britannia rules the waves!"
+
+The ASH is a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and
+yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the
+docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town of Kilkenny
+
+    "It shines well where it stands;"
+
+and the bare grey-blue of the branches, apart but not repulsive, like
+some cunning discord in music, deepens the harmony of the Isle of
+Groves. Contrast is one of the finest of all the laws of association, as
+every philosopher, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment, it brings, by
+the bonds of beauty, though many glades intervene, close beside that
+pale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-green PINE Clan,
+whose "leaf fadeth never," a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the
+English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest
+that BELLE ISLE is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all
+over--bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some
+tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns,
+on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and
+gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of
+nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substance
+purer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night on
+the mountain-top! Trees are they--fruit-trees--The WILD CHERRY, that
+grows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood--and can
+that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of old
+in the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens into
+pink--yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purity
+of the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virgin
+lips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a glad
+fond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his arms
+open to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smiles
+that are almost tears, within her father's bosom.
+
+              "As when to those who sail
+    Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
+    Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
+    Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
+    Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
+    Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,
+    Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."
+
+Shut your eyes--suppose five months gone--and lo! BELLE ISLE in Autumn,
+like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frost
+in the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still as
+midnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand Robin
+Redbreast--God bless him!--is warbling on the copestone of that old barn
+gable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct the
+clank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its
+slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of the
+Queen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness,
+yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and how close
+together seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two opposite
+shores! But we wish you to look at BELLE ISLE, though we ourselves are
+almost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that we
+know will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured.--Could you
+not think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the
+Isle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yet
+they burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, as
+in a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, and
+reigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all the
+canopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hung with
+the richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forth
+in gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in the
+air of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of these
+Palaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living and
+dying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration,
+with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No names
+of trees are remembered--a glorious confusion comprehends in one the
+whole leafy race--orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all
+seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye
+felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable
+in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trance
+goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takes
+down all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment with
+less of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses each
+one of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less and
+less glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all the
+happiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoples
+the melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may return
+never more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in the
+dust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips have
+declared--melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets--till the
+pensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac and
+foreboding hymns--as is the Race of Leaves--now old Homer speaks--so is
+the Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any
+creature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those mysterious
+misgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysterious
+still, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God,
+and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these--the earthly, in
+its sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:--
+
+    "But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?
+    Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"
+
+
+
+
+SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.
+
+SECOND RHAPSODY.
+
+
+Have we not been speaking of all the Seasons as belonging to the
+masculine gender? They are generally, we believe, in this country,
+painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, as may be daily seen in the
+pretty prints that bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns.
+Spring is always there represented as a spanker in a blue symar, very
+pertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, in
+a style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of that
+shamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She
+holds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, or
+primrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubt
+does look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood of
+the Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey, _in
+puris naturalibus_, meant to image Musidora, or the Medicean, or rather
+the Hottentot Venus.
+
+    "So stands the statue that enchants the world!"
+
+She seems, at the very lightest, a good round half hundred heavier than
+Spring; and, when you imagine her plunging into the pool, you think you
+hear a porpus. May no Damon run away with her clothes, leaving behind in
+exchange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dogdays, and should one
+"imparadise himself in form of that sweet flesh," there will be a cry in
+the woods that will speedily bring to her assistance Pan and all his
+Satyrs. Autumn is a motherly matron, evidently _enceinte_, and, like
+Love and Charity, who probably are smiling on the opposite wall, she has
+a brace of bouncing babies at her breast--in her right hand a formidable
+sickle, like a Turkish scymitar--in her left an extraordinary utensil,
+bearing, we believe, the heathenish appellation of cornucopia--on her
+back a sheaf of wheat--and on her head a diadem--planted there by John
+Barleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as ugly a customer as a lonely man
+would wish to encounter beneath the light of a September moon. On her
+feet are bauchles--on her legs huggers--and the breadth of her soles,
+and the thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own conjectures. Her
+fine bust is conspicuous in an open laced boddice--and her huge hips are
+set off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket that she seems to have
+picked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from a
+long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid
+of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less
+resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old
+beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble
+fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the
+melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated
+with frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained in iciness, and
+an old stump, half buried in the drift. Poor old, miserable, cowering
+crone! One cannot look at her without unconsciously putting one's hand
+in his pocket, and fumbling for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in the
+picture, especially while, on turning round your head, you behold a big
+blockhead of a vulgar bagman, with his coat-tails over his arms, warming
+his loathsome hideousness at a fire that would roast an ox.
+
+Such are the Seasons! And though we have spoken of them, as mere critics
+on art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always no
+inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, or
+prose-works, that--pardon our tautology--are popular with the people.
+The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations of
+persons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the old
+masters; so that, though the conception is good, the execution is, in
+general, far from perfect. Yet many a time, when lying at our ease in a
+Wayside Inn, stretched on three wooden chairs, with a little round
+deal-table before us, well laden with oatmeal cakes and cheese and
+butter, nor, you may be sure, without its "tappit hen"--have we after a
+long day's journey--perhaps the longest day--
+
+    "Through moors and mosses many, O,"
+
+regarded with no imaginative spirit--when Joseph and his brethren were
+wanting--even such symbols of the Seasons as these--while arose to
+gladden us many as fair an image as ever nature sent from her woods and
+wildernesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimage
+to her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop
+his head below the lowest lintel, and held all men his equal who earned
+by honest industry the scanty fare which they never ate without those
+holy words of supplication and thanksgiving, "Give us this day our daily
+bread!"
+
+Our memory is a treasure-house of written and unwritten poetry--the
+ingots, the gifts of the great bards, and the bars of bullion--much of
+the coin our own--some of it borrowed mayhap, but always on good
+security, and repaid with interest--a legal transaction, of which even a
+not unwealthy man has no need to be ashamed--none of it stolen, nor yet
+found where the Highlandman found the tongs. But our riches are like
+those that encumbered the floor of the Sanctum of the Dey of Algiers,
+not very tidily arranged; and we are frequently foiled in our efforts to
+lay our hand, for immediate use or ornament, on a ducat or a diamond, a
+pistole or a pearl, a sovereign, or only his crown. We feel ourselves at
+this moment in that predicament, when trying to recollect the genders of
+Thomson's "Seasons"--
+
+    "Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
+    And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
+    While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
+    Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!"
+
+That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination,
+and there is not a syllable about sex--though "ethereal mildness," which
+is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a
+Virgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that dwell between heaven and
+earth must love. Never to our taste--but our taste is inferior to our
+feeling and our genius--though you will seldom go far wrong even in
+trusting it--never had a poem a more beautiful beginning. It is not
+simple--nor ought it to be--it is rich, and even gorgeous--for the Bard
+came to his subject full of inspiration; and as it was the inspiration,
+here, not of profound thought, but of passionate emotion, it was right
+that music at the very first moment should overflow the page, and that
+it should be literally strewed with roses. An imperfect Impersonation is
+often proof positive of the highest state of poetical enthusiasm. The
+forms of nature undergo a half humanising process under the intensity of
+our love, yet still retain the character of the insensate creation, thus
+affecting us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, blended emotion
+that scarcely belongs to either separately, but to both together clings
+as to a phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, because only the
+soul of genius can give it a presence--though afterwards all eyes dimly
+recognise it, on its being shown to them, as something more vivid than
+their own faint experience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually one
+and the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understand
+and feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarest
+genius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break their
+harps, and go drown themselves in Helicon.
+
+    "From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
+    Child of the Sun, refulgent SUMMER comes,
+    In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
+    He comes attended by the sultry hours,
+    And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;
+    While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
+    Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,
+    All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."
+
+Here the Impersonation is stronger--and perhaps the superior strength
+lies in the words "child of the Sun." And here in the words describing
+Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other
+passage--averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The
+poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine;
+and 'tis a jewel of a picture--for ladies should always avert their
+blushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed,
+elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks of
+his mistress,--
+
+    "From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
+    Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
+    With sighing languishment."
+
+This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as
+delicate as it is natural; but for our own simple and single selves, we
+never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we
+cannot deny--if we did, the most credulous would not credit us--much
+agitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixing
+upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which
+the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the
+better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her
+affianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all our
+long lives got we absolutely _sick_--nor even _squeamish_--never were we
+obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth--but, on the contrary,
+we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too
+luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring for
+a few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself
+down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals.
+However, we are not now writing our Confessions--and what we wished to
+say about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented as
+turning away the face from that of the other, which may be all natural
+enough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and,
+had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would have
+read better in poetry. But for Spring to avert _his_ blushful face from
+the ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasons
+seem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness," was
+unquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to the
+toe," and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed his
+boyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of his
+own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not
+fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful
+of cold water.
+
+    "Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
+    While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
+    Comes jovial on," &c.,
+
+is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the
+sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So
+far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'er
+the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature--and
+descriptive of the growing and ripening or ripened harvest--whereas it
+is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is
+not obscurity--or indistinctness--which, as we have said before, is
+often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a
+contradiction--and therefore indefensible on any ground either of
+conception or expression.
+
+"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle of
+Indolence"--for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration to
+thought--and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, became
+celestial as an angel's song.
+
+    "See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
+    Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,
+    Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
+    These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
+    And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
+    Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
+    Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
+    When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,
+    And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
+    Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;
+    Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
+    Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;
+    Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd
+    In the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,
+    Till through the lucid chambers of the south
+    Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"
+
+Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read by the bedside of a
+dying lover of nature, might
+
+    "Create a soul
+    Under the ribs of death!"
+
+What in the name of goodness makes us suppose that a mean, and miserable
+November day, even while we are thus Rhapsodising, is drizzling all
+Edinburgh with the worst of all imaginable Scottish mists--an Easterly
+Haur? We know that he infests all the year, but shows his poor spite in
+its bleakest bitterness in March and in November. Earth and heaven are
+not only not worth looking at in an Easterly Haur, but the Visible is
+absolute wretchedness, and people wonder why they were born. The
+visitation begins with a sort of characterless haze, waxing more and
+more wetly obscure, till you know not whether it be rain, snow, or
+sleet, that drenches your clothes in dampness, till you feel it in your
+skin, then in your flesh, then in your bones, then in your marrow, and
+then in your mind. Your blinking eyes have it too--and so, shut it as
+you will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, though looking blue,
+are not puddled, and the dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is no
+eavesdropping--no gushing of waterspouts. To say it rained would be no
+breach of veracity, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy fact. The
+truth is, that _the weather cannot rain_, but keeps spit, spit,
+spitting, in a style sufficient to irritate Socrates--or even Moses
+himself; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, and authentic Rain
+could not--or if he could would not--so thoroughly soak you and your
+whole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day to do it, as that shabby
+imitation of a tenth-rate shower, in about the time of a usual sized
+sermon. So much cold and so much wet, with so little to show for it, is
+a disgrace to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the sunniest
+the weather can afford to wipe off. But the stores of sunniness which it
+is in the power of Winter in this northern latitude to accumulate,
+cannot be immense; and therefore we verily believe that it would be too
+much to expect that it ever can make amends for the hideous horrors of
+this Easterly Haur. The Cut-throat!
+
+On such days suicides rush to judgment. That sin is mysterious as
+insanity--their graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh!
+the brain and the heart of man! Therein is the only Hell. Small these
+regions in space, and of narrow room--but haunted may they be with all
+the Fiends and all the Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul despair
+or bliss. At the touch of something--whence and wherefore sent, who can
+say--something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars--she soars up
+into life and light, just as you may have seen a dove suddenly cleave
+the sunshine--or down she dives into death and darkness, like a shot
+eagle tumbling into the sea!
+
+Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should mortals, whom conscience tells
+that they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon the
+dust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dust
+dies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not that
+spirit its immortality in each sacred thought? When did ever religious
+soul fear annihilation? Or shudder to think that, having once known, it
+could ever forget God? Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternal
+death. Therefore is eternal death impossible to us who can hold
+communion with our Maker. Our knowledge of Him--dim and remote though it
+be--is a God-given pledge that He will redeem us from the doom of the
+grave.
+
+Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with Coleridge, in his
+beautiful poem of the "Nightingale," that
+
+    "In Nature there is nothing melancholy,"
+
+not even November. The disease of the body may cause disease in the
+soul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful--not the
+less strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which is
+within us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like an
+earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead.
+Heaven seems to have placed a power in our Will as mighty as it is
+mysterious. Call it not Liberty, lest you should wax proud; call it not
+Necessity, lest you should despair. But turn from the oracles of
+man--still dim even in their clearest responses--to the Oracles of God,
+which are never dark; or if so, but
+
+    "Dark with excessive bright"
+
+to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain the splendour. Bury all
+your books, when you feel the night of scepticism gathering around
+you--bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spells to
+illuminate the unfathomable--open your Bible, and all the spiritual
+world will be as bright as day.
+
+The disease of the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Some
+rapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingering
+death;--some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence life
+worse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of the
+grave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of meaning that
+ever was written, is--
+
+    "Mens sana in corpore sano."
+
+When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, what
+unutterable gladness bathes the spirit in that one feeling of--health!
+Then the mere consciousness of existence is like that emotion which
+Milton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Paradise--
+
+    "Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
+    All sadness but despair"
+
+It does more--for despair itself cannot prevail against it. What a dawn
+of bliss rises upon us with the dawn of light, when our life is
+healthful as the sun! Then
+
+    "It feels that it is greater than it knows."
+
+God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and at
+the uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in upon
+the spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if the
+enjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, and
+her absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over the
+ethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disordered
+matter!--from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the last
+scowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed the
+fatal fetters upon them--they see even that a link may be open, and that
+one effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery,
+and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a sudden
+sunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence is
+changed, and they see the very vanishing of their most dismal and
+desperate dream.
+
+"Somewhat too much of this"--so let us strike the chords to a merrier
+measure--to a "livelier lilt"--as suits the variable spirit of our
+Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting
+rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not
+suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes
+their very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation,
+which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will
+these dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with the
+proceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worst
+comes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escape
+the galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the
+shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like a
+criminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from hand to
+hand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of the
+most impatient of men--and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, the
+most patient of men and women--we often stand shut up in that
+sentry-looking canvass box, dexterously and sinistrously fingering the
+string, perhaps for five shrinking, and shuddering, and _grueing_
+minutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down upon ourselves
+the rushing waterfall! Soon as the agony is over, we bounce out the
+colour of beetroot, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with an
+amazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as fresh as when
+we first experienced it,
+
+    "In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."
+
+By-and-by we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that has
+leapt out of the pan--and then, seeming for a while to be an
+emblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we sober
+down into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside into
+our own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back upon
+ourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, reminds
+us of that line in Cowper descriptive of the November Moon--
+
+    "Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"
+
+Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed--we feel strong as the
+horse in Homer--a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the
+subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self--not
+self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world
+from selfishness--elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest
+regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of
+which every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the
+dogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot than
+Grimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficulties
+seem now--what they really are--facilities of which we are by far too
+much elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to appear appalling
+are felt now to be lulling securities--obstacles, like mountains, lying
+in our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus,
+we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and we
+kick them aside like an old footstool. Let the country ask us for a
+scheme to pay off the national debt--_there she has it_; do you request
+us to have the kindness to leap over the moon--here we go; excellent Mr
+Blackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article is
+in his hand, promotive of the sale of countless numbers of "my
+Magazine," and of the happiness of countless numbers of mankind. We
+feel--and the feeling proves the fact--as bold as Joshua the son of
+Nun--as brave as David the son of Jesse--as wise as Solomon the son of
+David--and as proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopolazzar. We survey
+our image in the mirror--and think of Adam. We put ourselves into the
+posture of the Belvidere Apollo.
+
+    "Then view the Lord of the unerring bow,
+    The God of life, and poesy, and light,
+    The Sun in human arms array'd, and brow
+    All radiant from his triumph in the fight.
+    The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright
+    With an immortal vengeance; in his eye
+    And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
+    And majesty flash their full lightnings by,
+    Developing in that one glance the Deity."
+
+Up four flight of stairs we fly--for the bath is in the double-sunk
+story--ten steps at a bound--and in five minutes have devoured one
+quartern loaf, six eggs, and a rizzar, washing all over with a
+punch-bowl of congou and a tea-bowl of coffee.
+
+                      "Enormous breakfast,
+    Wild without rule or art! Where nature plays
+    Her virgin fancies."
+
+And then, leaning back on our Easy-chair, we perform an exploit beyond
+the reach of Euclid--why, WE SQUARE THE CIRCLE, and to the utter
+demolition of our admirable friend Sir David Brewster's diatribe, in a
+late number of the _Quarterly Review_, on the indifference of Government
+to men of science, chuckle over our nobly-won order K.C.C.B., Knight
+Companion of the Cold Bath.
+
+Many analogies between the seasons of the year and the seasons of life,
+being natural, have been a frequent theme of poetry in all countries.
+Had the gods made us poetical, we should now have poured forth, a few
+exquisite illustrations of some that are very affecting and impressive.
+It has, however, often been felt by us, that not a few of those one
+meets with in the lamentations of whey-faced sentimentalists, are false
+or fantastic, and do equal violence to all the seasons, both of the year
+and of life. These gentry have been especially silly upon the similitude
+of Old Age to Winter. Winter, in external nature, is not the season of
+decay. An old tree, for example, in the very _dead_ of winter, as it is
+figuratively called, though bare of leaves, is full of life. The sap,
+indeed, has sunk down from his bole and branches--down into his toes or
+roots. But there it is, ready, in due time, to reascend. Not so with an
+old man--the present company always excepted;--his sap is not sunk down
+to his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the system--therefore,
+individual natural objects in Winter are not analogically emblematical
+of people stricken in years. Far less does the Winter itself of the
+year, considered as a season, resemble the old age of life considered as
+a season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the character and conduct of
+aged gentlemen in general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow,
+winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occasional thunder and lightning,
+bear analogy? We pause for a reply. Old men's heads, it is true, are
+frequently white, though more frequently bald, and their blood is not so
+hot as when they were springalds. But though there be no great harm in
+likening a sprinkling of white hair on mine ancient's temples to the
+appearance of the surface of the earth, flat or mountainous, after a
+slight fall of snow--and indeed, in an impassioned state of mind, we
+feel a moral beauty in such poetical expression as "sorrow shedding on
+the head of youth its untimely snows"--yet the natural propriety of such
+an image, so far from justifying the assertion of a general analogy
+between Winter and Old Age, proves that the analogies between them are
+in fact very few, and felt to be analogies at all, only when touched
+upon very seldom, and very slightly, and, for the most part, very
+vaguely--the truth being, that they scarcely exist at all in reality,
+but have an existence given to them by the power of creative passion,
+which often works like genius. Shakespeare knew this well--as he knew
+everything else; and, accordingly, he gives us Seven Ages of Life--not
+Four Seasons. But how finely does he sometimes, by the mere use of the
+names of the Seasons of the Year, intensify to our imagination the
+mental state to which they are for the moment felt to be analogous?--
+
+    "Now is the winter of our discontent
+    Made glorious summer by the sun of York!"
+
+That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, is inspired; and the
+further analogical images which follow add nothing to _our_ feeling,
+though they show the strength and depth of _his_ into whose lips they
+are put. A bungler would have bored us with ever so many ramifications
+of the same idea, on one of which, in our weariness, we might have
+wished him hanged by the neck till he was dead.
+
+We are an Old Man, and though single not singular; yet, without vanity,
+we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like Winter, in
+particular, than we are like Spring, Summer, or Autumn. The truth is,
+that we are much less like any one of the Seasons, than we are like the
+whole Set. Is not Spring sharp? So are we. Is not Spring snappish? So
+are we. Is not Spring boisterous? So are we. Is not Spring "beautiful
+exceedingly?" So are we. Is not Spring capricious? So are we. Is not
+Spring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest,
+modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures that
+steal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for our
+similitude--a staring and striking one--to Spring. But were you to stop
+there, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For only
+ask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer.
+Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes
+cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does not Summer love the shade? So
+do we. Is not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too much i' the sun?" So
+are we. Is not Summer famous for its thunder and lightning? So are we.
+Is not Summer, when he chooses, still, silent, and serene as a sleeping
+seraph? And so too--when Christopher chooses--are not we? Though, with
+keen remorse we confess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are too
+often more like a fury or a fiend--and that completes the likeness; for
+all who know a Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaim--"So is he!" But
+our portrait is but half-drawn; you know but a moiety of our character.
+Is Autumn jovial?--ask Thomson--so are we. Is Autumn melancholy?--ask
+Alison and Gillespie--so are we. Is Autumn bright?--ask the woods and
+groves--so are we. Is Autumn rich?--ask the whole world--so are we. Does
+Autumn rejoice in the yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, stored
+up in his great Magazine of Nature, are lavishly thence dispensed to all
+that hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? So do we. After that,
+no one can be so pur-and-bat-blind as not see that North is, in very
+truth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his Likeness or Eidolon.
+But--
+
+    "Lo, Winter comes to rule th' inverted year!"
+
+So do we,
+
+    "Sullen and sad, with all his rising train--
+    Vapours, and clouds, and storms!"
+
+So are we. The great author of the "Seasons" says, that Winter and his
+train
+
+        "Exalt the soul to solemn thought,
+    And heavenly musing!"
+
+So do we. And, "lest aught less great should stamp us mortal," here we
+conclude the comparison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of a great
+master, and ask, Is not North, Winter? Thus, listener after our own
+heart! thou feelest that we are imaged aright in all our attributes
+neither by Spring, nor Summer, nor Autumn, nor Winter; but that the
+character of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected by the Entire
+Year.
+
+
+
+
+A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON.
+
+
+Poetry, one might imagine, must be full of Snow-scenes. If so, they have
+almost all dissolved--melted away from our memory--as the transiencies
+in nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's "Winter," of course,
+we do not include in our obliviousness--and from Cowper's "Task" we
+might quote many a most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost and snow
+been done full justice to by them or any other of our poets? They have
+been well spoken of by two--Southey and Coleridge--of whose most
+poetical compositions respectively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner,"
+in some future volume we may dissert. Thomson's genius does not so often
+delight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature as
+that of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objects
+off sweepingly by bold strokes--such, indeed, as have almost always
+distinguished the mighty masters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper
+sets nature before your eyes--Thomson before your imagination. Which do
+you prefer? Both. Be assured that both poets had pored night and day
+upon her--in all her aspects--and that she had revealed herself fully to
+both. But they, in their religion, elected different modes of
+worship--and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mind
+we love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are
+almost a Task--and sometimes the Task is out of Season. There is
+delightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard of
+Olney--glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam.
+Cowper paints trees--Thomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous
+lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Burrampooter--Cowper,
+in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, or
+awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to
+antithesis--a deceptive style of criticism--and see how Thomson sings
+of Snow. Why, in the following lines, as well as Christopher North in
+his Soliloquy on the Seasons--
+
+                    "The cherish'd fields
+    Put on their winter-robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current."
+
+Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature of an ocular spectrum.
+
+Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet
+"brown," where all that is motionless is white--
+
+                "The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their _brown_ inhabitants."
+
+That one word proves the poet. Does it not?
+
+The entire description from which these two sentences are selected by
+memory--a critic you may always trust to--is admirable; except in one or
+two places where Thomson seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic,
+and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceased
+to be perfectly natural. Thus--
+
+                          "Drooping, the ox
+    Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil."
+
+The image of the ox is as good as possible. We see him, and could paint
+him in oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the fruit of
+all his toils"--to which we freely acknowledge the worthy animal was
+well entitled--sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantastical. Call
+it doubtful--for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment.
+Again--
+
+                        "The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    _With looks of dumb despair._"
+
+The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepherd agreed with us--one
+night at Ambrose's--that the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreed
+with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any
+circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own
+feeling in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow
+their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds--
+
+                          "Then, sad dispersed,
+    Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow."
+
+For, as they disperse, they do look very sad--and no doubt are so; but
+had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and
+uniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging, but whole flocks
+had perished.
+
+You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines
+that occur soon after, and which are a noble example of the sweeping
+style of description which, we said above, characterises the genius of
+this sublime poet:--
+
+                  "From the bellowing east,
+    In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
+    Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains
+    At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
+    Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,
+    The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,
+    The valley to a shining mountain swells,
+    Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the sky."
+
+Well might the Bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when
+telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, addressed
+them in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast.
+"Shepherds," says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely by
+filling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up--
+
+    "Far off its coming _groan'd_,"
+
+and the poet was inspired. Had he not been so, he had not cried, "Baffle
+the raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurd
+expression.
+
+Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then
+try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet.
+People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. A
+line--two words--may show that they are the Muse's sons. How exquisitely
+does Burns picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change!
+
+    "The chilly frost beneath the silver beam,
+    Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!"
+
+Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit of perception--or
+conception--or memory--or whatever else you choose to call it; for our
+part, we call it genius--
+
+    "An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
+    _Breathes a blue film_, and in its mid career
+    Arrests the bickering stream."
+
+And afterwards, having frozen the entire stream into a "crystal
+pavement," how strongly doth he conclude thus--
+
+    "_The whole imprison'd river growls below._"
+
+Here, again, 'tis pleasant to see the peculiar genius of Cowper
+contrasted with that of Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting, for the
+most part, in tranquil images--for his life was passed amidst tranquil
+nature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power.
+Cowper says--
+
+                        "On the flood,
+    Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight
+    Lies undissolved, _while silently beneath,
+    And unperceived, the current steals away_."
+
+How many thousand times the lines we are now going to quote have been
+quoted, nobody can tell; but we quote them once more for the purpose of
+asking you, if you think that any one poet of this age could have
+written them--could have chilled one's very blood with such intense
+feeling of cold! Not one.
+
+    "In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,
+    _And to the stony deep his idle ship
+    Immediate seal'd_, he with his hapless crew,
+    Each full exerted at his several task,
+    _Froze into statues; to the cordage glued
+    The sailor, and the pilot to the helm!_"
+
+The oftener--the more we read the "Winter"--especially the last two or
+three hundred lines--the angrier is our wonder with Wordsworth for
+asserting that Thomson owed the national popularity that his "Winter"
+immediately won, to his "commonplace sentimentalities, and his vicious
+style!" Yet true it is, that he was sometimes guilty of both; and, but
+for his transcendent genius, they might have obscured the lustre of his
+fame. But such sins are not very frequent in the "Seasons," and were all
+committed in the glow of that fine and bold enthusiasm, which to his
+imagination arrayed all things, and all words, in a light that seemed to
+him at the time to be poetry--though sometimes it was but "false
+glitter." Admitting, then, that sometimes the style of the "Seasons" is
+somewhat too florid, we must not criticise single and separate passages,
+without holding in mind the character of the poet's genius and his
+inspirations. He luxuriates--he revels--he wantons--at once with an
+imaginative and a sensuous delight in nature. Besides, he was but young;
+and his great work was his first. He had not philosophised his poetical
+language, as Wordsworth himself has done, after long years of
+profoundest study of the laws of thought and speech. But in such study,
+while much is gained, may not something be lost? And is there not a
+charm in the free, flowing, chartered libertinism of the diction and
+versification of the "Seasons"--above all, in the closing strains of the
+"Winter," and in the whole of the "Hymn," which inspires a delight and
+wonder seldom breathed upon us--glorious poem, on the whole, as it
+is--from the more measured march of the "Excursion?"
+
+All those children of the Pensive Public who have been much at school,
+know Thomson's description of the wolves among the Alps, Apennines, and
+Pyrenees,
+
+    "Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!
+    Burning for blood, bony and gaunt and grim!" &c.
+
+The first fifteen lines are equal to anything in the whole range of
+English descriptive poetry; but the last ten are positively bad. Here
+they are:--
+
+    "The godlike face of man avails him nought!
+    Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance
+    The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze,
+    Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey.
+    But if, apprised of the severe attack,
+    The country be shut up, lured by the scent,
+    On churchyard drear (inhuman to relate!)
+    The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig
+    The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,
+    Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."
+
+Wild beasts do not like the look of the human eye--they think us ugly
+customers--and sometimes stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in an
+awkward but alarming attitude, of hunger mixed with fear. A single wolf
+seldom or never attacks a man. He cannot stand the face. But a person
+would need to have a godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an army of
+wolves some thousand strong. It would be the height of presumption in
+any man, though beautiful as Moore thought Byron, to attempt it. If so,
+then
+
+    "The godlike face of man avails him nought,"
+
+is, under the circumstances, ludicrous. Still more so is the trash about
+"beauty, force divine!" It is too much to expect of an army of wolves
+some thousand strong, "and hungry as the grave," that they should all
+fall down on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh and blood,
+merely because the young lady was so beautiful that she might have sat
+to Sir Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr Watts's "Souvenir." 'Tis
+all stuff, too, about the generous lion standing in softened gaze at
+beauty's bright glance. True, he has been known to look with a certain
+sort of soft surliness upon a pretty Caffre girl, and to walk past
+without eating her--but simply because, an hour or two before, he had
+dined on a Hottentot Venus. The secret lay not in his heart, but in his
+stomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely has
+Spenser changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of the
+attendant lion of
+
+    "Heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb!"
+
+But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it in this passage, has
+vulgarised and blurred by it the natural and inevitable emotion of
+terror and pity. Famished wolves _howking_ up the dead is a dreadful
+image--but "_inhuman to relate_," is not an expression heavily laden
+with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel,
+unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, is
+revolting, and miserably mars the terrible _truth_.
+
+    "Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."
+
+Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts only frightened? And
+wherein lies the specific difference between a shade and a ghost?
+Besides, if the ghosts were frightened, which they had good reason to
+be, why were not they off? We have frequently read of their wandering
+far from home, on occasions when they had no such excellent excuse to
+offer. This line, therefore, we have taken the liberty to erase from our
+pocket-copy of the "Seasons"--and to draw a few keelavine strokes over
+the rest of the passage--beginning with "man's godlike face."
+
+Go read, then, the opening of "Winter," and acknowledge that, of all
+climates and all countries, there are none within any of the zones of
+the earth that will bear a moment's comparison with those of Scotland.
+Forget the people if you can, and think only of the region. The lovely
+Lowlands undulating away into the glorious Highlands--the spirit of
+sublimity and the spirit of beauty one and the same, as it blends them
+in indissoluble union. Bury us alive in the dungeon's
+gloom--incommunicable with the light of day as the grave--it could not
+seal our eyes to the sight of Scotland. We should see it still by rising
+or by setting suns. Whatever blessed scene we chose to call on would
+become an instant apparition. Nor in that thick-ribbed vault would our
+eyes be deaf to her rivers and her seas. We should say our prayers to
+their music, and to the voice of the thunder on a hundred hills. We
+stand now in no need of senses. They are waxing dim--but our spirit may
+continue to brighten long as the light of love is allowed to dwell
+therein, thence proceeding over nature like a victorious morn.
+
+There are many beautiful passages in the poets about RAIN; but who ever
+sang its advent so passionately as in these strains?--
+
+                          "The effusive south
+    Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
+    Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
+    At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
+    Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees,
+    In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails
+    Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep
+    Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom:
+    Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,
+    Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
+    And full of every hope and every joy,
+    The wish of nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
+    Into a perfect calm, that not a breath
+    Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
+    Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
+    Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods diffused
+    In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
+    Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all
+    And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
+    Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
+    The falling verdure!"
+
+All that follows is, you know, as good--better it cannot be--till we
+come to the close, the perfection of poetry, and then sally out into the
+shower, and join the hymn of earth to heaven--
+
+    "The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
+    By such as wander through the forest walks,
+    Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves.
+    But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends
+    In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
+    And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap?
+    Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth;
+    And, while the milky nutriment distils,
+    Beholds the kindling country colour round."
+
+Thomson, they say, was too fond of epithets. Not he, indeed. Strike out
+one of the many there--and your sconce shall feel the crutch. A poet
+less conversant with nature would have feared to say, "sits on the
+horizon round _a settled gloom_," or rather, he would not have seen or
+thought it was a settled gloom; and, therefore, he could not have said--
+
+        ----"But lovely, gentle, kind,
+    And full of every hope and every joy,
+    _The wish of Nature._"
+
+Leigh Hunt--most vivid of poets, and most cordial of critics--somewhere
+finely speaks of a ghastly line in a poem of Keats'--
+
+    "Riding to Florence with the murder'd man;"
+
+that is, the man about to be murdered--imagination conceiving as one,
+doom and death. Equally great are the words--
+
+                      "Herds and flocks
+    Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
+    The falling verdure."
+
+The verdure is seen in the shower--to be the very shower--by the poet at
+least--perhaps by the cattle, in their thirsty hunger forgetful of the
+brown ground, and swallowing the dropping herbage. The birds had not
+been so sorely distressed by the drought as the beasts, and therefore
+the poet speaks of them, not as relieved from misery, but as visited
+with gladness--
+
+                "Hush'd in short suspense,
+    The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
+    To throw the lucid moisture trickling off,
+    And wait th' approaching sign, to strike, at once,
+    Into the general choir."
+
+Then, and not till then, the _humane_ poet bethinks him of the insensate
+earth--insensate not; for beast and bird being satisfied, and lowing and
+singing in their gratitude, so do the places of their habitation yearn
+for the blessing--
+
+              "E'en mountains, vales,
+    And forests, seem impatient, to demand
+    The promised sweetness."
+
+The _religious_ Poet then speaks for his kind--and says devoutly--
+
+            "Man superior walks
+    Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
+    And looking lively gratitude."
+
+In that mood he is justified to feast his fancy with images of the
+beauty as well as the bounty of nature; and genius in one line has
+concentrated them all--
+
+    "Beholds the kindling country colour round."
+
+'Tis "an a' day's rain"--and "the well-showered earth is deep-enriched
+with vegetable life." And what kind of an evening? We have seen many
+such--and every succeeding one more beautiful, more glorious to our eyes
+than another--because of these words in which the beauty and the glory
+of one and all are enshrined--
+
+    "Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
+    Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
+    Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
+    The rapid radiance, instantaneous, strikes
+    Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams,
+    Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
+    Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,
+    In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
+    Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
+    Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
+    Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks
+    Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
+    And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
+    Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.
+    Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
+    Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
+    Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds
+    In fair proportion, running from the red
+    To where the violet fades into the sky."
+
+How do you like our recitation of that surpassing strain? Every shade of
+feeling should have its shade of sound--every pause its silence. But
+these must all come and go, untaught, unbidden, from the fulness of the
+heart. Then indeed, and not till then, can words be said to be set to
+music--_to a celestial sing-song_.
+
+The mighty Minstrel recited old Ballads with a warlike march of sound
+that made one's heart leap, while his usually sweet smile was drawn in,
+and disappeared among the glooms that sternly gathered about his
+lowering brows, and gave his whole aspect a most heroic character. Rude
+verses, that from ordinary lips would have been almost meaningless, from
+his came inspired with passion. Sir Philip Sidney, who said that "Chevy
+Chase" roused him like the sound of a trumpet, had he heard Sir Walter
+Scott recite it, would have gone distracted. Yet the "best judges" said
+he murdered his own poetry--we say about as much as Homer. Wordsworth
+recites his own Poetry (catch him reciting any other)
+magnificently--while his eyes seem blind to all outward objects, like
+those of a somnambulist. Coleridge was the sweetest of sing-songers--and
+his silver voice "warbled melody." Next to theirs, we believe our own
+recitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times,
+though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have pronounced it
+detestable, and the long-eared ludicrous; their delight being in what is
+called Elocution, as it is taught by player-folk.
+
+O friendly reader of these our Recreations! thou needst not to be
+told--yet in love let us tell thee--that there are a thousand ways of
+dealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; but
+sentiment there always must be, else it is stark nought. You may infuse
+the sentiment by a single touch--by a ray of light no thicker, nor one
+thousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded by
+lady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or you
+may splash it in as with a gorgeous cloud-stain stolen from sunset; or
+you may bathe it in with a shred of the rainbow. Perhaps the highest
+power of all possessed by the sons of song, is to breathe it in with the
+breath, to let it slip in with the light of the common day!
+
+Then some poets there are, who show you a scene all of a sudden, by
+means of a few magical words--just as if you opened your eyes at their
+bidding--and in place of a blank, a world. Others, again, as good and as
+great, create their world gradually before your eyes, for the delight of
+your soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost
+in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap image
+upon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they were
+ransacking and robbing, and red-reavering earth, sea, and sky; yet all
+things there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, when
+consummated, is a Whole that seems to typify the universe. Others give
+you but fragments--but such as awaken imaginations of beauty and of
+power transcendent, like that famous Torso. And some show you Nature
+glimmering beneath a veil which, nunlike, she has religiously taken; and
+then call not Nature ideal only in that holy twilight, for then it is
+that she is spiritual, and we who belong to her feel that we shall live
+for ever.
+
+Thus--and in other wondrous ways--the great poets are the great
+painters, and so are they the great musicians. But how they are so, some
+other time may we tell; suffice it now to say, that as we listen to the
+mighty masters--"sole or responsive to each other's voice"--
+
+    "Now, 'tis like all instruments,
+    Now like a lonely lute;
+    And now 'tis like an angel's song
+    That bids the heavens be mute!"
+
+Why will so many myriads of men and women, denied by nature "the vision
+and the faculty divine," persist in the delusion that they are
+poetising, while they are but versifying "this bright and breathing
+world?" They see truly not even the outward objects of sight. But of all
+the rare affinities and relationships in Nature, visible or audible to
+Fine-ear-and-Far-eye the Poet, not a whisper--not a glimpse have they
+ever heard or seen, any more than had they been born deaf-blind.
+
+They paint a landscape, but nothing "prates of their whereabouts," while
+they were sitting on a tripod, with their paper on their knees,
+drawing--their breath. For, in the front ground is a castle, against
+which, if you offer to stir a step, you infallibly break your head,
+unless providentially stopped by that extraordinary vegetable-looking
+substance, perhaps a tree, growing bolt upright out of an intermediate
+stone, that has wedged itself in long after there had ceased to be even
+standing-room in that strange theatre of nature. But down from "the
+swelling instep of a mountain's foot," that has protruded itself through
+a wood, while the body of the mountain prudently remains in the extreme
+distance, descends on you, ere you have recovered from your unexpected
+encounter with the old Roman cement, an unconscionable cataract. There
+stands a deer or goat, or rather some beast with horns, "strictly
+anonymous," placed for effect, contrary to all cause, in a place where
+it seems as uncertain how he got in as it is certain that he never can
+get out till he becomes a hippogriff.
+
+The true poet, again, has such potent eyes, that when he lets down the
+lids, he sees just as well, perhaps better than when they were up; for
+in that deep, earnest, inward gaze, the fluctuating sea of scenery
+subsides into a settled calm, where all is harmony as well as
+beauty--order as well as peace. What though he have been fated, through
+youth and manhood, to dwell in city smoke? His childhood--his
+boyhood--were overhung with trees, and through its heart went the murmur
+of waters. Then it is, we verily believe, that in all poets, is filled
+with images up to the brim, Imagination's treasury. Genius, growing, and
+grown up to maturity, is still a prodigal. But he draws on the Bank of
+Youth. His bills, whether at a short or long date, are never
+dishonoured; nay, made payable at sight, they are as good as gold. Nor
+cares that Bank for a run, made even in a panic, for besides bars and
+billets, and wedges and blocks of gold, there are, unappreciable beyond
+the riches which against a time of trouble
+
+    "The Sultaun hides in his ancestral tombs,"
+
+jewels and diamonds sufficient
+
+    "To ransom great kings from captivity."
+
+We sometimes think that the power of painting Nature to the life,
+whether in her real or ideal beauty (both belong to _life_,) is seldom
+evolved to its utmost, until the mind possessing it is withdrawn in the
+body from all rural _environment_. It has not been so with Wordsworth,
+but it was so with Milton. The descriptive poetry in "Comus" is indeed
+rich as rich may be, but certainly not so great, perhaps not so
+beautiful, as that in "Paradise Lost."
+
+It would seem to be so with all of us, small as well as great; and were
+_we_--Christopher North--to compose a poem on Loch Skene, two thousand
+feet or so above the level of the sea, and some miles from a house, we
+should desire to do so in a metropolitan cellar. Desire springs from
+separation. The spirit seeks to unite itself to the beauty it loves, the
+grandeur it admires, the sublimity it almost fears; and all these being
+o'er the hills and far away, or on the hills cloud-hidden, why it--the
+spirit--makes itself wings--or rather wings grow up of themselves in its
+passion, and naturewards it flies like a dove or an eagle. People
+looking at us believe us present, but they never were so far mistaken in
+their lives; for in the Seamew are we sailing with the tide through the
+moonshine on Loch Etive--or hanging o'er that gulf of peril on the bosom
+of Skyroura.
+
+We are sitting now in a dusky den--with our eyes shut--but we see the
+whole Highlands. Our Highland Mountains are of the best possible
+magnitude--ranging between two and four thousand feet high--and then in
+what multitudes! The more familiar you become with them, the mightier
+they appear--and you feel that it is all sheer folly to seek to dwindle
+or dwarf them, by comparing them as they rise before your eyes with your
+imagination of Mont Blanc and those eternal glaciers. If you can bring
+them under your command, you are indeed a sovereign--and have a noble
+set of subjects. In some weather they are of any height you choose to
+put them--say thirty thousand feet--in other states of the atmosphere
+you think you could walk over their summits and down into the region
+beyond in an hour. Try. We have seen Cruachan, during a whole black day,
+swollen into such enormous bulk, that Loch Awe looked like but a sullen
+river at his base, her woods bushes, and Kilchurn no bigger than a
+cottage. The whole visible scene was but he and his shadow. They seemed
+to make the day black, rather than the day to make them so--and at
+nightfall he took wider and loftier possession of the sky--the clouds
+congregated round without hiding his summit, on which seemed to twinkle,
+like earth-lighted fires, a few uncertain stars. Rain drives you into a
+shieling--and you sit there for an hour or two in eloquent confabulation
+with the herdsman, your English against his Gaelic. Out of the door you
+creep--and gaze in astonishment on a new world. The mist is slowly
+rolling up and away in long lines of clouds, preserving, perhaps, a
+beautiful regularity on their ascension and evanescence, and between
+them
+
+    "Tier above tier, a wooded theatre
+    Of stateliest view,"
+
+or cliff galleries with strange stone-images sitting up aloft; and yet
+your eyes have not reached the summits, nor will they reach them, till
+all that vapoury ten-mile-long mass dissolve, or be scattered, and then
+you start to see them, as if therein had been but their bases, THE
+MOUNTAINS, with here and there a peak illumined, reposing in the blue
+serene that smiles as if all the while it had been above reach of the
+storm.
+
+The power of Egoism accompanies us into solitude; nay, is even more
+life-pervading there than in the hum of men. There the stocks and stones
+are more impressible than those we sometimes stumble on in human
+society, and, moulded at our will, take what shape we choose to give
+them; the trees follow our footsteps, though our lips be mute, and we
+may have left at home our fiddle--more potent we in our actuality than
+the fabled Orpheus. Be hushed, ye streams, and listen unto Christopher!
+Be chained, ye clouds, and attentive unto North! And at our bidding
+silent the cataract on the cliff--the thunder on the sky. The sea
+beholds us on the shore--and his one huge frown transformed into a
+multitudinous smile, he turns flowing affections towards us along the
+golden sands--and in a fluctuating hindrance of lovely foam-wreaths
+envelopes our feet!
+
+To return to Thomson. Wordsworth labours to prove, in one of his
+"postliminious prefaces," that the true spirit of "The Seasons," till
+long after their publication, was neither felt nor understood. In the
+conduct of his argument he does not shine. That the poem was at once
+admired he is forced to admit; but then, according to him, the
+admiration was false and hollow--it was regarded but with that wonder
+which is the "natural product of ignorance." After having observed that,
+excepting the "Nocturnal Reverie" of Lady Winchilsea, and a passage or
+two in the "Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the period
+intervening between the publication of the "Paradise Lost" and "The
+Seasons" does not contain a single new image of external nature, he
+proceeds to call the once well-known verses of Dryden in the "Indian
+Emperor," descriptive of the hush of night, "vague, bombastic, and
+senseless," and Pope's celebrated translation of the moonlight scene in
+the "Iliad," altogether "absurd,"--and then, without ever once dreaming
+of any necessity of showing them to be so, or even, if he had succeeded
+in doing so, of the utter illogicality of any argument drawn from their
+failure to establish the point he is hammering at, he all at once says,
+with the most astounding assumption, "_having shown_ that much of what
+his [Thomson's] biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact,
+have been blind wonderment--how is the rest to be accounted for?"
+_"Having shown"!!!_ Why, he has shown nothing but his own arrogance in
+supposing that his mere _ipse dixit_ will be taken by the whole world as
+proof that Dryden and Pope had not the use of their eyes. "Strange to
+think of an enthusiast," he says (alluding to the passage in Pope's
+translation of the "Iliad"), "as may have been the case with thousands,
+reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having
+his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their
+_absurdity_!" We are no enthusiasts--we are far too old for that folly;
+but we have eyes in our head, though sometimes rather dim and motey, and
+as good eyes, too, as Mr Wordsworth, and we often have recited--and hope
+often will recite them again--Pope's exquisite lines, not only without
+any "suspicion of their absurdity," but with the conviction of a most
+devout belief that, with some little vagueness perhaps, and repetition,
+and a word here and there that might be altered for the better, the
+description is most beautiful. But grant it miserable--grant all Mr
+Wordsworth has so dictatorially uttered--and what then? Though
+descriptive poetry did not flourish during the period between "Paradise
+Lost" and "The Seasons," nevertheless, did not mankind enjoy the use of
+their seven senses? Could they not see and hear without the aid of those
+oculists and aurists, the poets? Were all the shepherds and
+agriculturists of England and Scotland blind and deaf to all the sights
+and sounds of nature, and all the gentlemen and ladies too, from the
+king and queen upon the throne, to the lowest of their subjects? Very
+like a whale! Causes there were why poetry flowed during that era in
+another channel than that of the description of natural scenery; and if
+it flowed too little in that channel then--which is true--equally is it
+true that it flows now in it too much--especially among the poets of the
+Lake School, to the neglect, not of sentiments and affections--for there
+they excel--but of strong direct human passion applied to the stir and
+tumult--of which the interest is profound and eternal--of all the great
+affairs of human life. But though the descriptive poets during the
+period between Milton and Thomson were few and indifferent, no reason is
+there in this world for imagining, with Mr Wordsworth, that men had
+forgotten both the heavens and the earth. They had not--nor was the
+wonder with which they must have regarded the great shows of nature, the
+"natural product of ignorance," then, any more than it is now, or ever
+was during a civilised age. If we be right in saying so--then neither
+could the admiration which "The Seasons," on the first appearance of
+that glorious poem, excited, be said, with any truth, to have been but a
+"wonder, the natural product of ignorance."
+
+Mr Wordsworth having thus signally failed in his attempt to show that
+"much of what Thomson's biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in
+fact, have been blind wonderment," let us accompany him in his equally
+futile efforts to show "how the rest is to be accounted for." He
+attempts to do so after this fashion: "Thomson was fortunate in the very
+title of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared
+sympathies of every one; in the next place, notwithstanding his high
+powers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ornaments are exactly
+of that kind which would be most likely to strike the undiscerning. He
+likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in
+which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any
+well-used copy of 'The Seasons,' the book generally opens of itself with
+the Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon and
+Musidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, and
+are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient
+in first recommending the author to general notice."
+
+Thomson, in one sense, _was fortunate_ in the _title_ of his poem. But a
+great poet like Wordsworth might--nay, ought to have chosen another
+word--or have given of that word a loftier explanation, when applied to
+Thomson's _choice_ of the Seasons for the subject of his immortal poem.
+Genius made that choice--not fortune. The "Seasons" are not merely the
+"_title_" of his poem--they are his poem, and his poem is the Seasons.
+But how, pray, can Thomson be said to have been _fortunate_ in the
+_title_ or the subject either of his poem, in the sense that Mr
+Wordsworth means? Why, according to him, people knew little, and cared
+less, about the Seasons. "The art of seeing had in some measure been
+learned!" That he allows--but that was all--and that all is but
+little--and surely far from being enough to have disposed people in
+general to listen to the strains of a poet who painted nature in all her
+moods, and under all her aspects. Thomson, then, we say, was either most
+_unfortunate_ in the title of his poem, or there was not with the many
+that indifference to, and ignorance of natural scenery, on which Mr
+Wordsworth so strenuously insists as part, or rather whole, of his
+preceding argument.
+
+The title, Mr Wordsworth says, seemed "to bring the poem home to the
+_prepared sympathies_ of every one!" What! to the prepared sympathies of
+those who had merely, in some measure, learned the "art of seeing," and
+who had "paid," as he says in another sentence, "little accurate
+attention to the appearances of nature!" Never did the weakest mind ever
+fall into grosser contradictions than does here one of the strongest, in
+vainly labouring to bolster up a silly assertion, which he has
+desperately ventured on from a most mistaken conceit that it was
+necessary to account for the kind of reception which his own poetry had
+met with from the present age. The truth is, that had Mr Wordsworth
+known, when he indited these luckless and helpless sentences, that his
+own poetry was, in the best sense of the word, a thousand times more
+popular than he supposed it to be--and Heaven be praised, for the honour
+of the age, it was and is so!--never had they been written, nor had he
+here and elsewhere laboured to prove that in proportion as poetry is
+bad, or rather as it is no poetry at all, is it, has been, and always
+will be, more and more popular in the age contemporary with the writer.
+That Thomson, in "The Seasons," _sometimes_ writes a _vicious style_,
+may be true; but it is not true that he _often_ does so. His style has
+its faults, no doubt, and some of them inextricably interwoven with the
+web of his composition. It is a dangerous style to imitate--especially
+to dunces. But its _virtue is divine_; and that _divine virtue_, even in
+this low world of ours, wins admiration more surely and widely than
+_earthly vice_--be it in words, thoughts, feelings, or actions--is a
+creed that we will not relinquish at the beck or bidding even of the
+great author of "The Excursion."
+
+That many did--do--and will admire the bad or indifferent passages in
+"The Seasons"--won by their false glitter or commonplace sentimentalism,
+is no doubt true: but the delight, though as intense as perhaps it may
+be foolish, with which boys and virgins, woman-mantuamakers and
+man-milliners, and "the rest," peruse the Rhapsody on Love--one passage
+of which we ventured to be facetious on in our Soliloquy on the
+Seasons--and hang over the picture of Musidora undressing, while Damon
+watches the process of disrobement, panting behind a tree, will never
+account for the admiration with which the whole world hailed the
+"Winter," the first published of "The Seasons;" during which, Thomson
+had not the barbarity to plunge any young lady naked into the cold bath,
+nor the ignorance to represent, during such cold weather, any young lady
+turning her lover sick by the ardour of her looks, and the vehemence of
+her whole enamoured deportment. The time never was--nor could have
+been--when such passages were generally esteemed the glory of the poem.
+Indeed, independently of its own gross absurdity, the assertion is at
+total variance with that other assertion, equally absurd, that people
+admired most in the poem what they least understood; for the Rhapsody on
+Love is certainly very intelligible, nor does there seem much mystery in
+Musidora going into the water to wash and cool herself on a hot day. Is
+it not melancholy, then, to hear such a man as Mr Wordsworth,
+earnestly, and even somewhat angrily, trying to prove that "these are
+the parts of the work which, after all, were probably most efficient in
+first recommending the author to general notice?"
+
+With respect to the "sentimental commonplaces with which Thomson
+abounds," no doubt they were and are popular; and many of them deserve
+to be so, for they are on a level with the usual current of human
+feeling, and many of them are eminently beautiful. Thomson had not the
+philosophical genius of Wordsworth, but he had a warm human heart, and
+its generous feelings overflow all his poem. These are not the most
+poetical parts of "The Seasons," certainly, where such effusions
+prevail; but still, so far from being either _vicious_ or _worthless_,
+they have often a virtue and a worth that must be felt by all the
+children of men. There is something not very credible in the situation
+of the parties in the story of the "lovely young Lavinia," for example,
+and much of the sentiment is commonplace enough; but will Mr Wordsworth
+say--in support of his theory, that the worst poetry is always at first
+(and at last too, it would seem, from the pleasure with which that tale
+is still read by all simple minds) the most popular--that that story is
+a bad one? It is a very beautiful one.
+
+Mr Wordsworth, in all his argumentation, is so blinded by his
+determination to see everything in but one light, and that a most
+mistaken one, that he is insensible to the conclusion to which it all
+leads, or rather, which is involved in it. Why, according to him, _even
+now_, when people have not only learned the "art of seeing"--a blessing
+for which they can never be too thankful--but when descriptive poetry
+has long flourished far beyond its palmiest state in any other era of
+our literature, still are we poor common mortals who admire "The
+Seasons," just as deaf and blind now, or nearly so, to their real
+merits--allowed to be transcendent--as our unhappy forefathers were when
+that poem first appeared, "a glorious apparition." The Rhapsody on Love,
+and Damon and Musidora, are still, according to him, its chief
+attraction--its false ornaments--and its sentimental commonplaces--such
+as those, we presume, on the benefits of early rising, and,
+
+    "Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!"
+
+What a nest of ninnies must people in general be in Mr Wordsworth's
+eyes! And is "The Excursion" not to be placed by the side of "Paradise
+Lost," till the Millennium?
+
+Such is the _reasoning (!)_ of one of the first of our English poets,
+against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentence
+there is which we had forgotten--but now remember--which is to help us
+to distinguish, in the case of the reception "The Seasons" met with,
+between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work is
+the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of
+the year; _and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself
+to treat his subject as became a poet_!" How original and profound!
+Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public,
+returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is
+the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the
+people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to
+regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of
+ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All
+poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are
+wretchedly prosaic--die and are buried, or what is worse, protract a
+miserable existence, in spite of their sentimental commonplaces, false
+ornaments, and a vicious style. But Thomson, in spite of all these,
+leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still more glorious
+immortality.
+
+There is no mystery in the matter. Thomson--a great poet--poured his
+genius over a subject of universal interest; and "The Seasons" from that
+hour to this--then, now, and for ever--have been, are, and will be
+loved, and admired by all the world. All over Scotland "The Seasons" is
+a household book. Let the taste and feeling shown by the Collectors of
+Elegant Extracts be poor as possible; yet Thomson's countrymen, high and
+low, rich and poor, have all along not only gloried in his illustrious
+fame, but have made a very manual of his great work. It lies in many
+thousand cottages. We have ourselves seen it in the shepherd's shieling,
+and in the woodsman's bower--small, yellow-leaved, tatter'd, mean,
+miserable, calf-skin-bound, smoked, _stinking_ copies--let us not fear
+to utter the word, ugly but true--yet perused, pored, and pondered over
+by those humble dwellers, by the winter ingle or on the summer brae,
+perhaps with as enlightened--certainly with as imagination-overmastering
+a delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born and
+highly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly-carved tables,
+and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of painting
+strives to embody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lend its
+beauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortal
+spirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for many
+centuries in Scotland. Men, women, and children, all look up to her
+loveful blue or wrathful black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keeps
+growing from the cradle to the grave. Say not that 'tis alone
+
+    "The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
+    Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind!"
+
+In Scriptural language, loftier even than that, the same imagery is
+applied to the sights seen by the true believer. Who is it "that maketh
+the clouds His chariot?" The Scottish peasantry--Highland and
+Lowland--look much and often on nature thus; and they live in the heart
+of the knowledge and of the religion of nature. Therefore do they love
+Thomson as an inspired bard--only a little lower than the Prophets. In
+like manner have the people of Scotland--from time immemorial--enjoyed
+the use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not
+deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we
+have quoted--we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his
+boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far
+away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not
+thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the
+mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here
+eternise on earth" his joy--but many millions have had souls to join
+religiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one
+mighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded,
+
+    "These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
+      Are but the varied God!"
+
+
+
+
+THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.
+
+
+Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how
+grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that
+glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more
+delightful even than the green--and we prayed that the fine fleecy
+flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No
+sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles.
+Then, it was a year in itself--a whole life. We remember slides a
+quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down
+the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one
+leg now--not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of
+skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain
+for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of
+its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream.
+They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry
+of "swoop-swoop" is heard still--but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned
+cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make
+the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars--those
+in the sky, as well as those below the ice--till again the tumult
+subsided--and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as
+a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a
+pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on
+the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray,
+seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of
+him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his
+awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single
+crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep,
+like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!
+
+Again we see--again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of a
+drift in the minister's glebe, a drift--judging by the steeple, which
+was sixty--about twenty feet high--and purer than any marble. The roof
+was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch
+of the palace was pillared--and the character of the building outside
+was, without any servile imitation--for we worked in the glow of
+original genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or its
+picture--wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in
+a superb hall, lighted up--not with gas, for up to that era gas had not
+been used except in Pandemonium--but with a vast multitude of farthing
+candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall--while a chandelier of
+frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in
+a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North--then
+the king of boys, as now of men--and proud were his subjects to do him
+homage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered with
+hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins--furnished by these animals slain
+by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland
+parish--the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from
+Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung--in sweet single
+voice--or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on
+his way to the lone Kings-well; and then in the intermediate hush, old
+tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the
+Barns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling--or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring
+in caves among the Cartlane Craigs--or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on
+his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on
+his thundering war-steed, armed cap-a-pie, while the King of Scotland
+had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of
+the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying
+song!
+
+Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With
+those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss
+of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in
+flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy
+frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people
+themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table
+stood a huge bowl--not of snow--steaming with nectar that made Hyems
+smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister
+himself--with his mother and sister--was with us in our fantastic
+festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering
+praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin
+scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle
+jig or strathspey--and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a
+confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and
+maddened by many a whoop and yell--so like savages were we in our glee,
+dancing at the marriage of some island king!
+
+Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away--and of all
+who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as
+then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever--let us
+then live well and wisely; and when death comes--from that sleep how
+blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost--no snow--but the sun of
+eternal life.
+
+Mercy on us! what a hubbub!--Can the harriers be hunting in such a
+snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous
+pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why--Imagination, thou art an
+ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a
+country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as
+in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his
+helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many
+of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet
+pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the
+Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce--all come alike to him; and
+of all the bards we have ever known--and the sum total cannot be under a
+thousand--he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye,
+labours under the blessing or the curse--we wot not whilk it be--of
+perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a
+springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil
+in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers
+up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements,
+to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The
+corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood;
+and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will
+bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels,
+by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be
+fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with
+guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground
+floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with
+a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we
+should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against
+the best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale,
+Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves--while, with the
+steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring
+would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?
+
+Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyes
+in your head--only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bash
+that shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue,
+_alias_ the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has
+chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of
+that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School.
+Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all
+foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux
+Booby--and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero.
+
+    "The combat deepens--on, ye brave,
+    Who rush to glory or the grave!
+    Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave,
+      And charge with all thy schoolery!"
+
+Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, in
+solid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the
+dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great
+Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last
+night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall--and a better day for a
+bicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, and
+prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up in
+drifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs, flung out in front,
+commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the
+yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the
+shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their
+places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, and
+scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close,
+
+    "Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!"
+
+"Let fly," cries a clear voice--and the snowball storm hurtles through
+the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the
+foe--their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked
+bat-like--and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower
+of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless
+School--silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some
+doughty champion in the adverse legion.
+
+See--see--the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens take ignominiously to
+flight--and the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie alone are left to bear the
+brunt of battle. A dreadful brotherhood! But the bashing balls are
+showered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms--and
+the day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men than
+devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at
+them!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and earocks!" No sooner
+said than done. Bob Howie is buried--and the whole School is trampling
+on its Master!
+
+    "Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,
+    On Fontarabian echoes borne,
+      That to King Charles did come,
+    When Rowland brave and Olivier,
+    And every paladin and peer,
+      On Roncesvalles died!"
+
+The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie,
+have echoed o'er the hill, and,
+
+    "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"
+
+the runaways, shaking the snows of panic from their pows,
+
+    "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane,"
+
+come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The high
+heroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, and
+the sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. What
+bashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips what
+slittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, and
+claps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that drops
+unlaunched at his feet. The School are broken--their hearts die within
+them--and--can we trust our blasted eyes?--the white livers show the
+white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs
+and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them--and "happy in my
+mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the
+tidings of this wretched overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are flying
+before Six!--and half of sixty--oh! that we should record it!--_are
+pretending to be dead!!_ Would indeed that the snow were their
+winding-sheet, so that it might but hide our dishonour!
+
+Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the
+gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or
+rather--hear, spirit of Homer!--like some great, shaggy, outlandish
+wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a
+fortnight's famine on the bare sea-cliffs, been driven by the hunger
+that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only
+be slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till,
+snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like
+creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the
+woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless
+hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another--till, as it
+might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies
+down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the
+blood off his flews and paws--and then, looking and listening round with
+his red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious of
+crime and fearful of punishment, soon as he sees and hears that all the
+coast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind the
+ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till,
+sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and
+coiling himself up all his wiry length--now no longer lank, but swollen
+and knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake--he falls suddenly
+asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder.
+
+That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in
+that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie
+and the Mad Dominie--and the School like such silly sheep. Those other
+hell-dogs are leaping in the rear--and to the eyes of fear and flight
+each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their
+mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue the
+pell-mell of the panic.
+
+Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporeal fear. What
+though it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened--no, brightened
+by the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight--some
+hard as stones--some soft as slush--some blae and drippy in the cold-hot
+hand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are the
+teazers--some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken ere
+they reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria coeli"--and some useless
+from the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than the
+foziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly.
+
+Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School!
+Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods.
+Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer!
+Twos and threes in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And
+here and there--woefullest sight of all--single boys distractedly
+ettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses--with their heads all the
+while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their
+eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over
+neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall,
+and in a moment evanished from this upper world!
+
+Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent,--the
+magpies chatter pert even in alarm,--the lean kine, collected on the
+lown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet--their horns moving, but not
+their tails,--while the tempest-tamed bull--almost dull now as an
+ox--gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow.
+
+But who is he--the tall slender boy--slender, but sinewy--a wiry
+chap--five feet eight on his stocking-soles--and on his stocking-soles
+he stands--for the snow has sucked his shoes from his feet--that plants
+himself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, a
+juvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, and
+fiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls and
+rallies the shattered School, that he may re-lead them to victory? The
+phantom of a visionary dream! KIT NORTH HIMSELF--
+
+    "In life's morning march when his spirit was young."
+
+And once on a day was that figure--ours! Then like a chamois-hunter of
+the Alps! Now, alas! like--
+
+    "But be hush'd, my dark spirit--for wisdom condemns,
+      When the faint and the feeble deplore;
+    Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stems
+      A thousand wild waves on the shore.
+    Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain,
+      Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate;
+    _Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vain_
+    Shall awake not a pang of remembrance again;
+      _To bear, is to conquer our fate!_"
+
+Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if young
+Kit had become not old Kit--but were standing now as then front to
+front, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the Mad
+Dominie and Bob Howie--both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or
+Stone bicker--in street, lane, or muir fight--hand to hand,
+single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gypsies--or in irregular
+high-road row--two to twelve--with a gang of Irish horse-coupers from
+the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 'Tis a
+strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore--to
+lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past.
+Or rather to admire One's Self as he _was_, without consciousness of the
+mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt
+with which One regards One's Self as he _is_, shrivelled up into a sort
+of shrimp of a man--or blown out into a flounder.
+
+The Snowball bicker owns an armistice--and Kit North--that is, we of the
+olden and the golden time--advance into the debatable ground between the
+two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad
+Dominie loved us, because then-a-days--bating and barring the cock and
+the squint of his eye--we were like himself a poet, and while a goose
+might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of
+a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob--God bless him!--to guard us
+from scathe would have risked his life against a whole craal of tinkers.
+With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up--and
+we are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stain
+which must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys and
+men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed of
+everlasting fame! Even so is it now with us--when sternly eyeing the
+other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge--not at
+long bowls--but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the naked
+mawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with the
+carrots, who, by moonlight nights,
+
+    "Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play,"
+
+had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly our
+jackets and stocks--it is not a day for buff--and at it like bull-dogs.
+Twice before had we fought him--at our own option--over the bonnet; for
+'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, after
+the first close, in which we lose the fall--with straight right-handers
+we keep him at off-fighting--and that was a gush of blood from his
+smeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush,
+he makes a plunge with his heavy left--for he was ker-handed--at our
+stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud
+admiration of Bob Howie--and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not
+choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the
+ogles--and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School--and, lifted
+on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised at
+Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly a
+ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We know
+that we have him--and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" And
+now we play around him,
+
+    "Just like unto a trundling mop,
+    Or a wild-goose at play."
+
+He is brought down now to our own weight--then nine stone jimp--his
+eyes are getting momently more and more pig-like--water-logged, like
+those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of
+the old Abbey Church of Paisley--and bat-blind, he hits past our head
+and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn.
+Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple--and down
+he sinks like a poppy--deaf to the call of "time"--and victory smiles
+upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra--hurra--hurra! Christopher
+for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie--he,
+the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the
+shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an
+overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg
+Whitelaw--shake hands cordially, and
+
+    "Off to some other game we all together flew."
+
+And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised in
+our Prose-Poem.
+
+Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry
+with them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the world
+were there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we have
+heard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood--forgetting what our great
+Philosophical Poet--after Milton and Dryden--has told them, that
+
+    "The boy is father of the man,"
+
+and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed must
+he have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven.
+Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating him
+on being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heaven
+only knows how many million years old, every night sparkling in
+happiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed in
+his heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face,
+was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid in
+boyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but the
+ground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entire
+superstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholds
+nature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green or
+white bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession.
+The soul afterwards perfects her palace--building up tier after tier of
+all imaginable orders of architecture--till the shadowy roof, gleaming
+with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the
+heavens ablaze.
+
+Gaze up on the highest idea--gaze down on the profoundest emotion--and
+you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You
+become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of
+metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious
+consciousness of the thought "BEFORE!" Try then to fix its date, and
+back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and now
+in darkness visible--now launching along lines of steady lustre, such as
+the moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes--now dazzled by
+sudden contrast--
+
+    "Blind with excess of light!"
+
+But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst eras
+after eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweet
+instant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath,
+during all that perilous pilgrimage--and perilous must it be, haunted by
+so many ghosts--never may it reach the shrine it seeks--the fountain
+from which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been out
+of the world of time--dare we say--in eternity!
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS DREAMS.
+
+
+How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifying
+the dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over the
+mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily
+before our eyes!--leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, that
+can bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier and
+steadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomable
+depth!--the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, the
+hours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a different living, and
+peopled, and haunted world. One life is a thousand lives, and each
+individual, as he fully renews the past, reappears in a thousand
+characters; yet all of them bearing a mysterious identity not to be
+misunderstood, and all of them, while every passion has been shifting
+and ceasing, and reascending into power, still under the dominion of the
+same Conscience, that feels and knows it is from God.
+
+Who will complain of the shortness of human life, that can re-travel all
+the windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden since
+the farthest back hour at which memory pauses, baffled and blindfolded,
+as she vainly tries to penetrate and illumine the palpable, the
+impervious darkness that shrouds the few first years of our inscrutable
+being? Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now remember
+it, the Time we first pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wondering
+in our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softness
+all their own--a yellowness nowhere else so vivid--"the bright
+consummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among the
+lowly grass--lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all the
+stars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the blue
+fields of heaven! Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand in
+hand with our golden-haired sister! Long, long, long ago, the day on
+which she died--the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that can now
+darken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, slowly into
+the horrid clay, and we were borne death-like, and wishing to die, out
+of the churchyard, that, from that moment, we thought we could enter
+never more! What a multitudinous being must ours have been, when, before
+our boyhood was gone, we could have forgotten her buried face! or at the
+dream of it, dashed off a tear, and away, with a bounding heart, in the
+midst of a cloud of playmates, breaking into fragments on the hill-side,
+and hurrying round the shores of those wild moorland lochs, in vain hope
+to surprise the heron that slowly uplifted his blue bulk, and floated
+away, regardless of our shouts, to the old castle woods. It is all like
+a reminiscence of some other state of existence.
+
+Then, after all the joys and sorrows of those few years, which we now
+call transitory, but which our BOYHOOD felt as if they would be
+endless--as if they would endure for ever--arose upon us the glorious
+dawning of another new life--YOUTH--with its insupportable sunshine, and
+its agitating storms. Transitory, too, we now know, and well deserving
+the same name of dream. But while it lasted, long, various, and
+agonising; as, unable to sustain the eyes that first revealed to us the
+light of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, looking up to
+moon and stars, invocated in sacred oaths, hugged the very heavens to
+our heart. Yet life had not then nearly reached its meridian, journeying
+up the sunbright firmament. How long hung it there exulting, when "it
+flamed on the forehead of the noontide sky!" Let not the Time be
+computed by the lights and shadows of the years, but by the innumerable
+array of visionary thoughts, that kept deploying as if from one eternity
+into another--now in dark sullen masses, now in long array, brightened
+as if with spear-points and standards, and moving along through chasm,
+abyss, and forest, and over the summits of the highest mountains, to the
+sound of ethereal music, now warlike and tempestuous--now, as "from
+flutes and soft recorders" accompanying not paeans of victory but hymns
+of peace. That Life, too, seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a
+thousand years. Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon.
+And is there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which men fear
+to face--Age, Old Age! Four dreams within a dream--and _where_ to awake?
+
+At dead of night--and it is now dead of night--how the heart quakes on a
+sudden at the silent resurrection of buried thoughts! Perhaps the
+sunshine of some one single Sabbath of more exceeding holiness comes
+first glimmering, and then brightening upon us, with the very same
+sanctity that filled all the air at the tolling of the kirk-bell, when
+all the parish was hushed, and the voice of streams heard more
+distinctly among the banks and braes. Then, all at once, a thunderstorm,
+that many years before, or many years after, drove us, when walking
+alone over the mountains, into a shieling, will seem to succeed; and we
+behold the same threatening aspect of the heavens that then quailed our
+beating hearts, and frowned down our eyelids before the lightning began
+to flash, and the black rain to deluge all the glens. No need now for
+any effort of thought. The images rise of themselves--independently of
+our volition--as if another being, studying the working of our minds,
+conjured up the phantasmagoria before us who are beholding it with love,
+wonder, and fear. Darkness and silence have a power of sorcery over the
+past; the soul has then, too, often restored to it feelings and thoughts
+that it had lost, and is made to know that nothing it once experiences
+ever perishes, but that all things spiritual possess a principle of
+immortal life.
+
+Why linger on the shadowy wall some of those phantasmagoria--returning
+after they have disappeared--and reluctant to pass away into their
+former oblivion? Why shoot others athwart the gloom, quick as spectral
+figures seen hurrying among mountains during a great storm? Why do some
+glare and threaten--why others fade away with a melancholy smile? Why
+_that one_--a Figure all in white, and with white roses in her
+hair--come forward through the haze, beautifying into distincter form
+and face, till her pale beseeching hands almost touch our neck--and
+then, in a moment, it is as nothing?
+
+But now the room is disenchanted--and feebly our lamp is glimmering,
+about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it is
+trimmed again--and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within
+us like a festal strain. And To-Morrow--To-Morrow is Merry Christmas;
+and when its night descends there will be mirth and music, and the
+light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy
+walls--and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room,
+will be banished far over the sea--and morning will be reluctant to
+allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.
+
+Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration,
+painted according to nature--what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a
+sameness would pervade them all--but only that kind of sameness that
+pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common
+eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon
+and some stars--a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few
+castellated, clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a family
+resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him
+who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and
+frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with
+the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that
+illumine those skies--and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be
+black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.
+
+    "Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"--
+
+is a fine line of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces
+the air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will last
+to the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor
+irrecoverable by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike;
+though many a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems
+to be buried among the dead. But they are not dead--but only sleep;
+though to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, and
+we, wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passing
+sweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in our
+solitude?--as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our
+youth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly
+stand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment,
+and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close
+upon our heart.
+
+My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in spring, with the
+din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds
+on earth. It is the Christmas Holidays--Christmas Day itself--Christmas
+Night--and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were we
+brothers and sisters so dear to one another--never before had our hearts
+so yearned towards the authors of our being--our blissful being! There
+they sit--silent in all that outcry--composed in all that
+disarray--still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp
+sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a
+prisoner--a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be
+felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy-flight. One
+old game treads on the heels of another--twenty within the hour--and
+many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the
+collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of
+genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is a
+hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a forest when
+the moon drops behind the mountain, and the small green-robed People of
+Peace at once cease their pastime, and evanish. For She--the
+Silver-Tongued--is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alike
+hundreds of years old--and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall,
+with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below--and, ere
+another Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be
+mute on earth--but to be hymning in Heaven.
+
+Of that House--to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings--with its
+old ivied turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and with
+flowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed its
+foundations has vanished along with them--and a crowd of other
+buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single
+tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne;
+which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for
+one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we
+ourselves--then so linked in love that the band which bound us all
+together was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood--to be
+scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wild
+parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought
+together no more! The old Abbey--it still survives; and there, in that
+corner of the burial-ground, below that part of the wall which was
+least in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers and
+nests--there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and
+Venerated--for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years have
+fled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to
+have ceased to weep--so seldom to have remembered!--And then, with a
+powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the
+floods we all wept together--at no long interval--on those pale and
+placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, in
+their coffins.
+
+We believe that there is genius in all childhood. But the creative joy
+that makes it great in its simplicity dies a natural death or is killed,
+and genius dies with it. In favoured spirits, neither few nor many, the
+joy and the might survive; for you must know that unless it be
+accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it
+brings before us must be inspired with beauty--that is, with affection
+or passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their
+youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that
+blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely
+recollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys--if any such
+there were--in which their childhood played, the torrents, the
+waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the rocks, the heaven's imperial
+dome, the raven floating only a little lower than the eagle in the sky.
+To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must imagine his own nature.
+He must collect from many vanished hours the power of his untamed heart,
+and he must, perhaps, transfuse also something of his maturer mind into
+these dreams of his former being, thus linking the past with the present
+by a continuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken.
+So is it too with the calmer affections that have grown within the
+shelter of a roof. We do not merely remember, we imagine our father's
+house, the fireside, all his features then most living, now dead and
+buried; the very manner of his smile, every tone of his voice. We must
+combine with all the passionate and plastic power of imagination the
+spirit of a thousand happy hours into one moment; and we must invest
+with all that we ever felt to be venerable such an image as alone can
+satisfy our filial hearts. It is thus that imagination, which first
+aided the growth of all our holiest and happiest affections, can
+preserve them to us unimpaired--
+
+    "For she can give us back the dead,
+    Even in the loveliest looks they wore."
+
+Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated one year in this
+family, another year in that--none present but those whom Charles Lamb
+the Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in all
+features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin
+from one root--relations all, happy, and with no reason either to be
+ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth--their lot being
+cast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean," where the dwellings
+are connecting-links between the hut and the hall--fair edifices
+resembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expands
+or contracts their dimensions--in which Competence is next-door
+neighbour to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk of
+Contentment.
+
+Merry Christmases they were indeed--one Lady always presiding, with a
+figure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but then
+somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most
+venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her
+grandchildren's ears. Nor did those solemn eyes, bedimmed into a
+pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbs
+that had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity. Dearly
+she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave;
+but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voice
+that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that its
+accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that was
+heard in the silence, as from another world.
+
+Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves--uncles,
+aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and "the rest," it
+might be presumptuous in us, who were considered by ourselves and a few
+others not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of time
+to decide--especially in the affirmative; but how the roof did ring with
+sally, pun, retort, and repartee! Ay, with pun--a species of
+impertinence for which we have therefore a kindness even to this day.
+Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the good fortune to have been born a
+cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone at
+those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its
+different branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears;
+and we think we hear ourselves--all those uncles and aunts, nephews and
+nieces, and cousins--singing now! Easy is it to "warble melody" as to
+breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to
+people in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts ours
+used to be at Seconds! Yet the most woeful failures were rapturously
+encored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most extraordinary
+voices indeed, every one hoarser than another, till at last, walking
+home with a fair cousin, there was nothing left for it but a tender
+glance of the eye--a tender pressure of the hand--for cousins are not
+altogether sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character,
+possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms of their own;
+as didst thou, Emily the "Wild-cap!"--That _sobriquet_ all forgotten
+now--for now thou art a matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elf
+fair and frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest and
+wisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancings, thy singings, and thy
+showering smiles.
+
+On rolled Suns and Seasons--the old died--the elderly became old--and
+the young, one after another, were wafted joyously away on the wings of
+hope, like birds almost as soon as they can fly ungratefully forsaking
+their nests and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed their
+pinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few days trimmed
+their snow-white sails in the land-locked bay, close to whose shores of
+silvery sand had grown the trees that furnished timber both for hull and
+mast, slip their tiny cables on some summer-day, and gathering every
+breeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in sunshine, and melt far
+off into the main. Or, haply, some were like fair young trees,
+transplanted during no favourable season, and never to take root in
+another soil, but soon leaf and branch to wither beneath the tropic sun,
+and die almost unheeded by those who knew not how beautiful they had
+been beneath the dews and mists of their own native climate.
+
+Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too painfully to touch
+the heart. For some hearts grow cold and forbidding with selfish
+cares--some, warm as ever in their own generous glow, were touched by
+the chill of Fortune's frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenly
+succeeding her smiles--some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took
+refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past--duty
+banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home--estrangements
+there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet ere long, though
+causeless, complete--changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in
+the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came
+thereby at last to be friends no more--unrequited love broke some
+bonds--requited love relaxed others--the death of one altered the
+conditions of many--and so--year after year--the Christmas Meeting was
+interrupted--deferred--till finally it ceased with one accord, unrenewed
+and unrenewable. For when Some Things cease for a time--that time turns
+out to be for ever.
+
+Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be--should these imperfect
+remembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life's
+busy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards the
+inditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts--for his,
+though "absent long and distant far," has never been utterly forgetful
+of the loves and friendships that charmed his youth. To be parted in
+body is not to be estranged in spirit--and many a dream and many a
+vision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pass before the mind of
+one whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather the
+expression of a doubt--of a fear--than of a belief or a conviction. The
+soul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through all
+intervening darkness--and of those more especially dear it keeps within
+itself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think it
+not, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishable
+as they are hallowed.
+
+All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists of
+morning--ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing that
+famous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnight
+hush--methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music--
+
+    "Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
+    The pealing anthem swells the note of praise!"
+
+How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale,
+pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with here
+and there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to the
+memory of the pious--the immortal dead. Some great clock is striking
+from one of many domes--from the majestic Tower of St Mary Magdalen--and
+in the deepened hush that follows the solemn sound, the mingling waters
+of the Cherwell and the Isis soften the severe silence of the holy
+night.
+
+Remote from kindred, and from all the friendships that were the native
+growth of the fair fields where our boyhood and our youth had roamed and
+meditated and dreamed, those were indeed years of high and lofty mood
+which held us in converse with the shades of great Poets and Sages of
+old in Rhedicyna's hallowed groves, still, serene, and solemn, as that
+Attic Academe where divine Plato, with all Hybla on his lips, discoursed
+such excellent music that his life seemed to the imagination
+spiritualised--a dim reminiscence of some former state of being. How
+sank then the Christmas Service of that beautiful Liturgy into our
+hearts! Not faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers had
+loved; but Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings that
+rose within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir of
+youthful voices so sweetly to join the diapason,--our eyes fixed all the
+while on that divine Picture over the Altar, of our Saviour
+
+    "Bearing his cross up rueful Calvary."
+
+The City of Palaces disappears--and in the setting sunlight we behold
+mountains of soft crimson snow! The sun hath set, and even more
+beautiful are the bright-starred nights of winter, than summer in all
+its glories beneath the broad moons of June. Through the woods of
+Windermere, from cottage to cottage, by coppice-pathways winding up to
+dwellings among the hill-rocks where the birch-trees cease to grow--
+
+    "Nodding their heads, before us go,
+    The merry minstrelsy."
+
+They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young by
+their Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales to
+the hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of the
+dancers ever and anon crossing the light of the star-like window, and
+the merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. Across those
+humble thresholds often did we on Christmas-week nights of
+yore--wandering through our solitary sylvan haunts, under the branches
+of trees within whose hollow trunk the squirrel slept--venture in,
+unasked perhaps, but not unwelcome, and, in the kindly spirit of the
+season, did our best to merrify the Festival by tale or song. And now
+that we behold them not, are all those woods, and cliffs, and rivers,
+and tarns, and lakes, as beautiful as when they softened and brightened
+beneath our living eyes, half-creating, as they gazed, the very world
+they worshipped? And are all those hearths as bright as of yore, without
+the shadow of our figure? And the roofs, do they ring as mirthfully,
+though our voice be forgotten? We hang over Westmoreland, an
+unobserved--but observant star. Mountains, hills, rocks, knolls, vales,
+woods, groves, single trees, dwellings--all asleep! O Lakes! but ye are,
+indeed, by far too beautiful! O fortunate Isles! too fair for human
+habitation, fit abode for the Blest! It will not hide itself--it will
+not sink into the earth--it will rise; and risen, it will stand steady
+with its shadow in the overpowering moonlight, that ONE TREE! that ONE
+HOUSE!--and well might the sight of ye two together--were it
+harder--break our heart. But hard at all it is not--therefore it is but
+crushed.
+
+Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higher
+than the Andes in heaven--but sole-sitting at midnight in a small
+chamber--a melancholy man are we--and there seems a smile of
+consolation, O Wordsworth! on thy sacred Bust.
+
+Alas! how many heavenly days, "seeming immortal in their depth of rest,"
+have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memory
+even of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Our
+spirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in her
+records--blanks are there that ought to have been painted with
+imperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning on
+life's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensation--for who
+can bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on the
+ghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come when
+we call on them to comfort us, are too often at our side when in our
+anguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion.
+Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary--they come and
+go like forms and shapes still imbued with life. Shall we vainly stretch
+out our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek to
+intrench ourselves by thoughts of this world against their visitation?
+The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love to
+resign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, they
+being dead! Shall we the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in
+other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on
+their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and
+show to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed by
+remorse and penitence!
+
+Sometimes we have fears about our memory--that it is decaying; for,
+lately, many ordinary yet interesting occurrences and events, which we
+regarded at the time with pain or pleasure, have been slipping away
+almost into oblivion, and have often alarmed us of a sudden by their
+return, not to any act of recollection, but of themselves, sometimes
+wretchedly out of place and season, the mournful obtruding upon the
+merry, and worse, the merry upon the mournful--confusion, by no fault of
+ours, of piteous and of gladsome faces--tears where smiles were a duty
+as well as a delight, and smiles where nature demanded, and religion
+hallowed, a sacrifice of tears.
+
+For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters as
+fine as frostwork filigree, which we could not break without destroying
+a whole world of endearment. That seems an obscure image; but it means
+what the Germans would call in English--our winter environment. We are
+imprisoned in a net of our own weaving--an invisible net; yet we can see
+it when we choose--just as a bird can see, when he chooses, the wires of
+his cage, that are invisible in his happiness, as he keeps hopping and
+fluttering about all day long, or haply dreaming on his perch with his
+poll under his plumes--as free in confinement as if let loose into the
+boundless sky. That seems an obscure image too; but we mean, in truth,
+the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is; and we have
+improved on that idea, for we have built our own--and are prisoner,
+turnkey, and jailer all in one, and 'tis noiseless as the house of
+sleep. Or what if we declare that Christopher North is a king in his
+palace, with no subjects but his own thoughts--his rule peaceful over
+those lights and shadows--and undisputed to reign over them his right
+divine.
+
+The opening year in a town, now, answers in all things to our heart's
+desire. How beautiful the smoky air! The clouds have a homely look as
+they hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they loved
+their birthplace; all unlike those heartless clouds that keep
+_stravaiging_ over mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the sky! Poets
+speak of living rocks, but what is their life to that of houses? Who
+ever saw a rock with eyes--that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, and
+stone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house
+without eyes--that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the good old
+Conservative grudges not the assessed taxes--his optics are as cheerful
+as the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the setting
+sun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a
+mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an
+avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you
+to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a
+Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A
+grove in winter, bole and branch--leaves it has none--is as dry as a
+volume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparks
+of heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the heart's blood
+circulates through the system like rosy wine.
+
+But a truce to comparisons; for we are beginning to feel contrition for
+our crime against the country, and, with humbled head and heart, we
+beseech you to pardon us--ye rocks of Pavey-Ark, the pillared palaces of
+the storms--ye clouds, now wreathing a diadem for the forehead of
+Helvellyn--ye trees, that hang the shadows of your undying beauty over
+the "one perfect chrysolite" of blessed Windermere!
+
+Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an apparition waving peace
+and goodwill to all dwellers in the land of dreams. In plainer but not
+simpler words (for words are like flowers, often rich in their
+simplicity--witness the Lily, and Solomon's Song)--Christian people all,
+we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New-Year, in town or in
+country--or in ships at sea.
+
+A Happy New-Year!--Ah! ere this ARIA, sung _sotto voce_, reach your ears
+(eyes are ears, and ears eyes), the week of all weeks will be over and
+gone, and the New-Year will seem growing out of the old year's
+ashes!--for the year is your only Phoenix. But what with time to do
+has a wish--a hope--a prayer! Their power is in the Spirit that gives
+them birth. And what is Spirit but the well-head of thoughts and
+feelings flowing and overflowing all life, yet leaving the well-head
+full of water as ever--so lucid, that on your gazing intently into its
+depths, it seems to become a large soft spiritual eye, reflecting the
+heavens and the earth; and no one knows what the heavens and the earth
+are, till he has seen them there--for that God made the heavens and the
+earth we feel from that beautiful revelation--and where feeling is not,
+knowledge is dead, and a blank the universe. Love is life. The unloving
+merely breathe. A single sweet beat of the heart is token of something
+spiritual that will be with us again in Paradise. "O, bliss and beauty!
+are these our feelings"--thought we once in a dream--"all circling in
+the sunshine--fair-plumed in a flight of doves!" The vision kept sailing
+on the sky--"to and fro for our delight"--no sound on their wings more
+than on their breasts; and they melted away in light as if they were
+composed of light--and in the hush we heard high-up and far-off
+music--as of an angel's song.
+
+That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broad
+awake--and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of the
+common day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof--and it
+inspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the whole
+world, then, promise henceforth to love us?--and we promise henceforth
+to love the whole world.
+
+It seems the easiest of all easy things to be kind and good--and then it
+is so pleasant! "Self-love and social are the same," beyond all
+question; and in that lies the nobility of our nature. The intensest
+feeling of self is that of belonging to a brotherhood. All selves then
+know they have duties which are in truth loves--and loves are
+joys--whether breathed in silence, or uttered in words, or embodied in
+actions; and if they filled all life, then all life would be good--and
+heaven would be no more than a better earth. And how may all men go to
+heaven? By making themselves a heaven on earth, and thus preparing their
+spirits to breathe empyreal air when they have dropped the dust. And how
+may they make for themselves a heaven on earth? By building up a happy
+HOME FOR THE HEART. Much, but not all--oh! not nearly all--is in the
+site. But it must be within the precincts of the holy ground--and within
+hearing of the waters of life.
+
+Pleasures of Imagination! Pleasures of Memory! Pleasures of Hope! All
+three most delightful poems; yet all the thoughts and all the feelings
+that inspired them--etherealised--will not make--FAITH! "The day-spring
+from on high hath visited us!" Blessed is he who feels that line--nor
+need his heart die within him, were a voice to be heard at midnight
+saying--"This New-Year's day shall be thy last!"
+
+One voice--one young voice--all by its sweet, sad, solitary self,
+singing to us a Christmas Hymn! Listening to that music is like looking
+at the sky with all its stars.
+
+Was it a spirit?
+
+    "Millions of spiritual creatures walk unseen,
+    Sole or responsive to each other's voice,
+    Hymning their great Creator."
+
+No, the singer, like ourselves, is mortal; and in that thought, to our
+hearts, lies the pathos of her prayers. The angels, veiling their faces
+with their wings, sing in their bliss hallelujahs round the throne of
+heaven; but she--a poor child of clay, with her face veiled but with the
+shades of humility and contrition, while
+
+    "Some natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon,"--
+
+sings, in her sorrow, supplications to be suffered to see afar-off its
+everlasting gates--opening not surely for her own sake--for all of woman
+born are sinful--and even she in what love calls her innocence feels
+that her fallen being does of itself deserve but to die. The hymn is
+fading away, liker and liker an echo, and our spirit having lost it in
+the distance, returns back holier to the heart-hush of home.
+
+The million hunger and thirst after the stronger and darker passions;
+nothing will go down with them but _the intense_. They are
+intolerant--or careless--or even ashamed of those emotions and
+affections that compose the blessing of our daily life, and give its
+lustre to the fire on the hearth of every Christian household. Yet, for
+all that, they are inexperienced in those same stronger and darker
+passions of which they prate, and know nothing of the import of those
+pictures of them painted, with background of gloom and foreground of
+fire, in the works of the truly great masters. The disturbed spirit of
+such delineations is far beyond the reaches of their souls; and they
+mistake their own senseless stupor for solemn awe--or their own mere
+physical excitement for the enthusiasm of imagination soaring through
+the storm on the wings of intellect. There are such things in "Satan's
+Invisible World Displayed" in poetry, as strong and dark passions; and
+they who are acquainted with their origin and end call them _bad_
+passions; but the good passions are not dark, but bright--and they are
+strong too, stronger than death or the grave.
+
+All human beings who know how to reap
+
+        "The harvest of a quiet eye,
+    That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"
+
+feel, by the touch, the flowers of affection in every handful of beauty
+they gather up from those fortunate fields on which shines, for ever
+through all seasons, the sun of life. How soft the leaves! and, as they
+meet the eye, how fair! Framed, so might it seem, of green dew
+consolidated into fragrance. Nor do they fade when gently taken from
+their stalk on its native bed. They flourish for ever if you bruise them
+not--sensitive indeed; and, if you are so forgetful as to treat them
+rashly, like those of the plant that bears that name, they shrink, and
+seem to shrivel for a time--growing pale, as if upbraiding your
+harshness; but cherished, they are seen to be all of
+
+    "Immortal amaranth, the tree that grows
+    Fast by the throne of God;"
+
+for the seeds have fallen from heaven to earth, and for eighteen hundred
+years have been spreading themselves over all soils fit for their
+reception--and what soil is not fit? Even fit are stony places, and
+places full of thorns. For they will live and grow there in spite of
+such obstruction--and among rank and matted weeds will often be seen
+peering out like primroses gladdening the desert.
+
+That voice again--"One of old Scotland's songs, so sad and slow!" Her
+heart is now blamelessly with things of earth. "Sad and slow!" and most
+purely sweet. Almost mournful although it be, it breathes of
+happiness--for the joy dearest to the soul has ever a faint tinge of
+grief. O innocent enchantress! thou encirclest us with a wavering haze
+of beautiful imagery, by the spell of that voice awakening after a mood
+of awe, but for thy own delight. From the long dim tracts of the past
+come strangely blended recognitions of woe and bliss, undistinguishable
+now to our own heart--nor knows that heart if it be a dream of
+imagination or of memory. Yet why should we wonder? In our happiest
+hours there may have been something in common with our most
+sorrowful--some shade of sadness cast over them by a passing cloud, that
+now allies them in retrospect with the sombre spirit of grief; and in
+our unhappiest hours there may have been gleams of gladness, that seem
+now to give the return the calm character of peace. Do not all thoughts
+and feelings, almost all events, seem to resemble each other--when they
+are dreamt of as all past? All receive a sort of sanctification in the
+stillness of the time that has gone by--just like the human being whom
+they adorned or degraded--when they, too, are at last buried together in
+the bosom of the same earth.
+
+Perhaps none among us ever wrote verses of any worth, who had not been,
+more or less, readers of our old ballads. All our poets have been
+so--and even Wordsworth would not have been the veritable and only
+Wordsworth, had he not in boyhood pored--oh, the miser!--over Percy's
+"Reliques." From the highest to the humblest, they have all drunk from
+those silver springs. Shepherds and herdsmen and woodsmen have been the
+masters of the mighty--their strains have, like the voice of a solitary
+lute, inspired a power of sadness into the hearts of great poets that
+gave their genius to be prevalent over all tears, or with a power of
+sublimity that gave it dominion over all terror, like the sound of a
+trumpet. "The Babes in the Wood!" "Chevy Chace!" Men become women while
+they weep--
+
+    "Or start up heroes from the glorious strain."
+
+Sing then "The Dirge," my Margaret, to the Old Man, "so tender and so
+true" to the spirit of those old ballads, which we might think were
+written by Pity's self.
+
+
+DIRGE.
+
+    "O dig a grave, and dig it deep,
+    Where I and my true love may sleep!
+      We'll dig a grave, and dig it deep,
+      Where thou and thy true love shall sleep!
+
+    And let it be five fathom low,
+    Where winter winds may never blow!--
+      And it shall be five fathom low,
+      Where winter winds shall never blow!
+
+    And let it be on yonder hill,
+    Where grows the mountain daffodil!--
+      And it shall be on yonder hill,
+      Where grows the mountain daffodil!
+
+    And plant it round with holy briers,
+    To fright away the fairy fires!--
+      We'll plant it round with holy briers!
+      To fright away the fairy fires!
+
+    And set it round with celandine,
+    And nodding heads of columbine!--
+      We'll set it round with celandine,
+      And nodding heads of columbine!
+
+    And let the ruddock build his nest
+    Just above my true love's breast!--
+      The ruddock he shall build his nest
+      Just above thy true love's breast!
+
+    And warble his sweet wintry song
+    O'er our dwelling all day long!
+      And he shall warble his sweet song
+      O'er your dwelling all day long.
+
+    Now, tender friends, my garments take,
+    And lay me out for Jesus' sake!
+      And we will now thy garments take,
+      And lay thee out for Jesus' sake!
+
+    And lay me by my true love's side,
+    That I may be a faithful bride!--
+      We'll lay thee by thy true love's side,
+      That thou may'st be a faithful bride!"
+
+Ay--ay--thou too art gone, WILLIAM STANLEY ROSCOE! What years have flown
+since we walked among the "alleys green" of Allerton with thee and thy
+illustrious father! and who ever conversed with him for a few hours in
+and about his own home--where the stream of life flowed on so full and
+clear--without carrying away impressions that never seemed to be
+remembrances--so vivid have they remained amidst the obscurations and
+obliterations of Time, that sweeps with his wings all that lies on the
+surface, but has no power to disturb, much less destroy, the record
+printed on the heart.
+
+We are all of us getting old--or older; nor would we, for our own
+part--if we could--renew our youth. Methinks the river of life is nobler
+as it nears the sea. The young are dancing in their skiffs on the
+pellucid shallows near the source on the Sacred Mountains of the Golden
+East. They whose lot it is to be in their prime, are dropping down the
+longer and wider reaches, that seem wheeling by with their sylvan
+amphitheatres, as if the beauty were moving morn-wards, while the
+voyagers are stationary among the shadows, or slowly descending the
+stream to meet the meridian day. Many forget
+
+    "The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,"
+
+and are lost in the roaring whirlpool. Under Providence, we see
+ourselves on the river expanded into a sea-like lake, or arm of the sea;
+and for all our soul has escaped and suffered, we look up to the stars
+in gratitude--and down to the stars--for the water too is full of stars
+as well as the sky--faint and dim indeed--but blended by the pervading
+spirit of beauty, with the brighter and bolder luminaries reposing on
+infinitude.
+
+
+
+
+OUR WINTER QUARTERS.
+
+
+BUCHANAN LODGE--for a few months--farewell! 'Tis the Twelfth of
+November; and for the City we leave thee not without reluctance, early
+in March by the blessing of Heaven again to creep into thy blooming
+bourne. Yet now and then we shall take a drive down, to while away a
+sunny forenoon among thy undecaying evergreens, to breathe the balm of
+thy Christmas roses, and for one _Gentle_ bosom to cull the earliest
+crocuses that may be yellowing through the thin snows of Spring.
+
+In truth, we know not well why we should ever leave thee, for thou art
+the Darling of all the Seasons; and Winter, so churlish elsewhere, is
+ever bland to thee, and, daily alighting in these gardens, loves to fold
+and unfold, in the cool sunshine, the stainless splendour of his
+pale-plumaged wings. But we are no hermit. Dear to us though Nature be,
+here, hand-in-hand with Art walking through our peaceful but not
+unpeopled POLICY, a voice comes to us from the city-heart--winning us
+away from the stillness of solitude into the stir of life. Milton speaks
+of a region
+
+    "Above the stir and smoke of this dim spot,
+    Which men call earth;"
+
+and oft have we visited it; but while yet we pursue the ends of this our
+mortal being, in the mystery of the brain whence ideas arise, and in the
+mystery of the heart whence emotions flow--kindred and congenial
+all--thought ever blending with feeling, reason with imagination, and
+conscience with passion--'tis our duty to draw our delight from
+intercommunion with the spirit of our kind. Weakest or wickedest of
+mortals are your soul-sick, life-loathing, world-wearied men. In
+solitude we are prone to be swallowed up in selfishness; and out of
+selfishness what sins and crimes may not grow! At the best, moral
+stagnation ensues--and the spirit becomes, like "a green-mantled pool,"
+the abode of reptiles. Then ever welcome to us be living faces, and
+living voices, the light and the music of reality--dearer far than any
+mere ideas or emotions hanging or floating aloof by themselves in the
+atmosphere of imagination. Blest be the cordial grasp of the hand of
+friendship--blest the tender embrace of the arms of love! Nay, smile
+not, fair reader, at an old man's fervour; for Love is a gracious
+spirit, who deserteth not declining age.
+
+The DROSKY is at the door--and, my eye! what a figure is Peter! There he
+sits, like a bear, with the ribbons in his paws--no part visible of his
+human face or form divine, but his small red eyes--and his ruby nose,
+whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the
+knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a
+Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish
+turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him
+like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland
+tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail--and the hair on his
+ears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely reminds us of Hogg's
+Bonassus. Ay, bless these patent steps--on the same principle as those
+by which we ascend our nightly couch--we are self-deposited in our
+Drosky. Oh! the lazy luxury of an air-seat! We seem to be sitting on
+nothing but a voluptuous warmth, restorative as a bath. And then what
+furry softness envelopes our feet! Yes--Mrs Gentle--Mrs Gentle--thy
+Cashmere shawl, twined round our bust, feels almost as silken-smooth as
+thine own, and scented is it with the balm of thy own lips. Boreas blows
+on it tenderly as a zephyr--and the wintry sunshine seems summery as it
+plays on the celestial colours. Thy pelisse, too, over our old happy
+shoulders, purple as the neck of the dove when careering round his mate.
+Thy comforter, too, in our bosom--till the dear, delightful, delicious,
+wicked worsted thrills through skin and flesh to our very heart. It
+dirls. Drive away, Peter. Farewell Lodge--and welcome, in a jiffy, Moray
+Place.
+
+And now, doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven by
+Peter, proud as Punch to tool along the staring streets the
+great-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet--yet--couldst thou lead the
+field, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day be
+not quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, a
+little further on in the solemn vista, the darkness of night; and
+therefore, like wise children of nature, not unproud of the past, not
+ungrateful for the present, and unfearful of the future, thus do we now
+skim along the road of life, broad and smooth to our heart's content,
+able to pay the turnpikes, and willing, when we shall have reached the
+end of our journey, to lie down, in hope, at the goal.
+
+What pretty, little, low lines of garden-fronted cottages! leading us
+along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and
+past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the
+full view of PITT Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight
+cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic--yea, call it at once
+magnificent--right up to the great city's heart. "There goes Old
+Christopher North!" the bright boys in the playground of the New Academy
+exclaim. God bless you, you little rascals!--We could almost find it in
+our heart to ask the Rector for a holiday. But, under him, all your days
+are holidays--for when the precious hours of study are enlightened by a
+classic spirit, how naturally do they melt into those of play!
+
+    "Gay hope is yours, by fancy fed,
+      Less pleasing when possest;
+    The tear forgot as soon as shed,
+      The sunshine of the breast;
+    Yours buxom health, of rosy hue,
+      Wild wit, invention ever new,
+    And lively cheer, of vigour born;
+      The thoughtless day, the easy night,
+    The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
+      That fly th' approach of morn."
+
+Descending from our Drosky, we find No. 99 Moray Place, exhibiting
+throughout all its calm interior the self-same expression it wore the
+day we left it for the Lodge, eight months ago. There is our venerable
+winter Hat--as like Ourselves, it is said, as he can stare--sitting on
+the Circular in the Entrance-hall. Everything has been tenderly dusted
+as if by hands that touched with a Sabbath feeling; and though the
+furniture cannot be said to be new, yet while it is in all sobered, it
+is in nothing faded. You are at first unaware of its richness on account
+of its simplicity--its grace is felt gradually to grow out of its
+comfort--and that which you thought but ease lightens into elegance,
+while there is but one image in nature which can adequately express its
+repose--that of a hill-sheltered field by sunset, under a fresh-fallen
+vest of virgin snow. For then snow blushes with a faint crimson--nay,
+sometimes when Sol is extraordinarily splendid, not faint, but with a
+gorgeousness of colouring that fears not to face in rivalry the western
+clouds.
+
+Let no man have two houses with one set of furniture. Home's deepest
+delight is undisturbance. Some people think no articles fixtures--not
+even grates. But sofas and ottomans, and chairs and footstools, and
+screens--and above all, beds--all are fixtures in the dwelling of a wise
+man, cognoscitive and sensitive of the blessings of this life. Each has
+its own place assigned to it by the taste, tact, and feeling of the
+master of the mansion, where order and elegance minister to comfort, and
+comfort is but a homely word for happiness. In various moods we vary
+their arrangement--nor is even the easiest of all Easy-chairs secure for
+life against being gently pushed on his wheels from chimney-nook to
+window-corner, when the sunshine may have extinguished the fire, and the
+blue sky tempts the _Paterfamilias_, or him who is but an uncle, to lie
+back with half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like a
+shepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements serve
+but to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which the
+very virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against the
+Lares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret to
+cellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, a
+Turkey or a Persian, or even a Wilton or a Kidderminster carpet, is as
+much the garb of the wooden floor inside, as the grass is of the earthen
+floor outside of your house. Would you lift and lay down the greensward?
+But without further illustration--be assured the cases are kindred--and
+so, too, with sofas and shrubs, tent-beds and trees. Independently,
+however, of these analogies, not fanciful, but lying deep in the nature
+of things, the inside of one's tabernacle, in town and country, ought
+ever to be sacred from all radical revolutionary movements, and to lie
+for ever in a waking dream of graceful repose. All our affections
+towards lifeless things become tenderer and deeper in the continuous and
+unbroken flow of domestic habit. The eye gets lovingly familiarised with
+each object occupying its own peculiar and appropriate place, and feels
+in a moment when the most insignificant is missing or removed. We say
+not a word about children, for fortunately, since we are yet unmarried,
+we have none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissenters
+from this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-kept
+parlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice do
+they glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as a
+_flitting_ ever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a long
+huge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors,
+moving along the dust-driving or mire-choked streets with furniture from
+a gutted town-house towards one standing in the rural shades with an
+empty stomach! All is dimmed or destroyed--chairs crushed on the
+table-land, and four-posted beds lying helplessly with their astonished
+feet up to heaven--a sight that might make the angels weep!
+
+People have wondered why we, an old barren bachelor, should live in such
+a large house. It is a palace; but never was there a greater mistake
+than to seek the solution in our pride. Silence can be had but in a
+large house. And silence is the chief condition of home happiness. We
+could now hear a leaf fall--a leaf of the finest wire-wove. Peter and
+Betty, Polly and the rest, inhabit the second sunk story--and it is
+delightful to know that they may be kicking up the most infernal
+disturbance at this blessed moment, and tearing out each other's hair in
+handfuls, without the faintest whisper of the uproar reaching us in our
+altitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there is
+regularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondly
+imagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years on
+the shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrown
+up both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew that
+he had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk story, immediately
+below _that_, having been for a season consumptive, we kept a Jenny ass
+and her daughter--and though we believe it was not unheard around Moray
+and Ainslie Places, and even in Charlotte Square, we cannot charge our
+memory with an audit of their bray. In the sunk story immediately below
+that again, that distinguished officer on half-pay, Captain Campbell of
+the Highlanders--when on a visit to us for a year or two--though we
+seldom saw him--got up a _Sma' still_--and though a more harmless
+creature could not be, there he used to sit for hours together, with the
+worm that never dies. On one occasion, it having been supposed by Peter
+that the Captain had gone to the East Neuk of Fife, weeks elapsed, we
+remember, ere he was found sitting dead, just as if he had been alive,
+in his usual attitude in his arm-chair, commanding a view of the
+precipice of the back court.
+
+Just as quiet are the Attics. They, too, are furnished; for the feeling
+of there being one unfurnished room, however small, in the largest
+house, disturbs the entire state of mind of such an occupant, and when
+cherished and dwelt on, which it must not unfrequently be, inspires a
+cold air of desolation throughout the domicile, till "thoughts of
+flitting rise." There is no lumber-room. The room containing
+Blue-Beard's murdered wives might in idea be entered without distraction
+by a bold mind.--But oh! the lumber-room, into which, on an early walk
+through the house of a friend on whom we had been sorning, all
+unprepared did we once set our foot! From the moment--and it was but for
+a moment, and about six o'clock--far away in the country--that appalling
+vision met our eyes--till we found ourselves, about another six o'clock,
+in Moray Place, we have no memory of the flight of time. Part of the
+journey--or voyage--we suspect, was performed in a steamer. The noise of
+knocking, and puffing, and splashing seems to be in our inner ears; but
+after all it may have been a sail-boat, possibly a yacht!--In the Attics
+an Aviary open to the sky. And to us below, the many voices, softened
+into one sometimes in the pauses of severer thought, are sometimes very
+affecting, so serenely sweet it seems, as the laverock's in our youth at
+the gates of heaven.
+
+At our door stand the Guardian Genii, Sleep and Silence. We had an ear
+to them in the building of our house, and planned it after a long summer
+day's perusal of the "Castle of Indolence." O Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy
+Thomson!--O that thou and we had been rowers in the same boat on the
+silent river! Rowers, indeed! Short the spells and far between that we
+should have taken--the one would not have turned round the other, but
+when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand--and the canoe
+would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our
+backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the
+slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove--the cloud-mountains,
+immovable as those of earth, and in spirit one world.
+
+Ay! Great noise as we have made in the world--our heart's desire is for
+silence--its delight is in peace. And is it not so with all men,
+turbulent as may have been their lives, who have ever looked into their
+own being? The soul longs for peace in itself; therefore, wherever it
+discerns it, it rejoices in the image of which it seeks the reality. The
+serene human countenance, the wide water sleeping in the moonlight, the
+stainless marble-depth of the immeasurable heavens, reflect to it that
+tranquillity which it imagines within itself, though it never long dwelt
+there, restless as a dove on a dark tree that cannot be happy but in the
+sunshine. It loves to look on what it loves, even though it cannot
+possess it; and hence its feeling, on contemplating such calm, is not of
+simple repose, but desire stirs in it, as if it would fain blend itself
+more deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would not
+so affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference--that attracts
+spirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised--but
+matter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imagination
+between earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there is
+apprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spirit
+throughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, the moon, the deep
+bright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower--none of them
+ever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical and
+unconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are; but we
+could have no pleasure in them, if we knew them as such. There is
+illusion, then, of some sort, and to what does it amount? We cannot well
+tell. But if there is really a love in human hearts to these distant
+orbs--if there is an emotion of tenderness to the fair, opening,
+breathing blossom that we would not crush it--"in gentleness of heart
+touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves"--it must be that we do not
+see them as they are, but "create a soul under the ribs of death." We
+could not be touched, or care for what has no affinity to ourselves--we
+make the affinity--we animate, we vivify them, and thenceforward,
+
+    "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
+    Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet."
+
+Now you do believe that we do love Silence--and every other thing worthy
+to be loved--you and yours--and even that romp, your shock-headed Coz,
+to whom Priscilla Tomboy was an Imogen.
+
+All our ceilings are deadened--we walk ankle-deep in carpeting--nobody
+is suffered to open a door but ourselves--and they are so constructed,
+that it is out of their power to _slam_. Our winter furniture is all
+massy--deepening the repose. In all the large rooms two fireplaces--and
+fires are kept perpetually burning day and night, in them all, which,
+reflected from spacious mirrors, give the mansion quite the appearance
+of a Pandemonium. _Not gas always._ Palm-oil burns scentless as
+moonlight; and when motion, not rest, in a place is signified, we
+accompany ourselves with a wax candle, or taper from time immemorial
+green. Yet think not that there is a blaze of light. We have seen the
+midnight heaven and earth nearly as bright, with but one moon and a
+small scatter of stars. And places of glimmer--and places of gloom--and
+places "deaf to sound and blind to light" there are in this our mansion,
+known but to ourselves--cells--penitentiaries--where an old man may sit
+sighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery--or at times almost
+happy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortal
+tribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, by
+its own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best."
+
+And thus is our domicile a domain--a kingdom. We should not care to be
+confined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave our
+own door--yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping
+like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range
+of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch.
+Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad step
+not above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-places
+illumined by the dim religious light of stained windows, on which
+pilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, are
+travelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores--or
+shepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles of
+Neaera's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrow
+bounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendid
+segments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of them
+ourselves--now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, now
+a Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise.
+
+Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point of
+sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through;
+and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;"
+such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary
+mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we
+observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one
+dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on
+being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency
+from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. They
+are all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; in
+number, nine--each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms--those on the
+same story communicating with one another, and with the parlours,
+drawing-rooms, and libraries--"a mighty maze, but not without a plan,"
+and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit of
+quietude by day and by night, awake or asleep--the chairs being
+couch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy,
+enveloped in a drapery of dreams.
+
+We go to bed at no stated hour--but when we are tired of sitting up,
+then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise,
+neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock,
+nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, nor
+Aurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, or
+crimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's
+visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of
+a certainty that _these_ are real web-and-woof damask curtains, _that_
+flock palpable on substantial walls.
+
+True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntary or inevitable
+change--but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however sudden
+and strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all its
+familiar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Place
+for a week--nay, not for two days and nights--till you might swear we
+had been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air of
+the Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan.
+You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that the
+eyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and who
+preserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress and
+demeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and his
+character. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish days
+served under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sable
+silvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten to
+our study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at our
+protracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes are
+old," we feel as if we had belonged to _this_ house alone, and it to us,
+from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, far
+away! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating upon
+the cheerful present--like birds of fairest plumage floating far inland
+from the main. But there is no idle longing--no vain regret. This, we
+say, is true wisdom. For each scene and season--each pleasure and
+place--ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, and
+to be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in the
+country are often restless to return to town--and people in town unhappy
+till they rush away into the country--thus cheating their entire
+existence out of its natural calm and satisfaction. Not so we. We give
+both their due--and that due is an almost undivided delight in each
+while we live under its reign. For Nature, believe us, is no jealous
+mistress. She is an affectionate wife, who, being assured of his
+fidelity, is not afraid to trust her husband out of her sight,
+
+    "When still the town affairs do call him thence,"
+
+and who waits with cheerful patience for his return, duly welcomed with
+a conjugal shower of smiles and kisses.
+
+But what is this we see before us? Winter--we declare--and in full fig
+with his powdered wig! On the mid-day of November, absolutely snow! a
+full, fair, and free fall of indisputable snow.
+
+Not the slightest idea had we, the day before, that a single flake had
+yet been formed in the atmosphere, which, on closing of our shutters,
+looked through the clear-obscure, indicative of a still night and a
+bright morning. But we had not seen the moon. She, we are told by an
+eyewitness, early in the evening, _stared_ from the south-east, "through
+the misty horizontal air," with a face of portentous magnitude and
+brazen hue, symptomatic, so weatherwise seers do say, of the approach of
+the Snow-king. On such occasions it requires all one's astronomical
+science to distinguish between sun and moon; for then sister resembles
+brother in that wan splendour, and you wonder for a moment, as the large
+beamless orb (how unlike Dian's silver bow!) is in ascension, what can
+have brought the lord of day, at this untimeous hour, from his sea-couch
+behind the mountains of the west. Yet during the night-calm we suspected
+snow--for the hush of the heavens had that downy feel, to our
+half-sleeping fancy, that belongs to the eider-pillow in which
+disappears our aged, honoured, and un-nightcap'd head. Looking out by
+peep of day--rather a ghostlike appearance in our long night-shirt,
+which trails a regal train--we beheld the fair feathers dimly descending
+through the glimmer, while momently the world kept whitening and
+whitening, till we knew not our home-returning white cat on what was
+yesterday the back-_green_, but by the sable tail that singularly shoots
+from the rump of that phenomenon. We were delighted. Into the cold
+plunge-bath we played plop like a salmon--and came out as red as a cut
+of that incomparable fish. One ply of leather--one of flannel--and one
+of the linen fine; and then the suit of pepper-and-salt over all; and
+you behold us welcoming, hailing, and blessing the return of day. Frost,
+too, felt at the finger and toe tips--and in unequivocal true-blue at
+the point, Pensive Public, of thy Grecian or Roman nose. Furs, at once,
+are all the rage; the month of muffs has come; and round the neck of
+Eve, and every one of all her daughters, is seen harmlessly coiling a
+boa-constrictor. On their lovely cheeks the Christmas roses are already
+in full blow, and the heart of Christopher North sings aloud for joy.
+Furred, muffed, and boa'd, Mrs Gentle adventures abroad in the blast;
+and, shouldering his Crutch, the rough, ready, and ruddy old man shows
+how widows are won, whispers in that delicate ear of the publication of
+bans, and points his gouty toe towards the hymeneal altar. In the
+bracing air, his frame is strung like Paganini's fiddle, and he is felt
+to be irresistible in the _piggicato_. "Lord of his presence, and small
+land beside," what cares he even for a knight of the Guelphic order? On
+his breast shines a star--may it never prove a cross--beyond bestowal by
+king or kaisar; nor is Maga's self jealous or envious of these wedded
+loves. And who knows but that ere another November snow sheets the
+Shotts, a curious little Kit, with the word North distinctly traceable
+in blue letters on the whites of his eyes, may not be playing antics on
+his mother's knee, and with the true Tory face in miniature, smiling
+upon the guardian of the merry fellow's own and his country's
+constitution?
+
+What kind of a Winter--we wonder--are we to have in the way of wind and
+weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual
+severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an
+occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come
+out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire,
+combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-day
+garb--we mean his garments of black and his garments of white frost. He
+looks best in the former, we think, on to about Christmas--and the
+latter become the old gentleman well from that festival season, on to
+about the day sacred to a class of persons who will never read our
+Recreations.
+
+Of all the months of the year, November--in our climate--whether in town
+or country, bears the worst character. He is almost universally thought
+to be a sour, sulky, sullen, savage, dim, dull, dark, disconsolate, yet
+designing month--in fewer words, a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorring
+all personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this national
+abuse of November. We know him well--and though we admit at once that he
+is no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worst
+repulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, his
+character continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they come
+at last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer his company "in
+the season of the year," to that of other more brilliant visitors. So
+true is it with months and men, that it requires only to know the most
+unpleasant of them, and to see them during a favourable phasis, in order
+to regard them with that Christian complacency which a good heart sheds
+over all its habits. 'Tis unlucky for November--poor fellow!--that he
+follows October. October is a month so much admired by the world, that
+we often wonder he has not been spoiled. "What a glorious October!"
+"Why, you will surely not leave us till October comes!" "October is the
+month of all months--and, till you see him, you have not seen the
+Lakes." We acknowledge his claims. He is often truly delightful; but,
+like other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only privileged to be
+at times extremely dull, but his intensest stupidity is panegyrised as
+wit of the first water--while his not unfrequent rudeness, of which many
+a common month would be ashamed, passes for the ease of high birth or
+the eccentricity of genius. A very different feeling indeed exists
+towards unfortunate November. The moment he shows his face, all other
+faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make
+himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and
+that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions,
+manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced
+is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will--yea, even more
+like an angel than a man or a month--every eyebrow arches--every nostril
+distends--every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over the
+ice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chill
+whisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozen
+atmosphere, eloquence would be congealed on the lips of an
+Ulysses--Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo.
+
+Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a far more solitary place than
+Glenetive, Glenevis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so much danger of
+being lost in it as in the Moor of Rannoch--for streets and squares,
+though then utterly tenantless, are useful as landmarks to the pilgrim
+passing through what seems to be
+
+    "A still forsaken City of the Dead!"
+
+But, like a frost-bound river suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, and
+coming down in spate from the mountains to the low lands, about the
+beginning of November life annually re-overflows our metropolis, with a
+noise like "the rushing of many chariots." The streets, that for months
+had been like the stony channels of dried-up streams--only not quite so
+well paved--are again all a-murmur, and people addicted to the study of
+political economy begin to hold
+
+    "Each strange tale devoutly true"
+
+in the Malthusian theory of population. What swarms keep hovering round
+the great Northern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, and still seems
+it too small to contain all the insects. Edinburgh is almost as large as
+London. Nay, don't stare! We speak comparatively; and as England is
+somewhere about six times more populous than Scotland, you may, by
+brushing up your arithmetic, and applying to the Census, discover that
+we are not so far wrong in our apparent paradox.
+
+Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburgh
+would nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all his gloom, even as a
+wood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows into the
+town--all its life seems to do so--and to leave nothing behind but the
+bare trees and hedges. Equipages again go glittering along all the
+streets, squares, circuses, and crescents; and one might think that the
+entire "nation of ladies and gentlemen"--for King George the Fourth, we
+presume, meant to include the sex in his compliment--were moving through
+their metropolis. Amusement and business walk hand-in-hand--you hardly
+know, from their cheerful countenances, which is which; for the Scots,
+though a high-cheeked, are not an ill-favoured folk in their
+features--and though their mouths are somewhat of the widest, their
+teeth are white as well as sharp, and on the opening of their ruddy
+lips, their ivory-cases are still further brightened by hearty smiles.
+'Twould be false to say that their figures are distinguished by an air
+of fashion--for we have no court, and our nobles are almost all
+absentees. But though, in one sense, the men are ugly customers, as they
+will find
+
+    "Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe,"
+
+yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions in
+marching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like
+
+                "That small infantry
+    Warr'd on by cranes."
+
+Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universally
+allowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism does
+not so readily recall to the imagination Virgil's picture of Camilla
+flying along the heads of corn without touching their ears, as the
+images of paviers with post-looking mallets driving down dislodged
+stones into the streets. Intermingling with the lighter and more elastic
+footsteps of your Southron dames, the ongoings of our native virgins
+produce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon melee that along
+the Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint.
+
+    "Amid the general dance and minstrelsy"
+
+who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his length
+of ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you cannot see the
+city for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and as for finding
+one particular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile,
+you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay.
+
+But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinct
+place--then a faint mixture of a clear chime that is almost music--now a
+tune--and at last, rousing the massy multitude to enthusiasm, a military
+march, swelling various, profound, and high, with drum, trombone,
+serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on
+(is it the measured tramp of the feet of men, or the confused trampling
+of horses?) banners floating over the procession, above the glitter of
+steel, and the golden glow of helmets. 'Tis a regiment of
+cavalry--hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!
+
+    "There England sends her men, of men the chief,"
+
+still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight
+forward from between sabres; while beneath the equable but haughty
+motion of their steeds, almost disciplined as their riders, with long
+black horse-hair flowing in martial majesty, nod their high Roman
+casques. The sweet storm of music has been passing by while we were
+gazing, and is now somewhat deadened by the retiring distance and by
+that mass of buildings (how the windows are alive, and agaze with
+faces!) while troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is felt by
+all, to the motion of the warlike tune, though now across the Waterloo
+Bridge sounding like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant is all gone
+by, and the dull day is deadened down again into the stillness and
+silence of an ignoble peace.
+
+    "Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!"
+
+All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind,
+invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in all
+professions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with
+a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the
+Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put
+Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter.
+The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long
+vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we
+seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more _gash_ than another,
+and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law,
+Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endless
+litigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends the
+prosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing of
+the great institution of Property! For without it, how could people go
+together by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? All
+the strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their natural
+element, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive to
+the commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to the
+lowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. Our
+Parliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foul
+steam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the State,
+blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how the
+engine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stephenson's
+Rocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then,
+such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collision
+into the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by the
+hoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent county, yet few or none are
+likely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket,
+like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shape
+of waggons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerce
+exult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion all over the world.
+
+But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lull
+at sea, or _lown_ on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's
+toilsome lot. The lull and the lown, what are they when most profound,
+but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and waters--a
+change wrought for an hour of peace in the heart of the hurricane!
+Therefore the sailor enjoys it on the green wave--the shepherd on the
+greensward; while the memory of mists and storms deepens the
+enchantment. Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those who are
+permitted to indulge it, while enduring the labours of an active or a
+contemplative life. To use another, and a still livelier image--see the
+pedlar toiling along the dusty road, with an enormous pack, on his
+excursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on the
+bank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys,
+like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through
+the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the
+wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or a
+botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with
+a mute prayer and a munching appetite--not idle, it must be confessed,
+in that sense--but in every other idle even as the shadow of the
+sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open--for by hypothesis he
+is a Scotsman--he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep.
+"Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you _idle_ fellow?" bawls some
+beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of
+those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly
+sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom--though the ant, Heaven
+bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sick-nurse.
+
+We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men.
+Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the
+self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars
+that move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was
+allowed by all the best watermen, that
+
+    "We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."
+
+But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has
+been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights,
+leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man
+himself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the things
+that ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated,
+or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy.
+They too have all an image-like appearance, and 'tis wondrous strange
+how silent they all are, actors and actresses on the stage of that
+revived drama, which sometimes seems to be a genteel comedy, and
+sometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfiguration
+into a tragedy deep as death.
+
+We presume that the Public read in her own papers--we cannot be but hurt
+that no account of it has appeared in the "Court Journal"--that on
+Thursday the 12th current, No. 99 Moray Place was illuminated by our
+annual Soiree, Conversazione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes--for
+Christopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite James
+Thomson,--
+
+                "No purpose gay,
+    Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns;
+    For happiness and true philosophy
+    Are of the social, still, and smiling kind."
+
+All the rooms in the house were thrown open, except the cellars and the
+Sanctum. To the people congregated outside, the building, we have been
+assured, had all the brilliancy of the Bude Light. It was like a palace
+of light, of which the framework or skeleton was of white unveined
+marble. So strong was the reflection on the nocturnal heavens, that a
+rumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place,
+nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of several
+engines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most part
+of the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while, in the Lothians, our
+illumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of the
+Aurora Borealis.
+
+                "From the arch'd roof,
+    Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
+    Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
+    With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
+    As from a sky. The hasty multitude
+    Admiring enter'd."
+
+We need not say who received the company, and with what grace SHE did
+so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sable
+stole; for the widow's weeds have not _yet_ been doffed for the robes of
+saffron--with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and
+ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her
+hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one star-bright diamond.
+Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then and
+there, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. The
+weeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairly
+entitled to; but the flowers--to speak figuratively--he would have
+cheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became both
+face and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room to
+another, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity of
+those Virgilian words,
+
+    "Incedit Regina."
+
+Surely there is something very poetical in the gradual flowing in of the
+tide of grace, elegance, and beauty, over the floors of a suite of
+regal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. Each party as it comes on
+has its own peculiar picturesqueness, and affects the heart or
+imagination by some novel charm, gently gliding onward a little while by
+itself, as if not unconscious of its own attractions, nor unproud of the
+gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive
+movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the
+radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and
+matrons--provided they be not "dumpy women"--tall, white, blue, and pink
+plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate,
+stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their
+cheeks--not with kisses--for they would be out of order both of time and
+place--but with words almost as tender as kisses, and awakening almost
+as tender a return--a few sweet syllables breathed in a silver voice,
+with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, are
+seen to be from heaven.
+
+A long hour ago, and all the mansion was empty and motionless--with us
+two alone sitting by each other's side affectionately and respectfully
+on a sofa. Now it is filled with life, and heard you ever such a happy
+murmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speaking
+much above breath, so gentle is true refinement, like a delightful
+fragrance
+
+    "From the calm manners quietly exhaled."
+
+Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great, big, hearty, huge, hulking,
+horse-laugh, in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gathered
+gracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, the
+urbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The pagan
+who perpetrates it should be burnt alive--not at a slow fire--though
+that would be but justice--but at a quick one--that all remnants of him
+and his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield has
+been loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema against
+laughter. But though often wrong, there his lordship was right, and for
+that one single rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having been
+one of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle--and that
+sweet, soft, low sound be heard, the _susurrus_. Let there be a
+many-voiced quiet music, like that of the summer moonlight sea when the
+stars are in its breast. But laughter--loud peals of laughter--are like
+breakers--blind breakers on a blind coast, where no verdure grows except
+that of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of all
+commodities, kelp.
+
+'Tis not a literary conversazione, mind ye, gentle reader; for we leave
+that to S. T. Coleridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But all
+speak--talk--whisper--or smile, of all the speakable, talkable,
+whisperable, and smileable little interesting affairs, incidents, and
+occurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, or
+demi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and melt
+away as fast in the stream of social pleasure,
+
+    "A moment white, then gone for ever!"
+
+Not a little scandal--much gossip, we daresay; but as for scandal, it
+is the vulgarest error in the world to think that it either means, or
+does any harm to any mortal. It does infinite good. It ventilates the
+atmosphere, and prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from becoming "a
+foul congregation of vapours." As for gossip, what other vindication
+does it need, than an order for you to look at a soiree of swallows in
+September on a slate-roof, the most innocent and white-breasted
+creatures that pay
+
+    "Their annual visits round the globe,
+    Companions of the sun,"
+
+but such gossipers that the whole air is a-twitter with their talk about
+their neighbours' nest--when--whew! off and away they go, winnowing
+their way westwards, through the setting sunlight, and all in perfect
+amity with themselves and their kind, while
+
+    "The world is all before them, where to choose,
+    And Providence their guide."
+
+And, madam, you do not matronise--and, sir, you do not
+patronise--_waltzing_? 'Tis very O fie-fieish, you think--and in danger
+of becoming very, very faux-papa-ish!
+
+    "Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old,"
+
+whose mind-motto was still--
+
+    "_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_"
+
+Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but be
+not terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your
+censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitely sensitive
+modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have
+suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged
+in even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where
+it is not--and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them open-armed,
+bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like
+the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish
+modesty and mouthing morality--for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite.
+Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling
+Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see the
+realisation of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours--
+
+    "Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance,
+    Lead on the eternal spring!"
+
+But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental
+Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for,
+blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE--so call we
+her who is our heart's-ease and heart's-delight--the granddaughter of
+one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned
+passion--but
+
+    "The course of true love never yet ran smooth"--
+
+comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed
+whisperingly into her ear--a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate
+as a leaf--just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost
+stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would
+have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand
+of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions
+of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings
+accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St
+Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A Hebrew melody! And now your heart
+feels the utter mournfulness of these words,
+
+    "By Babel's streams we sat and wept!"
+
+How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings!
+Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul
+that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance
+to her sway, but yields itself up entirely to all its moods and
+measures, led captive by each successive strain through the whole
+mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush.
+Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh--almost a
+sob--is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's self
+seems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine--
+
+    "Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"
+
+Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at the
+pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in
+her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!
+
+How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity
+to all who have roofs overhead--towards the houseless and them who
+huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets
+must have been a God-send indeed to not a few families, and your plan is
+preferable to a Fancy-Fair. Yet that is good too--nor do we find fault
+with them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give
+relief to misery--and the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the
+poor.
+
+Again, what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows,
+and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the night be about?
+and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He has
+driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our noddle--and to-morrow we
+must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to
+bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish
+acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power of
+King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not--though Ultra-Trimmers try
+to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we
+shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the devil,
+and the Chartists.
+
+
+
+
+STROLL TO GRASSMERE.
+
+FIRST SAUNTER.
+
+
+Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather
+of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been
+in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular
+intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on
+the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the
+fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we
+live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed
+that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the
+head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in
+thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls
+down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take to
+bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries them off, victims to their
+confidence in that treacherous tube. But we mean to ask have you an eye,
+an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all the
+prognosticating sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, of nature?
+Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, and
+spirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, come
+and go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from
+moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you
+listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them
+prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as
+that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when
+grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with
+the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes
+visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And
+know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are
+the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac? When a
+mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads
+every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when
+one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly
+off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty
+distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely
+lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of
+prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The
+prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when
+the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty
+for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is
+beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the
+blue of a midsummer's meridian day?
+
+Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser
+than ourselves; yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of
+the Mountains;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we know
+somewhat more than the vocabulary of the languages of calm and storm.
+Remember that we are now at Ambleside--and one week's residence there
+may let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St
+Cloud.
+
+One advice we give you, and by following it you cannot fail to be happy
+at Ambleside, and everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, love,
+admire, and delight in it, and vow that you would not change it for the
+atmosphere of a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be thankful for
+the faint air that comes down fitfully from cliff and chasm, or the
+breeze that ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. If the heavens
+are filled with sunshine, and you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool
+the sylvan shade for ever moistened by the murmurs of that fairy
+waterfall! Should it blow great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder
+magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements are warded even from the
+thunder-bolt by the dense umbrage of unviolated woods?
+Rain--rain--rain--an even-down pour of rain, that forces upon you
+visions of Noah and his ark, and the top of Mount Ararat--still, we
+beseech you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; the thing is
+impossible. Even this very afternoon will the rainbow span the blue
+entrance into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westering sun on
+his approach to the mountains--and a hundred hill-born torrents will be
+seen flashing out of the upfolding mists. What a delightful dazzle on
+the light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald;
+and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigality
+of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled
+Fairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest.
+
+You will not imagine, from anything we have ever said, that we are
+enemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embrace
+the new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At such
+hour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in the
+world. The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues
+everything to itself, and life is love.
+
+Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for having overslept the assignation
+hour, and allowed thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude,
+wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest
+phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us--for not
+clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead: the
+unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us--a loving murmur
+steals into our heart from thine--and pure as a child's, daughter of
+Heaven! is thy breath.
+
+In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the idea of
+morning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of common
+day"--the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during the
+night--enough, and no more, to enliven nature--the mists are ascending
+composedly with promise of gentle weather--and the sun, so mild that we
+can look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance that as he
+has risen so will he reign, and so will he set in peace.
+
+Yet we cannot help thinking it somewhat remarkable, that, to the best of
+our memory, never once were we the very first out into the dawn. We say
+nothing of birds--for they, with their sweet jargoning, anticipate it,
+and from their bed on the bough feel the forerunning warmth of the
+sunrise; neither do we allude to hares, for they are "hirpling hame," to
+sleep away the light hours, open-eyed, in the briery quarry in the
+centre of the trackless wood. Even cows and horses we can excuse being
+up before us, for they have bivouacked; and the latter, as they often
+sleep standing, are naturally somnambulists. Weasels, too, we can pardon
+for running across the road before us, and as they reach the
+hole-in-the-wall, showing by their clear eyes that they have been awake
+for hours, and have probably breakfasted on leveret. We have no spite at
+chanticleer, nor the hooting owls against whom he is so lustily crowing
+hours before the orient; nor do we care although we know that is not the
+first sudden plunge of the tyrant trout into the insect cloud already
+hovering over the tarn. But we confess that it is a little mortifying to
+our pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from the
+dust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her last
+night's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity,
+at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleeping
+on her pallet of straw. A pedlar, too, who has got through a portion of
+the Excursion before the sun has illumed the mountain-tops, is
+mortifying, with his piled pack and ellwand. There, as we are a
+Christian, is Ned Hurd, landing a pike on the margin of the Reed-pool,
+on his way from Hayswater, where he has been all night angling, till his
+creel is as heavy as a sermon; and a little further on, comes issuing
+like a Dryad's daughter, from the gate in the lane, sweet little Alice
+Elleray, with a basket dangling beneath her arm, going in her orphan
+beauty to gather, in their season, wild strawberries or violets in the
+woods.
+
+Sweet orphan of Wood-edge! what would many a childless pair give for a
+creature one-half so beautiful as thou, to break the stillness of a home
+that wants but one blessing to make it perfectly happy! Yet there are
+few or none to lay a hand on that golden head, or leave a kiss upon its
+ringlets. The father of Alice Elleray was a wild and reckless youth,
+and, going to the wars, died in a foreign land. Her mother soon faded
+away of a broken heart;--and who was to care for the orphan child of the
+forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely
+distinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to
+take her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her own
+subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the
+solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray
+never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it--never
+entered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small,
+lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old
+songs--as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? She
+is now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish for
+a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may
+mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge
+will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on
+leaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-off
+city some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside and
+Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid
+waters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from the
+fair basket-maker, an ornament for your parlour, that will not disgrace
+its fanciful furniture, and, as you sit at your dreamy needlework, will
+recall the green forest glades of Brathy or Calgarth. Industrious
+creature! each day is to thee, in thy simplicity, an entire life. All
+thoughts, all feelings, arise and die in peace between sunrise and
+sunset. What carest thou for being an orphan! knowing, as thou well
+dost, that God is thy father and thy mother, and that a prayer to Him
+brings health, food, and sleep to the innocent.
+
+Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, Alice
+Elleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden,
+trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in its
+cheerfulness has now and then a melancholy fall, and, at the close of
+the song, hers are the only eyes that are not dimmed with the haze of
+tears. Then away she glides with a thankful smile, and dancing over the
+greensward, like an uncertain sunbeam, lays the treasure, won by her
+beauty, her skill, and her industry, on the lap of her old guardian, who
+blesses her with the uplifting of withered hands.
+
+Meanwhile, we request you to walk away with us up to Stockgill-force.
+There has been a new series of dry weather, to be sure; but to our
+liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the
+noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified till your
+head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn-door--we are
+speaking to you, sir--and roar into a friend's ear all in vain a remark
+on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as
+completely drenched in spray as if you had fallen out of a boat--and
+descend to dinner with a toothache that keeps you in starvation in the
+presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry
+weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of
+tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why, it slides
+and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks,
+and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose
+foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache
+have you--speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent
+observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dewdrops have
+been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of
+the cushat--and as for toothache interfering with dinner, you eat as if
+your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss
+nuts, upper-and-lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the
+county. And all this comes of looking at Stockgill-force, or any other
+waterfall, in dry weather, after a few refreshing and fertilising
+showers that make the tributary rills to murmur, and set at work a
+thousand additional feeders to every Lake.
+
+Ha! Matutine Roses!--budding, half-blown, consummate--you are, indeed,
+in irresistible blush! We shall not say which of you we love best--_she
+knows it_; but we see there is no hope to-day for the old man--for you
+are all paired--and he must trudge it _solus_, in capacity of
+Guide-General of the Forces. What! the nymphs are going to pony it? And
+you intend, you selfish fellows, that we shall hold all the reins
+whenever the spirit moveth you to deviate from bridle-path, to clamber
+cliff for a bird's-eye view, or dive into dells for some rare plant?
+Well, well--there is a tradition, that once we were young ourselves; and
+so redolent of youth are these hills, that we are more than half
+inclined to believe it--so blush and titter, and laugh and look down, ye
+innocent wicked ones, each with her squire by her palfrey's mane, while
+good old Christopher, like a true guide, keeps hobbling in the rear on
+his Crutch. Holla there!--to the right of our friend Mr Benson's
+smithy--and to Rothay-bridge. Turn in at a gate to the right hand,
+which, twenty to one, you will find open, that the cattle may take an
+occasional promenade along the turnpike, and cool their palates with a
+little ditch grass, and saunter along by Millar-bridge and Foxgill on to
+Pelter-bridge, and, if you please, to Rydal-mere. Thus, and thus only,
+is seen the vale of Ambleside; and what a vale of grove, and glade, and
+stream, and cliff, and cottage, and villa, and grassfield, and garden,
+and orchard, and--But not another word, for you would forthwith compare
+our description with the reality, and seeing it faint and feeble, would
+toss it into the Rothay, and laugh as the Vol. plumped over a waterfall!
+
+The sylvan--or say rather the forest scenery--(for there is to us an
+indescribable difference between these two words)--of Rydal-park, was,
+in memory of living men, magnificent, and it still contains a treasure
+of old trees. Lady Diana's white pea-fowl, sitting on the limbs of that
+huge old tree like creatures newly alighted from the Isles of Paradise!
+all undisturbed by the waterfalls, which, as you keep gazing on the
+long-depending plumage illumining the forest gloom, seem indeed to lose
+their sound, and to partake the peace of that resplendent show--each
+splendour a wondrous Bird! For they stretch themselves all up, with
+their graceful crests, o'ercanopied by the umbrage draperied as from a
+throne. And never surely were seen in this daylight world such
+unterrestrial creatures--though come from afar, all happy as at home in
+the Fairies' Oak.
+
+By all means ride away into these woods, and lose yourself for half an
+hour among the cooing of cushats, and the shrill shriek of startled
+blackbirds, and the rustle of the harmless slow-worm among the last
+year's red beech-leaves. No very great harm in a kiss under the shadow
+of an oak (oh fie!) while the magpie chatters angrily at safe distance,
+and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of the
+canopy, and, hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of the
+loftiest umbrage. You still continue to see and hear; but the sight is a
+glimmer, and the sound a hum, as if the forest-glade were swarming with
+bees, from the ground-flowers to the herons' nests. Refreshed by your
+dream of Dryads, follow a lonesome din that issues from a pile of wooded
+cliffs, and you are led to a Waterfall. Five minutes are enough for
+taking an impression, if your mind be of the right material, and you
+carry it away with you further down the Forest. Such a torrent will not
+reach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; and
+saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied
+bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of
+many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in
+which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were
+grey, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt of the noisy
+world?
+
+You are now all standing together in a group beside Ivy-cottage, the
+river gliding below its wooden bridge from Rydal-mere. It is a perfect
+model of such architecture--breathing the very spirit of Westmoreland.
+The public road, skirted by its front paling, does not in the least
+degree injure its character of privacy and retirement; so we think at
+this dewy hour of prime, when the gossamer meets our faces, extended
+from the honey-suckled slate-porch to the trees on the other side of the
+turnpike. And see how the multitude of low-hanging roofs and gable-ends,
+and dovecot-looking windows, steal away up a green and shrubberied
+acclivity, and terminating in wooded rocks that seem part of the
+building, in the uniting richness of ivy, lichens, moss-roses, broom,
+and sweet-brier, murmuring with birds and bees, busy near hive and nest!
+It would be extremely pleasant to breakfast in that deep-windowed room
+on the ground-floor, on cream and barley cakes, eggs, coffee, and
+dry-toast, with a little mutton-ham not too severely salted, and at the
+conclusion, a nut-shell of Glenlivet or Cognac. But, Lord preserve ye!
+it is not yet six o'clock in the morning; and what Christian kettle
+simmereth before seven? Yes, my sweet Harriet, that sketch does you
+credit, and it is far from being very unlike the original. Rather too
+many chimneys by about half-a-dozen; and where did you find that steeple
+immediately over the window marked "Dairy?" The pigs are somewhat too
+sumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen-roost might
+accommodate a phoenix. But the features of the chief porch are very
+happily hit off--you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof--and
+some of the windows may be justly said to be staring
+likenesses.--Ivy-cottage is slipped into our portfolio, and we shall
+compare it, on our return to Scotland, with Buchanan Lodge.
+
+Gallantry forbids, but Truth demands to say, that young ladies are but
+indifferent sketchers. The dear creatures have no notion of perspective.
+At flower-painting and embroidery, they are pretty fair hands, but they
+make sad work among waterfalls and ruins. Notwithstanding, it is
+pleasant to hang over them, seated on stone or stool, drawing from
+nature; and now and then to help them in with a horse or a hermit. It is
+a difficult, almost an impossible thing--that foreshortening. The most
+speculative genius is often at a loss to conjecture the species of a
+human being foreshortened by a young lady. The hanging Tower at Pisa is,
+we believe, some thirty feet or so off the perpendicular, and there is
+one at Caerphilly about seventeen; but these are nothing to the castles
+in the air we have seen built by the touch of a female magician; nor is
+it an unusual thing with artists of the fair sex to order their plumed
+chivalry to gallop down precipices considerably steeper than a house, on
+animals apparently produced between the tiger and the bonassus. When
+they have succeeded in getting something like the appearance of water
+between what may be conjectured banks, they are not very particular
+about its running occasionally up-hill; and it is interesting to see a
+stream stealing quietly below trees in gradual ascension, till,
+disappearing for a few minutes over one summit, it comes thundering down
+another, in the shape of a waterfall, on the head of an elderly
+gentleman, unsuspectingly reading Mr Wordsworth's "Excursion," perhaps,
+in the foreground. Nevertheless, we repeat, that it is delightful to
+hang over one of the dear creatures, seated on stone or stool, drawing
+from nature; for whatever may be the pencil's skill, the eye may behold
+the glimpse of a vision whose beauty shall be remembered when even
+Windermere herself has for a while faded into oblivion.
+
+On such excursions there are sure to occur a few enviable adventures.
+First, the girths get wrong, and, without allowing your beloved virgin
+to alight, you spend more time than is absolutely necessary in arranging
+them; nor can you help admiring the attitude into which the graceful
+creature is forced to draw up her delicate limbs, that her fairy feet
+may not be in the way to impede your services. By-and-by a calf--which
+you hope will be allowed to grow up into a cow--stretching up her curved
+red back from behind a wall, startles John Darby, albeit unused to the
+starting mood, and you leap four yards to the timely assistance of the
+fair shrieker, tenderly pressing her bridle-hand as you find the rein
+that has not been lost, and wonder what has become of the whip that
+never existed. A little further on, a bridgeless stream crosses the
+road--a dangerous-looking ford indeed--a foot deep at the very least,
+and scorning wet feet, as they ought to be scorned, you almost carry,
+serene in danger, your affianced bride (or she is in a fair way of
+becoming so) in your arms off the saddle, nor relinquish the delightful
+clasp till all risk is at an end, some hundred yards on, along the
+velvet herbage. Next stream you come to has indeed a bridge--but then
+what a bridge! A long, coggly, cracked slate-stone, whose unsteady
+clatter would make the soberest steed jump over the moon. You beseech
+the timid girl to sit fast, and she almost leans down to your breast as
+you press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady old
+stager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each side
+of the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after due
+disentanglement, from that awkward, old-fashioned crutch and pummel, and
+from a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like a
+mouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, and
+difficult to open for releasement. You feel that all you love in the
+world is indeed fully, freshly, and warmly in your arms, nor can you
+bear to set the treasure down on the rough stony road, but look round,
+and round, and round, for a soft spot, which you finally prophesy at
+some distance up the hill, whitherwards, in spite of pouting Yea and
+Nay, you persist in carrying her whose head is ere long to lie in your
+tranquil bosom.
+
+Ivy-cottage, you see, is the domicile of gentlemen and lady folk; but
+look through yonder dispersion, and in a minute or two your eyes will
+see distinctly, in spite of the trees, a _bona fide_ farmhouse,
+inhabited by a family whose head is at once an agriculturist, a
+shepherd, and a woodsman. A Westmoreland cottage has scarcely any
+resemblance to a Scottish one. A Scottish cottage (in the Lowlands) has
+rarely any picturesque beauty in itself--a narrow oblong, with steep
+thatched roof, and an ear-like chimney at each of the two gable-ends.
+Many of the Westmoreland cottages would seem, to an ignorant observer,
+to have been originally built on a model conceived by the finest
+poetical genius. In the first place, they are almost always built
+precisely where they ought to be, had the builder's prime object been to
+beautify the dale; at least, so we have often felt in moods, when
+perhaps our emotions were unconsciously soothed into complacency by the
+spirit of the scene. Where the sedgy brink of the lake or tarn circles
+into a lone bay, with a low hill of coppice-wood on one side, and a few
+tall pines on the other, no--it is a grove of sycamores--there, about a
+hundred yards from the water, and about ten above its ordinary level,
+peeps out from its cheerful seclusion that prettiest of all
+hamlets--Braithwaite-fold. The hill behind is scarcely sylvan--yet it
+has many hazels--a few bushes--here and there a holly--and why or
+wherefore, who can now tell, a grove of enormous yews. There is sweet
+pasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mild
+without much sunshine, there is a bleating of lambs, a twitter of small
+birds, and the deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always a
+feature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, for
+probably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire,
+since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire on
+the hearth. No. There is a volume of smoke, as if the chimney were in
+flame--a tumultuous cloud pours aloft, straggling and broken, through
+the broad slate stones that defend the mouth of the vomitory from every
+blast. The matron within is doubtless about to prepare breakfast, and
+last year's rotten pea-sticks have soon heated the capacious grid-iron.
+Let the smoke-wreath melt away at its leisure, and do you admire, along
+with us, the infinite variety of all those little shelving and sloping
+roofs. To feel the full force of the peculiar beauty of these antique
+tenements, you must understand their domestic economy. If ignorant of
+that, you can have no conception of the meaning of any one thing you
+see--roofs, eaves, chimneys, beams, props, doors, hovels, and sheds, and
+hanging staircase, being all huddled together, as you think, in
+unintelligible confusion; whereas they are all precisely what and where
+they ought to be, and have had their colours painted, forms shaped, and
+places allotted by wind and weather, and the perpetually but pleasantly
+felt necessities Of the natural condition of mountaineers.
+
+Dear, dear is the thatch to the eyes of a son of Caledonia, for he may
+remember the house in which he was born; but what thatch was ever so
+beautiful as that slate from the quarry of the White-moss? Each
+one--no--not each one--but almost each one--of these little overhanging
+roofs seems to have been slated, or repaired at least, in its own
+separate season, so various is the lustre of lichens that bathes the
+whole, as richly as ever rock was bathed fronting the sun on the
+mountain's brow. Here and there is seen some small window, before
+unobserved, curtained perhaps--for the statesman, and the statesman's
+wife, and the statesman's daughters, have a taste--a taste inspired by
+domestic happiness, which, seeking simply comfort, unconsciously creates
+beauty, and whatever its homely hand touches, that it adorns. There
+would seem to be many fireplaces in Braithwaite-fold, from such a number
+of chimney-pillars, each rising up to a different altitude from a
+different base, round as the bole of a tree--and elegant, as if shaped
+by Vitruvius. To us, we confess, there is nothing offensive in the most
+glaring white rough-cast that ever changed a cottage into a patch of
+sunny snow. Yet here that greyish-tempered unobtrusive hue does
+certainly blend to perfection with roof, rock, and sky. Every instrument
+is in tune. Not even in sylvan glade, nor among the mountain rocks, did
+wanderer's eyes ever behold a porch of meeting tree-stems, or reclining
+cliffs, more gracefully festooned than the porch from which now issues
+one of the fairest of Westmeria's daughters. With one arm crossed before
+her eyes in a sudden burst of sunshine, with the other Ellinor Inman
+waves to her little brother and sisters among the bark-peelers in the
+Rydal woods. The graceful signal is repeated till seen, and in a few
+minutes a boat steals twinkling from the opposite side of the lake, each
+tug of the youthful rowers distinctly heard through the hollow of the
+vale. A singing voice rises and ceases--as if the singer were watching
+the echo--and is not now the picture complete?
+
+After a time old buildings undergo no perceptible change, any more than
+old trees; and after they have begun to feel the touch of decay, it is
+long before they look melancholy; for while they continue to be used,
+they cannot help looking cheerful, and even dilapidation is painful only
+when felt to be lifeless. The house now in ruins, that we passed a few
+hundred yards ago without your seeing it--we saw it with a sigh--among
+some dark firs, just before we began to ascend the hill, was many years
+ago inhabited by Miles Mackareth, a man of some substance, and
+universally esteemed for his honest and pious character. His integrity,
+however, wanted the grace of courteousness, and his religion was
+somewhat gloomy and austere, while all the habits of his life were sad,
+secluded, and solitary. His fireside was always decent, but never
+cheerful--there the passing traveller partook of an ungrudging, but a
+grave hospitality; and although neighbours dropping in unasked were
+always treated as neighbours, yet seldom were they invited to pass an
+evening below his roof, except upon the stated festivals of the seasons,
+or some domestic event demanding sociality, according to the country
+custom. Year after year the gloom deepened on his strong-marked
+intellectual countenance; and his hair, once black as jet, became
+untimely grey. Indeed, although little more than fifty years old, when
+you saw his head uncovered, you would have taken him for a man
+approaching to threescore and ten. His wife and only daughter, both
+naturally of a cheerful disposition, grew every year more retired, till
+at last they shunned society altogether, and were seldom seen but at
+church. And now a vague rumour ran through the hamlets of the
+neighbouring valleys, that he was scarcely in his right mind--that he
+had been heard by shepherds on the hills talking to himself wild words,
+and pacing up and down in a state of distraction. The family ceased to
+attend divine worship, and as for some time the Sabbath had been the
+only day they were visible, few or none now knew how they fared, and by
+many they were nearly forgotten. Meanwhile, during the whole summer, the
+miserable man haunted the loneliest places; and, to the terror of his
+wife and daughter, who had lost all power over him, and durst not speak,
+frequently passed whole days they knew not where, and came home, silent,
+haggard, and ghastly, about midnight. His widow afterwards told that he
+seldom slept, and never without dreadful dreams--that often he would sit
+up all night in his bed, with his eyes fixed and staring on nothing, and
+uttering ejaculations for mercy for all his sins.
+
+What these sins were he never confessed--nor, as far as man may judge of
+man, had he ever committed any act that needed to lie heavy on his
+conscience. But his whole being, he said, was one black sin--and a
+spirit had been sent to tell him, that his doom was to be with the
+wicked through all the ages of eternity. That spirit, without form or
+shadow--only a voice--seldom left his side day or night, go where he
+would; but its most dreadful haunt was under a steep rock called
+Blakerigg-scaur; and thither, in whatever direction he turned his face
+on leaving his own door, he was led by an irresistible impulse, even as
+a child is led by the hand. Tenderly and truly had he once loved his
+wife and daughter, nor less because that love had been of few words, and
+with a shade of sorrow. But now he looked on them almost as if they had
+been strangers--except at times, when he started up, kissed them, and
+wept. His whole soul was possessed by horrid fantasies, of which it was
+itself object and victim; and it is probable that had he seen them both
+lying dead, he would have left their corpses in the house, and taken his
+way to the mountains. At last one night passed away and he came not. His
+wife and daughter, who had not gone to bed, went to the nearest house
+and told their tale. In an hour a hundred feet were traversing all the
+loneliest places--till a hat was seen floating on Loughrigg-tarn, and
+then all knew that the search was near an end. Drags were soon got from
+the fishermen on Windermere, and a boat crossed and recrossed the tarn
+on its miserable quest, till in an hour, during which wife and daughter
+sat without speaking on a stone by the water-edge, the body came
+floating to the surface, with its long silver hair. One single shriek
+only, it is said, was heard, and from that shriek till three years
+afterwards, his widow knew not that her husband was with the dead. On
+the brink of that small sandy bay the body was laid down and cleansed of
+the muddy weeds--his daughter's own hands assisting in the rueful
+work--and she walked among the mourners, the day before the Sabbath,
+when the funeral entered the little burial-ground of Langdale chapel,
+and the congregation sung a Christian psalm over the grave of the
+forgiven suicide.
+
+We cannot patronise the practice of walking in large parties of ten or a
+score, ram-stam and helter-skelter, on to the front-green or gravel-walk
+of any private nobleman's or gentleman's house, to enjoy, from a
+commanding station, an extensive or picturesque view of the circumjacent
+country. It is too much in the style of the Free and Easy. The family
+within, sitting perhaps at dinner with the windows open, or sewing and
+reading in a cool dishabille, cannot like to be stared in upon by so
+many curious and inquisitive pupils all a-hunt for prospects; nor were
+these rose-bushes planted there for public use, nor that cherry-tree in
+vain netted against the blackbirds. Not but that a party may now and
+then excusably enough pretend to lose their way in a strange country;
+and looking around them in well-assumed bewilderment, bow hesitatingly
+and respectfully to maid or matron at door or window, and, with a
+thousand apologies, lingeringly offer to retire by the avenue gate, on
+the other side of the spacious lawn, that terrace-like hangs over vale,
+lake, and river. But to avoid all possible imputation of impertinence,
+follow you our example, and make all such incursions by break of day. We
+hold that, for a couple of hours before and after sunrise, all the earth
+is common property. Nobody surely would think for a moment of looking
+black on any number of freebooting lakers coming full sail up the
+avenue, right against the front, at four o'clock in the morning? At that
+hour, even the poet would grant them the privilege of the arbour where
+he sits when inspired, and writing for immortality. He feels conscious
+that he ought to have been in bed; and hastens, on such occasions, to
+apologise for his intrusion on strangers availing themselves of the
+rights and privileges of the Dawn.
+
+Leaving Ivy-cottage, then, and its yet unbreathing chimneys, turn in at
+the first gate to your right (if it be not built up, in which case leap
+the wall), and find your way the best you can through among old
+pollarded and ivied ash-trees, intermingled with yews, and over knolly
+ground, brier-woven, and here and there whitened with the jagged thorn,
+till you reach, through a slate-stile, a wide gravel walk, shaded by
+pine-trees, and open on the one side to an orchard. Proceed--and little
+more than a hundred steps will land you on the front of Rydal-mount, the
+house of the great Poet of the Lakes. Mr Wordsworth is not at home, but
+away to cloudland in his little boat so like the crescent moon. But do
+not by too much eloquence awaken the family, or scare the silence, or
+frighten "the innocent brightness of the new-born day." We hate all
+sentimentalism; but we bid you, in his own words,
+
+                "With gentle hand
+    Touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves."
+
+From a quaint platform of evergreens you see a blue gleam of Windermere
+over the grove-tops--close at hand are Rydal-hall and its ancient
+woods--right opposite the Loughrigg-fells, ferny, rocky, and sylvan, but
+the chief breadth of breast pastoral--and to the right Rydal-mere,
+seen, and scarcely seen, through embowering trees, and mountain-masses
+bathed in the morning light, and the white-wreathed mists for a little
+while longer shrouding their summits. A lately erected private chapel
+lifts its little tower from below, surrounded by a green, on which there
+are yet no graves--nor do we know if it be intended for a place of
+burial. A few houses are sleeping beyond the chapel by the river-side;
+and the people beginning to set them in order, here and there a pillar
+of smoke ascends into the air, giving cheerfulness and animation to the
+scene.
+
+The Lake-Poets! ay, their day is come. The lakes are worthy of the
+poets, and the poets of the lakes. That poets should love and live among
+lakes, once seemed most absurd to critics whose domiciles were on the
+Nor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerable
+quagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock--so are the Salisbury Craigs
+noble craigs--and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he to
+leap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in the
+Cowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour of
+Glaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack of
+cards. Who, pray, are the Nor-Loch poets? Not the Minstrel--he holds by
+the tenure of the Tweed. Not Campbell--"he heard in dreams the music of
+the Clyde." Not Joanna Baillie--her inspiration was nursed on the
+Calder's sylvan banks and the moors of Strathaven. Stream-loving Coila
+nurtured Burns; and the Shepherd's grave is close to the cot in which he
+was born--within hearing of the Ettrick's mournful voice on its way to
+meet the Yarrow. Skiddaw overshadows, and Greta freshens the bower of
+him who framed,
+
+    "Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."
+
+Here the woods, mountains, and waters of Rydal imparadise the abode of
+the wisest of nature's bards, with whom poetry is religion. And where
+was he ever so happy as in that region, he who created "Christabelle,"
+"beautiful exceedingly;" and sent the "Auncient Mariner" on the wildest
+of all voyagings, and brought him back with the ghastliest of all crews,
+and the strangest of all curses that ever haunted crime?
+
+Of all Poets that ever lived Wordsworth has been at once the most
+truthful and the most idealising; external nature from him has received
+a soul, and becomes our teacher; while he has so filled our minds with
+images from her, that every mood finds some fine affinities there, and
+thus we all hang for sustenance and delight on the bosom of our mighty
+Mother. We believe that there are many who have an eye for Nature, and
+even a sense of the beautiful, without any very profound feeling; and to
+them Wordsworth's finest descriptive passages seem often languid or
+diffuse, and not to present to their eyes any distinct picture. Perhaps
+sometimes this objection may be just; but to paint to the eye is easier
+than to the imagination--and Wordsworth, taking it for granted that
+people can now see and hear, desires to make them feel and understand;
+of his pupil it must not be said,
+
+    "A primrose by the river's brim
+    A yellow primrose is to him,
+    And it is nothing more;"
+
+the poet gives the something more till we start at the disclosure as at
+a lovely apparition--yet an apparition of beauty not foreign to the
+flower, but exhaling from its petals, which till that moment seemed to
+us but an ordinary bunch of leaves. In these lines is a humbler example
+of how recondite may be the spirit of beauty in any most familiar thing
+belonging to the kingdom of nature; one higher far--but of the same
+kind--is couched in two immortal verses--
+
+    "To me the humblest flower that blows, can give
+    Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."
+
+In what would the poet differ from the worthy man of prose, if his
+imagination possessed not a beautifying and transmuting power over the
+objects of the inanimate world? Nay, even the naked truth itself is seen
+clearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become a
+poet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad. Yonder ass licking his
+lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow
+with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at
+Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing
+with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally
+Chambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has
+cultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns their
+phraseology, and declares the sunset to be exceedingly handsome. The
+Laker, who sometimes has a soul, feels it rise within him as the rim of
+the orb disappears in the glow of softened fire. The artist compliments
+Nature, by likening her evening glories to a picture of Claud
+Lorraine--while the poet feels the sense sublime
+
+    "Of something far more deeply interfused,
+    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
+    And the round ocean and the living air,
+    And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
+    A motion and a spirit that impels
+    All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+    And rolls through all things."
+
+Compare any one page, or any twenty pages, with the character given of
+Wordsworth's poetry in the obsolete criticism that sought to send it to
+oblivion. The poet now sits on his throne in the blue serene--and no
+voice from below dares deny his supremacy in his own calm dominions. And
+was it of him, whom devout imagination, dreaming of ages to come, now
+sees, placed in his immortality between Milton and Spenser, that the
+whole land once rang with ridicule, while her wise men wiped their eyes
+"of tears that sacred _pity_ had engendered," and then relieved their
+hearts by joining in the laughter "of the universal British nation?" All
+the ineffable absurdities of the bard are now embodied in Seven
+Volumes--the sense of the ridiculous still survives among us--our men of
+wit and power are not all dead--we have yet our satirists, great and
+small--editors in thousands, and contributors in tens of thousands--yet
+not a whisper is heard to breathe detraction from the genius of the
+high-priest of nature; while the voice of the awakened and enlightened
+land declares it to be divine--using towards him not the language merely
+of admiration but of reverence--of love and gratitude due to the
+benefactor of humanity, who has purified its passions by loftiest
+thoughts and noblest sentiments, stilling their turbulence by the same
+processes that magnify their power, and showing how the soul, in ebb and
+flow, and when its tide is at full, may be at once as strong and as
+serene as the sea.
+
+There are few pictures painted by him merely for the pleasure of the
+eye, or even the imagination, though all the pictures he ever painted
+are beautiful to both; they have all a moral meaning--many a meaning
+more than moral--and his poetry can be comprehended, in its full scope
+and spirit, but by those who feel the sublimity of these four lines in
+his "Ode to Duty,"--
+
+    "Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads;
+    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
+    And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."
+
+Is thy life disturbed by guilty or sinful passions? Have they gained a
+mastery of thee--and art thou indeed their slave? Then the poetry of
+Wordsworth must be to thee
+
+    "As is a picture to a blind man's eye;"
+
+or if thine eyes yet see the light in which it is enveloped, and thy
+heart yet feels the beauty it reveals, in spite of the clouds that
+overhang and the storms that trouble them, that beauty will be
+unbearable, till regret become remorse, and remorse penitence, and
+penitence restore thee to those intuitions of the truth that illumine
+his sacred pages, and thou knowest and feelest once more that
+
+    "The primal duties shine aloft--like stars,"
+
+that life's best pleasures grow like flowers all around and beneath thy
+feet.
+
+Nor are we not privileged to cherish a better feeling than pride in the
+belief, or rather knowledge, that WE have helped to diffuse Wordsworth's
+poetry not only over this Island, but the furthest dependencies of the
+British empire, and throughout the United States of America. Many
+thousands have owed to us their emancipation from the prejudices against
+it, under which they had wilfully remained ignorant of it during many
+years; and we have instructed as many more, whose hearts were free, how
+to look on it with those eyes of love which alone can discover the
+Beautiful. Communications have been made to us from across the Atlantic,
+and from the heart of India--from the Occident and the Orient--thanking
+us for having vindicated and extended the fame of the best of our
+living bards, till the name of Wordsworth has become a household word on
+the banks of the Mississippi and the Ganges. It would have been so had
+we never lived, _but not so soon_; and many a noble nature has
+worshipped his genius, as displayed in our pages, not in fragments but
+in perfect poems, accompanied with our comments, who had no means in
+those distant regions of possessing his volumes, whereas Maga flies on
+wings to the uttermost parts of the earth.
+
+As for our own dear Scotland--for whose sake, with all her faults, the
+light of day is sweet to our eyes--twenty years ago there were not
+twenty copies--we question if there were ten--of the "Lyrical Ballads"
+in all the land of the mountain and the flood. Now Wordsworth is studied
+all Scotland over--and Scotland is proud and happy to know, from his
+Memorials of the Tours he has made through her brown heaths and shaggy
+woods, that the Bard's heart overflows with kindness towards her
+children--that his songs have celebrated the simple and heroic character
+of her olden times, nor left unhonoured the virtues that yet survive in
+her national character. All her generous youth regard him now as a great
+Poet; and we have been more affected than we should choose to confess,
+by the grateful acknowledgment of many a gifted spirit, that to us it
+was owing that they had opened their eyes and their hearts to the
+ineffable beauty of that poetry in which they had, under our
+instructions, found not a vain visionary delight, but a strength and
+succour and consolation, breathed as from a shrine in the silence and
+solitude of nature, in which stood their father's hut, sanctifying their
+humble birthplace with pious thoughts that made the very weekdays to
+them like Sabbaths--nor on the evening of the Sabbath might they not
+blamelessly be blended with those breathed from the Bible, enlarging
+their souls to religion by those meditative moods which such pure poetry
+inspires, and by those habits of reflection which its study forms, when
+pursued under the influence of thoughtful peace.
+
+Why, if it were not for that everlasting--we beg pardon--immortal
+Wordsworth--the LAKES, and all that belong to them, would be our
+own--_jure divino_--for we are the heir-apparent to the
+
+    "Sole King of rocky Cumberland."
+
+But Wordsworth never will--never can die; and so we are in danger of
+being cheated out of our due dominion. We cannot think this fatherly
+treatment of such a son--and yet in our loftiest moods of filial
+reverence we have heard ourselves exclaiming, while
+
+            "The Cataract of Lodore
+    Peal'd to our orisons,"
+
+O King! live for ever!
+
+Therefore, with the fear of "The Excursion" before our eyes, we took to
+prose--to numerous prose--ay, though we say it that should not say it,
+to prose as numerous as any verse--and showed such scenes
+
+    "As savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew."
+
+Here an English Lake--there a Scottish loch--till Turner grew jealous,
+and Thomson flung his brush at one of his own unfinished mountains--when
+lo! a miracle! Creative of grandeur in his very despair, he stood
+astonished at the cliff that came prerupt from his canvass, and
+christened itself "the Eagle's Eyrie," as it _frowned serenely_ upon the
+sea, maddening in a foamy circle at its inaccessible feet.
+
+Only in such prose as ours can the heart pour forth its effusions like a
+strong spring discharging ever so many gallons in a minute, either into
+pipes that conduct it through some great Metropolitan city, or into a
+water-course that soon becomes a rivulet, then a stream, then a river,
+then a lake, and then a sea. Would Fancy luxuriate? Then let her expand
+wings of prose. In verse, however irregular, her flight is lime-twigged,
+and she soon takes to hopping on the ground. Would Imagination dive? Let
+the bell in which she sinks be constructed on the prose principle, and
+deeper than ever plummet sunk, it will startle monsters at the roots of
+the coral caves, yet be impervious to the strokes of the most tremendous
+of tails. Would she soar? In a prose balloon she seeks the stars. There
+is room and power of ascension for any quantity of ballast--fling it
+out, and up she goes! Let some gas escape, and she descends far more
+gingerly than Mrs Graham and his Serene Highness; the grapnel catches a
+stile, and she steps "like a dreadless angel unpursued" once more upon
+_terra firma_, and may then celebrate her aerial voyage, if she choose,
+in an Ode which will be sure near the end to rise--into prose.
+
+Prose, we believe, is destined to drive what is called Poetry out of the
+world. Here is a fair challenge. Let any Poet send us a poem of five
+hundred lines--blanks or not--on any subject; and we shall write on that
+subject a passage of the same number of words in prose; and the Editors
+of the Quarterly, Edinburgh, and Westminster, shall decide which
+deserves the prize. Milton was woefully wrong in speaking of "prose or
+numerous verse." Prose is a million times more numerous than verse. Then
+prose improves the more poetical it becomes; but verse, the moment it
+becomes prosaic, goes to the dogs. Then, the connecting links between
+two fine passages in verse, it is enjoined, shall be as little like
+verse as possible; nay, whole passages, critics say, should be of that
+sort; and why, pray, not prose at once? Why clip the King's English, or
+the Emperor's German, or the Sublime Porte's Turkish, into bits of dull
+jingle--pretending to be verses merely because of the proper number of
+syllables--some of them imprisoned perhaps in parentheses, where they
+sit helplessly protruding the bare soles of their feet, like folks that
+have got muzzy, in the stocks?
+
+Wordsworth says well, that the language of common people, when giving
+utterance to passionate emotions, is highly figurative; and hence he
+concludes not so well fit for a lyrical ballad. Their volubility is
+great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by
+the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never--the utmost they
+reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk!
+The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream
+of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion!
+The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever
+yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet,
+in his sublimest moods, speaks in prose--Lady Macbeth talks prose in her
+sleep--and so it should be printed. "Out damned spot!" are three words
+of prose; and who that beheld Siddons wringing her hands to wash them of
+murder, did not feel that they were the most dreadful ever extorted by
+remorse from guilt?
+
+A green old age is the most loving season of life, for almost all the
+other passions are then dead or dying--or the mind, no more at the mercy
+of a troubled heart, compares the little pleasure their gratification
+can ever yield now with what it could at any time long ago, and lets
+them rest. Envy is the worst disturber or embitterer of man's declining
+years; but it does not deserve the name of a passion--and is a disease,
+not of the poor in spirit--for they are blessed--but of the mean, and
+then they indeed are cursed. For our own parts, we know Envy but as we
+have studied it in others--and never felt it except towards the wise and
+good; and then 'twas a longing desire to be like them--painful only when
+we thought that might never be, and that all our loftiest aspirations
+might be in vain. Our envy of Genius is of a nature so noble, that it
+knows no happiness like that of guarding from mildew the laurels on the
+brows of the Muses' Sons. What a dear kind soul of a critic is old
+Christopher North! Watering the flowers of poetry, and removing the
+weeds that might choke them--letting in the sunshine upon them, and
+fencing them from the blast--proclaiming where the gardens grow, and
+leading boys and virgins into the pleasant alleys--teaching hearts to
+love and eyes to see their beauty, and classifying, by the attributes it
+has pleased nature to bestow on the various orders, the plants of
+Paradise--This is our occupation--and the happiness of witnessing them
+all growing in the light of admiration is our reward.
+
+Finding our way back as we choose to Ivy-cottage, we cross the wooden
+bridge, and away along the western shore of Rydal-mere. Hence you see
+the mountains in magnificent composition, and craggy coppices with
+intervening green fields shelving down to the lake margin. It is a small
+lake, not much more than a mile round, and of a very peculiar character.
+One memorable cottage only, as far as we remember, peeps on its shore
+from a grove of sycamores, a statesman's pleasant dwelling; and there
+are the ruins of another on a slope near the upper end, the circle of
+the garden still visible. Everything has a quiet but wildish pastoral
+and sylvan look, and the bleating of sheep fills the hollow of the
+hills. The lake has a reedy inlet and outlet, and the angler thinks of
+pike when he looks upon such harbours. There is a single boat-house,
+where the Lady of the Hall has a padlocked and painted barge for
+pleasure parties; and the heronry on the high pine-trees of the only
+island connects the scene with the ancient park of Rydal, whose oak
+woods, though thinned and decayed, still preserve the majestic and
+venerable character of antiquity and baronial state.
+
+Having taken a lingering farewell of Rydal-mere, and of the new
+Chapel-tower, that seems among the groves already to be an antique, we
+may either sink down to the stream that flows out of Grassmere and
+connects the two lakes, crossing a wooden bridge, and then joining the
+new road that sweeps along to the Village, or we may keep up on the face
+of the hill, and by a terrace-path reach the Loughrigg-road, a few
+hundred yards above Tail-end, a pretty cottage-ornee which you will
+observe crowning a wooded eminence, and looking cheerfully abroad over
+all the vale. There is one Mount in particular, whence we see to
+advantage the delightful panorama--encircling mountains--Grassmere Lake
+far down below your feet, with its one green pastoral isle, sylvan
+shores, and emerald meadows--huts and houses sprinkled up and down in
+all directions--the village partly embowered in groves, and partly open
+below the shadow of large single trees--and the Church-tower, almost
+always a fine feature in the scenery of the north of England, standing
+in stately simplicity among the clustering tenements, nor dwindled even
+by the great height of the hills.
+
+It is pleasant to lose sight entirely of a beautiful scene, and to plod
+along for a few hundred yards in almost objectless shadow. Our
+conceptions and feelings are bright and strong from the nearness of
+their objects, yet the dream is somewhat different from the reality. All
+at once, at a turning of the road, the splendour reappears like an
+unfurled banner, and the heart leaps in the joy of the senses. This sort
+of enjoyment comes upon you before you reach the Village of Grassmere
+from the point of vision above described, and a stranger sometimes is
+apt to doubt if it be really the same Lake--that one island, and those
+few promontories, shifting into such varied combinations with the
+varying mountain-ridges and ranges, that show top over top in
+bewildering succession, and give hints of other valleys beyond, and of
+Tarns rarely visited, among the moorland wastes. A single long dim
+shadow, falling across the water, alters the whole physiognomy of the
+scene--nor less a single bright streak of sunshine, brightening up some
+feature formerly hidden, and giving animation and expression to the
+whole face of the Lake.
+
+About a short mile from the Village Inn, you will pass by without seeing
+it--unless warned not to do so--one of the most singularly beautiful
+habitations in the world. It belongs to a gentleman of the name of
+Barber, and, we believe, has been almost entirely built by him--the
+original hut on which his taste has worked having been a mere shell. The
+spirit of the place seems to us to be that of Shadowy Silence. Its
+bounds are small; but it is an indivisible part of a hill-side so secret
+and sylvan, that it might be the haunt of the roe. You hear the tinkle
+of a rill, invisible among the hazels--a bird sings or flutters--a bee
+hums his way through the bewildering wood--but no louder sound. Some
+fine old forest-trees extend widely their cool and glimmering shade; and
+a few stumps or armless trunks, whose bulk is increased by a load of ivy
+that hides the hollow wherein the owls have their domicile, give an air
+of antiquity to the spot, that, but for other accompaniments, would
+almost be melancholy. As it is, the scene has a pensive character. As
+yet you have seen no house, and wonder whither the gravel-walks are to
+conduct you, winding fancifully and fantastically through the
+smooth-shaven lawn, bestrewed by a few large leaves of the
+horse-chestnut or sycamore. But there are clustered verandas where the
+nightingale might woo the rose, and lattice-windows reaching from eaves
+to ground-sill, so sheltered that they might stand open in storm and
+rain, and tall circular chimneys, shaped almost like the stems of the
+trees that overshadow the roof irregular, and over all a gleam of blue
+sky and a few motionless clouds. The noisy world ceases to be, and the
+tranquil heart, delighted with the sweet seclusion, breathes, "Oh! that
+this were my cell, and that I were a hermit!"
+
+But you soon see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere you
+discern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement that
+belong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yet
+nothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep their
+own places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunny
+slope, not a weed is to be seen, for weeds are beautiful only by the
+wayside, in the matting of hedge-roots, by the mossy stone, and the
+brink of the well in the brae--and are offensive only when they intrude
+into society above their own rank, and where they have the air and
+accent of aliens. By pretty pebbled steps of stairs you mount up from
+platform to platform of the sloping woodland banks--the prospect
+widening as you ascend, till from a bridge that spans a leaping rivulet,
+you behold in full blow all Grassmere Vale, Village, Church-tower, and
+Lake, the whole of the mountains, and a noble arch of sky, the
+circumference of that little world of peace.
+
+Circumscribed as are the boundaries of this place, yet the grounds are
+so artfully, while one thinks so artlessly, laid out, that, wandering
+through their labyrinthine recesses, you might believe yourself in an
+extensive wilderness. Here you come out upon a green open glade (you see
+by the sun-dial it is past seven o'clock)--there the arms of an immense
+tree overshadow what is in itself a scene--yonder you have an alley that
+serpentises into gloom and obscurity--and from that cliff you doubtless
+would see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all its
+natural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows the
+owner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almost
+caprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments--the
+barn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of a
+chapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of being
+sick of the world, is attached to all elegant socialities and amities;
+that he uses silver cups instead of maple bowls, shows his scallop-shell
+among other curiosities in his cabinet, and will treat the passing
+pilgrim with pure water from the spring, if he insists upon that
+beverage, but will first offer him a glass of the yellow cowslip-wine,
+the cooling claret, or the sparkling champagne.
+
+Perhaps we are all beginning to get a little hungry, but it is too soon
+to breakfast; so, leaving the village of Grassmere on the right, keep
+your eye on Helm-crag, while we are finding, without seeking, our way up
+Easdale. Easdale is an arm of Grassmere, and in the words of Mr Green
+the artist, "it is in places profusely wooded, and charmingly
+sequestered among the mountains." Here you may hunt the waterfalls, in
+rainy weather easily run down, but difficult of detection in a drought.
+Several pretty rustic bridges cross and recross the main stream and its
+tributaries; the cottages, in nook and on hill-side, are among the most
+picturesque and engaging in the whole country; the vale widens into
+spacious and noble meadow-grounds, on which might suitably stand the
+mansion of any nobleman in England--as you near its head, everything
+gets wild and broken, with a slight touch of dreariness, and by no very
+difficult ascent we might reach Easdale-tarn in less than an hour's
+walking from Grassmere--a lonely and impressive scene, and the haunt of
+the angler almost as frequently as of the shepherd.
+
+How far can we enjoy the beauty of external nature under a sharp
+appetite for breakfast or dinner? On our imagination the effect of
+hunger is somewhat singular. We no longer regard sheep, for instance, as
+the fleecy or the bleating flock. Their wool or their baaing is nothing
+to us--we think of necks, and jigots, and saddles of mutton; and even
+the lamb frisking on the sunny bank is eaten by us in the shape of
+steaks and fry. If it is in the morning, we see no part of the cow but
+her udder, distilling richest milkiness. Instead of ascending to heaven
+on the smoke of a cottage chimney, we put our arms round the column, and
+descend on the lid of the great pan preparing the family breakfast.
+Every interesting object in the landscape seems edible--our mouth waters
+all over the vale--as the village clock tolls eight, we involuntarily
+say grace, and Price on the Picturesque gives way to Meg Dods's Cookery.
+
+Mrs Bell of the Red Lion Inn, Grassmere, can give a breakfast with any
+woman in England. She bakes incomparable bread--firm, close, compact,
+and white, thin-crusted, and admirably raised. Her yeast always works
+well. What butter! Before it a primrose must hide its unyellowed head.
+Then jam of the finest quality, goose, rasp, and strawberry! and as the
+jam is, so are her jellies. Hens cackle that the eggs are fresh--and
+these shrimps were scraping the sand last night in the Whitehaven sea.
+What glorious bannocks of barley-meal! Crisp wheaten cakes, too, no
+thicker than a wafer. Do not, our good sir, appropriate that cut of
+pickled salmon; it is heavier than it looks, and will weigh about four
+pounds. One might live a thousand years, yet never weary of such
+mutton-ham. Virgin honey, indeed! Let us hope that the bees were not
+smothered, but by some gracious disciple of Bonar or Huber decoyed from
+a full hive into an empty one, with half the summer and all the autumn
+before them to build and saturate their new Comb-Palace. No bad thing
+is a cold pigeon-pie, especially of cushats. To hear them cooing in the
+centre of a wood is one thing, and to see them lying at the bottom of a
+pie is another--which is the better, depends entirely on time, place,
+and circumstance. Well, a beef-steak at breakfast is rather
+startling--but let us try a bit with these fine ingenuous youthful
+potatoes, from a light sandy soil on a warm slope. Next to the country
+clergy, smugglers are the most spiritual of characters; and we verily
+believe that to be "sma' still." Our dear sir--you are in orders, we
+believe--will you have the goodness to return thanks? Yes, now you may
+ring the bell for the bill. Moderate indeed! With a day's work before
+one, there is nothing like the deep broad basis of breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+STROLL TO GRASSMERE.
+
+SECOND SAUNTER.
+
+
+It is yet only ten o'clock--and what a multitude of thoughts and
+feelings, sights and sounds, lights and shadows, have been ours since
+sunrise! Had we been in bed, all would have remained unfelt and unknown.
+But, to be sure, one dream might have been worth them all. Dreams,
+however, when they are over, are gone, be they of bliss or bale, heaven
+or the shades. No one weeps over a dream. With such tears no one would
+sympathise. Give us reality, "the sober certainty of waking bliss," and
+to it memory shall cling. Let the object of our sorrow belong to the
+living world, and, transient though it be, its power may be immortal.
+Away then, as of little worth, all the unsubstantial and wavering world
+of dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, so
+much the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like this,
+where all is steadfast but the clouds, whose very being is change, and
+the flow of waters that have been in motion since the Flood.
+
+Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by her
+elated husband, a high-born beautiful and graceful bride. They are
+making a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled her
+horns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, here
+it is--youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love--all united in
+ties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other--the
+blissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came to
+admire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can see
+only one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother,
+and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself--every
+one--that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virgin
+youthhood. With her, as with Genevieve--
+
+    "All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
+      Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
+    All are but ministers of Love,
+      And feed his sacred flame!"
+
+And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No--it will fade, and
+fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like the
+shortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of the
+light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal
+twilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not
+how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth,
+and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die.
+
+Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all such
+occasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that of
+wedded life it may generally be said,
+
+    "O, happy state, where souls together draw,
+    Where love is liberty, and nature law!"
+
+What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and
+religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul!
+And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine
+dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within
+bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them
+the cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good must
+flourish under that holy necessity--everything foul and bad fade away;
+and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrims
+travelling together through time to eternity, whether their path lead
+through an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to be
+gracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that very
+reason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and if
+the present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in rapture
+as it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice to
+them whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the past
+and future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulge
+tempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so?
+How much tranquillity and contentment in human homes! Calm onflowings of
+life shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out into
+the open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautiful
+resignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away--yet
+without and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not an
+unhappy lot--The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as if
+they were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in the
+gloom--The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearly
+dried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven--Children,
+those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as the
+glades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in the
+mother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether without
+relief--for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now in
+the bowers of heaven.
+
+Reverse the picture--and tremble for the fate of those whom God hath
+made one, and whom no one man must put asunder. In common natures, what
+hot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference,
+disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to
+madness, lies in that mean but mighty word--Temper! The face, to whose
+meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows
+now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape of
+those features is still fine--the eye of the gazelle--the Grecian nose
+and forehead--the ivory teeth, so small and regular--and thin line of
+ruby lips breathing Circassian luxury--the snow-drifts of the bosom
+still heave there--a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping from
+the chariot of the sun--nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veil
+beneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend--a devil
+incarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made your
+house a hell.
+
+But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homely
+wife--or one comely at the best--nay, even that you have sought to
+secure your peace by admitted ugliness--or wedded a woman whom all
+tongues call--plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame like
+the sun in miniature on the front of your house--but what Joint-Stock
+Company can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetual
+singeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze up without
+warning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire?
+We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantly
+contradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure,
+at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine at
+home every day for a month, she wonders why nobody asks you out, and
+fears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine from
+home one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted to
+tavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention--there is
+hatred and sorrow in house-bills--rent and taxes are productive of
+endless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing--indeed
+quite a fortune in itself--especially to a poor Scotsman going to
+England, where all the people are barbarous--yet is it irritatingly
+expensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawky
+hoydens and hobbletehoys are getting themselves accomplished in the
+foreign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, and
+the dumb-bells.
+
+    "Let observation, with extensive view,
+    Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
+
+(two bad lines, by the way, though written by Dr Johnson)--and
+observation will find the literature of all countries filled with
+sarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and ballads
+especially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous misery
+and discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns--the dilemma of
+English wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, of
+every individual hour of every individual day, and so on, has its
+peculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yet
+the delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing,
+and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger--marrying and
+giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of
+prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about
+every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth--double
+houses become villages--villages towns--towns cities--and our Metropolis
+is itself a world!
+
+While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach against
+wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion that
+leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the
+mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of
+the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's
+bosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under a
+fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful
+embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselves
+spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and the
+weak fall--bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as
+the day--fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken
+heart--hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to
+despair--crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of
+appetite, grows by what it feeds on--wide, but unseen, over all the
+regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy,
+dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge--beseechings, seductions,
+suicides, and insanities--and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet
+all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time
+endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage,
+of which every other golden globe is poison and death.
+
+Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou
+young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears
+to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile
+can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also
+the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and
+religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and
+unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, mayst thou be, as the dove in the
+sunshine on the Tower-top--and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on
+her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood!
+
+Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquainted
+with your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects to
+gaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Of
+yourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the pretty
+white-washed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine with
+each other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower.
+Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be there
+pathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes.
+Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you will
+disappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woody
+wildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and a
+glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is best
+society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or
+voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained
+in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an
+incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of
+nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song--and of the
+hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweet
+the cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears by far the most
+beautiful place in all the Lake-country. You buy a field--build a
+cottage--and in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you to
+sit) beneath the shadow of your own trees!
+
+In an English village--highland or lowland--seldom is there any spot so
+beautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, with
+the pensive shadows of the old church-tower settling over its cheerful
+graves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as too
+strong--for the pigeons are cooing in the belfry, the stream is
+murmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on the
+mounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead.
+But hark! the bell tolls--one--one--one--a funeral knell, speaking not
+of time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial--and close to
+the wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave.
+
+Hush! The sound of singing voices in yonder wood, deadened by the weight
+of umbrage! Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now all is
+silence--but the pause speaks of death. Again the melancholy swell
+ascends the sky--and then comes slowly along the funeral procession, the
+coffin borne aloft, and the mourners all in white; for it is a virgin
+who is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncovered
+while the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites
+along the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. A
+smothered sobbing disturbeth not the service--'tis a human spirit
+breathing in accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for the
+immortal--Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven.
+
+Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger
+from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost
+all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole
+delight of her greyhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy
+extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been
+beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her
+heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All
+that we know is her name and age--you see them glittering on her
+coffin--"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years"!
+
+The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to
+Ambleside; and although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous
+than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not
+indulge too long in a mournful mood--yet let us all sit down under the
+shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of
+Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears.
+
+Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for
+ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius
+has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves
+heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have
+well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now
+almost like a fallen wall--at best, the remnants of a cattle-shed shaken
+down by the storm.
+
+Thirty years ago--how short a time in national history--how long in that
+of private sorrows!--all tongues were speaking of the death that there
+befell; and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the
+funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on
+the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not
+even their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It was
+inhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known
+familiarly in her own small world by the name of LUCY OF THE FOLD. In
+almost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiar
+pride--some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and
+whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of
+mind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of
+attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending
+year. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished her
+thirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness,
+often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her
+parents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why they
+should dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so many
+regarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, but as fond too of her
+nest; and when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life was
+almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadness, and from sadness to joy;
+from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like that
+of the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creature
+wavering in the sunshine over the wood-top--was to Lucy as welcome a
+change as the change of lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the
+mountain-country of her birth.
+
+One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house,
+and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they
+would let him have lodging with them for a few months--a single room for
+bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family.
+Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever
+creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of
+imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the
+confinement of college walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a
+rainbow. No eyes had he for realities--all nature was seen in the light
+of genius--not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was
+beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in
+the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends,
+colleges, cities--all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt as
+if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond
+the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect
+and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a
+spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that
+cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in
+all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the
+countryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the
+Fold.
+
+Every day--and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among
+the hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyes--and every
+hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr Howard
+was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none
+doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever
+conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland
+and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured
+the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of
+the Fold. It was indeed even so--for, before the long summer days were
+gone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slept
+on the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none--indeed,
+scarcely one near relation--although he was rich in this world's riches,
+but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature had
+lavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed of the splendid
+but wayward youth--and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him,
+were it even to some savage land. Thus the Fold became to him the one
+dearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple ongoings of that
+humble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all the
+rough or coarser edges of lowly life were softened away in the light of
+genius that transmuted everything on which it fell; while all the silent
+intimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hut
+as fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spirit
+pre-eminently lovely, and chained it to the hearth, around which was
+read the morning and the evening prayer.
+
+What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very
+impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in
+place of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till in
+a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away,
+perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creature
+will have the soul of a very angel--and then, before God and at His holy
+altar, mine shall she become for ever--here and hereafter--in this
+paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of
+heaven."
+
+Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the
+change, imperceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought on
+Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely
+could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was
+dutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiar
+objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now
+grown to woman's stature--tall, though she scarcely seemed so except
+when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling,
+and far more than fulfilling, the fair promise of her childhood. Never
+once had the young stranger--stranger no more--spoken to daughter,
+father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towards
+Lucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, which
+was almost pity--an affection that was often sad--wonder at her
+surpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of its
+power--admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meet
+instruction as if already formed--and that heart-throbbing that stirs
+the blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in the
+twilight through smiles or through tears,--these, and a thousand other
+feelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, now
+constituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook him
+when he was alone among the mountains.
+
+At last it was known through the country that Mr Howard--the stranger,
+the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much,
+but whom everybody loved, and whose father must at the least have been a
+lord, was going--in a year or less--to marry the daughter of Allan
+Fleming--Lucy of the Fold. O, grief and shame to the parents--if still
+living--of the noble Boy! O, sorrow for himself when his passion
+dies--when the dream is dissolved--and when, in place of the angel of
+light who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowly
+born, and long rudely bred--a being only fair as many others are fair,
+sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, and
+partaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown to
+herself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one to
+rescue them from such a fate--from a few months of imaginary bliss, and
+from many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming be
+so infatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who would soon desert
+her broken-hearted? Yet kind thoughts, wishes, hopes, and beliefs
+prevailed; nor were there wanting stories of the olden time, of
+low-born maidens married to youths of high estate, and raised from hut
+to hall, becoming mothers of a lordly line of sons, that were
+counsellors to Kings and Princes.
+
+In Spring, Mr Howard went away for a few months--it was said to the
+great city--and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride.
+They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were still
+together. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath he
+would be at the Fold. A few fields in Easdale, long mortgaged beyond
+their fee-simple by the hard-working statesman from whom they
+reluctantly were passing away, had meanwhile been purchased by Mr
+Howard, and in that cottage they were to abide, till they had built for
+themselves a house a little further up the side of the sylvan hill,
+below the shadow of Helm-crag. Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return and
+its golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was to
+descend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of living
+things.
+
+Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun;
+and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic pass of the
+Hawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose as
+lustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnight
+hour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached the
+cliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning in
+the low window, the very planet of love. It seemed to shed a bright
+serenity over all the vale, and the moon-glittering waters of Rydal-mere
+were as an image of life, pure, lonely, undisturbed, and at the pensive
+hour how profound! "Blessing and praise be to the gracious God! who
+framed my spirit so to delight in His beautiful and glorious
+creation--blessing and praise to the Holy One, for the boon of my Lucy's
+innocent and religious love!" Prayers crowded fast into his soul, and
+tears of joy fell from his eyes, as he stood at the threshold, almost
+afraid, in the trembling of life-deep affection, to meet her first
+embrace.
+
+In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then in
+another moment, he saw, through the open door of the room where Lucy
+used to sleep, several figures moving to and fro in the light, and one
+figure upon its knees--who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed he
+became one of the pale-faced company--and there he beheld her on her
+bed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorable
+beauty--eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead,
+dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he fell
+down in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor.
+
+Encircled with arms that lay round him softer and silkier far than
+flower-wreaths on the neck of a child who has laid him down from play,
+was he when he awoke from that fit--lying even on his own maiden's bed,
+and within her very bosom, that beat yet, although soon about to beat no
+more. At that blest awakening moment, he might have thought he saw the
+first glimpse of light of the morning after his marriage-day; for her
+face was turned towards his breast, and with her faint breathings he
+felt the touch of tears. Not tears alone now bedimmed those eyes, for
+tears he could have kissed away; but the blue lids were heavy with
+something that was not slumber--the orbs themselves were scarcely
+visible--and her voice--it was gone, to be heard never again, till in
+the choir of white-robed spirits that sing at the right hand of God.
+
+Yet no one doubted that she knew him--him who had dropt down, like a
+superior being, from another sphere, on the innocence of her simple
+childhood--had taught her to know so much of her own soul--to love her
+parents with a profounder and more holy love--to see, in characters more
+divine, Heaven's promises of forgiveness to every contrite heart--and a
+life of perfect blessedness beyond death and the grave. A smile that
+shone over her face the moment that she had been brought to know that he
+had come at last, and was nigh at hand--and that never left it while her
+bosom moved--no--not for all the three days and nights that he continued
+to sit beside the corpse, when father and mother were forgetting their
+cares in sleep--that smile told all who stood around, watching her
+departure, neighbour, friend, priest, parent, and him the suddenly
+distracted and desolate, that in the very moment of expiration she knew
+him well, and was recommending him and his afflictions to the pity of
+One who died to save sinners.
+
+Three days and three nights, we have said, did he sit beside her who so
+soon was to have been his bride; and come or go who would into the room,
+he saw them not--his sight was fixed on the winding-sheet, eyeing it,
+without a single tear, from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking up
+to heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably long
+without food, so did he--and so he would have done, on and on to the
+most far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, he
+never rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he never
+slept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunderstorm,
+the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed that
+he heard it not--and during the floods of next day, to him the roaring
+vale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people--for now
+they seemed to be old--wept to see him sitting still beside their dead
+child; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office,
+and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenly
+alighted on the face of the corpse--and then off--and on--and away--and
+returning--was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty in
+its corruption. "Ha--ha!" starting up, he cried in horror--"What birds
+of prey are these, whom Satan has sent to devour the corpse?" He became
+stricken with a sort of palsy--and, being led out to the open air, was
+laid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf,
+where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat,
+building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life.
+
+The company assembled--but not before his eyes--the bier was lifted up
+and moved away down the sylvan slope, and away round the head of the
+Lake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied, here and there, as it
+passed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound of
+psalms--but he saw--he heard not;--when the last sound of the spade
+rebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by--but all the
+while he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmen
+at his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage of
+the Fold was as if she had never been born--for she had vanished for
+ever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguished
+in the dust.
+
+Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in his
+eyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of a
+reasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or in
+what part of the earth, yet, when left by himself, he never sought to
+move beyond the boundaries of the Fold. During the first faint
+glimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and over
+many times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she was
+dead--then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleep
+had fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate--then
+with groans too affecting to be borne by those who heard them, he would
+ask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, her
+husband, in life; and finally, and last of all, he imagined himself in
+Grassmere Churchyard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which it
+was evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours and
+hours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes all
+at once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting-fits
+returned, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone-dead. As
+for his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms,
+little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposed
+that one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days be
+alive--yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun did that
+body die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks of
+Rydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passing
+like a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage in
+Palestine, even beneath the shadow of Mount Sion, and was laid, with a
+lock of hair--which, from the place it held, strangers knew to have
+belonged to one dearly beloved--close to his heart, on which it had lain
+so long, and was to moulder away in darkness together, by Christian
+hands and in a Christian sepulchre.
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOY.
+
+
+Periodical literature is a type of many of the most beautiful things and
+interesting events in nature; or say, rather, that _they_ are types of
+_it_--the Flowers and the Stars. As to Flowers, they are the prettiest
+periodicals ever published in folio--the leaves are wire-wove and
+hot-pressed by Nature's self; their circulation is wide over all the
+land; from castle to cottage they are regularly taken in; as old age
+bends over them, his youth is renewed; and you see childhood poring upon
+them pressed close to its very bosom. Some of them are ephemeral--their
+contents are exhaled between the rising and setting sun. Once a-week
+others break through their green, pink, or crimson cover; and how
+delightful, on the seventh day, smiles in the sunshine the Sabbath
+Flower--a Sunday publication perused without blame by the most
+religious--even before morning prayer! Each month, indeed, throughout
+the whole year, has its own Flower periodical. Some are annual, some
+biennial, some triennial, and there are perennials that seem to live for
+ever--and yet are still periodical--though our love will not allow us to
+know when they die, and phoenix-like reappear from their own ashes. So
+much for Flowers--typifying or typified;--leaves emblematical of
+pages--buds of binding--dew-veils of covers--and the wafting away of
+bloom and fragrance like the dissemination of fine feelings, bright
+fancies, and winged thoughts.
+
+The Flowers are the periodicals of the earth--the Stars are the
+periodicals of heaven. With what unfailing regularity do the numbers
+issue forth! Hesperus and Lucifer! ye are one concern. The Pole-star is
+studied by all nations. How popular the poetry of the Moon! On what
+subject does not the Sun throw light? No fear of hurting your eyes by
+reading that fine clear large type on that softened page. As you turn
+them over, one blue, another yellow, and another green, all are alike
+delightful to the pupil, dear as the very apple of his eye. Yes, the
+great Periodical Press of heaven is unceasingly at work--night and day;
+the only free power all over the world--'tis indeed like the air we
+breathe--if we have it not, we die.
+
+Look, then, at all paper periodicals with pleasure, for sake of the
+Flowers and the Stars. Suppose them all extinct, and life would be like
+a flowerless earth, a starless heaven. We should soon forget the
+Seasons. The periodicals of the External would soon all lose their
+meaning, were there no longer any periodicals of the Internal. These are
+the lights and shadows of life, merrily dancing or gravely stealing over
+the dial; remembrancers of the past--teachers of the present--prophets
+of the future hours. Were they all dead, Spring would in vain renew her
+promise--wearisome would be the interminable summer days--the fruits of
+autumn tasteless--the winter ingle blink mournfully round the hearth.
+What are the blessed Seasons themselves, in nature and in Thomson, but
+periodicals of a larger growth? We should doubt the goodness of that
+man's heart, who loved not the periodical literature of earth and
+sky--who would not weep to see one of its flowers wither--one of its
+stars fall--one beauty die on its humble bed--one glory drop from its
+lofty sphere. Let them bloom and burn on--flowers in which there is no
+poison, stars in which there is no disease--whose blossoms are all
+sweet, and whose rays are all sanative--both alike steeped in dew, and
+both, to the fine ear of nature's worshipper, bathed in music.
+
+Pomposo never reads Magazine poetry--nor, we presume, ever looks at a
+field or wayside flower. He studies only the standard authors. He walks
+only in gardens with high brick walls--and then admires only at a hint
+from the head-gardener. Pomposo does not know that many of the finest
+poems of our day first appeared in magazines--or, worse still, in
+newspapers; and that in our periodicals, daily and weekly, equally with
+the monthlies and quarterlies, is to be found the best criticism of
+poetry anywhere extant, superior far, in that unpretending form, to
+nine-tenths of the learned lucubrations of Germany--though some of it,
+too, is good--almost as one's heart could desire. What is the
+circulation even of a popular volume of verses--if any such there
+be--to that of a number of Maga? Hundreds of thousands at home peruse it
+before it is a week old--as many abroad ere the moon has thrice renewed
+her horns; and the Series ceases not--regular as the Seasons that make
+up the perfect year. Our periodical literature--say of it what you
+will--gives light to the heads and heat to the hearts of millions of our
+race. The greatest and best men of the age have not disdained to belong
+to the brotherhood; and thus the hovel holds what must not be missing in
+the hall--the furniture of the cot is the same as that of the
+palace--and duke and ditcher read their lessons from the same page.
+
+Good people have said, and it would be misanthropical to disbelieve or
+discredit their judgment, that our Prose is original--nay, has created a
+new era in the history of Periodical Literature. Only think of that,
+Christopher, and up with your Tail like a Peacock! Why, there is some
+comfort in that reflection, while we sit rubbing our withered hands up
+and down on these shrivelled shanks. Our feet are on the fender, and
+that fire is felt on our face; but we verily believe our ice-cold shanks
+would not shrink from the application of the red-hot poker. Peter has a
+notion that but for that red-hot poker the fire would go out; so to
+humour him we let it remain in the ribs, and occasionally brandish it
+round our head in moments of enthusiasm when the Crutch looks tame, and
+the Knout a silken leash for Italian Greyhound.
+
+Old Simonides--old Mimnermus--old Theognis--old Solon-old Anacreon--old
+Sophocles--old Pindar--old Hesiod--old Homer--and old Methuselah! What
+mean we by the word _old_? All these men are old in three lights--they
+lived to a raven age--long long ago--and we heard tell of them in our
+youth. Their glory dawned on us in a dream of life's golden prime--and
+far away seems now that dawn, as if in another world beyond a million
+seas! In that use of the word "old," far from us is all thought of
+dotage or decay. Old are those great personages as the stars are old; a
+heaven there is in which are seen shining, for ever young, all the most
+ancient spiritual "orbs of Song."
+
+In our delight, too, we love to speak of old Venus and of old Cupid--of
+old Eve and of old Cleopatra--of old Helen and of old Dalilah; yea, of
+old Psyche, though her aerial wings are as rainbow bright as the first
+hour she waved them in the eye of the youthful Sun.
+
+How full of endearment "old boy!"--"old girl!" "Old Christopher
+North!"--"old Maga!" To our simplest sayings age seems to give a
+consecration which youth reveres. And why may not our hand, withered
+somewhat though it be, but yet unpalsied, point out aloft to heedless
+eyes single light or constellation, or lily by herself or in groups
+unsuspected along the waysides of our mortal pilgrimage?
+
+Age like ours is even more lovable than venerable; and, thinking on
+ourselves, were we a young woman, we should assuredly marry an old man.
+Indeed, no man ought to marry before thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty;
+and, were it not that life is so short, soon enough at threescore and
+ten. At seventy you are sager than ever, though scarcely so strong. You
+and life love each other as well as ever; yet 'tis unpleasant, when
+sailing on Windermere or Lochlomond with your bride, to observe the Man
+in the Honeymoon looking at you with a congratulatory grin of
+condolence, to fear that the old villain will smile over your grave in
+the Season of Kirns and Harvest Homes, when the fiddle is heard in every
+farmhouse, and the bagpipes are lowing like cattle on a thousand hills.
+Fain would he insure his life on the Tipperary Tables. But the enamoured
+annuitant is haunted with visions of his own Funeral deploying in a long
+line of chariots--one at the head of all armed with scythes--through the
+city, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride in
+white, nor less so his widow in black--more so in grey, portentous of a
+great change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving his
+first-born as yet unborn--or if born, haply an elfish Creature with a
+precocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowing
+ten years at least from his own father--auld-farrant as a Fairy, and
+gash as the Last of the Lairds.
+
+Dearly do we love the young--yea, the young of all animals--the young
+swallows twittering from their straw-built shed--the young lambs
+bleating on the lea--the young bees, God bless them! on their first
+flight away off to the heather--the young butterflies, who, born in the
+morning, will die of old age ere night--the young salmon-fry glorying in
+the gravel at the first feeling of their fins--the young adders basking,
+ere they can bite, in the sun, as yet unconscious, like sucking
+satirists, of their stings--young pigs, pretty dears! all a-squeak with
+their curled tails after prolific grumphie--young lions and tigers,
+charming cubs! like very Christian children nuzzling in their nurse's
+breast--young devils, ere Satan has sent them to Sin, who keeps a
+fashionable boarding-school in Hades, and sends up into the world
+above-ground only her finished scholars.
+
+Oh! lad of the lightsome forehead! Thou art smiling at Us; and for the
+sake of our own Past we enjoy thy Present, and pardon the contumely with
+which thou silently insultest our thin grey hairs. Just such another
+"were we at Ravensburg." "_Carpe Diem_" was then our motto, as now it is
+yours; "no fear that dinner cool," for we fed then, as you feed now, on
+flowers and fruits of Eden. We lived then under the reign of the Seven
+Senses; Imagination was Prime Minister, and Reason, as Lord-Chancellor,
+had the keeping of the Royal Conscience; and they were kings, not
+tyrants--we subjects, not slaves. Supercilious as thou art, Puer, art
+thou as well read in Greek as we were at thy flowering age? Come close
+that we may whisper in thine ear--while we lean our left shoulder on
+thine--our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, O
+Son of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he not
+once a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie,
+Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood--ye who so often heard our shouts mixed
+with the red-deer's belling--tossed back in exultation by Echo,
+Omnipresent Auditress on youth's golden hills.
+
+Know, all ye Neophytes, that three lovely Sisters often visit the old
+man's solitude--Memory, Imagination, Hope. It would be hard to say which
+is the most beautiful. Memory has deep, dark, quiet eyes, and when she
+closes their light, the long eyelashes lie like shadows on her pensive
+cheeks, that smile faintly as if the dreamer were half asleep--a
+visionary slumber, which sometimes the dewdrop melting on the leaf will
+break, sometimes not the thunder-peal with all its echoes. Imagination
+is a brighter and bolder Beauty, with large lamping eyes of uncertain
+colour, as if fluctuating with rainbow light, and with features fine as
+those which Grecian genius gave to the Muses in the Parian Marble, yet
+in their daring delicacy defined like the face of Apollo. As for
+Hope--divinest of the divine--Collins, in one long line of light, has
+painted the picture of the angel,--
+
+    "And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair."
+
+All our great prose-writers owe the glory of their power to our great
+poets. Even Hobbes translated Homer as well--that is as ill--as
+Thucidydes; the Epic in his prime after eighty; the History in his youth
+at forty; and it is fearful to dream what the brainful and heartless
+metaphysician would have been, had he never heard of the Iliad and the
+Odyssey. What is the greatest of prose-writers in comparison with a
+great poet? Nay--we shall not be deterred by the fear of
+self-contradiction (see our "Stroll to Grassmere") from asking who is a
+great prose-writer? We cannot name one; they all sink in Shakespeare.
+Campbell finely asks and answers--
+
+    "Without the smile from partial beauty won,
+    Oh! what were man? a world without a sun."
+
+Suppose the world without poetry--how absurd would seem the Sun! Strip
+the word "phenomena" of its poetical meaning, and forthwith the whole
+human race, "moving about in worlds _realised_," would lose their powers
+of speech. But, thank Heaven! we are Makers all. Inhabiting, we verily
+believe, a real, and substantial, and palpable outer world, which
+nevertheless shall one day perish like a scroll, we build our bowers of
+joy in the Apparent, and lie down to rest in a drapery of Dreams.
+
+Thus we often love to dream our silent way even through the noisy world.
+And dreamers are with dreamers spiritually, though in the body apart;
+nor wandering at will think they whence they come, or whither they are
+going, assured by delight that they will reach their journey's end--like
+a bee, that in many a musical gyration goes humming round men's heads
+and tree-tops, aimlessly curious in his joy, yet knowing instinctively
+the straight line that intersects all those airy circles, leading to and
+fro between his hive in the garden and the honey-dew on the heather
+hills.
+
+What can it be that now recalls to our remembrance a few lines of Esop,
+the delightful old Fabulist, the Merry and Wise, who set our souls
+a-thinking and our hearts a-feeling in boyhood, by moral lessons read to
+them in almost every incident befalling in life's common walks--solemn
+as Simonides in this his sole surviving elegiac strain?
+
+    "What weary woe, what endless strife
+    Bring'st thou to mortal men, O Life!
+      Each hour they draw their breath.
+    Alas! the wretches all despair
+    To flee the ills they cannot bear,
+      But through the gates of Death.
+
+    And yet how beautiful art Thou
+    On Earth and Sea--and on the brow
+      Of starry Heaven! The Night
+    Sends forth the moon Thee to adorn;
+    And thee to glorify the Morn
+      Restores the Orb of Light.
+
+    Yet all is full of Pain and Dread;
+    Bedrench'd in tears for ever shed;
+      The darkness render'd worse
+    By gleams of joy--and if by Heaven
+    A Blessing seemeth to be given,
+      It changes to a curse."
+
+Even in our paraphrase are not these lines very impressive? In the
+original they are much more solemn. They are not querulous, yet full of
+lamentation. We see in them not a weak spirit quarrelling with fate, but
+a strong spirit subdued by a sense of the conditions on which life has
+been given; conditions against which it is vain to contend, to which it
+is hard to submit, but which may yet be borne by a will deriving
+strength from necessity, and in itself noble by nature. Nor, dark as the
+doctrine is, can we say it is false. Intellect and Imagination may from
+doleful experiences have too much generalised their inductions, so as to
+seem to themselves to have established the Law of Misery as the Law of
+Life. But perhaps it is only thus that the Truth can be made available
+to man, as it regards the necessity of Endurance. All is not
+wretchedness; but the soul seeks to support itself by the belief that it
+is really so. Holding that creed, it has no excuse for itself, if at any
+time it is stung to madness by misery, or grovels in the dust in a
+passion of grief; none, if at any time it delivers itself wholly up,
+abandoning itself to joy, and acts as if it trusted to the permanence
+of any blessing under the law of Mutability. The Poet, in the hour of
+profound emotion, declares that every blessing sent from heaven is a
+Nemesis. That oracular response inspires awe. A salutary fear is kept
+alive in the foolish by such sayings of the wise. Even to us--now--they
+sound like a knell. Religion has instructed Philosophy; and for Fate we
+substitute God. But all men feel that the foundations of Faith are laid
+in the dark depths of their being, and that all human happiness is
+mysteriously allied with pain and sorrow. The most perfect bliss is ever
+awful, as if we enjoyed it under the shadow of some great and gracious
+wing that would not long be detained from heaven.
+
+It is not for ordinary minds to attempt giving utterance to such
+simplicities. On their tongues truths become truisms. Sentiments, that
+seem always fresh, falling from the lips of moral wisdom, are stale in
+the mouths of men uninitiated in the greater mysteries. Genius colours
+common words with an impressive light, that makes them moral to all
+eyes--breathes into them an affecting music, that steals into all hearts
+like a revelation and a religion. They become memorable. They pass, as
+maxims, from generation to generation; and all because the divinity that
+is in every man's bosom responds to the truthful strain it had of yore
+itself inspired. Just so with the men we meet on our life-journey. One
+man is impressive in all his looks and words, on all serious or solemn
+occasions; and we carry away with us moral impressions from his eyes or
+lips. Another man says the same things, or nearly so, and perhaps with
+more fervour, and his locks are silver. But we forget his person in an
+hour; nor does his voice ever haunt our solitude.
+Simonides--Solon--Esop!--why do such lines of theirs as those assure us
+they were Sages? The same sentiments are the staple of many a sermon
+that has soothed sinners into snoring sleep.
+
+Men take refuge even in ocular deception from despair. Over buried
+beauty, that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves,
+they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget much
+they ought to remember--all profounder thoughts--while gazing on the
+epitaph of letters or flowers. 'Tis a vision to their senses, with which
+Imagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that the
+deception prospers; for what if Love could bid the burial-ground give
+up or disclose its dead? Or if Love's eyes saw through dust as through
+air? What if this planet--which men call Earth--were at all times seen
+and felt to be a cemetery circling round the sun that feeds it with
+death, and not a globe of green animated with life--even as the dewdrop
+on the rose's leaf is animated with millions of invisible creatures,
+wantoning in bliss born of the sunshine and the vernal prime.
+
+Are we sermonising overmuch in this our L'ENVOY to these our misnamed
+RECREATIONS? Even a sermon is not always useless; the few concluding
+sentences are sometimes luminous, like stars rising on a dull twilight;
+the little flower that attracted Park's eyes when he was fainting in the
+desert, was to him beauteous as the rose of Sharon; there is solemnity
+in the shadow of quiet trees on a noisy road; a churchyard may be felt
+even in a village fair; a face of sorrow passes by us in our gaiety,
+neither unfelt nor unremembered in its uncomplaining calm; and sweet
+from some still house in the city stir is
+
+    "The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise."
+
+We daresay you are a very modest person; but we are all given to
+self-glorification, private men and public, individuals and nations; and
+every one Era and Ego has been prouder than another of its respective
+achievements. To hear the Present Generation speak, such an elderly
+gentleman as the Past Generation begins to suspect that his personal
+origin lies hid in the darkness of antiquity; and worse--that he is of
+the Pechs. Now, we offer to back the Past Generation against the Present
+Generation, at any feat the Present Generation chooses, and give the
+long odds. Say Poetry. Well, we bring to the scratch a few
+champions--such as, Beattie, Cowper, Crabbe, Rogers, Bowles, Burns,
+Baillie, Campbell, Graham, Montgomery, Scott, Southey, Coleridge,
+Wordsworth, Hunt, Hogg, Shelley, Keates, Pollok, Cunningham, Bloomfield,
+Clare, and _risum teneatis amici_--Ourselves.
+
+    "All with waistcoats of red and breeches of blue,
+    And mighty long tails that come swingeing through."
+
+And at sight of the cavalcade--for each poet is on his Pegasus--the
+champions of the Present Generation, accoutred in corduroy kilts and
+top-boots, and on animals which, "well do we know, but dare not name,"
+wheel to the right-about with "one dismal universal bray," brandishing
+their wooden sabres, till, frenzied by their own trumpeters, they charge
+madly a palisade in their own rear, and as dismounted cavalry make good
+their retreat. This in their strategies is called a drawn battle.
+
+Heroes, alive or dead, of the Past Generation, we bid you hail!
+Exceeding happiness to have been born among such Births--to have lived
+among such Lives--to be buried among such Graves. O great glory to have
+seen such Stars rising one after another larger and more lustrous--at
+times, when dilated with delight, more like Moons than Stars--like
+Seraphs hovering over the earth they loved, though seeming so high up in
+heaven!
+
+To whom now may the young enthusiast turn as to Beings of the same kind
+with himself, but of a higher order, and therefore with a love that
+fears no sin in its idolatry? The young enthusiast may turn to some of
+the living, but he will think more of others who are gone. The dead know
+not of his love, and he can hold no communion with the grave. But Poets
+never die--immortal in their works, the Library is the world of spirits;
+there they dwell, the same as in the flesh, when by meditation most
+cleansed and purified--yet with some holy change it seems--a change not
+in them but in us, who are stilled by the stillness, and attribute
+something supernatural to the Living Dead.
+
+Since first this Golden Pen of ours--given us by One who meant it but
+for a memorial--began, many years ago, to let drop on paper a few
+careless words, what quires so distained--some pages, let us hope, with
+durable ink--have accumulated on our hands! Some haughty ones have
+chosen to say rather, how many leaves have been wafted away to wither?
+But not a few of the gifted--near and afar--have called on us with other
+voices--reminding us that long ago we were elected, on sight of our
+credentials--not indeed without a few black balls--into the Brotherhood.
+The shelf marked with our initials exhibits some half-dozen volumes
+only, and has room for scores. It may not be easily found in that vast
+Library; but, humble member as we are, we feel it now to be a point of
+honour to make an occasional contribution to the Club. So here is the
+FIRST SERIES of what we have chosen to call our RECREATIONS. There have
+been much recasting and remoulding--many alterations, believed by us to
+have been wrought with no unskilful spirit of change--cruel, we confess,
+to our feelings, rejections of numerous lucubrations to their father
+dear--and if we may use such words, not a few new creations, in the same
+_genial_ spirit in which we worked of old--not always unrewarded by
+sympathy, which is better than praise.
+
+For kindness shown when kindness was most needed--for sympathy and
+affection--yea, love itself--for grief and pity not misplaced, though
+bestowed in a mistaken belief of our condition, forlorn indeed, but not
+wholly forlorn--for solace and encouragement sent to us from afar, from
+cities and solitudes, and from beyond seas and oceans, from brethren who
+never saw our face, and never may see it, we owe a debt of everlasting
+gratitude; and life itself must leave our heart, that beats not now as
+it used to beat, but with dismal trepidation, before it forget, or cease
+to remember as clearly as now it hears them, every one of the many words
+that came sweetly and solemnly to us from the Great and Good. Joy and
+sorrow make up the lot of our mortal estate, and by sympathy with them,
+we acknowledge our brotherhood with all our kind. We do far more. The
+strength that is untasked, lends itself to divide the load under which
+another is bowed; and the calamity that lies on the heads of men is
+lightened, while those who at the time are not called to bear, are yet
+willing to involve themselves in the sorrow of a brother. So soothed by
+such sympathy may a poor mortal be, that the wretch almost upbraids
+himself for transient gleams of gladness, as if he were false to the
+sorrow which he sighs to think he ought to have cherished more sacredly
+within his miserable heart.
+
+One word embraces all these pages of ours--Memorials. Friends are lost
+to us by removal--for then even the dearest are often utterly forgotten.
+But let something that once was theirs suddenly meet our eyes, and in a
+moment, returning from the region of the rising or the setting sun, the
+friend of our youth seems at our side, unchanged his voice and his
+smile; or dearer to our eyes than ever, because of some affecting
+change wrought on face and figure by climate and by years. Let it be but
+his name written with his own hand on the title-page of a book; or a few
+syllables on the margin of a favourite passage which long ago we may
+have read together, "when life itself was new," and poetry overflowed
+the whole world; or a lock of _her_ hair in whose eyes we first knew the
+meaning of the word "depth." And if death hath stretched out the absence
+into the dim arms of eternity--and removed the distance away into that
+bourne from which no traveller returns--the absence and the distance of
+her on whose forehead once hung the relic we adore--what heart may abide
+the beauty of the ghost that doth sometimes at midnight appear at our
+sleepless bed, and with pale uplifted arms waft over us at once a
+blessing and a farewell!
+
+Why so sad a word--_Farewell_? We should not weep in wishing welfare,
+nor sully felicity with tears. But we do weep because evil lies lurking
+in wait over all the earth for the innocent and the good, the happy and
+the beautiful; and, when guarded no more by our eyes, it seems as if the
+demon would leap out upon his prey. Or is it because we are so selfish
+that we cannot bear the thought of losing the sight of the happiness of
+a beloved object, and are troubled with a strange jealousy of beings
+unknown to us, and for ever to be unknown, about to be taken into the
+very heart, perhaps, of the friend from whom we are parting, and to whom
+in that fear we give almost a sullen farewell? Or does the shadow of
+death pass over us while we stand for the last time together on the
+sea-shore, and see the ship with all her sails about to voyage away to
+the uttermost parts of the earth? Or do we shudder at the thought of
+mutability in all created things--and know that ere a few suns shall
+have brightened the path of the swift vessel on the sea, we shall be
+dimly remembered--at last forgotten--and all those days, months, and
+years that once seemed eternal, swallowed up in everlasting oblivion?
+
+With us all ambitious desires some years ago expired. Far rather would
+we read than write nowadays--far rather than read, sit with shut eyes
+and no book in the room--far rather than so sit, walk about alone
+anywhere
+
+    "Beneath the umbrage deep
+    That shades the silent world of memory."
+
+Shall we live? or "like beasts and common people die?" There is
+something harsh and grating in the collocation of these words of the
+"Melancholy Cowley;" yet he meant no harm, for he was a kind, good
+creature as ever was born, and a true genius. He there has expressed
+concisely, but too abruptly, the mere fact of their falling alike and
+together into oblivion. Far better Gray's exquisite words,
+
+    "On some fond breast the parting soul relies!"
+
+The reliance is firm and sure; the "fond breast" is faithful to its
+trust, and dying, transmits it to another; till after two or three
+transmissions--holy all, but fainter and dimmer--the pious tradition
+dies, and all memorial of the love and the delight, the pity and the
+sorrow, is swallowed up in vacant night.
+
+Posthumous Fame! Proud words--yet may they be uttered in a humble
+spirit. The common lot of man is, after death--oblivion. Yet genius,
+however small its sphere, if conversant with the conditions of the human
+heart, may vivify with indestructible life some happy delineations, that
+shall continue to be held dear by successive sorrowers in this vale of
+tears. If the _name_ of the delineator continue to have something sacred
+in its sound--obscure to the many as it may be, or non-existent--the
+hope of such posthumous fame is sufficient to one who overrates not his
+own endowments. And as the hope has its root in love and sympathy, he
+who by his writings has inspired towards himself when in life, some of
+these feelings in the hearts of not a few who never saw his face, seems
+to be justified in believing that even after final obliteration of _Hic
+jacet_ from his tombstone, his memory will be regarded with something of
+the same affection in his REMAINS.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS
+
+ON THE
+
+SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS
+
+ON THE
+
+SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
+
+
+     [Professor Wilson's "Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands" were
+     first published as a Preface to _Swan's Select Views of the Lakes
+     of Scotland_, 2d edition, 1836. They were not included originally
+     in the "Recreations of Christopher North;" but the harmony of their
+     tone and spirit seemed to recommend them as an appropriate sequel
+     to that work; and accordingly they are now reprinted as such. The
+     thanks of the Editor and Publishers of Professor Wilson's writings
+     are due to the Messrs Fullarton, the proprietors of "Swan's Views,"
+     for the liberal manner in which they have placed this valuable
+     article at their disposal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In no other country does nature exhibit herself in more various forms of
+beauty and sublimity, than in the North of England and the Highlands of
+Scotland. This is acknowledged by all who, having studied their
+character, and become familiar with the feelings it inspires, have
+compared the effects produced on their minds by our own mountainous
+regions, with what they have experienced among the scenery of the Alps.
+There, indeed, all objects are on so vast a scale, that we are for a
+while astonished as we gaze on the gigantic; and all other emotions are
+sunk in an overwhelming sense of awe that prostrates the imagination.
+But on recovering from its subjection to the prodigious, that faculty
+everywhere recognises in those mighty mountains of dark forests,
+glittering glaciers, and regions of eternal snow--infinite all--the
+power and dominion of the Sublime. True that all these are but
+materials for the mind to work on, and that to its creative energy
+nature owes much of that grandeur which seems to be inherent in her own
+forms; yet surely she in herself is great, and there is a regality
+belonging of divine right to such a monarch as Mont Blanc.
+
+Those are the very regions of sublimity, and if brought into immediate
+comparison with them in their immense magnitude, the most magnificent
+scenery of our own country would no doubt seem to lose its character of
+greatness. But such is not the process of the imagination in her
+intercourse with Nature. To her sufficient for the day is the good
+thereof; and on each new glorious sight being shown to her eyes, she
+employs her God-given power to magnify or irradiate what she beholds,
+without diminishing or obscuring what she remembers. Thus, to her all
+things in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their own
+due impressions, aggrandised and beautified by mutual reaction in those
+visionary worlds, which by a thought she can create, and which as they
+arise are all shadowy representations of realities--new compositions in
+which the image of the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greater
+than any realities, but not therefore less, but more true to the spirit
+of nature. It is thus that Poets and Painters at once obey and control
+their own inspirations. They visit all the regions of the earth, but to
+love, admire, and adore; and the greatest of them all, native to our
+soil, from their travel or sojourn in foreign lands, have always brought
+home a clearer insight into the character of the scenery of their own, a
+profounder affection for it all, and a higher power of imaging its
+attributes in colours or in words. In our poetry, more than in any
+other, nature sees herself reflected in a magic mirror; and though many
+a various show passes processionally along its lustre, displaying the
+scenery of "lands and seas, whatever clime the sun's bright circle
+warms," among them all there are none more delightful or elevating to
+behold, than those which genius, inspired by love, has framed of the
+imagery, which in all her pomp and prodigality heaven has been pleased
+to shower, through all seasons, on our own beautiful island. It is not
+for us to say whether our native Painters, or the "old masters," have
+shown the greatest genius in landscape; but if the palm must be yielded
+to them whose works have been consecrated by a reverence, as often,
+perhaps, superstitious as religious, we do not fear to say that their
+superiority is not to be attributed in any degree to the scenery on
+which they exercised the art its beauty had inspired. Whatever may be
+the associations connected with the subjects of their landscapes--and we
+know not why they should be higher or holier than those belonging to
+innumerable places in our own land--assuredly in themselves they are not
+more interesting or impressive; nay, though none who have shared with us
+the spirit of the few imperfect sentences we have now written, will, for
+a moment, suppose us capable of instituting an invidious comparison
+between our own scenery and that of any other country, why should we
+hesitate to assert that our own storm-loving Northern Isle is equally
+rich in all kinds of beauty as the sunny South, and richer far in all
+kinds of grandeur, whether we regard the forms or colouring of
+nature--earth, sea, or air,--
+
+    "Or all the dread magnificence of heaven."
+
+What other region in all the world like that of the Lakes in the North
+of England! And yet how the true lover of nature, while he carries along
+with him its delightful character in his heart, and can so revive any
+spot of especial beauty in his imagination, as that it shall seem in an
+instant to be again before his very eyes, can deliver himself up, after
+the lapse of a day, to the genius of some savage scene in the Highlands
+of Scotland, rent and riven by the fury of some wild sea-loch! Not that
+the regions do not resemble one another, but surely the prevailing
+spirit of the one--not so of the other--is a spirit of joy and of peace.
+Her mountains, invested, though they often be, in gloom--and we have
+been more than once benighted during day, as a thunder-cloud thickened
+the shadows that for ever sleep in the deepest dungeons of
+Helvellyn--are yet--so it seems to us--such mountains as in nature ought
+to belong to "merry England." They boldly meet the storms, and seen in
+storms, you might think they loved the trouble; but pitch your tent
+among them, and you will feel that theirs is a grandeur that is
+congenial with the sunshine, and that their spirit fully rejoices in the
+brightness of light. In clear weather, verdant from base to summit, how
+majestic their repose! And as mists slowly withdraw themselves in
+thickening folds up along their sides, the revelation made is still of
+more and more of the beautiful--arable fields below--then coppice woods
+studded with standard trees--enclosed pastures above and among the
+woods--broad breasts of close-nibbled herbage here and there adorned by
+rich dyed rocks, that do not break the expanse--till the whole veil has
+disappeared, and, lo! the long lofty range, with its wavy line, rising
+and sinking so softly in the blue serenity perhaps of an almost
+cloudless sky. Yet though we have thus characterised the mountains by
+what we have always felt to be the pervading spirit of the region,
+chasms and ravines, and cliffs and precipices, are there; in some places
+you see such assemblages as inspire the fear that quakes at the heart,
+when suddenly struck in the solitude with a sense of the sublime; and
+though we have called the mountains green--and during Spring and Summer,
+in spite of frost or drought, they are green as emerald--yet in Autumn
+they are many-coloured, and are girdled with a glow of variegated light,
+that at sunset sometimes seems like fire kindled in the woods.
+
+The larger Vales are all serene and cheerful, and among the sylvan
+knolls with which their wide levels highly cultivated are interspersed,
+cottages, single or in groups, are frequent, of an architecture always
+admirably suited to the scenery, because in a style suggested not by
+taste or fancy, which so often disfigure nature to produce the
+picturesque, but resorted to for sake of the uses and conveniences of
+in-door life, to weather-fend it in storms, and in calm to give it the
+enjoyment of sunshine. Many of these dwellings are not what are properly
+called cottages, but Statesmen's houses, of ample front, with their many
+roofs, overshadowed by a stately grove, and inhabited by the same race
+for many generations. All alike have their suitable gardens, and the
+porches of the poorest are often clustered with roses; for everywhere
+among these hills, even in minds the most rude and uncultivated, there
+is a natural love of flowers. The villages, though somewhat too much
+modernised in those days of improvement, and indeed not a few of them
+with hardly any remains now of their original architecture--nothing old
+about them but the church tower, perhaps the parsonage--are nevertheless
+generally of a pleasing character, and accordant, if not with the great
+features of nature, which are unchanged and unchangeable, with the
+increased cultivation of the country, and the many villas and
+ornamented cottages that have risen and are rising by every lake and
+river side. Rivers indeed, properly so called, there are none among
+these mountains; but every vale, great and small, has at all times its
+pure and undefiled stream or rivulet; every hill has its hundreds of
+evanescent rills, almost every one its own perennial torrent flowing
+from spring, marsh, or tarn; and the whole region is often alive with
+waterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness, the scenery
+is fit for fairy festivals--and of many, in its horrid gloom, for
+gatherings of gnomes revisiting the glimpses of the moon from their
+subterraneous prisons. One lake there is which has been called "wooded
+Winandermere, the river lake;" and there is another--Ulswater--which you
+might imagine to be a river too, and to have come flowing from afar: the
+one excelling in isles, and bays, and promontories, serene and gentle
+all, and perfectly beautiful; the other, matchless in its majesty of
+cliff and mountain, and in its old forests, among whose hoary gloom is
+for ever breaking out the green light of young generations, and
+perpetual renovation triumphing over perpetual decay. Of the other
+lakes--not river-like--the character may be imagined even from that we
+have faintly described of the mountains:--almost every vale has its
+lake, or a series of lakes--and though some of them have at times a
+stern aspect, and have scenes to show almost of desolation, descending
+sheer to the water's edge, or overhanging the depth that looks
+profounder in the gloom, yet even these, to eyes and hearts familiar
+with their spirit, wear a sweet smile which seldom passes away: witness
+Wastwater--with its huge single mountains, and hugest of all the
+mountains of England, Scawfell, with its terrific precipices--which, in
+the accidents of storm, gloom, or mist, has seemed, to the lonely
+passer-by, savage in the extreme--a howling or dreary wilderness--but in
+its enduring character, is surrounded with all quiet pastoral imagery,
+the deep glen in which it is imbedded being, in good truth, the abode of
+Sabbath peace. That hugest mountain is indeed the centre from which all
+the vales irregularly diverge; the whole circumjacent region may be
+traversed in a week; and though no other district of equal extent
+contains such variety of the sublime and beautiful, yet the beautiful is
+so prevalent, that we feel its presence, even in places where it is
+overpowered; and on leaving "The Lakes," our imagination is haunted and
+possessed with images, not of dread, but of delight.
+
+We have sometimes been asked, whether the North of England or the
+Highlands of Scotland should be visited first; but, simple as the
+question seems, it is really one which it is impossible to answer;
+though we suspect it would equally puzzle Scotchman or Englishman to
+give a sufficient reason for his wishing to see any part of any other
+country before he had seen what was best worth seeing in his own. His
+own country ought to be, and generally is, dearest to every man. There,
+if nothing forbid, he should not only begin his study of nature, but
+continue his education in her school, wherever it may happen to be
+situated, till he has taken his first degree. We believe that the love
+of nature is strong in the hearts of the inhabitants of our Island. And
+how wide and profound may that knowledge of nature be, which the loving
+heart has acquired, without having studied her anywhere but within the
+Four Seas! The impulses that make us desire to widen the circle of our
+observation, are all impulses of delight and love; and it would be
+strange indeed, did they not move us, first of all, towards whatever is
+most beautiful belonging to our own land. Were it otherwise, it would
+seem as if the heart were faithless to the home-affections, out of
+which, in their strength, spring all others that are good; and it is
+essential, we do not doubt, to the full growth of the Love of Country,
+that we should all have our earliest imaginative delights associated
+with our native soil. Such associations will for ever keep it loveliest
+to our eyes; nor is it possible that we can ever as perfectly understand
+the character of any other; but we can afterwards transfer and transfuse
+our feelings in imagination kindled by our own will; and the beauty,
+born before our eyes, among the banks and braes of our childhood, and
+then believed to be but there, and nothing like it anywhere else in all
+the world, becomes a golden light, "whose home is everywhere," which if
+we do not darken it, will shine unshadowed in the dreariest places, till
+"the desert blossom like the rose."
+
+For our own parts, before we beheld one of "the beautiful fields of
+England," we had walked all Scotland thorough, and had seen many a
+secret place, which now, in the confusion of our crowded memory, seem
+often to shift their uncertain ground; but still, wherever they
+glimmeringly reappear, invested with the same heavenly light in which,
+long ago, they took possession of our soul. And now, that we are almost
+as familiar with the fair sister-land, and love her almost as well as
+Scotland's self, not all the charms in which she is arrayed, and they
+are at once graceful and glorious, have ever for a day withdrawn our
+deeper dreams from the regions where,
+
+    "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young,"
+
+unaccompanied but by our own shadow in the wilderness, we first heard
+the belling of the red-deer and the eagle's cry.
+
+In those days there was some difficulty, if not a little danger, in
+getting in among some of the noblest regions of our Alps. They could not
+be traversed without strong personal exertion; and a solitary pedestrian
+excursion through the Grampians was seldom achieved without a few
+incidents that might almost have been called adventures. It is very
+different now; yet the _Genius Loci_, though tamed, is not subdued; and
+they who would become acquainted with the heart of the Highlands, will
+have need of some endurance still, and must care nothing about the
+condition of earth or sky. Formerly, it was not possible to survey more
+than a district or division in a single season, except to those
+unenviable persons who had no other pursuit but that of amusement, and
+waged a weary war with time. The industrious dwellers in cities, who
+sought those solitudes, for a while to relieve their hearts from worldly
+anxieties, and gratify that love of nature which is inextinguishable in
+every bosom that in youth has beat with its noble inspirations, were
+contented with a week or two of such intercommunion with the spirit of
+the mountains, and thus continued to extend their acquaintance with the
+glorious wildernesses, visit after visit, for years. Now the whole
+Highlands, western and northern, may be commanded in a month. Not that
+any one who knows what they are, will imagine that they can be exhausted
+in a lifetime. The man does not live who knows all worth knowing there;
+and were they who made the Trigonometrical Survey to be questioned on
+their experiences, they would be found ignorant of thousands of sights,
+any one of which would be worth a journey for its own sake. But now
+steam has bridged the Great Glen, and connected the two seas.
+Salt-water lochs the most remote and inaccessible, it has brought within
+reach of a summer-day's voyage. In a week a joyous company can gather
+all the mainland shores, leaving not one magnificent bay uncircled; and,
+having rounded St Kilda and
+
+                      "the Hebride Isles,
+    Placed far amid the melancholy main,"
+
+and heard the pealing anthem of waves in the cave-cathedral of Staffa,
+may bless the bells of St Mungo's tolling on the first Sabbath.
+Thousands and tens of thousands, who, but for those smoking sea-horses,
+had never been beyond view of the city spires, have seen sights which,
+though passing by almost like dreams, are not like dreams forgotten, but
+revive of themselves in memory and imagination; and, when the heart is
+weary with the work of the hand, quicken its pulses with a sudden
+pleasure that is felt like a renovation of youth.
+
+All through the interior, too, how many hundreds of miles of roads now
+intersect regions not long ago deemed impracticable!--firm on the fen,
+in safety flung across the chasm--and winding smoothly amidst
+shatterings of rocks, round the huge mountain bases, and down the glens
+once felt as if interminable, now travelled almost with the speed of the
+raven's wing!
+
+In the Highlands now, there is no _Terra Incognita_. But there are many
+places yet well worth seeing, which it is not easy for all men to find,
+and to which every man must be his own guide. It is somewhat of a
+selfish feeling, indeed, but the pride is not a mean one, with which the
+solitary pedestrian sits down to contemplate some strange, or wild, or
+savage scene, or some view of surpassing sweetness and serenity, so far
+removed from the track of men that he can well believe for a time that
+his eyes have been the first to behold it, and that for them alone it
+has now become a visible revelation. The memory of such places is
+sometimes kept as a secret which we would not communicate but to a
+congenial friend. They are hallowed by those mysterious "thoughts that,
+like phantoms, trackless come and go;" no words can tell another how to
+find his way thither; and were we ourselves to seek to return, we should
+have to trust to some consciousness mysterious as the instinct of a
+bird that carries it through the blind night to the place of its desire.
+
+It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route: but without
+being utterly departed from--nay, without ceasing to control us within
+certain bounds--it admits of almost any degrees of deviation. We have
+known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to
+turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting
+themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of
+purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn
+a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless
+dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it
+listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought to
+shackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, that
+for a while they may walk on air, and feel that they too have wings.
+
+    "A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,
+    And it must be obeyed."
+
+The voice was our own--and yet though but a whisper from the heart, it
+seemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice--sweet and wild
+as an echo.
+
+On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine, where
+at night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:
+
+    "Among the hills a hundred homes have I;
+      My table in the wilderness is spread;
+    In these lone spots one honest smile can buy
+      Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed."
+
+If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the powers
+of Nature--the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun moon, and stars. We
+must keep a look-out--
+
+    "To see the deep fermenting tempest brew'd,
+    In the grim evening sky;"
+
+that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords; and
+if they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the mountain,
+and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet with the
+heather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not visited but
+for that storm, with its dark blue river streaked with golden
+light,--for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range; and there,
+during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward rejoiced in
+the trembling dews.
+
+There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur, as the
+climate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old shepherd
+or herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in spite of many a
+night's unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he can presage its
+changes from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when the
+long-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise have
+often perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain symptoms,
+there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well to study, and he
+will often exult on the mountain to feel that "knowledge is power." Many
+a glorious hour has been won from the tempest by him before whose
+instructed eye--beyond the gloom that wide around blackened all the
+purple heather--"far off its coming shone." Leagues of continuous
+magnificence have gradually unveiled themselves on either side to him,
+as he has slowly paced, midway between, along the banks of the River of
+Waterfalls; having been assured by the light struggling through the
+mist, that it would not be long till there was a break-up of all that
+ghastly dreariment, and that the sun would call on him to come forth
+from his cave of shelter, and behold in all its pride the Glen
+affronting the sea.
+
+Some Tourists--as they call themselves--are provided with map and
+compass; and we hope they find them of avail in extremities, though we
+fear few such understand their use. No map can tell--except very
+vaguely--how the aspect of the localities, looked at on its lines, is
+likely to be affected by sun-rise, meridian, or sun-set. Yet, true it
+is, that every region has its own happy hours, which the fortunate often
+find unawares, and know them at once to be so the moment they lift up
+their eyes. At such times, while "our hearts rejoice in Nature's joy,"
+we feel the presence of a spirit that brings out the essential character
+of the place, be it of beauty or of grandeur. Harmonious as music is
+then the composition of colours and of forms. It becomes a perfect
+picture in memory, more and more idealised by imagination, every moment
+the veil is withdrawn before it; its aerial lineaments never fade; yet
+they too, though their being be but in the soul, are mellowed by the
+touch, of time--and every glimpse of such a vision, the longer we live,
+and the more we suffer, seems suffused with a mournful light, as if seen
+through tears.
+
+It would serve no good purpose, supposing we had the power, to analyse
+the composition of that scenery, which in the aggregate so moves even
+the most sluggish faculties, as to make "the dullest wight a poet." It
+rises before the mind in imagination, as it does before the eyes in
+nature; and we can no more speak of it than look at it, but--as a whole.
+We can indeed fix our mental or our visual gaze on scene after scene to
+the exclusion of all beside, and picture it even in words that shall be
+more than shadows. But how shall any succession of such pictures,
+however clear and complete, give an idea of that picture which
+comprehends them all, and infinite as are its manifestations,
+nevertheless is imbued with one spirit?
+
+Try to forget that in the Highlands there are any Lochs. Then the sole
+power is that of the Mountains. We speak of a sea of mountains; but that
+image has never more than momentary possession of us, because, but for a
+moment, in nature it has no truth. Tumultuary movements envelope them;
+but they themselves are for ever steadfast and for ever still. Their
+power is that of an enduring calm no storms can disturb--and is often
+felt to be more majestical, the more furious are the storms. As the
+tempest-driven clouds are franticly hurrying to and fro, how serene the
+summits in the sky! Or if they be hidden, how peaceful the glimpses of
+some great mountain's breast! They disregard the hurricane that goes
+crashing through their old woods; the cloud-thunder disturbs not them
+any more than that of their own cataracts, and the lightnings play for
+their pastime. All minds under any excitation, more or less personify
+mountains. When much moved, that natural process affects all our
+feelings, as the language of passion awakened by such objects vividly
+declares; and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as endued with
+life--however dim and vague the conception may be--and feel their
+character in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of all
+that is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone. But
+while we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, will those
+monarchs remain invested with the purple and seated on thrones.
+
+In such imaginative moods as these must every one be, far more
+frequently than he is conscious of, and in far higher degrees, who, with
+a cultivated mind and a heart open to the influences of nature, finds
+himself, it matters not whether for the first or the hundredth time, in
+the Highlands. We fancy the Neophyte wandering, all by himself, on the
+"Longest Day;" rejoicing to think that the light will not fail him, when
+at last the sun must go down, for that a starry gloaming will continue
+its gentle reign till morn. He thinks but of what he sees, and that
+is--the mountains. All memories of any other world but that which
+encloses him with its still sublimities, are not excluded merely, but
+obliterated: his whole being is there! And now he stands on table-land,
+and with his eyes sweeps the horizon, bewildered for a while, for it
+seems chaos all. But soon the mighty masses begin arranging themselves
+into order; the confusion insensibly subsides as he comprehends more and
+more of their magnificent combinations; he discovers centres round which
+are associated altitudes towering afar off; and finally, he feels, and
+blesses himself on his felicity, that his good genius has placed him on
+the very centre of those wondrous assemblages altogether, from which
+alone he could command an empire of realities, more glorious far than
+was ever empire of dreams.
+
+It is a cloudy, but not a stormy day; the clouds occupy but portions of
+the sky,--and are they all in slow motion together, or are they all at
+rest? Huge shadows stalking along the earth, tell that there are changes
+going on in heaven; but to the upward gaze, all seems hanging there in
+the same repose; and with the same soft illumination the sun to continue
+shining, a concentration rather than an orb of light. All above is
+beautiful, and the clouds themselves are like celestial mountains; but
+the eye forsakes them, though it sees them still, and more quietly now
+it moves along the pageantry below that endures for ever--till chained
+on a sudden by that range of cliffs. 'Tis along them that the giant
+shadows are stalking--but now they have passed by--and the long line of
+precipice seems to come forward in the light. To look down from the
+brink might be terrible--to look up from the base would be sublime--but
+fronting the eye thus, horrid though it be, the sight is most beautiful;
+for weather-stains, and mosses, and lichens, and flowering
+plants--conspicuous most the broom and the heather--and shrubs that,
+among their leaves of light, have no need of flowers--and hollies, and
+birks, and hazels, and many a slender tree beside with pensile tresses,
+besprinkle all the cliffs, that in no gloom could ever lose their
+lustre; but now the day though not bright is fair, and brings out the
+whole beauty of the precipice--call it the hanging garden of the
+wilderness.
+
+The Highlands have been said to be a gloomy region, and worse gloom than
+theirs might well be borne, if not unfrequently illumined with such
+sights as these; but that is not the character of the mountains, though
+the purple light in which, for usual, they are so richly steeped, is
+often for a season tamed, or for a short while extinguished, while a
+strange night-like day lets fall over them all a something like a
+shroud. Such days we have seen--but now in fancy we are with the
+pilgrim, and see preparation making for a sun-set. It is drawing towards
+evening, and the clouds that have all this time been moving, though we
+knew it not, have assuredly settled now, and taken up their rest. The
+sun has gone down, and all that unspeakable glory has left the sky.
+Evening has come and gone without our knowing that she had been here;
+but there is no gloom on any place in the whole of this vast wilderness,
+and the mountains, as they wax dimmer and dimmer, look as if they were
+surrendering themselves to a repose like sleep. Day had no voice here
+audible to human ear--but night is murmuring--and gentle though the
+murmur be, it filleth the great void, and we imagine that ever and anon
+it awakens echoes. And now it is darker than we thought, for lo! one
+soft-burning star! And we see that there are many stars; but not theirs
+the light that begins again to reveal object after object as gradually
+as they had disappeared; the moon is about to rise--is rising--has
+arisen--has taken her place high in heaven; and as the glorious world
+again expands around us, faintly tinged, clearly illumined, softly
+shadowed, and deeply begloomed, we say within our hearts,
+
+    "How beautiful is night!"
+
+There are many such table-lands as the one we have now been imagining,
+and it requires but a slight acquaintance with the country to conjecture
+rightly where they lie. Independently of the panoramas they display,
+they are in themselves always impressive; perhaps a bare level that
+shows but bleached bent, and scatterings of stones, with here and there
+an unaccountable rock; or hundreds of fairy greensward knolls, fringed
+with tiny forests of fern that have almost displaced the heather; or a
+wild withered moor or moss intersected with pits dug not by men's hands;
+and, strange to see! a huge log lying half exposed, and as if blackened
+by fire. High as such places are, on one of them a young gorcock was
+stricken down by a hawk close to our feet. Indeed, hawks seem to haunt
+such places, and we have rarely crossed one of them, without either
+seeing the creature's stealthy flight, or hearing, whether he be alarmed
+or preying, his ever-angry cry.
+
+From a few such stations, you get an insight into the configuration of
+the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover
+at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other
+regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and if
+the blue aerial haze that hangs over a pass winding eastward, tempt you
+from your line of march due north, forthwith descend in that direction,
+and haply an omen will confirm you--an eagle rising on the left, and
+sailing away before you into that very spot of sky.
+
+No man, however well read, should travel by book. In books you find
+descriptions, and often good ones, of the most celebrated scenes, but
+seldom a word about the vast tracts between; and it would seem as if
+many Tourists had used their eyes only in those places where they had
+been told by common fame there was something greatly to admire. Travel
+in the faith, that go where you will, the cravings of your heart will be
+satisfied, and you will find it so, if you be a true lover of nature.
+You hope to be inspired by her spirit, that you may may read aright her
+works. But such inspiration comes not from one object or another,
+however great or fair, but from the whole "mighty world of eye and ear,"
+and it must be supported continuously, or it perishes. You may see a
+thousand sights never before seen by human eye, at every step you take,
+wherever be your path; for no steps but yours have ever walked along
+that same level; and moreover, never on the same spot twice rested the
+same lights or shadows. Then there may be something in the air, and
+more in your own heart, that invests every ordinary object with
+extraordinary beauty; old images affect you with a new delight; a
+grandeur grows upon your eyes in the undulations of the simplest hills;
+and you feel there is sublimity in the common skies. It is thus that all
+the stores of imagery are insensibly gathered, with which the minds of
+men are filled, who from youth have communed with nature. And it is thus
+that all those feelings have flowed into their hearts by which that
+imagery is sanctified; and these are the Poets.
+
+It is in this way that we become familiar with the mountains. Far more
+than we were aware of have we trusted to the strong spirit of delight
+within us, to prompt and to guide. And in such a country as the
+Highlands, thus led, we cannot err. Therefore, if your desire be for the
+summits, set your face thitherwards, and wind a way of your own, still
+ascending and ascending, along some vast brow, that seems almost a whole
+day's journey, and where it is lost from your sight, not to end, but to
+go sweeping round, with undiminished grandeur into another region. You
+are not yet half-way up the mountain, but you care not for the summit
+now; for you find yourself among a number of green knolls--all of them
+sprinkled, and some of them crowned with trees--as large almost as our
+lowland hills--surrounded close to the brink with the purple
+heather--and without impairing the majesty of the immense expanse,
+imbuing it with pastoral and sylvan beauty;--and there, lying in a small
+forest glade of the lady-fern, ambitious no longer of a throne on
+Benlomond or Ben-nevis, you dream away the still hours till sunset, yet
+then have no reason to weep that you have lost a day.
+
+But the best way to view the mountains is to trace the Glens. To find
+out the glens you must often scale the shoulders of mountains, and in
+such journeys of discovery, you have for ever going on before your eyes
+glorious transfigurations. Sometimes for a whole day one mighty mass
+lowers before you unchanged; look at it after the interval of hours, and
+still the giant is one and the same. It rules the region, subjecting all
+other altitudes to its sway, though many of them range away to a great
+distance; and at sunset retains it supremacy, blazing almost like a
+volcano with fiery clouds. Your line of journey lies, perhaps, some two
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, and seldom dips down to one
+thousand; and these are the heights from which all above and all below
+you looks most magnificent, for both regions have their full power over
+you--the unscaleable cliffs, the unfathomable abysses--and you know not
+which is the more sublime. The sublimity indeed is one. It is then that
+you may do well to ascend to the very mountain-top. For it may happen to
+be one of those heavenly days indeed, when the whole Highlands seem to
+be reposing in the cloudless sky.
+
+But we were about to speak of the Glens. And some of them are best
+entered by such descents as these--perhaps at their very head--where all
+at once you are in another world, how still, how gloomy, how profound!
+An hour ago and the eye of the eagle had not wider command of earth,
+sea, and sky, than yours--almost blinded now by the superincumbent
+precipices that imprison you, and seem to shut you out from life.
+
+    "Such the grim desolation, where Ben-Hun
+    And Craig-na-Torr, by earthquake shatterings
+    Disjoined with horrid chasms prerupt, enclose
+    What superstition calls the Glen of Ghosts."
+
+Or you may enter some great glen from the foot, where it widens into
+vale or strath--and there are many such--and some into which you can
+sail up an arm of the sea. For a while it partakes of the cultivated
+beauty of the lowlands, and glen and vale seem almost one and the same;
+but gradually it undergoes a strange wild change of character, and in a
+few miles that similitude is lost. There is little or no arable ground
+here; but the pasture is rich on the unenclosed plain--and here and
+there are enclosures, near the few houses or huts standing, some of them
+in the middle of the glen, quite exposed, on eminences above reach of
+the floods--some more happily placed on the edge of the coppices, that
+sprinkle the steep sides of the hills, yet barely mountains. But
+mountains they soon become; and leaving behind you those few barren
+habitations, you see before you a wide black moor. Beautiful hitherto
+had been the river, for a river you had inclined to think it, long after
+it had narrowed into a stream, with many a waterfall, and in one chasm a
+cataract. But the torrent now has a wild mountain cry, and though there
+is still beauty on its banks, they are bare of all trees, now swelling
+into multitudes of low green knolls among the heather, now composed but
+of heather and rocks. Through the very middle of the black moor it
+flows, yet are its waters clear, for all is not moss, and it seems to
+wind its way where there is nothing to pollute its purity, or tame its
+lustre. 'Tis a solitary scene, but still sweet; the mountains are of
+great magnitude, but they are not precipitous; vast herds of cattle are
+browsing there, on heights from which fire has cleared the heather, and
+wide ranges of greensward upon the lofty gloom seem to lie in perpetual
+light.
+
+The moor is crossed, and you prepare to scale the mountain in front, for
+you imagine the torrent by your side flows from a tarn in yonder cove,
+and forms that series of waterfalls. You have been all along well
+pleased with the glen, and here at the head, though there is a want of
+cliffs of the highest class, you feel nevertheless that it has a
+character of grandeur. Looking westward, you are astounded to see them
+ranging away on either side of another reach of the glen, terrific in
+their height, but in their formation beautiful, for like the walls of
+some vast temple they stand, roofed with sky. Yet are they but as a
+portal or gateway of the glen. For entering in with awe, that deepens,
+as you advance, almost into dread, you behold, beyond, mountains that
+carry their cliffs up into the clouds, seamed with chasms, and hollowed
+out into coves, where night dwells visibly by the side of day; and still
+the glen seems winding on beneath a purple light, that almost looks like
+gloom; such vast forms and such prodigious colours, and such utter
+stillness, become oppressive to your very life, and you wish that some
+human being were by, to relieve, by his mere presence, the insupportable
+weight of such a solitude.
+
+But we should never have done were we to attempt to sketch, however
+slightly, the character of all the different kinds of glens. Some are
+sublime in their prodigious depth and vast extent, and would be felt to
+be so, even were the mountains that enclose them of no great majesty;
+but these are all of the highest order, and sometimes are seen from
+below to the very cairns on their summits. Now we walk along a reach,
+between astonishing ranges of cliffs, among large heaps of rocks--not a
+tree--scarcely a shrub--no herbage--the very heather blasted--all
+lifelessness and desolation. The glen gradually grows less and less
+horrid, and though its sides are seamed with clefts and chasms, in the
+gloom there are places for the sunshine, and there is felt to be even
+beauty in the repose. Descends suddenly on either side a steep slope of
+hanging wood, and we find ourselves among verdant mounds, and knolls,
+and waterfalls. We come then into what seems of old to have been a
+forest. Here and there a stately pine survives, but the rest are all
+skeletons; and now the glen widens, and widens, yet ceases not to be
+profound, for several high mountains enclose a plain on which armies
+might encamp, and castellated clouds hang round the heights of the
+glorious amphitheatre, while the sky-roof is clear, and as if in its
+centre, the refulgent sun. 'Tis the plain called "The Meeting of the
+Glens." From the east and the west, the north and the south, they come
+like rivers into the sea.
+
+Other glens there are, as long, but not so profound, nor so grandly
+composed; yet they too conduct us nobly in among the mountains, and up
+their sides, and on even to their very summits. Such are the glens of
+Atholl, in the neighbourhood of Ben-y-gloe. From them the heather is not
+wholly banished, and the fire has left a green light without quenching
+the purple colour native to the hills. We think that we almost remember
+the time when those glens were in many places sprinkled with huts, and
+all animated with human life. Now they are solitary; and you may walk
+from sunrise till sunset without seeing a single soul. For a hundred
+thousand acres have there been changed into a forest, for sake of the
+pastime, indeed, which was dear of old to chieftains and kings. Vast
+herds of red-deer are there, for they herd in thousands--yet may you
+wander for days over the boundless waste, nor once be startled by one
+stag bounding by. Yet may a herd, a thousand strong, be drawn up, as in
+battle array, on the cliffs above your head. For they will long stand
+motionless, at gaze, when danger is in the wind--and then their antlers
+to unpractised eyes seem but boughs grotesque, or are invisible; and
+when all at once, with one accord, at signal from the stag, whom they
+obey, they wheel off towards the Corries, you think it but thunder, and
+look up to the clouds. Fortunate if you see such a sight once in your
+life. Once only have we seen it; and it was, of a sudden, all by
+ourselves,
+
+    "Ere yet the hunter's startling horn was heard
+    Upon the golden hills."
+
+Almost within rifle-shot, the herd occupied a position, high up indeed,
+but below several ridges of rocks, running parallel for a long distance,
+with slopes between of sward and heather. Standing still, they seemed to
+extend about a quarter of a mile, and as with a loud clattering of hoofs
+and antlers, they took more open order, the line at least doubled its
+length, and the whole mountain-side seemed alive. They might not be
+going at full speed, but the pace was equal to that of any charge of
+cavalry; and once and again the flight passed before us, till it
+overcame the ridges, and then deploying round the shoulder of the
+mountain, disappeared, without dust or noise, into the blue light of
+another glen.
+
+We question, if there be in the Highlands any one glen comparable with
+Borrowdale in Cumberland. But there are several that approach it, in
+that combination of beauty and grandeur, which perhaps no other scene
+equals in all the world. The "Gorge" of that Dale exhibits the finest
+imaginable assemblage of rocks and rocky hills, all wildly wooded;
+beyond them, yet before we have entered into the Dale, the Pass widens,
+with noble cliffs on one side, and on the other a sylvan stream, not
+without its abysses; and we see before us some lovely hills, on which--
+
+    "The smiling power of cultivation lies,"
+
+yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the ploughshare,
+copses and groves; and thus we are brought into the Dale itself, and
+soon have a vision of the whole--green and golden fields--for though
+most are in pasture, almost all seem arable--sprinkled with fine single
+trees--and lying in flats and levels, or swelling into mounds and
+knolls, and all diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages,
+with their out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand, and
+coloured like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to be
+distinguished--strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them very
+old; villages, apart from one another a mile--and there are three--yet
+on their sites, distant and different in much though they be, all
+associated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all the
+Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and even
+mountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensive
+aliens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains are
+not so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and the
+Passes over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are
+magnificent, and show precipices in which the Golden Eagle himself might
+rejoice.
+
+No--there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale.
+Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their beauty
+though less, almost as much affects us, because though contending, as it
+were, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it is not overcome, but
+prevails; and their beauty will increase with years. For while the rocks
+continue to frown aloft for ever, and the cliffs to range along the
+corries, unbroken by trees, which there the tempest will not suffer to
+rise, the woods and groves below, preserved from the axe, for sake of
+their needful shelter, shall become statelier, till the birch equal the
+pine; reclaimed from the waste, shall many a fresh field recline among
+the heather, tempering the gloom; and houses arise where now there are
+but huts, and every house have its garden:--such changes are now going
+on, and we have been glad to observe their progress, even though
+sometimes they had removed, or were removing, objects dear from old
+associations, and which, had it been possible, but it was not, we should
+have loved to see preserved.
+
+And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one often
+drops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds a night's
+lodging in the only hut. Yet they lie, sometimes, embosomed in their own
+green hills, among the most rugged mountains, and even among the wildest
+moors. They have no features by which you can describe them; it is their
+serenity that charms you, and their cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrong
+to call them glens, and they are but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell as
+deep, however small it may be; but these are not deep, for the hills
+slope down gently upon them, and leave room perhaps between for a little
+shallow loch. Often they have not any visible water at all, only a few
+springs and rivulets, and you wonder to see them so very green; there is
+no herbage like theirs; and to such spots of old, and sometimes yet,
+the kine are led in summer, and there the lonely family live in their
+shieling till the harvest moon.
+
+We have all along used the same word, and called the places we have
+spoken of--glens. A fine observer--the Editor of Gilpin's Forest
+Scenery--has said: "The gradation from extreme width downwards should be
+thus arranged,--strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell, ravine, chasm.
+In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to find the large,
+majestic, gently flowing river, or even the deeper or smaller lake. In
+the glen, if the river be large, it flows more rapidly, and with greater
+variety. In the dell the stream is smaller. In the ravine, we find the
+mountain torrent and the waterfall. In the chasm, we find the roaring
+cataract, or the rill, bursting from its haunted fountain. The chasm
+discharges its small tribute into the ravine, while the ravine is
+tributary to the dell, and thence to the glen; and the glen to the
+dale."
+
+These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true to
+nature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them in
+describing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed confused
+by common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing about
+Straths--nor shall we try to describe one--but suggest to your own
+imagination--as specimens--Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn. The
+dominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain ranges
+that environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble straths they
+are, from source to sea.
+
+And now we are brought to speak of the Highland Rivers, Streams, and
+Torrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or thunder in your
+own ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what the waters must be in a
+land of such glens and such mountains. The chief rivers possess all the
+attributes essential to greatness--width--depth--clearness--rapidity--in
+one word power. And some of them have long courses--rising in the
+central heights, and winding round many a huge projection, against which
+in flood we have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts are
+not of long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by all
+the tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calm
+into a commotion--the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood they
+are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of torment.
+Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is something
+to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them be
+united--and add thunder from the clouds--and we have heard in the
+Highlands all three in one--and the auditor need not care that he has
+never stood by Niagara. But when "though not o'erflowing full," a
+Highland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hear
+him rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calm
+and majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without any
+disturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace.
+
+Of rivers--comparatively speaking--of the second and third order--the
+Highlands are full--and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond
+compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of
+them--some tiny indeed, but others tall--are for ever dinning in the
+woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is the
+sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat's voice; clear
+amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and all
+other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the bark of the
+eagle--rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the
+"glimmer or the gloom" of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or the
+Tummel--for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he has
+shifted his eyrie, a few minutes' waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower.
+
+In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams, and
+some of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets; while in
+the greatest, the waters often flow on without a single tree, shadowed
+but by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they are larger than
+they seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of those profound
+hollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light in the sunshine, and
+in the gloom you see them not at all. We do not remember any very
+impressive glen, without a stream, that would not suffer some diminution
+of its power by our fancying it to have one; we may not be aware, at the
+time, that the conformation of the glen prevents its having any
+water-flow, but if we feel its character aright, that want is among the
+causes of our feeling; just as there are some scenes of which the beauty
+would not be so touching were there a single tree.
+
+Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennial
+torrents, and "in number without number numberless" those that seldom
+live a week--perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you hear
+nothing, even when they are all allow; yet, there is music in the sight,
+and the thought of the "general dance and minstrelsy" enlivens the air,
+where no insect hums. As on your descent you come within hearing of the
+"liquid lapses," your heart leaps within you, so merrily do they sing;
+the first torrent-rill you meet with you take for your guide, and it
+leads you perhaps into some fairy dell, where it wantons awhile in
+waterfalls, and then gliding along a little dale of its own with "banks
+o' green bracken," finishes its short course in a stream--one of many
+that meet and mingle before the current takes the name of river, which
+in a mile or less becomes a small woodland lake. There are many such of
+rememberable beauty; living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings of
+expanded rivers, which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilies
+have ever a gentle motion there as if touched by a tide.
+
+It used, not very long ago, to be pretty generally believed by our
+southern brethren, that there were few trees in the Lowlands of
+Scotland, and none at all in the Highlands. They had an obscure notion
+that trees either could not or would not grow in such a soil and
+climate--cold and bleak enough at times and places, heaven knows--yet
+not altogether unproductive of diverse stately plants. They know better
+now; nor were we ever angry with their ignorance, which was nothing more
+than what was to be expected in persons living perpetually at home so
+far remote. They rejoice now to visit, and sojourn, and travel here
+among us, foreigners and a foreign land no more; and we rejoice to see
+and receive them not as strangers, but friends, and are proud to know
+they are well pleased to behold our habitation. They do us and our
+country justice now, and we have sometimes thought even more than
+justice; for they are lost in admiration of our cities--above all, of
+Edinburgh--and speak with such raptures of our scenery, that they would
+appear to prefer it even to their own. They are charmed with our bare
+green hills, with our shaggy brown mountains they are astonished, our
+lochs are their delight, our woods their wonder, and they hold up their
+hands and clap them at our cliffs. This is generous, for we are not
+blind to the fact of England being the most beautiful land on all the
+earth. What are our woods to hers! To hers, what are our single trees!
+We have no such glorious standards to show as her indomitable and
+everlasting oaks. She is all over sylvan--Scotland but here and there;
+look on England from any point in any place, and you see she is rich,
+from almost any point in any place in Scotland, and you feel that
+comparatively she is poor. Yet our Lowlands have long been beautifying
+themselves into a resemblance of hers; as for our Highlands, though many
+changes have been going on there too, and most we believe for good, they
+are in their great features, and in their spirit unalterable by art,
+stamped and inspired by enduring Nature.
+
+We have spoken, slightly, of the sylvan scenery of the Highlands. In
+Perthshire, especially, it is of rare and extraordinary beauty, and we
+are always glad to hear of Englishmen travelling up the Tay and the
+Earn. We desire that eyes familiar with all that is umbrageous should
+receive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at Duneira and
+Dunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they proceed towards
+Blair Atholl. In that famous Pass, they will feel the power possessed by
+the sweet wild monotony of the universal birch woods--broken but by grey
+crags in every shape--grotesque, fantastical, majestic, magnificent, and
+sublime--on the many-ridged mountains, that are loth to lose the green
+light of their beloved forests, retain it as long as they can, and on
+the masses of living lustre seem to look down with pride from their
+skies.
+
+An English forest, meaning thereby any one wide continuous scene of all
+kinds of old English trees, with glades of pasture, and it may be of
+heath between, with dells dipping down into the gloom, and hillocks
+undulating in the light--ravines and chasms too, rills, and rivulets,
+and a haunted stream, and not without some melancholy old ruins, and
+here and there a cheerful cottage that feels not the touch of time--such
+a forest there is not, and hardly can be imagined to be in Scotland. But
+in the Highlands, there once were, and are still other forests of quite
+a different character, and of equal grandeur. In his "Forest Scenery,"
+Gilpin shows that he understood it well; all the knowledge, which as a
+stranger, almost of necessity he wanted, Lauder has supplied in his
+annotations; and the book should now be in the hands of every one who
+cares about the woods. "The English Forest," says Gilpin, "is commonly
+composed of woodland views, interspersed with extensive heaths and
+lawns. Its trees are oak and beech, whose lively green corresponds
+better than the gloomy pine with the nature of the scene, which seldom
+assumes the dignity of a mountain one, but generally exhibits a cheerful
+landscape. It aspires, indeed, to grandeur; but its grandeur does not
+depend, like that of the Scottish forest, on the sublimity of the
+objects, but on the vastness of the whole--the extent of its woods and
+the wideness of its plains. In its inhabitants also the English forest
+differs from the Scottish; instead of the stag and the roebuck, it is
+frequented by cattle and fallow-deer, and exchanges the scream of the
+eagle and the falcon for the crowing of pheasants, and the melody of the
+nightingale. The Scottish forest, no doubt, is the sublimer scene, and
+speaks to the imagination in a loftier language than the English forest
+can reach. The latter, indeed, often rouses the imagination, but seldom
+in so great a degree, being generally content with captivating the eye.
+The scenery, too, of the Scottish forest is better calculated to last
+through ages than that of the English. The woods of both are almost
+destroyed. But while the English forest hath lost all its beauty with
+its oaks, and becomes only a desolate waste, the rocks and the
+mountains, the lakes and the torrents of the Scottish forest make it
+still an interesting scene."
+
+The Tree of the Highlands is the Pine. There are Scotch firs, indeed,
+well worth looking at, in the Lowlands, and in England, but to learn
+their true character you must see them in the glen, among rooks, by the
+river-side and on the mountain. "We for our parts," says Lauder very
+finely, "confess that when we have seen it towering in full majesty in
+the midst of some appropriate Highland scene, and sending its limbs
+abroad with all the unrestrained freedom of a hardy mountaineer, as if
+it claimed dominion over the savage region round it, we have looked upon
+it as a very sublime object. People who have not seen it in its native
+climate and soil, and who judge of it from the wretched abortions which
+are swaddled and suffocated in English plantations, among dark, heavy,
+and eternally wet clays, may well call it a wretched tree; but when its
+foot is among its own Highland heather, and when it stands freely in
+its native knoll of dry gravel, or thinly covered rock, over which its
+roots wander afar in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall,
+furrowed, and often gracefully sweeping red and grey trunk, of enormous
+circumference, rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy, then would the
+greatest sceptic on this point be compelled to prostrate his mind before
+it with a veneration which perhaps was never before excited in him by
+any other tree." The colour of the pine has been objected to as
+murky--and murky it often is, or seems to be; and so then is the colour
+of the heather, and of the river, and of the loch, and of the sky itself
+thunder-laden, and murkiest of all are the clouds. But a stream of
+sunshine is let loose, and the gloom is confounded with glory; over all
+that night-like reign the jocund day goes dancing, and the forest revels
+in green or in golden light. Thousands and tens of thousands of pines
+are there, and as you gaze upon the whole mighty array, you fear, lest
+it might break the spell, to fix your gaze on any one single tree. But
+there are trees there that will force you to look on themselves alone,
+and they grow before your eyes into the kings of the forest. Straight
+stand their stems in the sunshine, and you feel that as straight have
+they stood in the storm. As yet you look not up, for your heart is awed,
+and you see but the stately columns reddening away into the gloom. But
+all the while you feel the power of the umbrage aloft, and when
+thitherwards you lift your eyes, what a roof to such a cathedral! A cone
+drops at your feet--nor other sound nor other stir--but afar off you
+think you hear a cataract. Inaudible your footsteps on the soft yellow
+floor, composed of the autumnal sheddings of countless years. Then it is
+true that you can indeed hear the beating of your own heart; you fear,
+but know not what you fear; and being the only living creature there,
+you are impressed with a thought of death. But soon to that severe
+silence you are more than reconciled; the solitude, without ceasing to
+be sublime, is felt to be solemn and not awful, and ere long, utter as
+it is, serene. Seen from afar, the forest was one black mass; but as you
+advance, it opens up into spacious glades, beautiful as gardens, with
+appropriate trees of gentler tribes, and ground-flowering in the sun.
+But there is no murmur of bee--no song of bird. In the air a thin
+whisper of insects--intermittent--and wafted quite away by a breath. For
+we are now in the very centre of the forest, and even the cushat haunts
+not here. Hither the red-deer may come--but not now--for at this season
+they love the hill. To such places the stricken stag might steal to lie
+down and die.
+
+And thus for hours may you be lost in the forest, nor all the while have
+wasted one thought on the outer-world, till with no other warning but an
+uncertain glimmer and a strange noise, you all at once issue forth into
+the open day, and are standing on the brink of a precipice above a
+flood. It comes tumbling down with a succession of falls, in a mile-long
+course, right opposite your stance--rocks, cliffs, and trees, all the
+way up on either side, majestically retiring back to afford ample
+channel, and showing an unobstructed vista, closed up by the purple
+mountain, that seems to send forth the river from a cavern in its
+breast. 'Tis the Glen of Pines. Nor ash nor oak is suffered to intrude
+on their dominion. Since the earthquake first shattered it out, this
+great chasm, with all its chasms, has been held by one race of trees. No
+other seed could there spring to life; for from the rocks has all soil,
+ages ago, been washed and swept by the tempests. But there they stand
+with glossy boles, spreading arms, and glittering crest; and those two
+by themselves on the summit, known all over Badenoch as "the
+Giants"--their "statures reach the sky."
+
+We have been indulging in a dream of old. Before our day the immemorial
+gloom of Glenmore had perished, and it ceased to be a forest. But there
+bordered on it another region of night or twilight, and in its vast
+depths we first felt the sublimity of lonesome fear. Rothiemurchus! The
+very word blackens before our eyes with necromantic characters--again we
+plunge into its gulfs desirous of what we dread--again, "in pleasure
+high and turbulent," we climb the cliffs of Cairngorm.
+
+Would you wish to know what is now the look of Glenmore? One now dead
+and gone--a man of wayward temper, but of genius--shall tell you--and
+think not the picture exaggerated--for you would not, if you were
+_there_. "It is the wreck of the ancient forest which arrests all the
+attention, and which renders Glenmore a melancholy, more than a
+melancholy, a terrific spectacle. Trees of enormous height, which have
+escaped alike the axe and the tempest, are still standing, stripped by
+the winds, even of the bark, and, like gigantic skeletons, throwing far
+and wide their white and bleached bones to the storms and rains of
+heaven; while others, broken by the violence of the gales, lift up their
+split and fractured trunks in a thousand shapes of resistance and of
+destruction, or still display some knotted and tortuous branches,
+stretched out, in sturdy and fantastic forms of defiance, to the
+whirlwind and the winter. Noble trunks also, which had long resisted,
+but resisted in vain, strew the ground; some lying on the declivity
+where they have fallen, others still adhering to the precipice where
+they were rooted, many upturned, with their twisted and entangled roots
+high in air; while not a few astonish us by the space which they cover,
+and by dimensions which we could not otherwise have estimated. It is one
+wide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over the
+valley. The sight even of a felled tree is painful; still more is that
+of the fallen forest, with all its green branches on the ground,
+withering, silent, and at rest, where once they glittered in the dew and
+the sun, and trembled in the breeze. Yet this is but an image of
+vegetable death. It is familiar, and the impression passes away. It is
+the naked skeleton bleaching in the winds, the gigantic bones of the
+forest still erect, the speaking records of former life, and of strength
+still unsubdued, vigorous even in death, which renders Glenmore one
+enormous charnel-house."
+
+What happened of old to the aboriginal Forests of Scotland, that long
+before these later destructions they had almost all perished, leaving,
+to bear witness what they were, such survivors? They were chiefly
+destroyed by fire. What power could extinguish chance-kindled
+conflagrations, when sailing before the wind? And no doubt fire was set
+to clear the country at once of Scotch firs, wolves, wild-boars, and
+outlaws. Tradition yet tells of such burnings; and, if we mistake not,
+the pines found in the Scottish mosses, the logs and the stocks, all
+show that they were destroyed by Vulcan, though Neptune buried them in
+the quagmires. Storms no doubt often levelled them by thousands; but had
+millions so fallen they had never been missed, and one Element
+only--which has been often fearfully commissioned--could achieve the
+work. In our own day the axe has indeed done wonders--and sixteen square
+miles of the Forest of Rothiemurchus "went to the ground." John of
+Ghent, Gilpin tells us, to avenge an inroad, set twenty-four thousand
+axes at work in the Caledonian Forest.
+
+Yet Scotland has perhaps sufficient forests at this day. For more has
+been planted than cut down; Glenmore will soon be populous as ever with
+self-sown pines, and Rothiemurchus may revive; the shades are yet deep
+of Loch Arkaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, Strathglass, Glen-Strathfarrar,
+and Loch-Shiel; deeper still on the Findhorn--and deepest of all on the
+Dee, rejoicing in the magnificent pine-woods of Invercauld and Braemar.
+
+We feel that we have spoken feebly of our Highland forests. Some,
+perhaps, who have never been off the high-roads, may accuse us of
+exaggeration too; but they contain wondrous beauties of which we have
+said not a word; and no imagination can conceive what they may be in
+another hundred years. But, apparently far apart from the forests,
+though still belonging to them, for they hold in fancy by the tenure of
+the olden time, how many woods, and groves, and sprinklings of fair
+trees, rise up during a day's journey, in almost every region of the
+North! And among them all, it may be, scarcely a pine. For the oak, and
+the ash, and the elm, are also all native trees; nowhere else does the
+rowan flush with more dazzling lustre; in spring, the alder with its
+vivid green stands well beside the birk--the yew was not neglected of
+yore, though the bow of the Celt was weak to that of the Saxon; and the
+holly, in winter emulating the brightness of the pine, flourished, and
+still flourishes on many a mountain-side. There is sufficient sylvan
+scenery for beauty in a land of mountains. More may be needed for
+shelter--but let the young plants and seedlings have time to grow--and
+as for the old trees, may they live for ever! Too many millions of
+larches are perhaps growing now behind the Tay and the Tilt; yet why
+should the hills of Perthshire be thought to be disfigured by what
+ennobles the Alps and the Apennines?
+
+Hitherto we have hardly said a word about Lochs, and have been doing our
+best to forget them, while imagining scenes that were chiefly
+characterised by other great features of Highland Landscape. A country
+thus constituted, and with such an aspect, even if we could suppose it
+without lochs, would still be a glorious region; but its lochs are
+indeed its greatest glory: by them its glens, its mountains, and its
+woods, are all illumined, and its rivers made to sing aloud for joy. In
+the pure element, overflowing so many spacious vales and glens profound,
+the great and stern objects of nature look even more sublime or more
+beautiful in their reflected shadows, which appear in that stillness to
+belong rather to heaven than earth. Or the evanescence of all that
+imagery at a breath may touch 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 they are
+sometimes seen to assume on a still summer day, always inspire some such
+faint feeling as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all
+things, when the setting sun is seen to sink beneath the mountain, and
+all its golden pomp at the same instant to evanish from the lake.
+
+The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of the
+Highlands as the region of Lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch Lomond.
+A great poet has said that, "in Scotland, the proportion of diffused
+water is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for instance, and in
+most of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds magnificent, and flatters
+the imagination, to hear at a distance of masses of water, so many
+leagues in length and miles in width; and such ample room may be
+delightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding with a lively breeze amid
+the rapidly-shifting scenery. But who ever travelled along the banks of
+Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling
+that a speedier termination of the long vista of blank water would be
+acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows,
+trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side? In fact,
+a notion of grandeur, as connected with magnitude, has seduced persons
+of taste into a general mistake upon this subject. It is much more
+desirable, for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerous
+and small or middle-sized, than large, not only for communication by
+walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar
+appearances. To illustrate this by one instance: how pleasing is it to
+have a ready and frequent opportunity of watching, at the outlet of a
+lake, the stream, pushing its way among the rocks, in lively contrast
+with the stillness from which it has escaped! and how amusing to compare
+its noisy and turbulent motions with the gentle playfulness of the
+breezes that may be starting up, or wandering here and there, over the
+faintly-rippled surface of the broad water! I may add, as a general
+remark, that in lakes of great width the shores cannot be distinctly
+seen at the same time, and therefore contribute little to mutual
+illustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of sight
+of each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes, then
+unfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object--he has the
+blankness of a sea-prospect without the grandeur and accompanying sense
+of power."
+
+We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on light
+grounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt and
+expressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is not
+applicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise this passage
+sentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a captious, but a
+reverent spirit, as we have ever done with the works of this illustrious
+man. He has studied nature more widely and profoundly than we have; but
+it is out of our power to look on Loch Lomond without a feeling of
+perfection. The "diffusion of water" is indeed great; but in what a
+world it floats! At first sight of it, how our soul expands! The sudden
+revelation of such majestic beauty, wide as it is and extending afar,
+inspires us with a power of comprehending it all. Sea-like indeed it
+is--a Mediterranean Sea--enclosed with lofty hills and as lofty
+mountains--and these indeed are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwell
+on the feeling which all must have experienced on the first sight of
+such a vision--the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifest
+that the spacious "diffusion of water" more than conspires with the
+other components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to it
+belongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright, as
+its own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and so
+deeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scene
+before us depend less on the expanse of the "diffusion of water." The
+islands, that before had lain we knew not how--or we had only felt that
+they were all most lovely--begin to show themselves in the order of
+their relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on the
+largest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or two of
+the least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted rock; and
+many as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid plain, for
+it is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude, as masses and
+sprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of the
+cerulean vault. And then the long promontories--stretching out from
+opposite mainlands, and enclosing bays that in themselves are
+lakes--they too magnify the empire of water; for long as they are, they
+seem so only as our eye attends them with their cliffs and woods from
+the retiring shores, and far distant are their shadows from the central
+light. Then what shores! On one side, where the lake is widest,
+low-lying they seem, and therefore lovelier--undulating with fields and
+groves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered, into lines of hills
+that gradually soften away into another land. On the other side, sloping
+back, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in their bareness, for they are
+green as emerald; others, scarcely more beautiful, studded with fair
+trees--some altogether woods. They soon form into mountains--and the
+mountains become more and more majestical, yet beauty never deserts
+them, and her spirit continues to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Far
+off as they are, Benlomond and Benvorlich are seen to be giants;
+magnificent is their retinue, but they two are supreme, each in his own
+dominion; and clear as the day is here, they are diadem'd with clouds.
+
+It cannot be that the "proportion of diffused water is here too great;"
+and is it then true that no one "ever travelled along the banks of Loch
+Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling that
+a speedier termination to the long vista of blank water would be
+acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows,
+trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side?" We have
+travelled along them in all weathers and never felt such a wish. For
+there they all are--all but the "sparkling stream to run by our side,"
+and we see not how that well could be in nature. "Streams that sparkle
+as they run," cross our path on their own; and brighter never issued
+from the woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss--ay, and
+much farther--the variations of the foreground are incessant; "had it no
+other beauties," it has been truly said, "but those of its shores, it
+would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the
+bright-green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that sometimes
+skirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its gentle
+billows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky promontories
+rising from the dark water, rich in wildflowers and ferns, and tangled
+with wild roses and honeysuckles, or its retired bays where the waves
+dash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them, an
+inverted landscape." The islands are for ever arranging themselves into
+new forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem to
+be, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is a
+pleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances the
+delight of admiration. And alongside, or behind us, all the while, are
+the sylvan mountains, "laden with beauty;" and ever and anon open glens
+widen down upon us from chasms; or forest-glades lead our hearts away
+into the inner gloom--perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looks
+not as if it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear by
+nature, a woodsman's hut.
+
+Half-way between Luss and Tarbet the water narrows, but it is still
+wide; the new road, we believe, winds round the point of Firkin, the old
+road boldly scaled the height, as all old roads loved to do; ascend it,
+and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell.
+Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to
+belong to them--to be subjected to their will--and that is capricious;
+for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and
+sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their
+biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences"
+which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigious
+mountains; for we cannot look on them without feeling that they reign
+over the solitude they compose; the lights and shadows flung by the sun
+and the clouds imagination assuredly regards as put forth by the vast
+objects which they colour; and we are inclined to think some such belief
+is essential in the profound awe, often amounting to dread, with which
+we are inspired by the presences of mere material forms. But be this as
+it may, the upper portion of Loch Lomond is felt by all to be most
+sublime. Near the head, all the manifold impressions of the beautiful
+which for hours our mind had been receiving, begin to fade; if some
+gloomy change has taken place in the air, there is a total obliteration,
+and the mighty scene before us is felt to possess not the hour merely,
+but the day. Yet should sunshine come, and abide a while, beauty will
+glimpse upon us even here, for green pastures will smile vividly high up
+among the rocks; the sylvan spirit is serene the moment it is touched
+with light, and here there is not only many a fair tree by the
+water-side, but yon old oak-wood will look joyful on the mountain, and
+the gloom become glimmer in the profound abyss.
+
+Wordsworth says that "it must be more desirable, for the purposes of
+pleasure, that lakes should be numerous, and small or middle-sized, than
+large, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for variety,
+and for recurrence of similar appearances." The Highlands have them of
+all sizes--and that surely is best. But here is one which, it has been
+truly said, is not only "incomparable in its beauty as in its
+dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent and
+splendour, but unites in itself every style of scenery which is found in
+the other lakes of the Highlands." He who has studied, and understood,
+and felt all Loch Lomond, will be prepared at once to enjoy any other
+fine lake he looks on; nor will he admire nor love it the less, though
+its chief character should consist in what forms but one part of that of
+the Wonder in which all kinds of beauty and sublimity are combined.
+
+We feel that it would be idle, and worse than idle, to describe any
+number of the Highland lochs, for so many of the finest have been seen
+by so many eyes that few persons probably will ever read these pages to
+whom such descriptions would be, at the best, more than shadowings of
+scenery that their own imaginations can more vividly re-create. There
+are other reasons for not saying a single word about some of the most
+beautiful; for genius has pictured and peopled them and the surrounding
+regions in colours that will never fade. Besides, in the volumes to
+which these "Remarks" are a preface--contributed with pleasure, somewhat
+impaired indeed by the consciousness of their many defects and
+imperfections--views of them all are submitted to the eye; and it is not
+to be thought that we could by words add to the effect of the works of
+such artists. These objections do not apply to what we have written
+respecting the character of the Scenery of the Highlands, apart, as far
+as that may be, from their lochs; and it may have in some measure
+illustrated them also, if it has at all truly characterised the
+mountains, the glens, the rivers, the forests, and the woods.
+
+We may be allowed, however, to say, that there cannot be a greater
+mistake than to think, as many, we believe, do who have only heard of
+the Highland Lochs, that, with the exception of those famous for their
+beauty as well as their grandeur, beauty is not only not the quality by
+which they are distinguished, but that it is rarely found in them at
+all. There are few, possessing any very marked character, in which
+beauty is not either an ingredient or an accompaniment; and there are
+many "beautiful exceedingly," which, lying out of the way even of
+somewhat adventurous travellers, or very remote, are known, if even by
+that, only by name. It does not, indeed, require much, in some
+situations, to give a very touching beauty to water. A few trees, a few
+knolls, a few tufted rocks, will do it, where all around and above is
+stern or sterile; and how strong may be the gentle charm, if the torrent
+that feeds the little loch chance to flow into it from a lucid pool
+formed by a waterfall, and to flow out of it in a rivulet that enlivens
+the dark heather with a vale of verdure over which a stag might
+bound--and more especially if there be two or three huts in which it is
+perceived there is human life! We believe we slightly touched before on
+such scenes; but any little repetition will be excused for the sake of a
+very picturesque passage, which we have much pleasure in quoting from
+the very valuable "Guide to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland," by
+the brothers Anderson. We well remember walking into the scene here so
+well painted, many long years ago, and have indeed, somewhere or other,
+described it. The Fall of Foyers is the most magnificent cataract, out
+of all sight and hearing, in Britain. The din is quite loud enough in
+ordinary weather--and it is only in ordinary weather that you can
+approach the place from which you have a full view of all its grandeur.
+When the Fall is in flood--to say nothing of being drenched to the
+skin--you are so blinded by the sharp spray-smoke, and so deafened by
+the dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that your
+condition is far from enviable, as you cling, "lonely lover of nature,"
+to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid gulf. Nor in
+former times was there any likelihood of your being comforted by the
+accommodations of the General's Hut. In ordinary Highland
+weather--meaning thereby weather neither very wet nor very dry--it is
+worth walking a thousand miles for one hour to behold the Fall of
+Foyers. The spacious cavity is enclosed by "complicated cliffs and
+perpendicular precipices" of immense height, and though for a while it
+wears to the eye a savage aspect, yet beauty fears not to dwell even
+there, and the horror is softened by what appears to be masses of tall
+shrubs, or single shrubs almost like trees. And they are trees, which on
+the level plain would look even stately; but as they ascend ledge above
+ledge the walls of that awful chasm, it takes the eye time to see them
+as they really are, while on our first discernment of their character,
+serenely standing among the tumult, they are felt on such sites to be
+sublime.
+
+"Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik," says the Book we were
+about to quote, "a space of three or four miles, the river Foyers flows
+through a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch. They present
+various quiet glades and open spaces, where little patches of cultivated
+ground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose surface is pleasingly
+diversified by nodding trees, bare rocks, empurpled heath, and bracken
+bearing herbage." It was the excessive loveliness of some of the scenery
+there that suggested to us the thought of going to look what kind of a
+stream the Foyers was above the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of a
+summer evening, found it
+
+    "Was even the gentlest of all gentle things."
+
+But here is the promised description of it. "Before pursuing our way
+westward, we would wish to direct the traveller's attention to a
+sequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This is a
+secluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its natural
+attractions--and these are many--is distinguished as one of the few
+places where the old practice of resorting to the 'shieling' for summer
+grazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on all sides by
+steep mountains; but at the north end there is a small lake, about a
+mile and a half in length, and from one-third to half a mile in breadth.
+The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a perfectly level tract, of
+the same width with the lake, and about two miles and a half in length,
+covered with the richest herbage, and traversed by a small meandering
+river flowing through it into the lake. The surface of this flat is
+bedecked with the little huts or bothies which afford temporary
+accommodation to the herdsmen and others in charge of the cattle. This
+portion of the glen is bordered on the west by continuous hills rising
+abruptly in a uniformly steep acclivity, and passing above into a
+perpendicular range of precipices, the whole covered with a scanty
+verdure sprouted with heath. At a bend of the lake near its middle,
+where it inclines from a northernly course towards the west, a
+magnificent rounded precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may be
+about 1200 feet in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a few
+narrow and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting a
+perfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the rest
+of the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side, clothed
+with birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded over with the
+deeper-tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain, and the adjoining
+portion of the lake, are lined by mountains corresponding in height with
+those opposed to them; but their lower extremities are, to a
+considerable extent, strewed with broken fragments of rock, to which
+succeeds an uninterrupted zone of birch and alder, which is again
+overtopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An elevated terrace occupies the
+remainder of this side of the lake; above the wooded face of which is
+seen a sloping expanse of mingled heath and herbage. About half a mile
+from the south end, Mr Fraser of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected a
+shooting-lodge; viewed from which, or from either end, or from the top
+of the platform on the north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcely
+picture a more attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by this
+sequestered vale, to which Dr Johnson's description of the 'Happy
+Valley' not inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of several
+hundreds, are generally kept here from the beginning of June to the
+middle of August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The river
+sweeps to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-clad
+hills, which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn which
+immediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a rustic
+bridge, from which a single footpath conducts across the brow of the
+hill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles distant."
+
+There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost as
+little known (one view of it is given in the book), equal to anything in
+the Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in the Great
+Glen--Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since, having been
+induced to do so by a passage in John Stoddart's "Remarks on the Local
+Scenery and Manners of Scotland;" and it was then a very noble oak and
+pine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept steadily at it; and a
+great change was wrought; but it is still a grand scene, with a larger
+infusion of beauty than it possessed of old. The scenery of the valley
+separating it from Loch Lochy is very similar to that of the Trossachs;
+through it there are two approaches to the loch, and the _Mile-Dubh_, or
+the Dark Mile, according to our feeling, is more impressive than any
+part of the approach to Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are very
+solemn, and yet very sweet; for though many old pines and oaks and ashes
+are there, and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now on
+many places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocks
+below, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the young
+are intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their protection,
+without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch, more or less
+sylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some magnificent
+remains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep like some great
+river. There may be more, but we remember but one island--not large, but
+wooded as it should be--the burying-place of the family of Lochiel. What
+rest! It is a long journey from Loch Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig--and by the
+silent waters we walked or sat all a summer's day. There was nothing
+like a road that we observed, but the shores are easily travelled, and
+there it is you may be almost sure of seeing some red-deer. They are no
+better worth looking at from a window than Fallow--no offence to Fallow,
+who are fine creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all;
+but on the shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a human
+habitation within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seen
+to be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here and
+there some spot that seems cultivatable, but probably is found not to
+be so after some laborious years--there they are at home; and you, if
+young, looking on them, feel at home too, and go bounding, like one of
+themselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable steep. Roe, too,
+frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be started; grouse spring
+up before you oftener than you might expect in a deer forest; but, to be
+sure, it is a rough and shaggy one, though lovelier lines of verdure
+never lay in the sunshine than we think we see now lying for miles along
+the margin of that loch. The numerous mountains towards the head of the
+loch are very lofty, and glens diverge in grand style into opposite and
+distant regions. Glen Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on the
+loch, and leads to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart--Glen Paean to
+Oben-a-Cave on Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and Loch
+Shiel; and Glen Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice!
+We chose Glen Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that took
+us down to Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and in
+grandeur not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day's
+journey, the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the great
+objects of nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, the
+spirit of the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest.
+It is surpassing fair--and having lain all night long on its gentle
+banks, sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it since
+but as the Land of Dreams.
+
+Which is the dreariest, most desolate, and dismal of the Highland Lochs?
+We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness, with
+which perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may travel
+for days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We speak of the
+regions comprehended between the Forest of Atholl and Ben-nevis, the
+Moor of Rannoch and Glen Spean. There are many lochs--and Loch Ericht is
+their griesly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds, hunters, fowlers, anglers,
+traverse its borders, but few have been far in the interior, and we
+never knew anybody who had crossed it from south to north, from east to
+west. We have ourselves seen more of it, perhaps, than any other
+Lowlander; and had traversed many of its vast glens and moors, before we
+found our way to the southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into the
+western gloom of Ben Auler from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hours
+dismal but not dangerous precipices that opened out into what might
+almost be called passes--but we had frequently to go back, for they were
+blind--contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains that
+rose from the water a few miles down the loch. All was vast, shapeless,
+savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of those days that
+keep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder; such as one conceives
+of on the eve of an earthquake. At first the sight was dreadful, but
+there was no reason for dread; imagination remains not longer than she
+chooses the slave of her own eyes, and we soon began to enjoy the gloom,
+and to feel how congenial it was in nature with the character of all
+those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in
+solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And
+they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great
+distance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, covering their
+feet.
+
+Loch Ericht is many miles long--nearly twenty; but there is a loch among
+the Grampians not more than two miles round, if so much, which is
+sublimer far--Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once, a short
+way down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some two thousand
+feet below you, itself being as many above the level of the sea. But to
+come upon it so as to feel best its transcendent grandeur, you should
+approach it up Glenaven--and from as far down as Inch-Rouran, which is
+about half-way between Loch Aven and Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran and
+Tomantoul the glen is wild, but it is inhabited; above that house there
+is but one other; and for about a dozen miles--we have heard it called
+far more--there is utter solitude. But never was there a solitude at
+once so wild, so solemn, so serene, so sweet! The glen is narrow; but on
+one side there are openings into several wider glens, that show you
+mighty coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are without
+a break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy, from
+dark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of pastoral or of
+forest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong to the bases of
+Ben-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants are not seen--but it
+sublimes the long glen to know that it belongs to their dominion, and
+that it is leading us on to an elevation that ere long will be on a
+level with the roots of their topmost cliffs. The Aven is so clear--on
+account of the nature of its channel--that you see the fishes hanging in
+every pool; and 'tis not possible to imagine how beautiful in such
+transparencies are the reflections of its green ferny banks. For miles
+they are composed of knolls, seldom interspersed with rocks, and there
+cease to be any trees. But ever and anon we walk for a while on a level
+floor, and the voice of the stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have been
+noticed on the hill, but not many, and red and black cattle grazing on
+the lower pastures; but they disappear, and we find ourselves all at
+once in a desert. So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its black
+heather on that greenest grass; but 'tis such a desert as the red-deer
+love. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to
+be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till we
+again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in the
+glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains,
+for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, forming
+themselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; and
+now we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we know
+not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel that
+sublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur we
+feel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker.
+
+This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from that
+enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholy
+moors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps them
+herbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any
+sign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as if
+they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere
+imagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a
+desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances of
+outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith,
+the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to make
+them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region as
+happy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as the
+soul has chosen to make sublime--the colouring of the mountains all
+such, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region,
+thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to be
+indeed one of the very noblest in nature.
+
+We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on the
+Character of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that the
+sketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally filled
+up with some details--must be very imperfect indeed without
+comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that
+stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do not
+think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we have
+sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds,
+and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet they
+contain such an endless variety of all the fairest and greatest objects
+of nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our powers to give
+anything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the grandeur that for
+ever kept unfolding themselves around our summer voyagings in calm or
+storm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth part of the wonders of
+"the marine" between the Mull of Cantire and Cape Wrath? He may have
+gathered many an extensive shore--threaded many a mazy multitude of
+isles--sailed up many a spacious bay--and cast anchor at the head of
+many a haven land-locked so as no more to seem to belong to the sea--yet
+other voyagers shall speak to him of innumerable sights which he has
+never witnessed; and they who are most conversant with those coasts,
+best know how much they have left and must leave for ever unexplored.
+
+Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyll! Without it and
+the Sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morvern! Eclipsed the
+splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the waves
+roll in light, you will see how the mountains are beautified by the sea.
+There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to no
+land-loch--only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image of
+ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all now
+it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich and
+adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the Amethyst bound away "at
+her own sweet will," accordant with yours, till she reach the distant
+and long-desired loch.
+
+    "Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar,
+    Comes in among these mountains from the main,
+    'Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan's rocky cape
+    And Ardmore's shingly beach of hissing spray;
+    And while his thunders bid the sound of Mull
+    Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays
+    Hill-shelter'd from the wrath that foams along
+    The mad mid-channel,--All as quiet they
+    As little separate worlds of summer dreams,--
+    And by storm-loving birds attended up
+    The mountain-hollow, white in their career
+    As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles
+    Of craggy Carnich, and green Oronsay
+    Drench'd in that sea-horn shower o'er tree-tops driven,
+    And ivied stones of what was once a tower,
+    Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might
+    In the long reach between Dungallan caves
+    And point of Arderinis ever fair
+    With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait
+    Into another ampler inland sea;
+    Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,--
+    And potent is she, though so meek the Eve,--
+    Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean
+    Insensibly into a solemn calm,--
+    And all along that ancient burial-ground
+    (Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend
+    Its own eternal quiet to the waves,
+    Restless no more, into a perfect peace
+    Lulling and lull'd at last, while drop the airs
+    Away as they were dead, the first-risen star
+    Beholds that lovely Archipelago,
+    All shadow'd there as in a spiritual world,
+    Where time's mutations shall come never more!"
+
+These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe their
+greatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which nature has
+lavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but Loch Leven is
+scarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is matchless
+magnificence above Loch Etive. All round about Ballahulish and Inverco
+the scenery of Loch Leven is the sweetest ever seen overshadowed by
+such mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter its lustre; in all
+weathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often while tip among the rocks
+the tall trees are tossing in the storm, the heart of the woods beneath
+is calm, and the vivid fields they shelter look as if they still enjoyed
+the sun. Nor closes the beauty there, but even animates the entrance
+into that dreadful glen--Glencoe. All the way up its river, Loch Leven
+would be fair, were it only for her hanging woods. But though the glen
+narrows, it still continues broad, and there are green plains between
+her waters and the mountains, on which stately trees stand single, and
+there is ample room for groves. The returning tide tells us, should we
+forget it, that this is no inland loch, for it hurries away back to the
+sea, not turbulent, but fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is one
+of the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series of
+waterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immense
+vista; and all the way up to the furthest there are noble assemblages of
+rocks--nowhere any want of wood--and in places, trees that seem to have
+belonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to
+lead into another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way,
+past some small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on all
+sides, and descended on Loch Treag,
+
+    "A loch whom there are none to praise,
+    And very few to love,"
+
+but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoral
+contentment and peace.
+
+Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen by
+almost all who have visited the Highlands--but very imperfectly; to know
+what it is, you must row or sail up it, for the banks on both sides are
+often richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are frequently well
+embayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently wide to allow you
+from its centre to command a view of many of the distant heights. But
+above Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For a couple of miles it is
+not wide, and it is so darkened by enormous shadows that it looks even
+less like a strait than a gulf--huge overhanging rocks on both sides
+ascending high, and yet felt to belong but to the bases of mountains
+that sloping far back have their summits among clouds of their own in
+another region of the sky. Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere else
+is there such lofty heather--it seems a wild sort of brushwood; tall
+trees flourish, single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and then
+an oak--and they are in their youth or their prime--and even the
+prodigious trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are not
+all dead, but shoot from their knotted rind symptoms of life
+inextinguishable by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge into
+the Upper Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains,
+all of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests.
+Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all--king at once of Loch
+Etive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off, is still a
+giant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with him the Black
+Mount and its dependents, so that they all seem to belong to this most
+magnificent of all Highland lochs. "I know not," says Macculloch, "that
+Loch Etive could bear an ornament without an infringement on that aspect
+of solitary vastness which it presents throughout. Nor is there one. The
+rocks and bays on the shore, which might elsewhere attract attention,
+are here swallowed up in the enormous dimensions of the surrounding
+mountains, and the wide and ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house,
+here fearfully solitary, situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visible
+when at the upper extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in a
+few places on the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were a
+humble mountain flower, by the universal magnitude around." This is
+finely felt and expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there is
+much of the beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, and
+bay, and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granite
+masses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; several
+houses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though that
+long hollow--half a day's journey--till you reach the wild road between
+Inveruran and King's House--lies in gloom, yet the hillsides are
+cheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and rock-broken,
+should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. But
+to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceases
+to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off a
+solitary dwelling indeed--perhaps the loneliest house in all the
+Highlands--and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by the
+voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or three
+stems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture--but we
+have seen them and the deer-hounds glide over it, followed by other
+fearless feet, when far and wide the Forest of Dalness was echoing to
+the hunter's horn.
+
+We have now brought our Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands to a
+close, and would fain have said a few words on the character and life of
+the people; but are precluded from even touching on that most
+interesting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellers
+through those wonderful regions, can be so occupied with the
+contemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought to
+their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without such
+thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses,
+in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; but
+they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensive
+tracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods that
+for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life,
+yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable to the instructed
+eye almost everywhere, and in them often lies the spell that charms us,
+even while we think that we are wholly delivered up to the influence of
+"dead insensate things." None will visit the Highlands without having
+some knowledge of their history; and the changes that have long been
+taking place in the condition of the people will be affectingly
+recognised wherever they go, in spite even of what might have appeared
+the insuperable barriers of nature.
+
+                                  "Time and Tide
+    Have washed away, like weeds upon the sands,
+    Crowds of the olden life's memorials;
+    And 'mid the mountains you as well might seek
+    For the lone site of fancy's filmy dreams.
+    Towers have decay'd and moulder'd from the cliffs,
+    Or their green age, or grey, has help'd to build
+    New dwellings sending up their household smoke
+    From treeless places once inhabited
+    But by the secret sylvans. On the moors
+    The pillar-stone, reared to perpetuate
+    The fame of some great battle, or the power
+    Of storied necromancer in the wild,
+    Among the wide change on the heather-bloom
+    By power more wondrous wrought than his, its name
+    Has lost, or fallen itself has disappear'd;
+    No broken fragment suffer'd to impede
+    The glancing ploughshare. All the ancient woods
+    Are thinn'd and let in floods of daylight now,
+    Then dark and dern as when the Druids lived.
+    Narrow'd is now the red-deer's forest reign;
+    The royal race of eagles is extinct.
+    But other changes than on moor and cliff
+    Have tamed the aspect of the wilderness;
+    The simple system of primeval life,
+    Simple but stately, hath been broken down;
+    The clans are scatter'd, and the chieftain's power
+    Is dead, or dying--but a name--though yet
+    It sometimes stirs the desert; to the winds
+    The tall plumes wave no more--the tartan green
+    With fiery streaks among the heather-bells
+    Now glows unfrequent; and the echoes mourn
+    The silence of the music that of old
+    Kept war-thoughts stern amid the calm of peace.
+    Yet to far battle plains still Morven sends
+    Her heroes, and still glittering in the sun,
+    Or blood-dimm'd, her dread line of bayonets
+    Marches with loud shouts straight to victory.
+    A soften'd radiance now floats o'er her glens;
+    No rare sight now upon her sea-arm lochs
+    The sail oft-veering up the solitude;
+    And from afar the noise of life is brought
+    Within the thunders of her cataracts.
+    These will flow on for ever; and the crests,
+    Gold-tipt by rising and by setting suns,
+    Of her old mountains inaccessible
+    Glance down their scorn for ever on the toils
+    That load with harvests now the humbler hills,
+    Now shorn of all their heather bloom, and green
+    Or yellow as the gleam of lowland fields.
+    And bold hearts in broad bosoms still are there,
+    Living and dying peacefully; the huts
+    Abodes are still of high-soul'd poverty;
+    And underneath their lintels beauty stoops
+    Her silken-snooded head, when singing goes
+    The maiden to her father at his work
+    Among the woods, or joins the scanty line
+    Of barley-reapers on their narrow ridge,
+    In some small field among the pastoral braes.
+    Still fragments dim of ancient poetry
+    In melancholy music down the glens
+    Go floating; and from shieling roof'd with boughs,
+    And turf-wall'd, high up in some lonely place
+    Where flocks of sheep are nibbling the sweet grass
+    Of mid-summer, and browsing on the plants
+    On the cliff mosses a few goats are seen
+    Among their kids, you hear sweet melodies
+    Attuned to some traditionary tale,
+    By young wife sitting all alone, aware
+    From shadow on the mountain horologe
+    Of the glad hour that brings her husband home
+    Before the gloaming, from the far-off moor
+    Where the black cattle feed; there all alone
+    She sits and sings, except that on her knees
+    Sleeps the sweet offspring of their faithful loves."
+
+We love the people too well to praise them--we have had too heartfelt
+experience of their virtues. In castle, hall, house, manse, hut, hovel,
+shieling--on mountain and moor, we have known, without having to study
+their character. It manifests itself in their manners, and in their
+whole frame of life. They are now, as they ever were, affectionate,
+faithful, and fearless; and far more delightful surely it is to see such
+qualities in all their pristine strength--for civilisation has not
+weakened, nor ever will weaken them--without that alloy of fierceness
+and ferocity which was inseparable from them in the turbulence of feudal
+times. They are now indeed a peaceful people; severe as are the
+hardships of their condition, they are, in the main, contented with it;
+and nothing short of necessity can dissever them from their dear
+mountains. We devoutly trust that there need be no more forced
+emigration--that henceforth it will be free--at the option of the
+adventurous--and that all who will, when the day cometh, may be gathered
+to their fathers in the land that gave them birth. Much remains to be
+done not only to relieve but enlighten; yet Christian benevolence has
+not been forgetful of their wants; schools and churches are arising in
+remote places; and that they are in good truth a religious as well as a
+moral people is proved by the passionate earnestness with which, in
+their worst destitution, they embrace every offer of instruction in the
+knowledge that leads to everlasting life. The blessing of Heaven will
+lie on all such missions as these; and the time will come when we shall
+be able to contemplate, without any pain, the condition of a race who,
+to use the noble language of one, though often scornful and sarcastic
+overmuch, yet at heart their friend, "almost in an hour subsided into
+peace and virtue, retaining their places, their possessions, their
+chiefs, their songs, their traditions, their superstitions and peculiar
+usages--even that language and those recollections which still separate
+them from the rest of the nation. They retained even their pride, and
+they retained their contempt of those who imposed that order on them,
+and still they settled into a state of obedience to that government, of
+which the world produces no other instance! It is a splendid moral
+phenomenon, and reflects a lustre on the Highland character, whether of
+the chiefs or the people, which extinguishes all past faults, and which
+atones for what little remains to be amended. A peculiar political
+situation was the cause of their faults; and that which swept away the
+cause, has rendered the effects a tale of other times."
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Recreations of Christopher North,
+Volume 2, by John Wilson
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